We can not believe that in just under a month we will be back in the UK and Christmas will be upon us. Hard to think of that sitting here in 40f heat!

Our work continues building our poultry stock. 4 ducks have now joined us, 3 hens and a drake. One of the hens has started laying eggs. We fenced off a small area for them and built a pond to keep them happy. We have also fenced a slightly bigger area ready to house turkeys and maybe some geece. 3 of our chickens will soon be mums currently sitting on around 20 eggs and another 3 are laying. We have also recently purchased 100 roadrunner chicks to help quickly build our stock. Things are starting to get noisy in the fowl run.

It’s nice to see some greenery in our shade greenhouse. (Even if our fingers aren’t so green!) Cabbages and spinach are growing nicely and we have also sown tomatoes and giant rape seeds.

We hope to start harvesting early next year, bringing in some much needed income and also enabling us to donate where needed.

We still only have one colonised bee hive but have set up 4 trap boxes in nearby gardens ready for swarming season. For more about our bee project visit beeagainstpoverty.org

The father of Andrea, the little boy living with disabilities we mentioned in our last blog, has been busy carrying out some building work for us. They have been able to use some of the income to start a goat project for Andrea. They have purchased 3 goats, one of which is pregnant. We have also received a donation of £62 which will go towards much needed pampers or equivalent, for Andrea.

In January we are looking to start working with 10 new families. We had asked Wozhele Primary School and St Charles Primary school to give us names of OVC’s (orphans and vulnerable children) who will be going into grade 3 (year 3), in January. They selected 5 each for us to meet along with their families. Meeting them at the school and then driving to each family’s home taking time to find out the family’s history and story. It’s a great privilege to be welcomed into their homes and we now have the difficult task of assessing which we can help and sadly maybe some we can’t. We are praying for wisdom and guidance.

Finally our barrels full of donated tools and other items from the UK have been delivered (Yay). Slightly delayed due to fuel shortages, we now have the fun long task of sorting them all out!

Innocent who has been working for us over the last year has decided to leave and persue other avenues. We wish him all the best in his plans for his future and thank him for all his hard work. We are in the process of looking for a new assistant ideally before we leave.