re-patrioted

Wow, it feels so great to be home. It felt great that first day, seeing my girlfriend in the airport and my family back home, and driving on roads without potholes on the right side of the road, not having to think or worry about what I'd eat or if I'd actually enjoy it. And the joys of being home just blossomed from there, spending a day at the beach and being able to go in the water, getting a burger with my friends and having about a dozen great options on where to go. Saturday brunch, cool summer evenings that go until 8:30, the sound and smell of lawn mowers going in the morning.

I've had two weeks of this, and it's been so great, I haven't wanted to really think about my time in Uganda. If it was hard being there, it seems like it was harder after experiencing, seemingly for the first time, all the great little things back home.

And that's the tension I've found in coming home. Yes, there are other tensions, like how to live with so much when everyone in Uganda has so little. I think most people would have the tension of living in comfort when everything they just knew was so uncomfortable. And maybe all the old comforts make them a little uncomfortable. But I have such a new appreciation for all these little comforts, and I love being thankful for Ramen noodles that taste just like Ramen noodles, that I don't want to think about the poor substitutes I had in Uganda.

But in Uganda I was filled with a whole other kind of appreciation. Yes, for the things that I didn't have, but much more so for the new things I had over in that foreign country. And that was the prayers and support of so so many people. I felt empowered to do what I did because of the encouragement of everyone praying for me, reading this little blog, who supported me financially, who sent me encouraging emails. Even now I'm discovering some of the details of what that looked like - people who have told me they were reading my blog, were praying for me, who are interested in hearing what my time was like. That network of support was much bigger than I realized, and now I understand why it was so real for me in Uganda.

Everything all told, I learned a whole huge deal about relationships, doing business, the developing world, management, non-profits, commodities, you name it. But the most important thing I learned is that life in community is powerful. I've always had the belief that extraordinary circumstances have a way of bringing out the best in us, of creating inflection points in our lives where we sink or swim and go through big changes. And my extraordinary 6 months required an extraordinary community to see it through to completion. I learned a lot, I rose to challenges, but the biggest challenge was met not by me alone, and I'll never run into another challenge without that support.

That's my way of saying thank you, for everything to everyone, for being a part of my trip, for making whatever success I had possible, and for bringing me home in one piece.

This marks the end of this blog. I think I'll take some time off, do some very un-adventurous things for a while, before starting back up.

And the blog will definitely have a different name.

Thank you, I love you all. -ANDREW

the next three weeks

I think it's a universal phenomenon, that when the clock starts winding down, things both accelerate and slow down. They slow down because everyone is fixated - that final shot heading toward the basket, and that one moment can make or break the whole thing. I guess that's the last moment, when the clock is hitting zero. But back up to the final 10%, the final two minutes, or for me, the final three weeks, and things certainly pick up. In football you have the two-minute drill - no huddles, everyone rushing to the line. The team gets 10 plays off in the same time they got 3 off in the 1st quarter. In basketball, the full court press comes on, and either team is scoring every 10 seconds. And when shipping a product the whole business is a buzz as the deadline gets closer.

That's where I am right now. Everything is buzzing as I'm tying ALL the loose ends together in my last three weeks. And it still amazes me that we're starting new things. But today I'm interviewing a fellow that will be taking over my work - first on the farm, then with the research. Between the transition, the research, and all the logistics to tie up, I'll be the busiest I've been right up to the end.

I've always told myself I just needed an opportunity or a challenge to bring out my best, and this whole experience has been something like that, but these last three weeks seem like a gauntlet for me to take up. So here's to the challenge and the next three weeks.

the next adventure

It's been a terribly long time since I've last posted. So long, my time as an expat has dwindled down to four weeks and change. These last four weeks serve to be my busiest and most fruitful yet. Certainly not the hardest - I've had my hardest weeks, I'm glad they're behind me, and I got through them with the support and encouragement of everyone reading this blog. But the busiest? Definitely. Already in the last five days, I've been downtown to Kampala for four of them, I've bought furniture and moved into a new house, I've researched the maize market, sold more pigs after re-negotiating a supply deal, and taken care of A LOT of Kyklou business. When my four weeks and change are finished, I'll have settled Kyklou into their new home, bought a car, registered as an NGO, stabilized and transferred the farm to someone else, and developed an approach to tackle a small problem in Uganda - the maize value chain.

That will be my legacy, what I've accomplished here, what will go on my resume and what my successors will thank me for (I'm certain of this, our new house will be awesome, but not finished until my last day here). But what I'll tell people back home, the stories I'll share with my friends and family, all of you reading this, are the little struggles and joys and failures and successes that make up the inch by inch terrain of my time in Uganda - not the massive valley we were in and the hill we've climbed, but the rocks and pebbles along the way, the ones that got stuck in my shoe and made my life miserable, and the ones I could climb on top of, sit and watch the sunrise.

Each and every email from one of you is one of those little moments of joy, each comment, every time I see the stats tick up with one more viewer. I'm more thankful than I can say for all the prayers I never heard about, and the ones I did.

It seems like the end, but really it's simply the beginning of the end. We're focusing on knowledge transfer and turnover, creating deliverables and tying up loose ends. Each week is so busy it flies by like a day, only when I look back have we done so much more than 24 hours would allow. I'm beginning to prepare for my life back home, more mentally and emotionally than actual plans, even though I'm doing that as well. I'll come home changed, this many new experiences guarantees that. I'm working in these last four weeks to make that change count and to make it stick.

I think, from all the support I've had on this adventure, the next won't be too hard. So here's to the next adventure.

employees #2 and #3

If you ever need to kickstart your day and bring back a bucketload of lost motivation, a nap and a shower will do it. You trick your body that it's a new day, you feel great, when you eat dinner it feels like breakfast, and you can work all night. Every office needs to offer a nap/shower to sleepy employees.

The big news is that in 10 days the first of Kyklou's new employees will be here, and the second by the end of May! I'll have company and help, and it really will begin the end of my time here, as we'll be doing a lot of knowledge transfer and they'll be slowly taking over my duties.

There's a lot of change in the air - I'm looking for a house to rent, Kyklou's first HQ and the home of the team that's coming over here to replace me. We're applying to be an official NGO in Uganda, and setting up a partnership with the university here to train students.

And things are improving - we just had a pig give birth to 10 piglets - which is phenomenal. So things seem to be looking up. I have busy days, but not busy putting out fires, just busy because things are changing and we have five things going at once. In other words, a good kind of busy. And at first things will be busy but much better with my two new compatriots, then they'll wind down for me until I'm on that plane home. So here's to employees #2 and #3.

officially a ugandan

I'm not THAT tan yet, although I'm working on it. I now have a piece of technology completely foreign to us in the U.S., but one every single Ugandan has - a dual sim phone. And multiple phone numbers. I now have to my name three phone numbers, two on one phone, a third on another - and a fourth sim card is in my 3G modem, so that makes four. And it's completely normal here. They even sell quad-sim phones, so you can have a line from each of the major carriers on one phone. How crazy is that?

That means I'm also carrying around two phones, which is another Ugandan thing to do. It's fitting that I've crossed this threshold into native living as the farm seems to (finally) be settling down. For the first time we're coming up on paying salaries and buying feeds, and I'm not scrambling to give the farm a loan. We're keeping records better than ever, we're being more efficient with our feeding program, and our workers are doing a great job. I'm also in the early stages of talks to link up with the largest university here, Makerere University, to have our farm act as an extension classroom, for groups of interns to learn hands on from our farm, with university instructors teaching. It's obviously a win win, because these students get practical, hands on training, but the farm gets free labor, oversight from the university, and funding to run the whole program. It lines up directly with our mission to not only run a business, but run one that has tangible impacts on the community - we'll be enabling farmers to run successful piggery businesses on their own.

It's amazing to see the Lord's hand in how all these things come together. All I had to do was sit down with the executive director of this program at Makerere and he wanted to partner with us - he sent me a draft MoU before I got home. I'm amazingly excited to push through to the end of my time here, and work so the farm can go from our current stability to true growth. Maybe it's all because I'm not officially a Ugandan, technologically speaking. Here's to that.

required to trust

Today I went to church, but not the service I had been planning on. Yesterday 'plan A' was to go to an early service then spend the day relaxing at a nice hotel, turning off my phone and taking in some western world luxury. But I woke up to flat gray clouds, and I was proven right in my choice to abandon the hotel - it rained much of the afternoon. So instead I slept in and went to my normal 10am church service. I almost left early to get some shopping done, get in some lunch so I could get back before the rain, but I stuck to the end to meet up with some new friends I'd met a couple of weeks ago. I got to the grocery store as the rain started, and decided to wait it out at the local pizza place - maybe the rain would pass by the time my brick over pizza was finished.

I found two of my new friends at the pizza place and sat down with them to wait for our pizzas. They are both my age and year in school, both went to Alabama (I said "Roll Tide?" to make sure I knew what school they were talking about, and they said "yup!"), the guy almost went to Wheaton, and almost went to law school, and both had been to Uganda before and were working with an orphanage and other ministries around the city.

We were talking about our experiences here in Uganda, and it came up some of the dangers of living here, how we've all had our places broken in to, how we've all seen boda accidents. They told me that two years ago they went to an Ethiopian restaurant to watch the World Cup final; they arrived late for a fluke reason and didn't get their usual table, instead were put into a side room separated from the main room by a wall. The restaurant happened to be one of two places bombed by terrorists that night, that killed something like 75 people, Ugandans and Westerners and injured many many more. But in that back room, where they were seated, their whole group of 7 people were unscathed. Even people closer to the door were injured, but they escaped the blast.

God was in control of every event that day leading to their safety and to their testimony, but really, he was in control of every event that day, events that led to a terrorist attack. It's obvious He had a greater purpose for them, the initial inspection shows God's sovereignty and how he protects us. But there were hundreds of people not so fortunate, victims of a terrorist attack. What do we do with that? It's not too hard to follow a train of thought to randomness and chaos, and it's much harder to figure out God's plan in it all. But then I think to even today, and how it was not in my original plan but God's that I even have lunch with these two. And sometimes God lets us connect the dots and see his plan and give him glory for its goodness, and other times we're kept in the dark, required to trust.

thankful

I'll refrain from titling more posts about my showering habits, but the shower I took today, phenomenal. It's amazing how a nights sleep can take away worry and stress like a magical remedy. Nothing's changed in the morning, except you have LESS time and things are closer - but they all seem ok. And even though I did not want to wake up this morning (I contained my alarm snoozing to three hits) sometimes all it takes is starting a day you don't want to find out it's not going to be as bad as you thought. Now life here throws some craziness at you everyday. But the today was great. When a day like today works out, and I can feel really good about taking my dinner on the patio here, overlooking a beautiful sky and setting sun, I'm really overcome by thankfulness for all the people that have supported me through the tough times, and are praying for me behind the scenes and across an ocean, because it is largely due to that massive effort that I'm here, in this good spot, today.

So I'm not going to say more than that I'm thankful for everyone who's out there reading, for sending up little prayers and big prayers and fb messages and comments that let me know the people I love are out there thinking about me. It's the right perspective on life too; I think it's a big circle (prayers to bless you make you feel thankful, which in turn makes you feel blessed) that God intended. So here's to being thankful.

I took a shower!

I guess that's not the biggest news, maybe if you were near me... I moved out of the guest house, away from the farm, to a place of my own, space, independence. Well, not literally more space, because for the next month I'll be staying at a hotel, sleeping and maybe doing some work and eating some meals in my room, but lounging on the hotel patio, eating meals in restaurants around the area. The biggest thing is GOING to work and coming home when I'm done. It's a shift that forces the farm to run by itself. And honestly, it is. We've done the big things that I can do, we're just finishing putting in place a new management structure, and our farm manager is committed and doing good work. We still have tons of challenges, right down to the most basic one that our pigs don't grow fast enough, but that's really not for me.

There's still a lot of stress of running this whole operation and being the only one over here. I am the country director and the project manager, the monitoring and evaluation specialist and the logistics and accounting departments. And I'm trying to help start the next project, so I'm trying to pull double duty as a project manager. But being away from the farm puts the farm in perspective, focuses me to work through our farm manger - which builds him up, develops sustainability, and saves my sanity. No more screaming pigs at night.

We sold pigs this morning, and just as in everything before my best laid plans never pan out as I want them. Hopefully learning to fight through that here in Uganda will help me plan and succeed in the states. It can only help. Also I'm not finished with marketing, I'm just a week or two into my new plan, there's a lot of work to be done.

Lots of good, lots to still work on. And the bottom line is, I took a shower. Here's to that.

the roller coaster

Have I used this metaphor before? These last few days were certainly a roller coaster, an old school one that just sends you down a massive drop then twists and turns until it brings you back up again. I liken these last few days to a certain roller coaster at Lake Compounce, the one old wooden one that seems fun and nostalgic as you walk in the park and hear it rumble by with kids screaming on it. But I think they're screaming in pain, because it's so unbelievably shaky that every second on it is painful. And the most relief you get is when the ride comes to a full and complete stop.

Now that my ride has come to a full and complete stop, well, really it did so yesterday, I have a sense of peace that seemed impossible to feel amidst the jerky and shaky weekend. It's amazing to me that my trial coincided perfectly with what the disciples must have faced as they saw Jesus arrested, tortured and crucified, then waited in fear and uncertainty until a massive turn around, a renewal, the resurrection, that took their painful journey to a full and complete stop. And for me just like them, the day after the resurrection wasn't about sitting in the same place, but moving on to the new thing that's in front of them.

Over the weekend I felt the ground beneath my shake and start to fall away; a build up of work stresses and daily life stresses and home stresses led me to search for plane tickets back to the U.S. But I didn't buy one, thankfully, because as quickly as the ground started to fall away it started to feel firm again. My friends and family both reached out to me and prayed for me, a confluence of encouragement that kept me going. The fear and uncertainty the disciples felt that Saturday, I felt Saturday too.

Maybe it's going too far with the metaphor to hope that my work and life here will be a new creation, just how Jesus' resurrection ushered in God's new creation. So far it seems like it. I'm working on enjoyable things today, I'm still across the street from the farm but letting the farm take care of itself, while I plan how to empower the farm to not just survive but grow. I'm looking for new places to live away from the farm. My time left here is less than the time I've spent here, and the ratio is looking better and better every day.

My weekend is a testament to how God works through the roller coaster - through your friends and family, prayers you don't even know were uttered, and by rewarding faithfulness when the shaking ground seems to be sliding away from you. And roller coasters aren't one time things, so here's to learning how to get through them, thanking the ones who help you, and being better for it by being on the other side.

NOW its the rainy season

About a month ago I was worried that the rainy season was starting, and that we hadn't finished packing away all our grain and that it would get in the way of everything. Well, I think it was supposed to have started, but there's been a bit of a drought here. So now it's starting. Luckily we do have all our grain packed away, and I'm much more comfortable getting things done that I'm not completely scared by the rain. It'll probably make things harder, but not impossible. It's much cooler out.

I wasn't sure quite what the rainy season looked like. It would rain hard for a few hours, then take a week off. Not the rainy season. Now, it rained yesterday, twice, and it rained last night and this morning, HARD. To the point where half of my guest house got flooded. It's not as bad as it sounds, all the floors are tile, and the house is on a slant so that my bedroom and the sitting room are untouched, just the kitchen and the area where the kitchen table is. Nothing is ruined, I'm pretty sure.

The rain makes it harder for the farm hands, I think. I think the smell from the manure gets worse in the rain, and it's just harder to slosh manure around when its raining. But maybe the water in the pens helps them clean a bit. Maybe.

It really makes traveling hard. Because so many of the roads are dirt roads that get muddy and slick, and are very narrow, with ruts throughout and drainage trenches down the sides, it's pretty hazardous to drive on some roads. And the boda drivers have a better handle on not falling in a ditch, or getting out if they do, but that doesn't mean there's a less chance of slipping in general. Plus you can't take a boda anywhere when it's actually raining, which it has been all morning.

It's nice to just sit at home on a rainy day; having got up early enough that I don't have to jump into action it feels kind of like that. So here's to the rainy season.

the little things

I'm thinking about the little things today because my plate is full of them. Selling pigs on weekends is a big thing - if I don't deliver, we lose customers and take leaps backward. But all the things I need to do today I could do tomorrow. They're little things in a number of work streams I have going. And as any of you will know, these little things are just as important to the overall success as the big things.

It's that the little things build, so maybe in aggregate they're as important as a large event, but they're more difficult in that they need to be started earlier and kept up. In college, when you have a paper due, you can spend a little amount of time each day working on the research and writing, or, really, you can do it all in a night. So that's the mentality to fight, because all these activities have to happen on distinct days, and require working with people that can be inconsistent, and take a long time to be able to move onto the next step.

The thing that ties the little events to the big ones is that the little things will define what those big moments are. So here my little things are going to different buyers, assessing their demands, and taking that to my current buyers to get better prices. All so my big event of selling pigs this weekend can be more successful.

I think in life too we skip the little things often, it's just easier, but don't realize that 1) they aggregate into big things that we miss, and 2) they lead into the big events of our lives, and if we miss the little things our big events won't be so big.

So I'm working on the little things today, and pushing them on the farm and in our marketing and in the other things I have to do, but then focusing on the little things in life - lifting my friends and family up in prayer, reading scripture every day, being joyful with everyone I meet. So here's to the little things.

work weeks

Here in Uganda, working on Saturday is fairly standard. Like the weekend is only one day long. Kids go to school on Saturdays, so why not have adults work. So yesterday I was working. And today I had to finish up the two things I was working on yesterday, plus have my weekly call with my boss. So at the end of all that, I'm still tired, and about to start another long work week. And by long I mean approximately 7 days long. I'm not the kind of tired that needs a good night's sleep. I'm about to hit the hay, before 10, so I think I'll get one. I need a day of relaxation, where I completely put the farm behind me.

I have a day like that in mind. When my friend Dave was here visiting we went to this posh hotel, got guest passes to the spa and pool and just lounged it up all day. I'm going to do that in a couple of weeks. When we square this farm away, or have our first profitable month, or something like that, I'm going to take a whole day, turn off my phone, and just chill out. Now I know why people hate their blackberry's. But I think mine is worse. These pigs are 50 ft from me. I can't get away.

That sounds a little depressing. I'm looking to make this a challenge, that this farm will be running by the time I leave. And then anything else I get finished will be icing on the cake. I have about 11 more weeks. So here's to all 11 of those work weeks.

my new car

I have some wheels for the weekend. I was expecting some little sedan - as much as it seems outrageous that anything but jeeps and hummers can work over here, people take whatever vehicle they have over everything. But apparently a little car means a nice big Toyota Land Cruiser, just not the safari edition. But it's perfect and blue, full off road capability but manageable size. Basically it will fit 250kg of pork in the back. And I'll go about my rounds, dropping off pork here and there, wherever really.

I wish I had this car full time, but it's just for the weekend.. it would make my life a whole lot easier. I'm going to spend this coming week really developing our marketing situation, push our current buyers to get a little better price, and find a suitable supplier who can help fill our gaps when our buyers want more than we have. Hopefully I can concentrate on these activities and leave the farm to our farm manager. I think I can, we're almost there, he's a great worker.

The biggest problem with that is we have some very big question marks still, hiring workers, reducing our costs, figuring out why our pigs aren't growing as fast as they should be. But we'll get there, I feel it's a mix of keeping the long term in sight, planning for it through the medium term, and getting the details right in the short term. Missing any of those time frames can be disastrous.

One example of that - a couple weeks ago we decided we wanted to buy bran in bulk instead of maize - saves money up front, and adds simplicity down the line in not having to mill and market the flour ourselves. We had a price under 300 shillings/kg two weeks ago, and last week it was 350. This week we bought for 500. We waited because we weren't sure if we could store bran for more than a month, we were doing an experiment. But we realized, even if we couldn't store the bran, we could of made a hefty profit just buying and selling. So then I moved today and bought 10 tons, two weeks too late, but each day we waited was a loss. In two months the price will be 1000 shillings/kg.

So there's a ton in the works, but the first thing I have to do is watch some pigs be slaughtered and sell some pork. So here's to my new mobility and my new car.

day in the city

Still no comments, hmmm.

Today I spent the whole day downtown in Kampala, first buying feeds and other things the farm needed, then connecting with a supplier who wanted to connect me with another supplier - which didn't happen -  then on to an NGO we might partner with in the future. In all we got a lot done, I felt useful the whole time, even tho there's time lost to transit, waiting for people, etc.

I love getting to know the city. I took a boda to my last destination, only to find that it was the place I first went to church. And with a much better knowledge of the city around me, everything started to make sense. I can move around Kampala fairly well now, which I'm fairly proud of. The people I talked with at the NGO I went to were all interested in our projects so far; a good first step to eventually partnering with them.

Any day I give out 5 business cards and get 5 back is a good day. Here's to more good days in the city.

a new name!

I've changed the name of my blog, like I thought I would. I've changed the layout too, do you like it better?

I've realized I want to talk about more than just the qualities I find/don't find in people.. who we are is a huge part of life, but there's a lot of life that's just in the moments, the feelings, the things more fleeting than the quality of our character.

I'm an expat over here, and it definitely shapes all my experiences. I feel this name will change as well when I'm no longer an expat, but I also hope to take these lessons with me the rest of my life. Maybe the lessons an expat learns are ones everyone needs to learn, even in their own country.

I'm off to be even more productive the rest of this afternoon, and then tomorrow, and the day after. I might take a break on Saturday, but probably not. Thanks to everyone who says a little prayer when I throw a struggle up on here, I certainly need them. And I'd love some comments, that's why they made the button!

embracing the struggling

I found a pithy little plaque in the office connected to my guest house. It says "Victory and defeat are in the hands of God, so one must embrace the struggle." It's just too true.

Sometimes I think it takes a morning where everyone is running late, and I'm forced to sit in the shade, listen to the birds chirping, the kids shouting out their lessons, the pigs squealing, the trees rustling and the sun shining down to get re-centered, know that all I can do is struggle, and the victory or defeat are out of my hands. And with that attitude I can work toward my goals, I can take the next step, I can keep all the balls I'm juggling in the air another day, I can think ahead a day, a week, a month, and put what I can together.

If I focus on the negative, well, there's quite a lot, and it'd block my view of anything good and everything in front of me. But the good things are there too, the little miracles God throws into our day to remind us that he's in control. Like how the farm, with all the absolute craziness, is probably in its best state since I've been here, and we have opportunities to improve all around.

I think if we're not struggling, we're probably not growing, or learning, or living up to our potential. So here's to embracing the struggle.

ugh

That's about all I can say, after arriving home last night and finding that my guest house had been broken into.. Luckily only a few things were stolen, I had my important electronics with me, but my backup hard drive, two cameras that Kyklou gave me, a Blackberry that I wasn't using, my knives (which are the most sentimental things I lost). They went through all my clothes and around my shelves, but didn't find my hidden money stash, which was huge. That would of been a big blow.

Also the farm had been burglarized, and we know who it was, it was one of our farmhands and one of the local kids. They took 800kg of broken maize and tried to sell it to the local miller. A neighbor tipped us off, we went to the miller, they told us who it was, and we caught them all right, brought back the maize.. But all this combined today to make me go 'ugh.' The whole weekend and now today was spent dealing with the aftermath, both the immediate problems of not having farmhands we can trust, and then just the larger problem of creating a culture where we aren't being taken advantage of. And it's not that we have the farm settled in any way, we're getting there, our new farm manager is working out well, but we just can't catch a break.

So I'm very tired tonight, starting my countdown to the end of June with a busy, exhausting day. Here's to hoping tomorrow is better, I'd appreciate prayers all around. Thanks everyone.

hotel rwanda

I've finally found fast internet in Africa. It's at a coffee shop, as expected, in Kigali.

My first full day in Kigali, Saturday, I went over to the Hotel Des Mille Collines, which, unbeknownst to me for the majority of the day, was the hotel from the movie "Hotel Rwanda." I felt a tad uncultured for not knowing that, as I was simply enjoying the luxury of a swimming pool and the hot sun. I actually enjoyed the hot sun too much, as I got some sun burn, but my time at the hotel was well spent. I spent the day swimming, reading, napping. I went back to my hotel for a late lunch, then went back to the hotel for dinner. Unfortunately for me, it started raining right as I got there, so I was kept from dining in their open air top floor restaurant - I wanted to see the city at night. Instead I met a couple of Luxembourgians at the bar and hit it off with them. We ended up going out to experience the Kigali nightlife.. in my opinion, there's no better way to experience African nightlife than with a family of Luxembourgians.

My second full day, Sunday, I slept in then went to the genocide memorial - a sad but compelling tribute to the genocide. The whole event is bizarre and surreal - a whole population of people turned on a given minority and just started slaughtering them, and the international community was too slow in responding to stop it. To say it got out of hand is an understatement, and it's unbelievable to think of the scope and pervasiveness of this mindless killing. And to think that it was only about 17 years ago that all this happened, and the majority of the people I see walking around lived through it, and were connected to it in some way or another - related to a victim or a perpetrator. In all, shocking.

And now today, my last day, will be spent trying to get my head back into the farming business. I hope I'm not shocked at what I find at the farm, I don't expect to be, and this week has potential to be a very good week. Here's to that. My next post will be back in the wonderful country of Uganda. And the countdown will begin, I will be home in the U.S. in less than 3 months. Something to be excited about.

kigali

I'm here in Rwanda, and it's wonderful. Even the music that's now playing in the hotel restaurant sets Kigali apart from Kampala. Moderately volumed classy tunes. The streets don't have potholes, the sidewalks are clean, the whole downtown area is open and inviting. It's hilly, so panoramic views of the rest of the city are everywhere. I'm lucky enough to be staying in a hotel about a 2 minute walk from the center of the city (or what I can tell is the center of the city), and so all these qualities are right around me. Rwanda has had some major civil strife much more recently than Uganda, but it's not showing. So far Rwanda has surpassed Uganda in almost every way.

It's odd not being in an Anglo-centric environment. I'm spending Francs, and few people speak English, if not the local dialect of swahili they speak French. My wallet has dollars, francs and shillings in it - Rwandan Francs and Ugandan Shillings. And USD. It's an interesting experiment in foreign exchange. I've even seen different foreign exchange dealers with drastically different rates. Arbitrage opportunities down the street. But that's not why I'm here.

I plan on experiencing Kigali, and that's little more than visiting the genocide memorial and then spending some time at different restaurants the locals recommend. I'd say a country like Rwanda has three aspects. The city side of things, that I plan to see. The safari/wilderness side of things, the vast parts of the country that are beautiful and exotic, if really only available to rich tourists. Then the countryside and normal living of most Rwandans, a poor, agricultural life. I don't doubt it's different than that type of life in Uganda (the type of life I'm around all the time), but I bet it's the same in a lot of ways.

I'll post again when I've experienced more of Kigali. For now I have some reports to finish up. Cheers!

rwanda!

I'm heading off to Rwanda tomorrow morning for a long four-day weekend of not hearing, smelling, or dreaming about any pigs whatsoever. All the pigs I will see will be in my excel files, as I update our stock movements, profitability models and cash flow. But I can handle that. There's a sizable difference between the squeal (shriek) of dragging 140kg pigs into a small weighing cage and finding out just which weekend we'll be slaughtering pig 5s1cb1. Actually, that pig isn't born yet, but soon.

Is it bad that an ideal vacation for me actually includes a weekend on my computer? Let's be serious though, it'll be me on my computer by a pool sipping a fruity drink with my shirt off in the sun. That' pretty nice. Even if I am ordering (literally putting in order) the deaths of hundreds of pigs.

The farm is in the same state of flux it's been for a while now, since we've gotten the big things handled but still have a mountain of small things left to work on. Maybe more flux now that we have new personnel on the farm. But the fun in it all is that while we'll never have this thing down tight, we're improving all around, and eventually we'll be scrambling but we'll see that we've reached our goal.

That'll be a nice day. Hopefully a lot like tomorrow.

consistent In what?

I'm thinking now that being consistent is a quality that is secondary to many other qualities. I don't mean secondary in the sense that it is less important, I mean secondary in that other qualities come first, and then consistency acts upon them. Consistency is dependent upon the qualities an individual already has - if you're consistently mean, I don't think consistency counts for much.

In this way, the underlying qualities become all the more important, just as they are if we weren't considering consistency first. The reason consistency stands out as being so important is that many people have many good qualities, but in lacking consistency they lack a real force behind making their good qualities count. Honesty, diligence, excellence, are all good qualities that many people have in abundance. But at times, here and there, and when the going gets tough, sometimes these qualities fall to the wayside. And so that's where consistency comes in and is all important. It's the glue that turns good qualities into a good life.

Our farm still lacks consistency, but we still do many things right. That's why consistency stands out as the primary thing missing. But when I think about myself, not only am I not consistent, but I find many other aspects of my life that need work. Activity is one. I came to the end of the day today overwhelmed with all the challenges facing the farm, but realized I didn't do much at all to tackle them. I need to simply be doing more, then doing more consistently. When I read, I need to read higher quality items, better books and articles. But then I need to do that consistently. Being consistent is the name of the game only if you're consistent in the good and admirable things of life.

be the change you want to see

I think another reason I care so much about consistency is that to me, it's intimately tied to responsibility, keeping promises, even the character of a man. Maybe there's a type of inconsistency that doesn't involve going back on a promise. And maybe it's too harsh to infer that inconsistent people are lacking in character and can't keep their word. But I think it's something special to be consistent both in the big, obvious things of life and in the little, implicit arrangements we make. In the large ones, when you're late to a weekly meeting that's the same time every week, everyone knows it, and at the same time, no one gives you much credit for being on time, or even consistently on time. But when there's an implicit arrangement, like keeping the farm clean all the time, whatever it takes, it's something special to be consistent in it. It's reliability, which is definitely the cousin of responsibility, which is pretty much married to character.

I did meet a young fellow who had these qualities today, probably the most impressive Ugandan I've met yet. He's young, but already has a burgeoning business trading in maize products, and he was more than willing to supply us as well as give me some business advice. A great contact to have, and hopefully a great person to know.

Meeting so many people lacking in consistency makes me want to be more consistent. It's being the change you want to see. Here's to that goal.

inconsistency everywhere

I think my mind was preoccupied with consistency when I made this blog because it's the one single most important thing missing from life here in Uganda. Everyone is late to everything, or early sometimes. Things done the same each day don't start at the same time. Power and water come on and go off at random. Every time I take a boda somewhere, people want to negotiate the price.

I try to instill consistency everywhere I can, in our farm operations, in our schedules; but if I try and drop an iron box of consistency into the turbulent stream that is the rest of society, I naturally get rocked and buffeted. The temptation is there to drop the consistency and just go with it. After all that's how it's done here, right?

So much of development work places emphasis on fully integrating within the culture. I'm also convinced a quality like consistency will drastically improve the processes and the people who adopt its regimen. Today I'm focused on bringing consistency to our pig farm. We've generally gotten some large scale consistency - weekly meetings, weighings, mixing of feeds, but now we need to get down to the daily, and that's where the fight is now.

the name of the game

I've titled this blog 'consistency' because I hope it will be a discussion of the things of life, and one thing I've uncovered recently is that consistency is the name of the game - in life, faith, business. That's not to say it's the only thing, far from it, and in every disparate area of life so many different qualities come into play. But consistency cuts across all of them.

As I discover more this blog will probably change names, or grow, just like in life we change and grow. Why does a blog have to be static? Who comes up with their best idea right off the bat. We'll grow with it. I'll blog about life, business, faith, friends - the things of life.

I hope everyone can come along this blogging journey with me, enter into the conversation, maybe grow and change. We'll see what the blog is called tomorrow. Thanks for reading.