Breaking News

Well actually, as the power and internet are so unreliable, this is a round-up of news items.

Last Sunday I went for a walk round the compound and bumped into Ben, the project co-ordinator, and while he was showing me the pineapples he picked one and gave it to me.  When I got home the girls were very excited – it is the first pineapple to be harvested!  Ondati’s first pineapple.

Samina excited about the pineapple

When I went to pay for it Ben had to start a new page in the record book – another excitement.

Unfortunately, it isn’t quite ripe enough to eat. It is still sitting on the shelf.  I have been putting it out in the sun to ripen but it’s not very sunny.  In fact it keeps raining.

Yesterday, Wednesday we woke up to find a new arrival! A calf arrived the night before.  Unfortunately, it is a male – not very useful when you are trying to build up a dairy herd.  They seem to be unable to produce female calves – can anyone out there suggest how they could remedy this?

Leslie at 12 hours old

In the past, calves have been named after TAMTF volunteers, but they have run out of boy’s names, so I suggested they could call him Leslie.  They may keep him and sell the other bull calves, so Leslie (or Les) could be here for a while.

Work-wise we have broken the back of the budget for 2012 and I have been working on updating the cash book and various other spreadsheets.  I have spent some time with the Principal, showing him excel techniques and some basic accounting principles.

We discussed depreciation – and after the easy option, straight-line, we got on to reducing balance calculations.  I even explained the basics of current cost accounting.

Today is now Friday and we woke to the sound of rain – quite unusual in the morning – so it looks like this evening’s little outing to the nearby village of Oria will not happen.  We were going to go to the Friday market, it is bigger than Ondati and just a 45 minute walk away.  But the roads will be rivers of mud.

Zoe and I with the pineapple

We were planning to go out for the day tomorrow – a proper small town – have lunch out, see the sights but this rain is making the roads very difficult. Meanwhile, we are sitting in our little house, trying to work.  We are dependent on battery power (a car battery that has to be taken away to be charged) so working on computers is limited.  It’s a long time since I wrote so much by hand. The internet is very intermittent and the signal is weak so it has been difficult to update this blog very often.