The Farm---

The farming season has really arrived and this is characterised by the numerous ‘back’ gardens that have suddenly materialised on Hospital land. Almost every hospital worker has a piece of land ‘allocated’ to them over the years and suddenly these have been turned into gardens. Even little J has got on the act of farming and joining the next door neighbours in clearing and sowing their groundnut garden. I understand the most popular crops to sow at this time would be groundnuts, cassava and maize.


We are struggling to get the hospital farm off the ground due to lack of manpower. We were counting on hiring casual labour to clear, plough and till the land for us but with everybody busily involved with their own farms casual labour has not been easy to come by. Our efforts to rent a tractor to do the ploughing were also not successful. The only tractor in town has no mechanical attachments – but we keep trying. The good news is that all the hospital grounds-men are keen to help with the farm so we may have to mobilise them to till the land for the next few days to keep the elephants grass at bay.
We have earmarked three plots of land for groundnuts, cassava and maize and my fear is if we do not start the task now we may miss the rains. Michael’s agricultural training background is finally coming into good use.
The farms are a crucial plank in the strategy to generate extra income for the hospital. Already one of our initiatives have started bearing fruit – sorry for the pun. We have managed to produce nearly forty (yes 40!) gallons of palm oil from the fruits harvested from the palm trees on the hospital land. These were previously been harvested by all and sundry for their personal consumption. The dilemma is whether to sell the palm oil now, when prices are low or to hold on until the price goes up later during the year. Financially we could do with the money that would be realised from such a sale. The understanding is we could realise about Le100, 000 to Le150, 000 if we were to sell now. This can buy us about 18,000 tablets of Paracetamol, which would last the hospital for about 2-3 months. This is how relevant this project is to us, however if we were to wait until later during the year we could double the price. Decisions, decisions, decisions!!! That’s life.

The last few weeks have been a strain on us as a working couple. Especially when we reviewed the progress the hospital has made against how much more work is left to be done. We felt overwhelmed and to be honest - pretty dejected initially. We however realised how blessed we were to have the support of some key personnel in the hospital. They have helped us to navigate the hospital through the maze of challenges facing it, and helped us to avoid some tricky situations. That review really gave us hope and joy, and to cap it all a sermon on the radio one Sunday morning summed it all up. The preacher referred to how God is attentive to all our cries even when we feel overwhelmed and are despondent. He is always there for us (See Ps 18 v.6) – and that helped to put the spring back into our steps.

Thank you for all your prayers and we are grateful because we do feel and know that God is in control and it is only because so many of you are praying for us. We are very humbled and grateful for that. God bless you allM, J.& Little