Progressed as Promised- Kitongo 2011

Several friends of Margaret Paul’s, my aunt, approached me a few months ago about donating to JBFC for her 50^th birthday. We talked, behind Margaret’s back of course, about the various projects Margaret would appreciate on campus, and they started sending in donations. Thanks to their generosity, and my aunt getting old, we are now in the process of building a laundry area, tiling all of our dorms, and building a playground at the school.

All of these projects are helping keep in line with the theme for this year: re-organizing. We have been taking a step back, looking at what needs to be done, and maintaining what we have already before we plan to take the next step forward in June or July- our secondary school. It has been an incredibly busy time, getting all of these smaller projects completed, but our girls have been extremely excited, and we think we are going to have the coolest playground in all of East Africa- we are building traditional-looking huts on stilts, connected by swinging bridges, with a tricycle race-track, teter-toters, swings, and all of the other playground necessities.

We send a special thanks to all of Marg’s friends who made these projects a reality, and we would also like to share a short video sent to Margaret on her birthday to tell her about these projects. We hope you enjoy:

Donkey, Yee Haw!

Well, I’m finally feeling like half a cowboy, because we now have half horses on campus thanks to the Tulsa fundraiser in mid-April. And, by half-horses, I do mean DONKEYS. We went on a bit of a “donkey hunt” towards the middle of last week, and after much searching, found 2 families, each with 2 donkeys, who were willing to sell. The village was about 2 hours away from the JBFC campus, so we had to rent a truck, trick the donkeys into the bed, and start the treck back to campus, but everything went extremely smoothly, and now, Santa, Jack, Ethel, and Winnie are grazing happily around campus, taking their dust bathes and “eh-awing” as they see fit (even at 2AM). Training has begun for them to learn to plow and pull carts, as to reduce the great expense we use to do both of these things on campus.

I bring this new addition up because it speaks to the progress we are experiencing on our farm. Since restructuring the staffing and creating new goals, all of our livestock has been extremely prolific, we have been “passing” a great number of the young birthed on campus, and our livestock and farm are starting to turn into a real business. We are even registered for the state fair at the beginning of August in hopes of advertising this business as well as bringing home the gold for biggest hog and turkey-maybe even the prize for loudest donkey!

Furthermore, thanks to the Tulsa fundraiser, we have been able to start a new laying hen business, and have purchased 600 new laying hens in hopes of being able to supply the surrounding area as well as our campus with quality eggs. The first coop has been constructed already, and the second one’s construction is well under way. All of this progress just means we are moving closer and closer to our goal of self-sustainability.