Pimp My Pen Ugandan Style

We travelled to another parish on Wednesday to continue planting caliandra, leucina, and lub lub. We had also offered to help the women with goat pen repairs if they needed it. We were to bring the nails, and as long as the women supplied the wood and other supplies, we would do the repairs for them. So the global vets crew, Kent, Sarah, other FAOC volunteers and I arrived at the first home, ready to disperse and plant. We met a group of 10 women at the home and they directed us to a huge pile of cut trees and a large open clearing. We were to construct a goat pen for a elderly lady with 11 goats. So, as it turns out, it was more like BUILD my pen, Ugandan style. But it was ok, because there was a group of 20 people, surely we could build a goat pen. How hard could it be...right??? Well, first I should introduce our building tools - pangas (machetes) to cut the wood, spades to dig, and 2 hammers to build. Soon after using these tools, we realized that our initial design (the size of a small apartment) was too big. We down sized our plans and began digging. It was a slow process, using dull spades and machetes to dig 11 holes, 2 feet deep in hard, rocky ground. Within the first 5 minutes, I had already blistered my hands and was getting tired. Luckily, the women here have great skills with the tools they have and helped dig. Next, the tree cutting. Actually, this was not too bad. It is amazing to say, but a machete actually cuts a tree much faster than a manual saw. So now that the holes were dug and the trees cut, it was time to construct a pen, except that we actually had no idea really how to design a pen. Luckily for us, Kent is a man of very many friends, and of course, we had to recruit some local help to get the job done. The men quickly got things rolling, we all got to work, and got the pen build, after 8 hours!!! It is probably one of the biggest goat pens I have seen in Uganda, but at least it was built. The goats were not happy to be intruduced to their new pen, but with time, I hope they will like it.