Busoga Shining Light Association (BSLA) was founded in 2002 and registered in as a community based organisation by Iganga District Administration Department of Culture and Community Development.

The purpose was to bring together the small and medium holder farmers (Entrepreneurs) to form a strong co-operative society of farmers in the district. In this regard BSLA would have a forum for group marketing, information exchange and networking with developed and developing partners.

Training farmers in agronomic practices

Along side with setting up the demos, farmers have been introduced to a number of agronomic principals like: early land preparation, use of improved seeds, timely planting, use of fertilizers e.g. DAP, spacing and optimum plant population in the field including gap filling, weed control (timely weeding) top dressing using UREA, application of savine dust to control stalk borers, timely harvesting. On farm training shall be dobe concurrently to monitor the performance of the adaptors.

Setting up demonstration gardens

BSLA is going to set up ten demos during the first rains in this season. Willing farmers have already been identified to offer the land worth an acre. The group members shall participate in activities like planting, monitoring the weeding process, participating in fertilizer application and control of stalk borers and harvesting.

Training farmers

BSLA is promoting commercial agriculture production for increased house hold income and food security inthe district. The organization has plans to implement a maize production project with a purpose of increasing maize production and improving its quality in 10 farmer groups.

Each group has 18 members and BSLA is providing the group with inputs for an acre for demonstration purposes. In the picture you can see DAP, UREA & maize seeds in stock ready to be distributed to the farmers groups. Waiswa Ajab distributed DAP and Maize seeds to Igombe integrated farmers centre group, the group is actively egaged in maize production. the group members say that maize is used for food and cash crop.

During the farmers training in receord management and Agronomy, Waiswa Ajab and Naigaga Olivia demonstrated how a farmer can plant maize in the rows in order to get better yields. Farmers of Abalyogero group said that they have been getting 10 bags in an acre.

Helping Orphans Help Themselves

BSLA is starting a child sponsorship program with 5 children who lost both parents due to the effects of HIV/AIDS. The Child sponsorship will aim at connecting Ugandan children with people that care like you. Child sponsorship means the money you give to a child helps to send them to school, helps feed them, buy books and school uniform needed for schooling, and also covers basic medical care.

Children who will be sponsored are those whose parents are not there for them and these are children who are orphaned due to HIV/AIDS. You get to see and feel the difference your support makes, through the eyes of your sponsored child and their regular letters and photographs.

How much can it cost to sponsor a child in Uganda?

£15 pounds of that equivalent in other currencies will cover the basic needs of a child including school fees, books, uniform and basic medical care

How you can sponsor a child?

You can pay your monthly support using any of the methods bellow

1. You can send cheques made payable to AWISH Uganda or Slum Doctors programme


2. Or you could even send cash

Wanambisi on a visit to BSLA

Waiswa Ajab takes Wanambisi to his maize field

Maize garden for the widows

The hunger currently experienced by millions across the region increases the likelihood of HIV infection, as people are driven to adopt risky coping strategies in order to survive. These include traveling to search for food and additional sources of income, migrating, engaging in hazardous work, and, most lethally, women exchanging sex for money or food. These actions facilitate the spread of HIV, putting individuals especially women and children at high risk of infection. For those already infected with the virus, malnutrition exhausts the immune system, which makes people more susceptible to malaria, tuberculosis, and other opportunistic diseases, and leads to faster progression from HIV to AIDS. People weakened by HIV/AIDS find it harder to access food, because they are often not strong enough to work or to walk long distances to the market. Successful efforts to improve the food security and livelihoods of families should reduce the probability of HIV infection, slow the progression of HIV to AIDS and increase the resilience of households trying to recover from HIV-related illness and death.

• BSLA provides the farmers (widows) with modern Agronomic extension services & rural based marketing system.


• Provide the women with a grant for purchase of seeds, fertilizer and maize drying crib.


• Increase youth and woman participation in the fight against HIV/AIDS
  

Slum Doctors Programe donated $5,250 to support 25 AIDS widows in an integrated HIV/AIDS education and maize production project for a period of 18 months or 3 growing seasons. $1,500 was for training, materials, and administrative costs in the first six months. The balance was for grants to the widows of $1,250 for each of 3 seasons.

Magumba Nathan

I've never been to Uganda. My one adventure oversees happened over thirty years ago. Old folks like me will understand that the memories of that don't seem so distant. That trip was to the British Isles. So I have to imagine Uganda. It helps to see pictures, and now that I have higher speed Internet access videos too. By way of The Kiva Chronicles I've been alerted to a couple of other blogs: Carl's Big Adventure and intocontext and both of them have provided visual images to feed my imagination.

I'm not sure for how long I've been corresponding with Nathan Magumba; it's over four years now. Nathan is nice to have sent me pictures over that time. This is a cropped version of a recent one. I've seen a couple of high school pictures and some snapshots over the years we've known each other. My old computer crashed and I lost some pictures. There's one I wish that I still had of Nathan plowing with an ox-drawn plow. I think of that one often not so much because of the image itself, but the story he told me. It's not a simple matter to lead an ox to plow. There was something very telling to me in his story of the necessity for compassion for the ox, at least to see things from the point of view of an ox. Nathan is able to plow fields with oxen.

The story told about awaking very early in the mornings well before dawn and working in the fields then rushing back for a quick bath then going to school. All this without resentment, to the contrary a sense of privilege. He expressed such gratitude to the family whose farm he worked while going to high school; remembering being cared for when he was sick and trousers bought for him. How he engaged in his lessons at school and remembering his teacher exhorting him and the other students to be all they could become. Nathan has reminded me that he shares the humanist values of the Enlightenment, that history isn't an easy stereotype.

It's been a little complicated that right at the time of starting this blog there are moves on the ground which may affect the future of the BSLA, but now is not the time to share them in public. Nathan's been quite busy suffice it to say, and it's best for me to let him decide what to say when.

He sent me his resume which he wrote to share with those abroad taking an interest in the BSLA. Resumes are such pain to write! There are too many models to chose from. Also from what I can see Curriculum Vitae are more commonly used in Uganda. The important thing in the USA is to get everything on a single page and that doesn't seem the norm there.

The document seems rather stiff to me. It also doesn't convey all the genuine skills he possesses. Since 2002 Nathan has been the Telecentre Assistant, Instructor and Cashier at Iganga Senior Secondary School. The telecentre there was started in conjunction with SchoolNet Uganda. SchoolNet has been an important bridge across the digital divide in Uganda and in other developing countries.

Through his association with the Iganga Secondary School Nathan has received certification in Introduction to Computers and in Microsoft Applications. He also attended a week long workshop in Computer Maintenance and Repair. He earned a diploma in Computers and Business Management through correspondence with Cambridge International College.

Something I hadn't known before was that right out of his A-Level diploma he taught primary students for a year. For a young man, Nathan has experience in teaching. My degree is in education, and from my little experience I know it's not so easy. I smile thinking about his story of what it means to lead an ox to plow. The key to teaching is empathy; a second key is necessary too and that's knowledge of the subject matter. Nathan knows his way around popular computer software, much less common skills there than they are here. And Nathan has done much to make those skills more widespread where he is. He's taught many people in the community how to access the Internet and to use email.

As I look at his CV I see his experience, and know that it's only a beginning. At times Nathan reminds me: "Rome wasn't built in a day." That's true, of course, but in his workman like composition of his life, it's easy to see he's creating something good.

Mobilize the Community

That's a picture of people in Pittsburgh participating in The Global Night Commute. The picture was taken by Peter Okema Otika (I reduced the file size).

On Saturday night people in many cities across the globe walked into their towns to spend the night in order to draw attention to the children who commute into Gulu and other towns to seek protection from abductions. On Sunday there was a large rally in Washington DC to urge International attention and action in Darfur.

I'm a bit ashamed to say I didn't attend either event. But I'm quite heartened by them both because it signals that many Americans are beginning to pay attention to African issues. There is of course a difference between the attention of national governments and the attentions of ordinary people. It's the second kind I'm most encouraged by, but the first that might seem to matter the most.

The USA is a place where there are many people of different heritages. Some American families are here because of awful wars and persecution. That doesn't mean there are no tensions between people of different ethnic backgrounds, indeed there are. Still, most Americans have some sense that we are a country of many peoples and traditons. One of the classic pieces of writing from 1930's America is Seventy Thousand Assyrians by William Saroyan. There is a line in it I always remember:

I think now that I have affection for all people, even for the enemies of Armenia, whom I have so tactfully not named. Everyone knows who they are. I have nothing against any of them because I think of them as one man living one life at a time, and I know, I am positive, that one man at a time is incapable of the monstrosities performed by mobs. My objection is to mobs only.

Paul Rusesabagina insists:

[H]uman beings were designed to live sanely, and sanity always returns.

There's something of that in Saroyan's contention of what an ordinary man is incapable of. People throughout time have committed the most heinous acts, and yet we are, our ordinary state as human beings is not to behave so badly.

The important thing is to find ways for people to do good. These recent rallies are a way for people to register their intention to pay attention. Certainly a part of that is to influence politics, but another part is simply to say to one another, and to people in Northern Uganda and Darfur that we are paying attention.

I'm not sure many people are interested in hearing what I have to say here in this blog. Mostly I hope to read what members of the BSLA have to say. The point is for this blog to become a way for ordinary people to communicate across the distances.

I was moved to read a statement on one of the pages of the Japanese drumming group Kodo. It seems appropirate to the work of the BSLA:

In ancient Japan the taiko was a symbol of the rural community and it is said that the limits of the village were defined not by geography but by the furthest distance at which the taiko could be heard. It is Kodo's hope with the One Earth Tour to bring the sound of the taiko to people around the globe, so that we may all be reminded of our membership in that much larger community: the world.

With Kodo the sound of the drum is literal, in a figurative sense the boundaries of our villages are stretched by the sounds of a world of drumming. It becomes a matter of finding artful ways to harmonize the sounds of our drums and to create a drumming heart beat for our joined-together world.

One of the greatest tasks for the BSLA is to create fellowship within the local communities where you operate. From that fellowship the objectives to increase education, to promote health, to nurture livelihood and to foster stewardship of the environment will follow. Promoting fellowship with concerend people everywhere will help us all.