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.