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.