Livestock farming + cultivation project, June 2018 important updates

1) Animals (3) have given birth. Piglets are fine, soon the vet will give them some iron injections.

 



















Here two pictures of the first piglets born in May, already posted on our facebook page:

2) CASSAVA & CORN!! After the land cleaning we started to plant: first we planted Cassava; about 3 weeks ago we have planted the corn that grows much faster.

 




Here you can see a Cassava plant detail:

3) The structure is not yet enough suitable to accommodate the animals and their piglets: we will have to build two more boxes, also to keep the females separated from the male.

4) Some time ago we have closed the old office: we did not accept the rent increase for the room, unjustified (quite normal here). For now we have preferred to invest our resources into the animal breeding and cultivation self-financing project. The same applies to the NGO certificate, renewal of which (it has a cost!) has been postponed. First of all we must take care of this work, then we will take care of all the formalities.

 
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We want to tell you something more about this project, something about the way we daily live it: every morning at 06 AM (Ransford and Felix - nda) we go to the place where the land that houses cultivation and animals is located (near Adwaso town).

If we are "on foot", the journey takes about an hour (via "trotro", the vehicle that here performs the functions of the bus).

However, to save time we've borrowed a motorbike from a dear friend who stays in Accra, Romeo. It's a 9 year old motorbike, beautiful but with several serious engine problems (one above all, the fuel pump is faulty). By motorbike it takes only 15 minutes to arrive. But sometimes the engine does not work, and other times we save the money we should spend on fuel (which is also a nice way to say that sometimes we do not have money for the fuel... :-) )

Here you can see our "official" motorbike!

Moreover, some roads in the rural areas are not exactly suitable for a motorbike (perhaps a motocross one) : but we think this issue applies in some way to all the rural areas of the world …

However we try to be careful ...

Once arrived (one way or another) at destination, we check the conditions of the animals and those of the cultivation.

Then we go to the town to buy what we need; later we come back and get to work. This happens every day.

We are proud of our work, which (please remember this point) is developed for our self-financing. And we are happy to share it with you. This is also Africa.


Ofie Support Unit - June 5, 2018, Ghana.