We Nurture Wonderful Human Beings

Earth Day

Year 7 launched their programme Hand to Hand to curb plastic pollution in their neighbourhood, including their local market town Rwaihamba. Collectively they formed a ‘Plastic not so Fantastic’ grant proposal as part of their Project Based Learning course work on recycling and waste management. With much excitement they were awarded a micro grant by The Peace Department, a non-profit organisation in the US which launched a global clean-up in honour of April's Earth Day.

The Year 7 project aims to revolutionize waste management and promote environmental responsibility. Hand to Hand proposes a sustainable recycling programme with community participation (images below of the first recycling workshop in Sadhguru School's village of Kyakatama), and a town-wide clean up day which happened on 30^th April. The students are spearheading ongoing waste management systems which they are establishing with the help of Sub-County leaders, whom they are calling upon to turnaround the current diffident attitude to rubbish in the community.

Rwaihamba Clean-Up

During the clean-up over 300 from the community, including 60 from Sadhguru School, joined hands to clear up the streets and back paths of plastic bags, bottles, broken jerricans and discarded vegetable/banana stem waste from the market. 

On the same day, Rogers and Ignatious from Year 7 worked with a local builder, learning the art of mixing aggregate, sand and cement, to concrete in 6 metal dustbins that had been commissioned from Welder Julius using a portion of the kids' Peace Department grant.

Another small portion went towards a hard earned doughnut (mandazi) break, offered to all helpers by students Onesimus and Diana who had negotiated a bulk discount with the local bakery. A third portion went to hiring help to build a large composting area for all the banana stem (matoke) waste generated each market day, and a small covered waste collection and recycling shed for sorting out the plastics to be sent for recycling. Student Precious explained to us how the different bottles and plastics could be separated and delivered to Fort Portal, 24km away, after her fact finding visit there, and got us all separating out Rwaihamba's plastic waste into different piles.

The result was 43 large sacks of plastic bottles weighing 156kg taken to Fort Portal for recycling, with the help of Ndali Lodge's truck, and for which the centre paid a small per kg price - enough for Rwaihamba market to commission a new dustbin without the help of a grant.

Biogas for a Cleaner Kitchen!

While we do have access to plenty of sustainable firewood sources from Ndali forest, there's a lot of effort expended in firewood collection, large spaces taken up with drying and storing it, and then there's axing it to size each day to start up three or four fireplaces for giant cooking pots. Over time, despite using comparatively low-smoke dry firewood, the whole of the kitchen's ceiling, walls and light bulbs become encrusted in black soot.

Dhwani from Uganda, currently an engineering undergraduate at Northeastern University in the US, after many hours of research, proposal writing and competitive interviews was awarded a grant to build us a biogas system. The beautifully constructed (by Biogas Solutions Uganda) underground biodigester dome will be fed with cowdung (from our 5 school cows and from the Ndali Estate herd), with vegetable waste from the kitchen, fallen wild figs gracefully thrown down by the monkeys (!), and with human waste from our loos. The system is expected to generate enough gas to cover all the children's breakfasts and lunches, with ample reserves in the holidays which could be used to run a small carpentry-workshop generator.

Added to that, the gas generation produces two biproducts: a completely odourless nutrient-dense liquid manure, and a slurry which drys into a rich composting soil.

We can't wait to share future images of these two #SaveSoil companions at work on our own vegetables and flowers and on our neighbours' fields.