I’m late on my log this week, a lot has happened and really, I’m lucky to be alive.

The last master training of the Green Warriors is finished and to wrap up this phase of the project the boss wants me to travel through the 2 districts and see what the Green warriors have achieved on the ground.

Source: Steve Cran, Global Sustainability Corps. Content created by Steve Cran and Global Sustainability Corps is licensed under Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported

The old dual cab ute is packed with my Green Warrior staff and all our gear. It better not rain because there’s not enough room inside the vehicle so 2 are riding in the back no matter what the weather does. We travel the bone crunching rutted tracks to Nuccups, about 5 hours drive from Abim. I’ve just got over a second bout of malaria and feel a bit light headed and low on energy. Several of my staff have been through their own malaria nightmares. At Nuccups, we RV with the boss and his crew and plan out the weeks activities.

We’re going to the most remote Green Warrior first at Ding Dinga where the wild people live. We pick up the Green Warrior in town and head out to a bore pump garden his community has constructed.

As we arrive I can see curved raised beds covered in vegetation. We get out of the ute and negotiate the thorn stick fence. I see some mistakes already. These people have never gardened vegetables before so they lack the finer points.

They’ve over planted the vege seeds and have a carpet of seedlings bunched together on the top of all the beds. I ask my crew what’s wrong with this picture. They get it and start explaining to the local Green Warrior how to fix it. There’s also soap coming into the garden from the wastewater from the actual pump and that’s going to cause problems with the soil.

Soldiers having been using the bore pump for washing. There are no people here because they’re all at the market several kilometres away in Kenya. I want to check Kenya out but the Green Warrior insists we have to come to his next project.

We drive through the scrub on an almost invisible track. I have to keep my arm in the ute because of the thorny shrubs we have to push through with the vehicle. They’re not just prickles, they are sharp spikes! I see it would be almost impossible to move through this type of vegetation in the wet season so there is little chance of cattle raiders.

Safe for now! We are driving and driving and I ask the Green Warrior how far to this village. “Not far, not far”, he says.

Finally after 90 minutes of hard driving a village emerges. Its dry and thorny and in the clearing ahead a crowded bore pump appears. I see the bore pump garden, an exact copy of the one at Ding Dinga, except this one has lots of women watering, hoeing and fencing with thorns. I get the Green Warrior to call all the women into a circle for a chat in the shade.

About 50 people gather next to the bore-pump. It’s the same problems again, too many seeds and the seedlings should have been planted a week ago. Through an interpreter I outline all the steps they have to do to correct the mistakes they’ve made. I am careful to praise them for the work they’ve completed but stress they have to get it right if they want to eat.

The group, mostly women clap each time I give them a pointer on their garden. This place is so isolated and I cant but wonder how the Green Warrior gets to a community this far into the bush and actually gets something on the ground!

There’ no vehicles out this far so he must have walked. This dude deserves a medal. It’s time to go so we say goodbye and the group cheers and waves as we drive off leaving a dust cloud in our wake. I make a mental note to give some extra support to this community.

We duck into a village in Kenya, just over the border to get some diesel. There is no border post, not even a marker but the roads are better and there’s power lines. My crew tell me the power comes from Uganda and is sold to the Kenyan government. That wouldn’t be a bad thing except the Ugandans don’t get any electricity in their villages up here. It’s a bit unfair. We barter for a price and end up filling our tanks as the fuel is cheaper even with the foreigner tax than Uganda.

I’m back in Kenya again the next day in the boss’s Nissan Patrol. We have an escort vehicle with 4 armed soldiers as our security force and we are taking a shortcut to one of our projects using the Kenyan road to cut a few hours off the trip. I feel a bit weird about having Ugandan soldiers as an escort in Kenya but nobody else in our car seems to worry. Sure enough I spy a Kenyan police landrover on the side of the road. As we speed past I see it only has 3 wheels on and a jack holding up the rear axel. No hot pursuit possible today thank God!

A few more kilometres later and we cut back across the border and head for another set of projects our Green warriors have had a hand in. We see the same mistakes and I’m making a mental note to make up a checklist to help them cover all the bases when they set these projects up. At one site the community has set up a seedling bed garden next to a creek.

I ask them where the community garden is going to be and a group of people lead me into the scrub to see it. We walk for about 2 kilometres. I’m feeling weird and my mind seems disconnected from my body. At the garden site I see the community has cleared about 4 acres by hand and the ground is dug ready for planting. “Where’s the water source?” I ask.

“Back at the river”, they tell me. Bloody hell, people carrying a jerry can this far will be exhausted, especially if they are malnourished. I find out the chief and his wife have designed this set up. The boss and I agree this is one site that is set up for failure.

Overall the Green Warriors have mobilized their communities to build and fence many village gardens. They have proved the Karamajong can grow food. We see crops of maize, sunflowers, sesame and peanuts everywhere. The real problem here is food distribution, storage and marketing for a fair price. The land here is fertile and the farmers should be rich.

The boss and I discuss the next phase of this project where we will run some more Green Warrior training, but this time the first wave of Green Warriors will choose the students from their own project communities. The boss also tells me I look yellow. Must be liver damage from the malaria.

In Amudat we stop for the night. I eat beans and rice in a filthy café.

I don’t have much of an appetite but I eat anyway. Later the boss tells me the local doctors warned him the village currently has a cholera epidemic. Great!, I’ve already eaten!

A few days later I agree to go to Kampala with the boss to get a medical check-up. I have a bad cough and a distinct lack of energy around the middle of the day. A few blood tests and I’m told I have typhoid… Malaria twice, a bad chest infection and typhoid all in the same month… No wonder I’ve lost my sparkle! The boss tells me he’s sending me home to Australia a week early, I come back in 6 weeks. No argument from me (maybe a bit!). I have now become so sick I’m crawling to the toilet to vomit in my hotel room… I pack, get the right medicines and do the final admin to go home.

I’m so lucky to be able to go home to a wealthy country like Australia. It’s a long series of flights to get home. I exit the airport and jump on the train. My body’s here now in Australia but my mind is with my Green Warriors out in the bush of Karamoja. I hope it comes home soon! I’ll be back…

Source: Steve Cran, Global Sustainability Corps. Content created by Steve Cran and Global Sustainability Corps is licensed under Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported