With the kids at the Zoo – Lessons outside the classroom

If you have been around kids like I have been, you might have probably heard a child in that inquisitive age, probably of three or four, mistake one object for a very different one he might have got familiar with. It can both be interesting and embarrassing if you are a parent of a child that should have known better.

Not very long ago on my way to church in a Kampala suburb I had a child of about four call a long-horned cow an elephant. An elephant was probably the biggest animal the kid might have known and when she saw this big cow, she thought she had finally met one.

Cows being such a common site in Uganda, even in urban places, I wondered if anybody heard ever bothered to teach this anything about domestic animal in our own environment. You can never underestimate how much a kid learns from adults around them even when you are not directly teaching them.

Recently my wife paid us a visit in the village and she asked one of my helpers to go buy her liver at the butchery and the guy instead came back with pork. When she told me what had happened, I said to her in the presence of our kids that the guy is not a very sharp fellow. had she sent another helper things could be different.

Later that week I started work on a garden table and I came to a point where I needed help and when the sharper helper showed up I asked him to help me, just then my son showed and said, “You have asked Emojong to help you because the other guy is not sharp since he brought pork instead of liver when mom sent him to the butcher. You can guess what my response was.

That comment reminded me of my visit to Entebbe Zoo with the kids earlier this year when I was amazed at how many question they asked me besides being keen on reading the different labels at the animal cages and fences. It was also an opportunity to let them know that animals like the bear, kangaroo and a couple of other are not native to our country, for they asked me about all the animals they had ever watched on TV or the net.

Being a parent these experiences have opened my eyes to just how much the kids learn or miss or  when you are or not close to them.

 

All is well that ends well – Back in Juba South Sudan

I am suddenly back in Juba, the capital of South Sudan after resigning from my job as a distribution manager of The New Nation newspaper here in South Sudan. I am here for one week consultative assignment with the Sudan Advocacy for Development – the NGO that publishes the New Nation newspaper.

It was only yesterday when I read an article about honesty on a WordPress blog and the previous day I had read another article from Linkedin that talked about honesty as being an invaluable asset – my own paraphrase. Those two articles could have come at no better to my life than now to remind me of how much the trait of honesty has earned me in my life.

I am back as a consultant in newspaper distribution with an organisation that I worked for and the reason the head of this organisation has kept in touch with me is mainly because of honesty. It amazing, though, how the one of the people I have been called to help solve some of the distribution challenges here at the New Nation asked me to “kindly” tell a lie to the project coordinator that he present at the station of duty yesterday when he was conspicuously absent – having illicitly traveled to Uganda.

First of all I am here to help him succeed and not find fault, secondly it is the one who pays the piper who calls the tune – I owe my allegiance to the project coordinator who has entrusted me with the responsibility sorting out the distribution of The New Nation here in South Sudan. And God forbid that I forget it is honesty besides an excellent job done while I was in office that has won me this short contract.

This morning while I reflected on the panic here at the New Nation Distribution Department and all the whispers and speculations, I remembered the children of Israel and the various prophets that the Lord God sent to them whenever they were not walking in his will. They seemed always to take issue with the prophets rather heed the message. I especially remembered Amos the fruit gatherer who was content with his work in the bushes just like myself who was called from my village where I was tending my geese, cow, ducks, garden and trees and quite content with it.

I am here for the good of the organisation and the individuals who work for it if thet are willing to cooperate and if they are any wrongs, repent. Like Apostle Peter said, “If you are eager to do what is right, who will be against you?”

One would say that Jonah was a prophet of doom when God sent him to pronounce his judgement upon Nineveh but look what happened when the king heard the message, “… the people of Nineveh repented at the preaching of Jonah” – you can refer to the book of Jonah chapters 2 and 3. And the fact that they repented may be the reason Jonah did not want to go there in the first place because it seems he wished them to perish, for Jonah knew that God always shows mercy to the repentant soul.

I am only a messenger and I will deliver my message to the people here and return with their responses to the one who sent me and I go back to the village. I am already missing my kids and their hundreds of questions per day, my cow, trees and the pond that I am making myself just like the garden table that I made myself after nearly a year of begging a carpenter to do it.

The Pendulum – il pendolo – pendulul

The Pendulum – il pendolo – pendulul.

I came across the post some who just decided to follow my blog and found it to be a very uplifting and richly meaning laden poem. You can enjoy it too and please pass on the love.

Back Home with the Kids – Teaching them to work.

Philemon n Mercy clean the garden table.

Work was as much a learning process as it was a game that Philemon and Mercy loved to play. I realized it gave them some sense pride and satisfaction that their parents recognized that they growing and thus becoming responsible especially if they received an unflattering thank-you.

Work outdoors was much fun as it was for the kids to piece together their Spiderman puzzle mart indoors.

Work besides being a play thing was also a food appetite raising thing for the kids.

I did not have to bother begging them to eat their food once they were out and about the garden for some time exerting their physical abilities e.g. in trying to slash, dig, rake etc.

The kids excited about the new garden table that they watched come to life.

Here in photos are some of the activities that the Mogerts were engaged in:

Philemon is happy to be out and about the garden watching and participating in the various activities that I perform in the garden.

Back Home With The Kids

My son Philemon reading in the garden

It is now nearly three months since I resigned from the New Nation in Juba, South Sudan and returned home to Uganda to establish my own self-employment and spend more time with my family. I have spent more than ninety percent of the past three months in the village(Tororo) engaged in farming activities, part of which involved re=arranging our home garden and transforming part of it into an orchard and constructing a pond close to the kitchen.

Philemon speaks to his mom on phone

The last four weeks, though, have been mainly dedicated to keeping watch of our two kids who have been on school holiday. This is possibly the longest unbroken time I have ever spent with Mercy and Philemon; preparing their meals, bathing, washing, making their beds, playing with them and wiping their bottoms.

Philemon n Mercy play in the house,

It has been a very happy and interesting time together. Even if we have not have had much materially, love has kept us going and the kids will happily return to school in Entebbe on 21^st of May 2013.

Mercy rakes grass in the garden

In the past two months, as part of the farming activities. I acquired a Jersey heifer and a Friesian calf which unfortunately got an infection and I had to curl it, I have also made a down payment for two hundred layers which will be delivered by mid-June.

Philemon practices his writing skills in the kitchen

I have not made much headway with the quarry project, for I am yet to come up with a comprehensive business plan to solicit funds and also acquire an access road to the rock through another person’s piece of land,

Mercy too tries her hand at writing.

I will go window shopping for stone crashing machinery in Kampala this week as I return the kids to their mother Entebbe and that will also give ample time to come with a proper business plan.

Dining in the graden

It has been tough being out of formal employment again without a steady income but I still have that faith that I will succeed in due time. Hardly anybody around me buys that idea but I am gonna hang in this time round go it whole hog into self-employment. I believe I will succeed.

Philemon feeds the cow

Going It Alone

Bellini crossing Niagara River on a tight rope, by Barker, George, 1844-1894 2 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

There is an illustration of fickle faith I once read in a book written by the Reverend Billy Graham that went something like this; there was once a man who pushed a wheelbarrow on a tight rope stretched across the Niagara Falls and crowds would gather to cheer him as wheeled back and forth over the falls. One day the man asked the people who were cheering him if they believed that he could push the wheel barrow with somebody in it on the tight rope over the falls and the crowd shouted yes. But when the man asked for a volunteer to come forth for the ride on the tight rope over the falls nobody came forward.

Simply put, “Faith is to act on what you believe,”

It is very strange to listen to some people who love to tell stories of individuals who have taken a step of faith and pursued their heart’s desire and succeeded discourage their own from following their hearts when it comes to self-employment. Everybody wants the often trodden path of formal employment but not the unfamiliar one of job creation.

Not many people hereabout believe that I resigned from my job at the New Nation of Sudan Advocacy for Development in Juba to come back home to create my own unlike when I was fired from the New Vision in 2009. I am seen by some as some kind of stranger like the time when I was born-again when some friends asked me what was wrong.

Anyway, let them believe what they will, as for me and I, we shall go it alone. Time will tell.

 

Fare Thee Well South Sudan

steel bridge over the White Nile in Juba, Equatoria, South Sudan (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

Today the twenty-sixth day of February 2013 marks the end of my one year contract as Distribution Manager of The New Nation newspaper and therefore my last day of work with Sudan Advocacy for Development – the publisher of the New Nation newspaper. Therefore I will be leaving for Juba for Kampala or my home town of Tororo early tomorrow morning by bus.

 

I am leaving my position vacant as my employers have not yet found a suitable replacement for me. I have spent the last two weeks of my work in anticipation of training a South Sudanese national to take up my position but the promised candidate did not show up, preferring instead to find work in Australia where he has been living as a refugee.

 

Until mid January this year I had hoped to work another one year at S.A.D but a twist of things here at work made me change my mind and decided not to renew my contract, preferring to return home to Uganda to work with the land and also be close to my family.

 

When I said that I had resigned, somebody said that I had taken the decision to resign without any definite plan of what I was falling back to in Uganda. Well, it is true that I do not have much or any money to use as capital for the agricultural projects that I never abandoned even as I came to work in South Sudan back in February of 2012 but I definitely have plans of what I am returning to.

 

First of all, as I have just said, I never did abandon the projects that I was on when I was called to be distribution manager for the New nation, save for the fact that the projects remarkably suffered from the effects of my absence and have thus stagnated. Thus my return to the village will be more of a revival than a virgin venture. I have one or two new projects, though, that I intend to take namely stone crashing and brick-making – which really need some heavy investment in terms of machinery.

 

Finding funds to acquire machinery to mine the rock that I bought alongside a piece of land in the course of 2012 and purchasing a hydra-form machine for the bricks will probably be my toughest challenge when I return home.

 

Inevitably part of the motivation of my resignation from my current job is the desire to be close to my family. My two kids are very young and advancing to their formative years in which they will naturally have many questions to ask and I need to be there for them. The weather in Juba has not been helpful, besides the lack of good schools which I could think of my children joining.

 

The challenges ahead of me seem to be very tough but making the decision has not been as tough because of loss of trust at work and subsequently the killing of enthusiasm that had kept me in rhythm with the organisation I worked for. I know, like Jacob, what faith makes possible, love will make it easy. For Joseph worked years for Rachel but it seemed just like weeks to him because he loved her.

 

The past one year that I have worked in South Sudan has been just like weeks to me because I loved my job until mid January this year when I hit a snug and it all of a sudden became a drag. The past few weeks at S.A.D have definitely been like several years for me and I am so glad to see the sun go down the hills today. I am finally free to return to that which I love and I know that I will succeed despite the odds that may be stack against me, including people’s opinion.