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Published: November 26th 2008
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A dawning realisation that the pineapples I planted over 18 months ago would be getting close to harvest and ever-increasing airfares made me get my finger out and take action in booking a flight to Uganda before it was too late. Denise couldn't get the time off so I travelled on my own.
Here's my notes of the journey taken from my diary: "On plane somewhere over Ethiopia. That strange sense of destiny rises up again. Airline meals - that bouncing bomb effect of explosions of delight at consuming each morsel! What is it that produces such paroxysms of pleasure? Don't know. Partly the false sense of getting something for nothing perhaps?! Excellent journey - 3 seats to myself, charming Kenyan Airways staff (not-the-all-too-often-pretentious-smiles-but-raised-eyebrows-when-you're-out-of-sight-crew). Amazing too that this ticket has cost the same as it did on our first journey in 1994 (£450).
Arrival at Nairobi Airport to catch the next flight to Entebbe - everyone got off the plane, it was dark and there were no staff anywhere to be seen and no signposts either. Some people seemed to know where they were going so everyone followed them, we wandered across a very busy runway and almost got
knocked down! When we eventually reached a doorway there was a sign saying it was for domestic passengers only! So the rest of us wandered back on to the runway and managed to find a local fuel operator who pointed us in the opposite direction. At last some light shone in the darkness and we came to the security section.
Going through security - not allowed my bottle of orange (bought at Heathrow Airport), had to drink all 500ml of it, while sitting there an American man in a wheelchair came forward and had his bag searched, security found a large bottle of liquid, when informed he would need to drink it, the man looked dismayed and had to explain that he couldn't access the wheelchair-unfriendly toilets so he had to pee into his water bottle instead!!
The final short one hour hop over to Uganda was uneventful but got me thinking about racism. I was sat at the end of three seats, the man in the middle was a black Ugandan guy and on the other side of him was a black Nigerian man. None of us knew each other. Throughout the trip the Ugandan man chatted
with the Nigerian man, neither of them acknowledged my existence. I had a strange feeling of paranoia that they were ignoring me because I was white. It was a small glimpse into the feeling that many black people must feel in the UK. Yet I also had to acknowledge that there is a natural attraction and a sense of safety to that which is similar and to those that we feel we may have something in common with. Anyway maybe they didn't speak to me because I had on earmuffs, eyemuffs and I was curled up in a ball sound asleep!"
I stayed in Sam and Eva's house in Wanyange for the two weeks and was fortunate enought to be able to use their car to get around as Sam was in Hawaii. Moses escorted me most of the time. Moses and Peninah have 4 of their own children and also look after 16 other children (mostly orphans).
The old lady, Viviane, who has rented the land to me is well and now has a very smart new brick house (she previously had a mud house). A local charitable organisation paid for the materials to build it. She
looks after 3 local children, one of them being her grandson. All 10 of Viviane's own children died before the age of 18.
Viviane and Moses have been looking after the pineapples for me (as well as lots of children!) and they are just about ready for harvest, we picked about two dozen of them and they are as sweet as a nut! The two acres of land should produce about 7000 pineapples in the first harvest and more next time round (in theory you should be able to produce 20,000 per acre if done well). The land is incredibly fertile and Viviane also has bananas, melons, tomatoes, coffee bushes, casava, peanuts (or groundnuts as they call them in Uganda), corn (maize in Uganda), mangoes, and jackfruit growing in her garden. In her zealousness Viviane had planted dozens of maize plants inbetween all the pineapples, which meant they had nicked all the water and nutrients from the pineapples, so the pineapples will be somewhat smaller than normal!
I wanted to solar dry the pineapples as this adds value to them when selling. The last time I was in Uganda there were three companies exporting dried pineapples to Europe.
I went to visit them again this time, but one of them had stopped trading in dried pineapples, the other one had temporarily stopped while they converted all their suppliers (small farmers like myself) to organic which is a very long process which can take over a year to complete, and I was told that the third exporter was a crook! No luck there then!
This meant that we would have to sell the pineapples fresh as they are harvested. This is not a big problem as the area is very popular for pineapple growing and the Sudanese and Kenyans come there with big lorries and buy up all the pineapples for a reasonable amount.
In December Viviane wants to give me another 6 acres of land for pineapples, which is great but it's costing me a fortune preparing and maintaining the land as it is!
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Fred
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Pine growing Experience
It is interesting to read your article about pineapple growing. My Wife has interested me to grow pineapples but i have not conviced myself that it worth my time. What has interested is the output one can get in acrea. I think i should give it a trial because if you harvest 20,000 pineapple fruits at farm rate of 600/=per fruit then you earn a cool 12,000,000/= in a period of 3 months. If you compute off the costs, you save a cool 6,000,000/=. If you have any literature on pineapple growing, kindly send it to me. I will fill you in once i start on my project.