Extreme Permaculture

Malaria, typhoid and a chest infection - Extreme Permaculture Steve Cran

Posted by niccolo at 2:04 pm people, permaculture 2 Responses » Tagged with: Extreme Permaculture, Steve Cran, uganda

Jul 082010

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

steve

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.

hut

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.

swale

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!

green-swale

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

The elephants in the permaculture system

Posted by niccolo at 6:34 pm permaculture.tv No Responses » Tagged with: Extreme Permaculture, Global Sustainability Corps, Steve Cran

Jun 122010

It’s just me and my 5 trainee staff this week. We are building a huge pizza/bread oven from local materials.

mud oven

These ovens can cook bread, cakes, meat and of course pizzas. One good oven can be a business for a family or women’s group. The Ugandans this far north haven’t discovered pizza yet but with the help of this first oven they will join the rest of the world with an African version of the pizza. Its going to take a bit of muscle and determination to make this beast so I tell my team if we finish it by friday, we are all going to Kadepo National Park for a weekend camping.

The first 2 days are taken up building the base or plinth that will support the oven up at waist height so the cooks don’t have to bend down when stoking the fire or cooking. I estimate 3 meters across by paces as there are no tape measures here at Abim. I calculate the final oven will end up 2 meters across at the base. My rule for an oven is it has to be big enough to crawl into if you are serious about making commercial quantities of bread. While the team are building the base I organize the other materials needed. Once the base is complete I get the team to fill it with waste bricks, stone and sand. It’s important to make sure the sand is packed down with no air pockets.

Next stage we build the inner mold as I call it. Using stacked bricks like a wedding cake we make a dome shape that can be disassembled through the oven door once the outside shell is complete. With a dome shaped stack of bricks as the inner core we use a mixture of composted dung and soil to cover the stack so it looks like a mud dome.

The outer shell is made of cob, a mixture of clay based soil mixed with chopped grass and a small amount of cement powder (yeah, I cheated!) The cement is to give the dome a bit more strength when its drying so we don’t have a collapse when we disassemble the mold that holds the cob up as the outer shell. I lay all the materials out on a clean piece of ground and show the trainees the right ratios of soil to grass. The scientific method is a barrow of soil mixed with 2 large hand fulls of chopped grass and 1 shovel full of cement. The mix forms a small pile on the ground and we add water as we go. Off with the shoes and into the cob mix pile. It’s stomping time. The Ugandans are reluctant to get dirty but with a bit of teasing I have some fellow stompers. It feels good, the cool mud squishing between the toes. Feet mix mud better than any hand tools.

As each mix is ready we apply it by building up a thick base and spiraling up the mold. I show them how to slap the mix into shape with no air pockets allowed. It takes several hours of hard work but finally the dome is complete. We decide to build a brick arched oven entrance because we have the materials left over. An hour later the whole oven is complete and we cover the wet-outter with sand to assist in the drying. We will now leave this for several days until its hard enough to start excavating out the mold materials.

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

road trip

As promised its Saturday and we load the vehicle for our camping trip to Kadepo Park. Only one of the trainees has seen wild animals before. It’s the trip of a lifetime for us all. Ever since I read my first National Geographic magazine I’ve wanted to see the animals of Africa. So far I’ve seen bugger all in Karamoja. The ecology of this place has been seriously damaged by war, fire, drought and poaching. I hope Kadepo is different.

The King mountain

There are nine of us squeezed into a Hilux dual cab. The tray is full of tents, bags, food and people. Luckily the Ugandans are not very wide and we squash 3 women and a guy into the back seat for the 4 hour journey. I haven’t been north of Abim since the dry season in February. We drive out through the gauntlet of mountains looking down on Abim. My favorite is “the King”. Its a solid rock like a huge whale tooth sticking up out of the forest floor. It’s rumored to have magical powers. It sure looks impressive as we pass.

The hot and dusty drive there is uneventful other than seeing the countryside green for a change. We finally approach the front gate of the park which is a square arch made of rough stone and a boom-gate blocking our entry. Time to pay.

giraffe skull

The ranger is friendly as he gets his visitors book out as well as a list of fees. There’s a special fee for Muzungus, a fee per person for park entry, a fee for the vehicle, and we haven’t even covered camping yet. That’s the next stop, the lodge. After shelling out $110 USD we make it into the park along a dirt road. We haven’t even got to the lodge when a giant wart hog charges out of the Savannah. Holy shit! The tusks are like cow horns coming from its jaws. It’s twice the size of the biggest pig I’ve ever seen! It emits a loud bass grunt and heads back into the long grass. Wow!

At the top of the ridge leading into a huge valley an amazing vista unfolds in front of our eyes. The valley is kilometers wide with little rock hills sticking out of the Savannah. These hills have stacks of huge boulders like giant building blocks. One little mountain has a ruin of an old hotel which I’m told was built by Idi Amin. It looks like the best place in the park to observe the valley from. I know where we’re camping tonight! At the lodge we again work out how much we have to pay. Heaps as usual. I ask the head ranger if we can camp at Idi’s lodge. He tells me nobody’s ever camped there before but go ahead. We are given our very own guide/ranger carrying an AK47 for protection. We have to pick him up at Idi’s place.

Idi palace

The packed Hilux takes us towards the abandoned lodge we can see a few kilometers away on the other side of the valley. The roads don’t exactly head in the right direction so we take a series of tracks in the general direction. Soon we spy some elephants about 300 meters away. They are all shiny with mud and are walking single file along a swampy track. We see buffalo and antelope. I wish I had a decent camera…

The lodge was trashed and burnt in the 1980′s when Idi Amin got the boot from power. It’s grey walls blend into the rocks behind. The main structure is still intact as its made from cut stone. Our vehicle grinds its way up the steep road to the entrance of a once grand set of buildings high over the valley below. Wow, the view is truly stunning. I can see all the way to the Sudan. This valley was once the traditional hunting grounds for many of the tribes of east Africa. I see the elephants in the distance, herds of buffalo, a few giraffe in the tree line. I imagine all of Uganda looking like this in the past. It’s better than I imagined!

We camp that night in the ruins. A fingernail moon illuminates the valley below. Nobody can sleep because a lion is roaring all night. Not the kind of sound that promotes deep sleep! At dawn we pile into the vehicle for our early morning safari and head off down the hill with our armed ranger. The first large animal we spot is a huge buffalo, like a brick of meat, not edible meat, but muscle meat! He has a set of horns on his forehead shaped like a mustache. We stop the vehicle to get a snap but it begins to move aggressively towards us. We move on.

giraffes

Along the track a bit further we see a tour bus stopped and we turn down the track they are looking down to see a huge dark male lion trotting down the road. We follow at 20 meters behind. The lion glances back but doesn’t care we are his shadow. I marvel at his size. The ones I’ve seen in zoos are saggy and unfit. This one is pumped!

He has a mate not far away and we watch them set up for hunting out a buffalo from a herd of over 1000 spread across the valley floor. We never get to see the kill because we move off so not to disrupt the action. Our next animal icon is the giraffe, and I’d have to say my favorite besides the elephant. A herd of them are straddling the road. My God, they are so graceful. Even running they look like they are in slow motion. Their coloring and size make them so unique. We wave to them but they just calmly watch us while chewing branches on an acacia tree.

On the last day we are invited to a lodge by a Muzungu called Patrick. He’s building a new lodge on the border of the park to set up a new buffer zone around the park. He is totally interested in the Green Warrior concept and sustainability practices. He treats us to a meal of boervorst sausages and potato salad washed down with some cold beers. How good is that?

We thank Patrick and head back to base as its getting dark. I have to settle our bill at the lodge so I drop the men off at the bottom of out fortress like hill and proceed towards the parks main lodge.

Some ways down the track in the evening light we come across a troop of elephants crossing the road on a bend. I get the driver to stop and we watch a couple of mama elephants and a few teenagers with a bunch of babies cross the road in a tight group. When they’d all crossed and it was safe to proceed we inched forward around the bend. It was almost dark…Halfway round the bend I glanced out the window to see a giant grandfather elephant 20 meters from the vehicle. It was bloody huge with little squinty eyes glaring at me. Suddenly it flapped its huge ears forward and trumpeted. SHIIIT!!!

The massive beast charged forward at the vehicle. Go! Go! Go! I yelled at the same time the girls in the back screamed in unison. Maybe I was screaming too as the largest land mammal on earth came thundering towards us trumpeting his warning sound….The old vehicle found its legs and we shot off down the road with angry Jumbo close on our heels. He didnt give up for a hundred meters and he almost got us at one point. Up the track a bit we all started laughing to let the tension out. It’s not everyday you get a pissed off elephant want to squash you. When we got back to our camp the guys asked us if we heard that elephant close by…Did we ever!

We traveled home the next day, all of us tired form more strange night creatures keeping us awake. I wonder if Tarzan ever slept properly at night. I’m coming back to this place, this African paradise. The animals may be dangerous but its been the absolute highlight of my Ugandan adventure!

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

Green Warrior master training week in Karamoja

Posted by niccolo at 1:00 am permaculture.tv No Responses » Tagged with: Extreme Permaculture, Green Warriors, Karamoja, Karamojajong, North Uganda, Steve Cran, uganda

Jun 022010

Hello again, it’s Green Warrior master training week in Karamoja, Uganda, and the 33 Green Warriors have battled flood, raiders, broken bridges and hellish roads to get back to Abim for their one week training.

After 2 weeks on the job in the field, they have returned for a weeks training in nursery construction and a debrief on their first field activities.

Green Warrior nursery takes shape

I’m worried about some of the Green Warriors getting here in time. I only have 6 days and I’m sure some of them aren’t going to get here for the first 3 days. I organize all the materials before the week starts. Poles, bamboo, cement, sand, bricks, tools and composted Kraal manure as well as a truck load of top soil. As predicted, the Green Warriors arrive in drips and drabs. I don’t let it worry me as we begin nursery construction with my 5 person training staff and the Green Warriors join in as they arrive. This is the best way to handle the start of any course in the 3rd world as punctuality is a white mans thing. I always joke with the Ugandans that a Ugandan watch should just have one hand and 2 times, Day and Night…

We work like maniacs during the morning hours because the rains come after lunch. One team is putting up the frame from bush poles another team is splitting bamboo, while the remaining team breaks up the lumpy ground and rakes it flat. Its a full moon and I feel the effect on the Green warriors. If you ever want to finish off a project, the full moon gives the right stimulis for the group to get it done. We grow our crops by moon phases and I use moon phases to grow infrastructure projects!

Steve Cran’s Green Warrior Challenge

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 nursery is near completion. I’m conducting classroom training on nursery theory. Its pretty standard stuff. Potting mix ratios, when to water, as well as daily, weekly and monthly maintenance. A nursery this size should produce 20,000 tree seedlings of planteable size 3 times a year (that’s trees that grow products or have a use for the community). This size is perfect for schools or community based organizations. If I’ve done it right I will see copy cat nurseries spring up around Uganda.

So far I’ve seen some pretty pathetic excuses for nurseries. This construction is made from 100% locally sourced materials. The shade is created by bamboo splits nailed horizontally onto bush pole beams.

I need seed and the budget is small to make this project happen. I buy 8 beers and 4 cokes. I divide the Green Warriors up into 3 groups. I give each groups 2 sacks and tell them they have 2 hours to go into the village and get useful tree seed. The group that gets the most seed and the most diverse range of seed wins the beer. They all rush off like madmen possessed to win that prize which cost me $11 USD.

tree seed collected from village

A couple of hours later the first group arrives with 2 sacks full of bounty. I draw 3 circles on the concrete floor and each groups unloads their seed into the circle and sorts it out for counting. I see moringa, pomegranite, acacia, lemon, lime, mango, soursop, kei apple, shea nut and many others I’ve never seen before. The three teams between them brought in 38 different types of tree seed and enough seed to plant out 3 nurseries and all for $11. Good strategy. I announce the winner and hand out the beer prize. The team members each get half a beer and a few sips of coke. We spend the rest of the afternoon sorting the seeds and storing it in a huge plastic drum to protect them from vermin.

Green Warriors tools

The nursery job is going well except for the lack of tools. All the tools I’ve obtained from local suppliers are dodgy quality and most of them have broken. This is one of the biggest problems here in Uganda. Money is spent on helping people become self sufficient but the tools only last a few days to a few months. Some examples are machetes, or pangas as they are called here. I buy 5 pangas at the local hardware. Within 4 hours the wooden handles have all come off. I tell the students these are the most expensive machettes in the world. They look puzzled. Yep, Chinese low-quality machetes cost $2 each. Because they are crap and there is no other machete available, the user has to buy a new one each day. Thats over a $1000 a year in pangas! I hold up a Brazillian machete I bought in Kampala. This one costs $10 usd, an unheard of price for a machete here. I tell them this one will last over a year if it used each day. Its heavy duty good quality and holds its sharp edge well. It is much cheaper at the end of the year to buy the $10 machette. They finally get it.

The wheel barrows have no bearings and use only an axle inside a piece of pipe which quickly fills with sand. The barrows squeak and as the axle becomes bound with sand, the barrows become harder to push. The trays are made of light pressed metal, very light metal. The best barrow I could source from Kampala lasted 3 months.

The list goes on. A hand saw costs $3. It cuts about as well as a kids play saw in Australia. I found a $7 saw in Kampala that eats wood for breakfast. The carpenters are amazed. The hammers cost $3 and fly apart on the second day.

plastic cans

When it comes to watering cans, there is two kinds of shit. Plastic shit that lasts a few months and then splits, then there is locally made tin watering cans which leak so badly you dont have to tip the water out, just hold the leaking can over the garden.

It’s so frustrating trying to make any projects work with crap tools. It’s even worse to deliver tools to communities that are of the same quality. I have made sure that most of the tools delivered on this project are of proper quality and design.

I sourced a steel handled shovel for the community tool banks. It’ll last a year no worries. The feedback from the people is the shovels are a big hit. I sourced hoes, hoe/forks, and african axe heads made from high quality steel. They are also a hit. The wheelbarrows are definatley shit.I dont even bother with machettes.

Imagine being a farmer and having to dig your field with nothing but a sharp stick. It happens here. Imagine when you do have tools you have to spend a third of your time fixing those tools. It happens here. A much needed project here is setting up a tool buisness to make local pangas, hoes, forks, etc with light steel handles and good quality heads. A blacksmith could be employed to make a range of local machettes/pangas as well as knives and sickles. Imagine the amount of aid money spent on crappy low grade tools and low grade food. On the books it looks like theyy are helping the farmers and communities, but in reality they just delivered junk. It proves nobody really cares at the higher levels. All this common sense is an alien language to many NGO’s and the UN.

We finish the week with a session in the training hut on the future of Green Warriors in Karamoja. I tell them other people in other countries will soon begin to start up their own Green Warriors. I also tell them in the future, the next thing they’ll need will be a Green Warrior Field Academy to train Karamajong trainers and showcase their working models of sustainable agriculture and appropriate technology. They all agree. They tell me the villagers are picking up the skills. Gardens are happening everywhere. The villagers want more seed, more tools, more Green Warriors. They tell me it’s working!

Its almost time to leave. The cook has baked me a cake with Steve written across the top in icing. I slice it up into 34 pieces and we each get a slice. We have our cake and eat it too! We do one final big African clap. I release the Green Warriors back into the villages and communities that need them to lead the way to self reliance. The Green Warriors are coming. I love these guys! I’ll miss them until next time..

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

Wet season and Green Warriors - Steve Cran in Uganda

Posted by niccolo at 8:21 pm cooperation, culture, democracy, people, permaculture, pioneers No Responses » Tagged with: Extreme Permaculture, Green Warriors, permaculture, Steve Cran, uganda

May 242010

My spell in Kampala has come to an end. Time to travel back to the field.

fried grass-hoppers
basket of fried grasshoppers

A quick stop in the market to grab some fruit for the trip and I spy something interesting. Is that what I think it is? Yep! It’s a basket full of fried grasshoppers, minus the legs. Smells good. I think of all the grasshoppers living in my garden back at Abim. “

Hey mate, can I try one”, I say to the grinning merchant. He’s never seen a Muzungu eat a grasshopper before so he scoops up a handful and offers them to me. I toss a few into my mouth and start chewing. Mmm! Not bad, like roasted peanuts, kind of! Next time I get an infestation of grasshoppers, I’m going to look at it as a blessing. These would be nice in a stir-fry!

I’m on the road to Nuccappyrt, up near the Kenyan border. Huge trucks loaded with quartz rock are heading out of “Nuccas” as we call it, churning up the muddy road. The churned up mud has begun to dry into hard ruts, which make driving painful. Smash, smash crunch, crunch as the vehicle bottoms out on the huge holes and ruts. My spine is only saved by me hanging onto the roof handle and suspending my body.

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

police shed
police quarters at Nuccas

I see out the window acres of lush corn crops, rice paddies, sesame seed, vegetables and cassava. The soil is black and beautiful. I see trucks laden with fresh produce heading out of Nuccas district. What’s going on here? How can they grow this much food and still be receiving aid? I hadn’t realized the potential of this land as I’d only been here in the dry season. For 8 months of the year this place is a food bowl. Something is fishy here!

guards
guard escort

We pick up a military escort in Namalu. I have to strap on a bulletproof vest. It weighs a ton and restricts my breathing. The clouds are dark and I can hear the rumble of thunder. The soldiers climb onto the back of the pick-up truck and squat with their belt fed, general purpose, machine guns facing out. The have water proof ponchos on and they’re going to need it. We take off in convoy the soldiers leading. Small villages appear every few kilometers made of corrugated iron and mud. There is a market set up in each one. The people are ragged but healthy looking. Many of them wave and grin.

driver
UN driver

We pass through a game reserve. Its open savannah with small mountains poking out of the plain. One mountain has huge caves in it, so big I could drive a ship through them. I visualize a safari lodge built into the caves. Wow, what a place. I make a mental note to come back and visit that place. My driver tells me I may need a gun as lions live near there.

It starts to rain, then pour. The soldiers are drenched but still remain vigilant. This is the most dangerous place in Uganda with the most amount of shootings and raids in the country. The pouring rain doubles in intensity. We can’t even see the bullbar. The radio crackles and the escort has stopped, so have we. I’ve only seen rain this bad once before in Aceh. We wait until the rain slows down enough for us to see. We begin to move again slowly. An instant flood has appeared on the sides of the road. We come to a section of flooded road where a virtual waterfall is eating away at the road. The escort radios that it’s too dangerous to cross. Maxi and I discuss the risk, we agree to cross anyway. We radio the escort and tell them we are crossing and to get out of the way.

They radio back and say they will cross if we are going to. We both ford the raging flood, as the road is slowly getting narrower from the erosion by the torrent of chocolate brown water. The water comes up to the door handle but we make it and begin the climb up the mountain into Nuccas. The rain has flattened the crops on both sides of the road and where the ground is freshly tilled the soil is washing away with the flood. We make it into Nuccas an hour later as the afternoon sun peeks through the clouds. A huge mountain range with strange shaped peaks looks down upon us as we enter the town.

dawn
mountains on the border of Kenya

I check into a filthy cement box room with a toilet with no water except a full gerry can for my shower. At least it’s got a mozzy net! The single bed looks dodgy but its better than a lot of people have in this place.

I drive to the office in the morning. A drunken woman is lying in a pothole at the hotels entrance. Another woman helps her up and out of the vehicles path. It’s 7 o’clock and the woman can’t walk. I wonder what she’s going to do for the rest of the day. Drunkenness is the only release for extremely poor people. Men and women alike drink a local brew they made from the sorghum that is given out as aid food.

A visitor is waiting for me, two visitors in fact. Major Benson and Lieutenant Edward from the military base across the road from the office. They are keen to help the local people grow food. Major Benson tells me his troops are disarming the Karamajong villages and need to help the people with a living to replace cattle raiding. Lieutenant Edwards job is helping the villages with agriculture. I give them a manual each and we discuss Green Warriors. The major asks me if his soldiers can become Green Warriors. I tell him anybody can be a Green Warrior. A new plan starts to form in my mind. We agree to meet up in a few weeks to discuss the options.

The military escort arrives. These guys have different weapons. We are headed to Ding Dinga, a border village 1 km from Kenya. Many raiders pass through this area from Kenya; steal cattle and race them back over the border. We strap on our weighty bulletproof vests. My driver asks me if the vest will really stop a bullet. I joke that it has a money-back guarantee, he doesn’t laugh.

The trip is rough as the roads are still on the truck route to the mine. We see some wild camels and a troop of baboons playing in the mud next to a swamp. They scream and bolt as we pass. The more guns people here have, the less wildlife. The baboons know the score!

In Ding Dinga we park just outside the community and remove our vests. We instruct the soldiers to stay put. We don’t want to frighten the villagers. Too late. When we walk into the village the young men have disappeared, only the women and some old guys are left.

Our Green Warrior is there digging a bore-pump garden with the women. He is pleased to see me, as his village is the most remote in our project. I skip the formalities, give the women a cheery grin and grab a hoe. They all start working faster when I join in. I show them how to shape the beds with a flat top to survive the heavy rains. They have an interesting smell, the smell of wild humans. These guys exist with no money. They eat no processed food, only wild meats and fruits. I like their smell. I wonder what I smell like to them because very soon I’m covered in sweat.

We have no common language, just digging and laughing. After a while I realize its 2pm and too hot to seriously work so we take a break under some shady trees. I seat them in a circle and get my Green Warrior to translate. I explain that they are good, smart people and its time to let go of aid and become self-sufficient. They clap and cheer. I also tell them the only physical sign of god on this earth is nature so when we work growing things we are working with god. (I’m a free thinker, not the religious type but missionaries have converted these people) They clap and cheer again. I give them some pest control pointers and its time to leave. The Green Warrior and I have a quick chat over at the vehicle.

He used to be the chief for 10 years until he retired. He asked me if I could get the army to lay off harrassing the project. The army has been searching the village for weapons and the male youth have all taken off. I tell him about the Major asking me if the army can have Green Warriors. He gets excited and says he could get the village to work with the army if they are genuine. I tell him I will talk to the major. We hug and its time to go.

Just out of the village we stop to pick up the escorts and put on the bulletproof vests. All the way back I’m thinking on other armies like the Thai army and the El Salvadorian army who assist the communities they are in with permaculture training. The communities begin to trust and rely on the army and the army gets solid intelligence and support from the community. It would work well here. The other thing is here the army and the police live so poorly themselves. It would be a multi-benefit activity.

Its time to return to Abim, the long way today. The military escorts cost the organization heaps so we have to go home out of the security zone which is an extra 400 kms on rough roads. I’m just about to leave when Major Benson calls me. He wants a lift the first 200 kms. No worries, if he’s in civilian clothes. We don’t want to be seen cosy with the army (even though we use their escorts!)

The major and I chat for the 4 hours on our journey about Green Warriors, army style. He tells me that in his village he is self reliant with a few acres of land and many diverse crops. If you are seen carrying food home in a plastic bag in his village it’s seen shameful because you can’t grow your own food! Yeah, I like this guy!

The plot thickens!

We dump the major off in Mbale after I give him instructions to google Jim Humble and MMS, the miracle mineral supplement, for curing AIDS. Yes, that’s right cure AIDS. The army looses many soldiers each year to HIV/AIDS, not to mention friends and relatives. One must be very careful about giving out the cure for AIDS.

We head for Soriti. It’s getting late afternoon. In Soriti we pick up Catherine, our admin support person for Green Warriors. She’s had malaria but is ready for work now. The long way to Abim is getting longer and darker. It is forbidden to drive through the zone at night but the flooding has cut a few roads. The driver is exhausted and nodding off. I take over. I whack the ute in 4-wheel drive so I get better traction at speed.

We are diverted several times because a huge flood has sliced away the roads. At 9 pm we have been on the road for 12 hours and everyone is sore from the constant jarring on rough terrain. The headlights only pick up the rim of a hole and I can’t gauge the depth. One hole I hit sends us airborne and my head bashes into the roof . Another head wound! We keep going on this seemingly endless trip until we get to a flooded river.

There are vehicles parked on both sides but a small truck exits the water with 15 villagers pushing it. A villager comes to the window and tells us his group will push us. There’s a bridge with the water flowing a meter over it and 2 large holes either sides. My passenger’s recon it’s too dangerous. I see a guy wading up to his armpits across the river. If you can walk, you can drive! I give them the option of staying on the riverbank the night but I’m rooted and want to get home. My gut says its ok. The passengers think it through and see outside it’s raining.

They’re coming with me. We drive slowly into the river with all the windows open and no seatbelts on in case we have to swim for it. The danger is extra swells coming down the river when we are in a deep point. The water is up to the door handles when we drop into a deep hole. The bonnet disappears but we have a snorkel and the engine drives us onwards to the far bank. As we pop out the other side the villagers who have been pretending to push us all cheer. I give them $5 which is the standard fee and just enough to get a jerry can full of brew. We make it home a couple of hours later. My body is sore for 2 days after from the trip.

Next week is Green Warrior nursery training week. I hope the warriors can make it to Abim across this flood-ravaged land…

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

Open Letter for Global Sustainability Corps

Posted by niccolo at 7:33 am industry, permaculture.tv, transition 2 Responses » Tagged with: Extreme Permaculture, Global Sustainability Corps, Green Warriors, permaculture, Steve Cran, uganda

May 182010

G’day again from Karamoja, Uganda. The Green Warriors have been dispersed into the field.

Green Warrior garden

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

Local NGO’s now have trained sustainability specialists from the local culture and language group advising them how to help communities take their first steps in permanent sustainability.

Back at base I have a team of 7 taking extra training to prepare for the master training week next week. Their task is to build a nursery shade house and compost bay system using local materials. The design was a combination of things I’ve done in other countries and what is possible with local materials. We have agreed on the design and from here on they get no help from me. It’s time to throw them into the deep end. I’m off to Kampala!

We tear out of Abim at 8 am, an unheard of time to leave as usually the paperwork can take half a day. This time Hyenas driving. Why do they call him Hyena? It’s something to do with how his reputation with the ladies. He’s the organization’s security guy and he spent 4 years in Iraq working for the Americans as a hired soldier. The USA hires thousands of Ugandans for their military operations abroad. Hyena and I get on because we love a good laugh and we’re both ex-soldiers.

Hyena has his foot flat to the floor. The rains have been constant lately and the road is soft. We make good time. In fact with Hyenas careful planning we shave off 2 hours on the drive to Kampala. It also had something to do with his lead foot. We cruise into Kampala at exactly the right time to miss the rush hour…Thank God!

stunted hybrid cabbages in karamoja

I check in at the backpackers. It’s located on the grounds of a huge old soap factory. The little cottages used to house the colonial bosses in the 1950′s. I spy a coconut tree, some asian bamboo clumpa and several other plants of interest for the nursery. My mission is to get planting stock and any extra OPV (open-pollinated variety) seed I can find.

I chuck my bags on the bed and tour the old cottage. There’s some beds, enough for a van full of backpackers. There’s a kitchen with electric stove and refrigerator! Luxury! Finally I test the shower. Eureka! Hot water! Yippee! I haven’t had a hot shower for over a month.

I have a secret list for my Kampala trip besides the tools and seeds. There’s a hot shower, a pizza, some Indian food, ice cream and a foreign beer…Shower time now!

I look out the window, there’s a grey monkey sitting on the fence chucking sticks at the barking dog next door. I cant forget I’m in Africa.

I get the organization to supply a vehicle to take me to the central market in Kampala. I’m bracing myself for what I know is coming. The driver drops me and an interpreter in the filthy crowded street outside the market. The smells drift into my nostrils.

Rotting fruit, meat, dust , animals, poultry and cooking food all mixed together. My nose is a veteran and I slam my nostrils shut, well almost. We make our way to the vegetables. They are sold from concrete benches under a rusty tin roof. I can barely squeeze through the crowd. I manage to score corriander, shallots, amaranth and several unknown greens with the roots and some soil still attached. I also find soursop, lemons, custard apples, tamarillo, pomegranite, rock melon and heaps more fruit for seed. I buy enough to generate enough seed for this phase of the training. Struggling under our load with an army of followers trying to sell us more, we trudge up hill to where the driver is waiting a couple of hundred meters away from the market. I load the ute, good score, I tell myself. I hope the greens make it to Abim alive. I’ll pack them in wet newspaper when I get back to the backpackers.

We stop on the main agriculture market street. Every kind of chemical and hybrid seed is for sale here. Little shops stocked with enough poison to start world war 3. If ever there was terrorism this it! Many of these chemicals are banned in Western countries. The chemical companies continue to make them and sell them to ignorant farmers in africa. Squillons of litres of the most poisonous biocides sold in small plastic bottles with tiny writing on the labels, so tiny you can barley read it. The poisons go with the hybrid seed, seed deliberately weakened so it needs a chemical cocktail to grow it. Pests love hybrid vegetables because they are genetically weak and insects exist to eradicate the weak so the strong are the breeding stock.

ex-combatants in East Timor

The farmers don’t know this. They buy the latest chemicals and fancy seed packets. They buy the backpack sprayers but not the safety gear that goes with it. They cant afford to protect their health. When was the last time a poor Ugandan farmer sued a multinational chemical conglomerate for compensation? Never! They get the shit end of the stick.

I walk into the chemical sales arcade. I was told I could find some “effective micro-organism” mix here. Everywhere I ask they try and sell my fungicide, pesticide, herbicide, planeticide! The smell is crippling, literally. I wouldnt want to work in here or anywhere down wind or down stream from this hellish place.

For an organic earth loving Green Warrior, this is enemy territory. If Mr Monsanto crossed my path I’d make him drink his poison….Keep calm dude, I tell myself. The only reason this crap exists anywhere on this planet is because of the lack of real education and the corruption of agriculture by the chemical giants. If anybody disagrees just drink a teaspoon of their product and you will know their effects rapidly.

I go to the bookshop in the city. I look for books on sustainable agriculture. Plenty of books on conventional agricultural practices. All of them pushing biocides. No sustainable agriculture books. I do find one book on traditional family medicine gardens. Another good score. I look through the text books on agriculture.

Geez, agriculture looks boring through the idiots that wrote these books. Where’s the passion for the earth? Where’s the love for nature? What about the living soils? According to these morons, soil is just a bunch of chemical compounds holding up plants so chemicals can be applied. I start to realize why young people no longer want to farm their family’s land. Farming is heading towards being dominated by agri-buisness. It’s not cool to be seen with dirt under your fingernails. Everybody wants a job in an office in the city. Its not just Uganda, its everywhere. It gets me thinking. How do we change this? Why hasn’t permaculture been more effective…

Green hands in Aceh, Ex-combatants

Why hasn’t permaculture been more efective? Well the plain truth is permaculture is just information in a book.

Permaculture doesnt have a leader, it has an author. Permaculture is what we use to achieve sustainability. In short, permaculture on its own is not sustainable. Many times I’ve seen good systems put in place only to become overgrown or redeveloped into conventional systems. To really make a change in the world it has to come from the heart and it has to be permanently part of our culture.

Green Warriors, East Timor

It takes passion, dedication, initiative and determination to beat the problems of this world. Most people really want to change the world for the better. Ask around and people hate the current ways that destroy our planet. They feel powerless and constantly ask “What can you do?” and put their mind in neutral so they don’t have to think about where we are headed. People get passionate about sport….why not the planet. Young men join the army and die for their country…why not live for your planet? How can we draw out all the people that really care about the world and are prepared to do something about it. How can we give those people the skills that will help them change their world? How can we link them together and support them with money and resources. How can we make that group of people grow exponentially?

We need Green Warriors in every country. We need a new path for the dissatisfied youth of the world. We need to harness this wasted resource and empower it to heal our earth. Nobody owns the term Green Warrior. Nobody should either. Every organization that teaches sustainability, every permaculture school, every primary and secondary school and every university should have and nurture its own Green Warriors. Why not, nobody else is going to change the world. The current system is failing all around. I propose we all begin to plan how to start up a Gren Warrior movement in our areas. Ugandas Karamajong that have been addicted to aid for 40years can do it. The East Timorese have Perma-scouts. The Achenese have Green Hands, They are all warriors doing it for the planet.

I will publish the basic training syllabus for Green Warriors on GlobalSustainablityCorps.org website in the next few weeks. If any trainers or people with the right stuff want to assist in creating a network of Green Warriors accross the world I will assist them to do so.

In fact I cant do a job this big on my own and I have no intention of being its leader. It needs no one leader just many leaders and many groups putting sustainable systems on the ground. We can pool our knowledge, skills and resources and the Green Warriors will have a snowballing effect.

The Green Warriors as an organization will not exist, it will simply be a path for the people who want to make a difference to follow. We have enough organizations, enough administration, enough foundations, charities, schools, universities, groups, cliques and felowships.

Why not have them form their own Green Warriors and put them to work building something sustainable where they live. They can download a syllabus and a basic manual and off they go. If you can see yourself as one of the Green Warriors stay tuned, the tools are being developed right now.

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

Karmajong chanting "Green Warrior, Warrior Green!"

Posted by niccolo at 5:27 pm cooperation, culture, education No Responses » Tagged with: Extreme Permaculture, Extreme Permaculture with Steve Cran, Global Sustainability Corps, Green Warrior, Green Warriors, Karmajong, Karmajong Permaculture Manual, Karramoja, Steve Cran, uganda, Zaf

May 102010

Green Warriors are packed in the 3 ton blue truck. “Trust in The Lord” is the motto written across the front of the windscreen.

Zaf and I planning how to structure our movie at the bore pump

They all give a cheer as the truck moves past me. Some of them are chanting “Green Warrior, Warrior Green!” in their Karmajong singing style.

Zaf is standing on the road filming with his large movie camera. The propaganda machine is in action. This week I am taking the Green Warriors to a new village for a weeks live training in the field. At the same time Zaf will film them doing their thing and immortalize them to make some short films to show around Karamoja to help people understand that self-sufficiency is possible and desirable.

This is a traditional Karamajong dance performed by the Green Warriors for sustainability in Karamoja, Northern Uganda

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 Green Warrior camp is set up in a boarding school for primary aged students. I check out the dormitories. Concrete floor strewn with rubbish and goat droppings, steel bunks, no glass in the windows. It looks like a prison facility. I wouldn’t send my kid here unless he was real bad! The grounds are huge, about 6 acres, with a chain wire fence capped with barbed wire adding to the prison effect. Its the wet season so the grass is lush and many goats and a few cows are grazing the grounds.

I assemble the Green warriors. Zaf and I play a few games with them to warm them up. Zaf is a theater-trainer used to working with ex-combatants and prisoners as well as film-maker. I love multifunctional people!

Waster water animal trough for the Bore Pump garden

We move down the the schools bore pump. It’s the same as thousands across Karamoja. Steel handle, circular cement slab, small drain away from the pump and of course a mosquito ridden puddle at the end blended with animal manure. When the jerry-cans are filled, the waste water flows down the channel into the puddle. I tell the Green Warriors that the puddle is a wasted resource and we are going to sort it.

I leave them to come up with a design and make a list of the resources they will need. As we have virtually no budget, I have to scrounge up what is needed. I see a fence line with no wire made of wooden poles. I track down the head teacher and ask her if we can recycle the fence line. Its school holidays and she is the only teacher around. I can see she is dubious if my project and its benefits to her school.

I instruct Santos to remove every second post. While some of the Green Warriors are doing this I spot a platoon of local militia running along the fence-line, fanning out in formation. They look serious. I walk out into the playing field and wave. I tell the young Green Warrior women to wave too. They smile and wave. The soldiers look confused,. Some wave back. They break formation and trudge back to where they came from.

I find out the next day a rumor had spread through the village. The warriors have come to raid the village, they are at the school. The militia is immediately mobilized. They fan out ready for an attack. They see a Muzungu and a bunch of girls waving. What ? The warriors don’t have women! There are no Muzungu raiders! Whew! No raiders here, only Green Warriors, not warriors. At least we are known now as the Green Warriors. The villagers become interested.

The “Bore Pump Garden“ that I have included in the Karamoja Permaculture Manual begins to take shape. The Green Warriors have dug a hole 2 meters across and half a meter deep a few meters down hill from the waster water flow. They tell me they are doing it bigger than the manual because it should be deep enough to dip your watering can in instead of pumping the handle on the pump. I find a source of stone at the school and some Green Warriors jump into the back of the truck and drive off tho retrieve them.

Green Warriors adding extra beds to garden to use up extra seedlings.

Each day I arrive at the camp, the Green warriors are excited to show me what they’ve done. Excellent! They have initiative, drive and enthusiasm. Zaf films them every step of the way. In the afternoon Zaf gets the dudes into a large circle and gets them singing their Green Warrior song they performed last week at their final ceremony. I think to myself I’d love to take this crew on a singing tour through Australia as their voices are so good to listen to. One young woman leads the song and the rest join in. Singing is so natural for a people that have no radios, tv’s or movies for entertainment. Not a sour note can be heard and their big African smiles are on every face. I feel proud to have such a fine bunch of people as my first Green Warriors in Uganda.

On the 3rd day an interesting character shows up. I call him Michael Jackson. He is deaf and mute but he is so expressive. His entire communication is mime. He has a huge grin and he wears an old suit jacket. His legs are splattered with mud and I know he is a farmer. without prompting he goes over to Zaf and does a version of Michael Jacksons Thriller dance. He has a straw hat and Marty, another Muzungu, shows him how to flip it onto his head by rolling it up his arm. Zaf grabs him and takes him down to the bore pump to film him. Somethings going on here.

Next day, Zaf shows me a film called, “The Bore Pump Dance” by the Boogie Man. He’s spliced in AC/DC’s The Boogie Man song and the music fits the movements of this interesting fellow who just showed up out of the bush. A star is born and we show it to the Green warriors on Zafs laptop in one of the empty class rooms at the school.

They all crack up. Later that day, Boogie man comes back and we grab him and a few of his family and show him the film. too bad he cant hear the music but I was moved by watching his face as he saw himself on the wide screen film. His family roared laughing and cheered when it finished. Boogie man walked out with his head held a little higher and his smile a bit wider. Zaf and I looked at each other and laughed! We knew that this guy was a gem.

Last day and I arrive at the bore hole garden. The Green Warriors are in 3 teams mulching, building a fence and cementing the animal trough and waste water chanel. Some villagers are helping. Zaf moves around asking the Green Warriors “What is a Green Warrior?”. They look into the camera and say things like” A Green Warrior grows food for his family” Another states with conviction, “A Green Warrior is self sufficient!”

A young girl of 17 slams a fence post into a hole and looking into the camera lens shouts “I am a Green Warrior, I am a woman of action for sustainability!” Bloody hell, where did that come from, I ask myself. These guys are totally serious…

We form a circle. I tell them their role in the future is to create a ripple effect from their projects. Only they can change their world. I tell them the problems of the world are growing and soon there will be no more food trucks coming to Karamoja. One guy cheers. They know the food is genetically engineered and its crap.

The circle finishes off the final day with the Green Warrior song. Their singing and their spirit drift across the rain drenched landscape. Slowly these people are waking up. The first Green Warriors are born.

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

Gardens complete despite fierce winds, tropical storms - Extreme Permaculture

Posted by niccolo at 7:22 pm ecology, permaculture No Responses » Tagged with: Extreme Permaculture, Global Sustainability Corps, Steve Cran, uganda

May 022010

Hello again from the Green Warrior training camp in Uganda’s north. Thirty-three trainees have endured fierce winds, tropical storms, and flooded tents and worked their buts off building gardens and food production systems without one complaint.

Steve and a Green Warrior garden

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 Karamajong are an intelligent people who have been done over by 40 years of aid. If you pick some one up and carry them long enough, eventually their legs wont work. At that point, have you done them any favors? This has been the main theme in this course. The Karamajong are not going to only walk again, they’re going to run!

I divide the class into 3 teams of 11, each with a leader. Two groups have a woman as their leader. I tell them the result I want and where to find the resources. This is LEISA training: Low External Input Sustainable Agriculture. This is where you create gardens out of nothing, well almost nothing.

Gardeners

The girls are organizing the men. I dig one garden with a team of 5 to give them a standard to work from. The dark earth is easy to work. I line up my team and we raise our hoes over our heads and sink them into the soft topsoil. We dig a trench in front of us and drag the soil into a mound. I hop over the mound and turn around, the team copies me. We dig again another trench pulling the soil onto the mound. The mound becomes a raised bed within minutes.

The other teams organize and copy our system. Within 30 minutes the digging is complete. 3 gardens with a fishbone pattern of raised beds stand out of the flat ground. The students are amazed it took so little time. I show them how to flatten the tops of the beds to handle the tropical rain. We plant the seeds and mulch with the left over grass from the thatching of huts next door.

The students are learning all these new concepts and skills. Their eyes are shining. Sometimes I can see it is twisting their minds and I give them time to rest. It takes time to integrate new thinking.

The 5 rings of sustainability are ingrained in their minds now. They have a manual with all the techniques and strategies that work in each ring.

It’s time to redesign their Manyattas, the stick fortified villages. They have to replace the sticks every 3 months, which has a huge impact on the vegetation around their villages. No wonder Karamoja is fast becoming desert. Between cutting the vegetation for sticks, firewood, charcoal making and animal fodder, it’s a wonder anything is left at all!

I ask them why they have a stick fence around the round villages. Security, they say. Ha! I say. What security. I can shoot the whole village with my AK47 from outside without even entering. The sticks are crap I tell them. They look puzzled. Oh yeah, they don’t really stop anything…

What could we make fences out of for our Manyattas that doesn’t cost anything and that is a common resource, I ask. They look at me blankly. The thinking gears are turning slowly. Ching! A light goes on in one guy’s head. Rocks! Yeah, rocks.

You can’t shoot through rocks, you only build it once and you don’t cut the bush down every 3 months! I can see them all visualizing a stone walled Manyatta. I open up my laptop and show them a photo of a 250,000-year-old site in South Africa made of stone. Same pattern as their villages. Round with curved cells inside and even a cattle kraal, all stone. There’s excited talking and pointing. Bingo! We have ignition! They are onto it!

It’s the second last day. We’ve built and planted several gardens. I get the students to now make clay models of the future “Green Manyattas”. I leave them to it , but I tell them I want some basic outcomes in their designs. They all draw big circles with chalk on the concrete. Each group draw similar patterns for the layout of their villages. I’m getting a cultural pattern lesson watching them. Very interesting!

The models are finished. Very impressive. They are very detailed, even having little clay animals. Each group presents their design to the other 2 groups. Some have little model beehives hanging in the trees. Each model has 2 stonewalls circling the village. The outer walls contain orchards and animal fodder. One has a goat dairy. The walls have little slits in them to shoot from if the raiders come. There is a maze system to get the animals in and out to make it difficult for raiders to escape with animals. Water tanks next to the bore pump, roof water runs into a cistern with a filter. Compost toilets and fire proof thatching on the huts. Gardens and food trees everywhere. They really get it! I’m so happy…. Lets hope they can make these models into reality.

Jumpers

It’s the final nights celebration. Each tribal group is going to do some dances and songs about sustainability. Their singing and dancing is so good! With little rehearsal they have me and the other Muzungus transfixed with their entertainment. They sing of reforesting, growing food, bringing back the animals…the list goes on. They even have a guy pretending to be lazing around and a woman with 2 hoes over her shoulder sings about her man should come and help till the field. He sings that she was born a woman and it’s her role to do all the work while he rests! Hmmm…, that one may need a bit of work!

Finally its what I’ve been waiting for, the jump dancing! We get into circle. We shuffle and slap our foot flat on the ground at the same time as clapping to make a backbeat. The men make a kind of grunting noise in time with each clap. 4 people at a time jump into the circle in time with the grunts and claps. It’s my turn and I’m pushed into the middle. Its getting dark and I see all these teeth grinning at me as I launch into my first jump. As I jump, so do the others and we look into each other’s faces as we go up and down.

I jump as high as I can. I don’t want to be a slack whitey doing it badly. They all cheer me on. I feel the friendship and the love they have for each other. The moon is just about full. We jump until my legs turn to rubber. For a night, I’m a Karamajong brother jumping for joy. This is the first batch of Green Warriors. I’m praying with the skills they have now they can jump out of poverty into a sustainable future

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

Steve Cran's next 3 months of Uganda Extreme Permaculture

Posted by niccolo at 2:57 am liberation, people, permaculture No Responses » Tagged with: Extreme Permaculture, Global Sustainability Corps, Steve Cran, uganda

Apr 232010

The plane taxis into Entebbe International Airport. The sign on the termal says “Welcome to Uganda, the Jewel of Africa“.

tents

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

Outside the plane I see Uganda has greened up considerably in the month I’ve been away. I wade through the procedures at customs, pay my $50 for the 3 month working visa and I’m outside the terminal meeting the driver sent to pick me up.

A big smile, a handshake and he’s wrestled my bags into the Landcruiser. I’d forgotten how much I like these Ugandan people. “Welcome back Mr Steve, Welcome!” he says. Yep, I’m back. I think to myself as I see in my minds eye all the things I have to do in the next 3 months.

My boss is the driver this time on the 2 day trip to Karamoja. He drives faster than I do. He probably hasn’t flipped the vehicle like me yet. We have time to talk and strategize. He tells me all the preparations that have been done while I was away.

Suddenly he slams on the brakes! “Did you see him?!”, “That little dude”. “What?”, I say. We get out and on the side of the road is a fluoro green kids toy. Its not a kids toy, its an Iguana. Its got buggy eyes that swivel around and its doing a strange dance like its listening to an Ipod. Little suckers are on the end of each of its toes and it has a curled tail. God must have had a sense of humour when he made this guy.

We stop at a village to see some ex-combatants. The chief is named Jullius. We ask about a blacksmith. I want to make tools for my project. He leads me to an old man that is sitting in the shade of a building tinkering with some metal strips. I draw the shape of the machetes I want. The old man asks for some steel to make them. I ask the chief if he has any old wrecked vehicles. He grins and leads me around the back of his house.

There I see a 2 ton Toyota Dyna with bullet holes all through the cab. A thick trunked paw paw tree grows out through the rusted tray. “This is my lucky truck”, he explains.

He tells me 8 people were in this truck when it was ambushed by 6 rebels from the Lord’s Resistance Army a few years back. They fired automatic weapons into the truck as they sped by on down the road.

The chief points to each hole in the cab and describes where each bullet went. Nobody killed but most were wounded including a baby. One poor woman lost her foot. “That is why I call it my lucky truck” he finishes his story with a wide grin. I ask can we break it down for tools. Yes, he wants us to make lucky tools. Deal done, back on the road.

We finally arrive at base camp at Abim. Santos my offsider is waiting. 20 tents are set up in the field next door. It looks like an army camp. We embrace. “I feared you were not coming back man!” he says in his thick Ugandan accent. We tour the camp and he tells me we have 33 students from 2 districts in Karamoja, all of the students Karamajong. Only 7 of the students are women. As women do all the work at their homes its hard to get women who can leave home for 3 weeks.

We are told 4 people were killed nearby the previous day by raiders.

There’s a brand new bullet proof vest and a baby blue kevlar helmet waiting for me in the office.

The students seem unconcerned.

plant-ug

I check out the vegetable experimental gardens I left behind. Tons of greens crowding the beds. Most have done we..

Weird technicolor grasshoppers have been nibbling the rocket plants but not too bad. The interesting thing was the hybrid tomatoes I’d planted to see if they’d work without chemicals. Some weird leaf miner had made them look like variegated plants.

Every hybrids was infected but the non-hybrid were healthy and untouched. The amaranth plants were tall and fat, just the kind of plant needed for people that want a sure-thing garden. Lots of plants going to seed just in time for the seed saving part of my training.

gardeners-uganda

The next day training starts. We do the African clap to kick off each class. One, two, three, CLAP!!!

The students are told to switch their brains on. Later we’ll switch them off for the break. The technique works!

I give them the camp rules and a brief overview on what they will learn. We begin with permaculture ethics…

Day 3 of the course, all is well. The cooks are cooking up good food (by local standards). We have to kill one goat a day to supply the team. We are building a kitchen garden outside the kitchen using reject bricks. Three large raised garden beds begin to grow out of the ground as everybody takes turns laying the bricks. The women carry the water and mix the cement. Some of them sing together as they work. Nice voices! The women work constantly and the men take it in turns. After lunch, its classroom work.

We are halfway through sustainability principles when a ferocious wind tears through the compound. Dust and sand are pelted into our eyes and everyone covers their eyes and kneels down. I raise my voice and keep teaching.

Finally the wind stops and the rain begins. A tropical storm erupts and the rain smashes down. I see some of the new cement work washing away. After an hour it stops and I ask the students if anybody left their tent open. There’s a look of horror on their faces and they bolt out of the hut towards their camp.

Some of the tents were rolling around like weird mushrooms. Torn from their ropes by the wind. Others are in huge puddles of muddy water. Oh dear!… The students retrieve their wet blankets and bedding from the wreckage.

I get them rope and some diesel to get the wet fire wood going to dry their stuff. I suspend the training so they can dry their stuff. I tell them a Green Warrior must be able to face hardship. They all agree and go about the task of fixing their camp.

more-ug

What a great bunch of people I think. No complaints. I remember all the negative feedback I’ve heard about the Karamajong. Most of it racist slurs. These guys are clever and optimistic. They are the first of the Green Warriors to hit the ground. I cant fix Karamoja but maybe these guys can. Step by step they are learning the path to sustainability.

5 rings of sustainability – Extreme Permaculture with Steve Cran from Permaculture Cooperative on Vimeo.

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

50 Green Warriors training 500 Green Warriors training 5000 - Extreme Permaculture with Steve Cran

Posted by niccolo at 12:15 pm permaculture.tv No Responses » Tagged with: Extreme Permaculture, Steve Cran, uganda

Mar 182010

The weather changes and the land greens up at an incredible rate. With new rains mosquitos breed in the nooks and crannys. Its malaria time.

Villy the Indian tractor driver

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

I meet Villy the Indian tractor driver. He’s in the cafe placing a lengthy order to a woman who is staring at him blankly. I tell him forget it mate, just ask what she’s got because there is only that. No menu’s here. He smile a big Indian smile and waggles his head. His ears stick out of the side of his head like beer mug handles. I can sense he is a pretty good guy. Villy tells me he is plowing all the poor peoples land for a government project, (there’s an election coming up). He is sad because the people have no seed. I tell him he can have some of the seed I have but the people must save their seed from this crop for the next one. He waggles his head and thanks me.

A week later I see Villy in the cafe. He looks like hell. He is sweating and his usual smile is fading. He tells me he has “bad toilet problems” and his joint aches. I ask him what he has been drinking. Maybe he has dysentery. He tells me he has been drinking 15 bottles of coke a day. What?….Bloody hell, Villy, that crap will kill you, I tell him. No more coke!

Next day I hear Villy is in Hallaleyah Hospital with malaria. I go the hospital which is a brick building looking like a warehouse. In the backroom is a stained mattress with Villy laying on it covered in sweat. He has a drip attached to his arm. I ask him how he is doing. “I’m very much vomiting” he rasps and still tries to waggle his head. “Are you drinking water mate?” I ask him. He shakes his head. You gotta drink or you’ll die, I tell him. I sit with him for a while remembering my first time with malaria. It’s the worst feeling, like being savaged by demons awake or asleep.

Its getting dark. Mosquitoes are biting me. There are other patients laying on beds in the other room. I wonder if the mosquitoes have bitten them first. Villy has no bed net. Time to get Villy outta here. I force him up and disconnect his drip. The nurse comes in and protests. She gives in when she looks into my eyes and takes out the drip connection from his arm. “Gimme your wallet Villey” I tell him. I pay the nurse for the treatment with Villys money and drag him down the road to a hotel and check him in. The soccer’s on and everybody is cheering as I help Villy to his room.

His brother is coming to pick him up tomorrow. Goodnight Villy and don’t even think about a coke for 6 months. He falls asleep while I’m looking at him. Villy’s lucky somebody was watching out for him. Plenty people die here from malaria. Somebody saved me once and it was my turn to return the favour.

I jump into the landcruiser. My bags are packed. Its an 8 hour ride from hell to Kampala. We go a different way there than before so I get to see the country. There are so many NGO’s with offices in every town. We always make jokes about their names like “War Child” and another called “Peace Child.” What happens when they meet? Do they cancel each other out? There’s “Save the Children” and I’d joke who’s going to save the rest of the people? I saw one NGO called “Invisible Children.”

It must be hard to round up those children if they’re invisible. Many of the local NGO’s have the christian cross on their logo. One has the cross, the bible and some cows. It could be cows for Jesus. There’s doctors without borders, engineers without borders and veterinarians without borders.

I may start one up called “Save the Borders!”

The best one I reckon was in Moroto. There we spotted a vehicle with DED on the side. I said to Santos Hey how would you inspire people in the field if your NGO was called DED. Later we nicknamed Matius, the bloke driving the car , “the DED guy.” We had plenty of DED jokes especially when we found out he was doing a peace building project with the K’jong warriors.

Let’s hope he doesn’t live up to his nickname! I’m pretty cynical about all these charities and Non Government Organizations. All that money pumped into this place with little to show after 40 years. Some organizations get some good projects going but mostly its the usual stuff. I call em “stop and flop” projects because they fail as soon as the NGO leaves or finishes the funding. You know your project is good if it continues to grow after you go. That’s a “go and grow project.”

The land-cruiser is flying down the bush roads leaving a dust tail 300 meters long. Finally we find a bitumen highway of sorts. Now we are really moving. 130kph passing all kinds of vehicles going both ways. Best not to look I tell myself. I’m still a bit jumpy after rolling the batmobile. We see baboons on the side of the road. Maybe they’re hitch-hiking. We don’t pick them up.

African beehives from cane and mud

After a few hours we stop at a honey project run by an NGO. They have a workshop set up to make beehives made from cane and mud. I try the African honey. WOW! Very nice, like a perfumed honey. There is a little sign attached to the trees spouting messages about the environment. Under the sign is a pile of plastic garbage. Where do you put garbage when there is no dumps? Everywhere is the answer.

African beehives in the field

Back in the vehicle and continue to Kampala. Finally the villages become towns. We pull over at the side of the road behind a bus. All these dudes selling meat skewered on a stick shove them through the open window. I’m not hungry as I watch the driver make a selection. Something slaps against my window. Its a plastic bag full of pale yellow stuff with a wicked smell like…rancid butter! Its butter Santos tells me. Want some? My hygiene alarm is beeping. NO WAY I say.

Soon we are in the capital city of Uganda. So much food for sale on the side of the road. We get stuck in a traffic jam next to “Mother Darling’s comfortable furniture” factory. People with stuff to sell are trying to look through the vehicles tinted window. Some of the sellers are Karamajong women with tribal scars on their faces. Beggars, mostly children and women with babies scratch at the window. The traffic is weaving all over the place like a bunch of drunks. Its the massive potholes in the highway. Your car could seriously disappear in those. I’m visualizing a hot shower and some western food. All is possible in this crazy city.

I have finished up planning the next phase. We will train 50 Green warriors in a 3 week boot camp. We have tents, tarpaulins and a field kitchen. These warriors will have to dig their own toilets, set up their own showers and build several gardens around Abim in the 3 weeks we have them. After that the survivors will go to the field and build gardens in the villages, mainly around the bore pumps.

Every 4 weeks they return for “master classes” like earth oven building or nursery skills. At the end of 6 months whoever is left will be employable by any NGO or community. I even have 2 guys from the prison as staff.

The course is a modified permaculture design certificate course. Some of the participants cant read and write but the course covers that with hands-on skills. Half or more of the students will be women. I’ve already invited a few tough ones I’ve met in my travels. We also have a manual “The Five Rings of Sustainability” which I wrote with 3rd world trainers in mind.

This is my last blog for a few weeks. I’m taking a break and going back to Australia. I’m coming back with some goodies for the next phase. I’m dreaming of those 50 Green Warriors training 500 Green Warriors training 5000 Warriors…..

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

Some people giggle when they are going to die - Extreme Permaculture with Steve Cran

Posted by niccolo at 1:31 am permaculture, permaculture.tv No Responses » Tagged with: Extreme Permaculture, Steve Cran

Mar 012010

I’m in the shower. There’s blood in the water at my feet. I’m picking bits of glass and small stones out of a wound on my head as the cold water eases my headache. Not a good day but I’m alive and so is my team.

Damaged car

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

I get called to Mbale by my boss. 4 hours drive to meet him half way from Kampala. We have to write a proposal. I missed breakfast and lunch and we arrive at 3 pm. Oh Wow! An Indian restaurant!! My poor little shrunken stomach can barely fit in the several spicy dishes. That night I realize although I didn’t order it, I got a free Deli Belly to go with my meal. No guava leaves here. For a day I nut out the proposal for the next phase with a gut full of demons playing rugby.

Frontier

It would be great to be free of organizations. They are like the zombies in horror movies. All they want is “more brains”. They stagger on wanting more brains and you give them more brains but it doesn’t make em any smarter they just want more brains! I’m supposed to train 50 “Green Warriors” over 3 weeks and set them loose to solve 40 years of food aid addiction in 6 months. Yeah right!… I have to compromise my lofty goals. I’ll at least give 50 people solid hands on training and some inspiration. Some villages will be able to set up good demo models for others to copy but mostly its the usual “monitoring and evaluation” with my token force running around the edges. I grit my teeth and agree to the scheme because its a toe in the door and my gut says something else will develop. This cats not skun yet!

I head to Morotto but its getting dark and its pouring rain. After several hours of 4X4 adventure driving I arrive at some place called “Nuccups” with my driver exhausted. The vehicle looks like a mud brick on wheels. Its cold and I crash in a room buzzing with hundreds of mosquitoes. In the morning I come out of the room to a magnificent sight. The mountains are stunning. The shapes of the peaks are like old men looking down on us. Kenya is on the other side and the most cattle raids happen here. Its green and lush here. Im putting this place on my green warrior map.

Green warriors

I’m waiting outside the prison in Moroto with my team. Ram, Santos and the driver Buddy. The warden is arranging a meeting with the senior prisoners from our green warrior group. A million flies are buzzing around annoying the crap out of everyone. The rain must have activated them. We are sitting under a huge spreading tree with these little olive sized fruits covered in a crisp shell. They taste like sweet butterscotch. I look around for a fallen fruit. Dam! The goats ate them all, Oh well…Plunk, one lands on the bench in front of me. Thanks tree! I say to myself as I munch on the sweet carob-butterscotch like flavour. I don’t waste my time. I pull out an art pad I bought in town and draw 5 designs of the gardens I want the prisoners to build. The field we started on last week looks like a tractor went through it. They’ve been busy.

The big doors open and we’re led in to an ante room next to the superintendents office. The “super” as I call him is a friendly guy who genuinely cares about the prisoners welfare. He stores the tools we gave him in his office so he knows they’re still around.

The prisoners gather round a table with a blanket as a table cloth. I show them design by design. Ram translates. Two of the guys are being released about the same time the Green warriors project is supposed to start. I offer them positions on the project. They agree. They’ve already got Green Warrior fever. One stipulation though, I tell them they will have to come back to prison to train their mates. This brings smiles and vigorous nods. I look into each of their eyes…These guys may just make the difference in the future. Yes I’m an idealist but I take risks and the combination gets results most times.

I tell them its up to 2 organizations and a donor to fund the project so they’d better start praying. One guy has dreadlocks where the rest have shaved heads. Hey Ram, ask him why he’s got hair and everyone else is bald, I say. Ram reports back after some exchange that the guy is an artist! Oh right I say.

We hit the road the next day in our landcruiser Prado. Its muddy and I take the wheel as I spy a military escort vehicle loaded with armed soldiers speeding out of town. Best to follow them through the bush roads in case of warrior ambush. We are in fourwheel drive sitting on 70-80 kph on the greasy roads. Water is ponding in the potholes so its hard to judge their depth. The soldiers ahead are rugged up in wet weather gear and sit on a central bench seat with their weapons facing out. They have to hang on to their guns with one hand and the vehicle with the other as the ute dodges the worst holes. The desert is greening up and all kinds of birds are flying across our vision.

The military vehicle is about 50 meters ahead. I follow its tracks through the light mud. As I come around a slight bend at medium speed the vehicle starts to slide. I correct but the shoulder is soft an the vehicle slews sideways. Oh shit! We keep sliding. Nothing I’m doing to the vehicle is working. Buddy starts giggling. As we slide the wheels catch in a deep pothole and the Prado is flipped in the air and crashes on its roof. We’re sliding at speed upside down. My head has been bashed in by the roof. We hit the embankment and the vehicle rolls onto its side. I’m trapped on the bottom side staring at dirt and glass where the window used to be. Buddy is still giggling. Some people giggle when they are going to die oddly enough.

I’m cramped in by the crushed roof and Buddy is suspended above me. The embankment has pushed the windshield into the cab. I feel hazy. I wake up standing outside the vehicle on the road. What the…Is everybody OK I yell. Yes yes yes they all answer as somebody climbs out of the window. I see the military escort racing back to us. An officer gets out and his soldiers help us pick up all our stuff flung over the road. We cut some seat belts out of the Prado and make a tow rope. With the aid of the escort 4X4 we and several soldiers try to right our vehicle. No good. I retie the strap on a different tow point just as another old pick-up truck arrives with 4 farmers and 2 soldiers. With the extra muscle we flip the Prado back onto its wheels.

Guard

I thank the colonel and tell him I owe him some beers. He grins and shakes my hand. I watch them speed off as the soldiers wave. Lucky for us we still have the other 2 soldiers for security and the farmers. The farmers are bush mechanics and we all work together to make our car mobile. The air cleaner is full of oil. I cut up some water bottles with my $2 flick knife I bought in Kabong. We bail the oil out of the air-cleaner and pour it back in the oil filler. Finally I start the vehicle and drive it back onto the road. Its smashed but it goes. We go.

We make it back to Kotido at low speed. Air conditioned of course. No windscreen. My head hurts. We meet another staff member in town. The vehicle is drawing a lot of unwanted attention. Max tells me we have to get this vehicle out of town asap. The police see a white man in a damaged vehicle and all hell will break loose. This is not Australia. White men mean money and a few twists of the truth and all of a sudden I’m in jail and the vehicle is impounded and stripped. I get the picture.

A Kraal full of fresh fertilizer!

We get another military escort and head out of town. I’m in another vehicle following the limping Prado. Max tells me horror stories of the same situation in the past. I force myself to relax and breath. We make it to base but a policeman spies our wreck and starts making inquires. Max fobs him off with a story. At base we make a plan. Get the vehicle out of here to the next town 3 hours away before the police wake up. The driver agrees to drive the wreck even though he is as flogged out as me. Under escort they drive off into the dusk. Lots of phone-calls to the owner, the boss and several other conspirators. Done, time for a shower and some medicinal beer.

our new tank with garden. This tank is built with local fired clay bricks and rendered inside and out with cement. It holds about 6000 lt.

Town looks different. Hey, the electricity has arrived! Finally, Abim has light! I see the towns people at night for the first time. Ususlly its just shadows and the flash of a few teethy smiles in the dark. Now we are moving up! Santos and I share a cold beer.

I ask Santos how I exited the vehicle after the crash as all I remember is waking up standing outside, the first one out. He laughs and says, “You just went up”. Huh? “Yes you went up, just like that” I don’t get it. He laughs and says. “You got pulled up”

I still don’t get it. Buddy was blocking my escape route. Santos tells me he is happy because the project is going to work and he saw with his own eyes something strange happen. Mmmm… Oh well, we all survived another day in Karamoja. The batmobile is buggered but we live!

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

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