Our work days on the agricultural team followed a similar pattern.  Rita and her team picked us up in the morning and we went into Soroti to collect our supplies -- water, rubber boots, seeds, and food supplies.  We drove about an hour or two over bumpy, dirt roads to the cooperative communities.  We visited the Multi-function Platforms (MFP) that Pilgrim has recently donated to the communities to help them become self-sufficient.  The communities must build the structures to house the machines and operate them.  The machines can be used to grind seeds (adding value to their crops) or generate electricity.  After some formal greetings and opening remarks we would begin our work together.  We carried seedlings (pine and/or mango) and cans of vegetable seeds.  Our hosts brought hoes and pangas (machetes).  As we began working we quickly realized that we were not here to teach anything (What did we, financial analysts and advisors, bankers, social workers, etc. know about planting?) -- we watched closely and tried to pitch in.  We learned to swing a hoe (without cutting off a toe) and to strip a bush branch to create a strap for tying.  Our efforts provided great amusement for our hosts.  We watched in admiration as a few quick whacks with a panga made a needed post or pole, or helped create a strap.  There appeared to be few instructions needed among our hosts, people came and went -- returning with bundles of branches, ties or coverings.  Proving the adage that many hands make light work, we would often be surprised how much had been accomplished at the end of the day or how quickly.  We concluded the afternoons with formal remarks and thanks.

On Monday and Tuesday the cooperative’s leaders -- Simon Peter and Robert -- led us we planted pine seedlings, created nursery beds, dug a well, and grafted fruit seedlings.  Hoes were used to break up the hardened ground and remove weeds, as well as digging holes for seedlings or poles.  Nursery beds were systematically created for the tomatoes, peppers, onion and cabbage seeds.  The ground was loosened with the hoes and raised beds created, then poles made symmetrical indentations for the carefully laid seeds.  The poles were used to tenderly cover the seeds and then the covers were created -- v-forked sticks, connected to poles, tied together with straps, covered with grass, which was again tied down.  It was systematic and everything was gathered from the nearby landscape.  While our hosts worked barefoot and barehanded -- we wore gloves or risked painful blisters.  Adults of all ages pitched in -- older ones provided instructions, young women worked with babies tied to their backs.  Meanwhile, around us the cattle grazed under the watchful eyes of their young caretakers and dogs scampered about seeking shade.  The well required back breaking, heavy digging -- much of it done by Will and a local boy who is deaf.  Despite their differences, they forged a bond built on mutual respect and admiration and were rewarded when water was found six feet down.  Nancy and Tish worked with John, a local, experienced horticulturalist, to graft orange branches onto mango seedlings.    Three years ago John started a demonstration orchard, which now consists for 300 fruit bearing trees.  He did this by grafting imported seedlings of exotics, like the American Tangerine and the South African Valencia Orange onto the Ugandan hardy native roots of the sour lemon and the mango.  He is now taking cuttings from his orchard and grafting new trees using this method to recreate orchards for the cooperatives that Rita has helped to develop.  We helped John graft new trees and then helped him create a nursery for the tender shoots by digging a foot deep area under a tree to set the 2 foot trees into.  They are then covered by plastic and weighted with dirt.  In this way the tender shoots are protected from the hot sun and heavy rain.  They are watered twice a day for two weeks and then planted in the new orchard.  After we finished working on our last day together, our hosts served us roasted chicken and cassava.  The children gathered round in hopes of seeing photos of themselves or collecting empty water bottles.  We left satisfied by what had been accomplished and the friendships forged.

On Wednesday we traveled to another community cooperative and again worked on creating nursery beds and grafting fruit trees.  The field was smaller and next to the host farmer’s home, so when the heat was too much we could retire to the shade around his home.  April used empty water bottles to start a soccer game with the kids, and they quickly returned with a real soccer ball.  The highlight of the day, however, was the connections made when Alyson began pitching in by carrying wood and grass on her bead.  Several of us joined Alyson and eventually we even learned to balance our loads without hands -- for a bit!  This pleased and delighted our hosts who later remarked that they had never seen a muzungu (white person) carry anything on their heads before!  Such a simple gesture and yet so meaningful.  By the end of the day April had the women singing and dancing, laughing and praising.  When we said our good-byes that day they were filled with thanksgiving for the blessings we’d received and bit of sadness at leaving our newfound friends. 

Thursday we returned to Aaron’s farm to weed and loosen the soil around the sweet potatoes.  Today it was just ourselves and our Pilgrim friends, and somehow the day seemed hotter and we grew weary sooner.  Perhaps it was the absence of many hands and newfound friends.  In any event, we hoed until almost noon and then stopped for lunch.  We then traveled to Aaron’s home where we transplanted his jatropha bean seedlings.  Jatropha is a bio-fuel and can be used instead of diesel to power the MFP which provides electricity for the students.  Here we made more progress, dividing the work into various tasks and working together to dig up the plants, place the seedlings and an adequate amount of dirt into the transplanting sleeve, and then place the seedlings in new, larger rows where they would receive more sunlight.  It was dirty, but satisfying work and we moved the entire 800 plants that afternoon.  Several of us sampled the fresh mangos from Aaron’s mango tree -- yum, yum.

Friday turned out to be an educational morning.  We visited the site where Pilgrim is manufacturing Bio-Sand Water Filters.  When Teso suffered extensive flooding in 2007 over 80% of water sources were contaminated and many people became very sick.  Pilgrim began working on the need to provide clean water for rural communities and came across this technology in Western Uganda.  For $100 Pilgrim can build a concrete filter which is about three feet tall and filled with a mixture of gravel and both course and fine gravel to filter the water.  Pilgrim requires that farmers who receive the filters come and help build it, so they are invested in it and understand it.  They must also agree to be a demonstrate site for others to visit and see it work.  Rita explained that under the current pilot program Pilgrim is building 75 filters, but if the pilot is successful they plan to build 1,000 next year.  We watched in amazement as dirty brown water was converted to clean, clear water in a matter of moments (See the photo!).  Adding a certain type of bacteria would also eliminate 90% of harmful of impurities.  We realized these filters were an amazingly simple yet important technology.  It was time to return to Soroti.