Dear friends and supporters,

In the last months a lot has progressed in our project and in the upcoming posts we are looking forward to updating you and to introducing you to some of our farmers and our team. We have a lot of news to share! Since the last post we have built a headquarters, had our first harvest of honey with the farmers, and we will have some jars of our very own honey for sale in a craft shop at the beautiful Isunga Lodge very shortly. Watch this space for updates on all of this.

Our greatest challenge at the moment is to apply for external funding. As every (social/development) project we are mostly limited by financial resources. Big investments have been made in training new farmers, building beehives and apiaries, purchasing a land close to Kibale Forest National Park and the construction of our new building.

So let’s start by introducing our brand new, residential headquarters, training ground and workshop in Isunga. In May, we purchased one and a half acres of farmland bordering Kibale Forest National Park. Our land is nestled in the hills around the forest, amongst local subsistence farmers and quiet retreats. The farmers are primarily growing matooke (green starchy bananas; a staple food of Uganda), cassava, potatoes, maize, sweet potatoes and French beans for food; as well as eucalyptus, coffee and pine trees that are sold locally. The nearest lodge to us is Isunga Lodge, the owners and staff of which have been most welcoming and interested in our project, offering great hospitality and valuable feedback. We hope to provide their visitors with our delicious forest honey in the near future, and Karen and Gerry from the Lodge have kindly offered to help us sell it.

The longest task on the land has been to build a structure that can accommodate our office as well as three bedrooms, a kitchen and a workshop. We decided for a more traditional (read: cheaper) structure based on local wood, mud and cement/sand. There is still a lot of work to do, as we need to put in wiring for electricity, paint the walls and improve our sanitary facilities (using a pit latrine is an acquired skill, though we feel all true travellers should learn it). We have started to build the furniture by ourselves and have so far completed three sets of bunk-beds, some shelves and some benches. We have a large workshop at the back of the building for producing hives and catch boxes, which is currently where we store and work with our locally-sourced wood.

When we arrived, the land was mostly used for maize and potatoes. After these were harvested by the owners we were left with a more-or-less bare canvass. Though we are planting trees/shrubs that serve as bee-forage (i.e. Brugmansia and Calliandra), and some crops to eat, we are leaving much of the land to the processes of natural succession and currently taking advantage of the fields of Bidens pilosa that our new bee colonies seem to love. We have selected a small patch of Eucalyptus, under which we will put our first ten hives, while we grow natural bamboo fences for the future apiary.

The land is already very rich in wild plant, bird, and insect species, who seem to be increasing with every day we leave the land uncultivated (Gallery coming soon). And of course, the rainforest is only about a thirty-meter flight from our property. Our honeybees are happy to enjoy the nectar and pollen resources close-by, though the seasonal rain has meant that they need a little support in their foraging to assure that their colonies are strong. To do this, we’ve shared out some of the waste honey from our first harvest and provided some cassava flour.

Besides providing us with a place where we can sleep, work and enjoy the breathtaking views on the Kibale Forest area, our headquarters is meant to be a gathering and training area for our farmers, where they can learn essential bee-keepings skills. Our next training course is is set for late November and the interest is already very high! We are looking forward to welcoming new farmers in the Enjojo Farms project and train them with the fun and lucrative skills of keeping wild honeybees.

A final note

Although we have made good progress, we have only just started to produce and sell honey and are far from becoming self-sufficient. Therefore, we are looking forward to working together with other beekeeping projects in East Africa, to share experiences and to learn from each other’s mistakes and successes. Moreover, we will work closely together with a student-run consultancy agency in Vienna, that focusses on social enterprises and NPOs to enhance their social impact. As always, if you’re interested in contributing to the project, please visit our contributions page.