And the winner is...

Heated debates between my husband and my father are not uncommon. When two people spend as much time together as those two, conflict is bound to happen. From big things (who gets to operate the planter this year) to the small things (Funderburks or Powhaten for lunch), there is almost always something that Justin and Dad are debating.

This winter, however, arose a debate of such monumental proportions, that each side had started recruiting members and a community was left divided.

What, you ask, could cause such a rift?

What could strike a cord that runs so deeply within a man?

The age old question...

Gleaner or International.

Up until now, the project has utilized hand labor for harvesting (as you saw in a previous post about the Mpanga site). This is partly because we have been growing corn for seed which requires more gentle processing than a combine can offer. This season we planted our first crop of soybeans. That along with the prospect of farming some additional land encouraged us to look into purchasing and shipping combines.

So, the search began and with it, the much debated question. Which combine to go with.

There are a lot of factors to keep in mind when researching equipment bound for Africa.
Here are a few:

Narrow roads. While the field size is steadily increasing as farmers begin to work more cooperatively, which would allow for larger equipment, the roads continue to be a problem. For this reason, we begain looking at smaller sized combines.

Another size restriction is the container they will be shipped in. Justin took me along on a combine scouting mission earlier this year and while holding my end of the tape measure I remember thinking, either my math is way off (which is not all that hard to imagine) or we are literally looking at inches to spare if we go with this machine.

Parts replacement is a huge one. It's important to figure out which kind of machine is going to break the least, break the most consistently (for example, if we know this is always the part that breaks, we can include extras in the container), and the liklihood of being able to find replacement parts somewhere in Africa versus the price of having them shipped.

As you may have quessed, among the farmers polled, the older genenation pulled for Team Berry and the F2 Gleaner. Besides the nostalgia surrounding these beasts of a machine, I think there is something very durable about them and farmers talked about their simplicity. Easy to work on, easy to get running again...if you can find the parts. And, consequently, based on nothing other than this picture of me when I was 5, Gleaner had my vote as well.

Team Justin and the 1420 International crew spoke of familiarity with the machines (as a lot of folks in our area run much larger updated versions of this classic) and ease of finding parts. Also taken into consideration is the vast number of people who are able to work on Internationals who might be able to talk Justin through fixing one over the phone.

These along with a thousand other factores (like which model can we get in a 1/64th scale version so we can create a model African farm in our basement...boys will be boys) were carefully debated and scrutinized and a winner was finally decided.

Red wins again. (Dad is inevitably muttering something under his breath about young kids thinking they know everything and we'll just see who has to come show them how to fix it when it breaks down)

And, like nearly all machinery decisions, it really came down to price and location. We were able to get a total of three combines (two 1420's and one 1440) for the right price and all in Illinois...Carlyle, Greenville and Auburn to be exact.

So, the two 1420's along with two bean heads and one corn head are being loaded onto a container as we speak and should reach the shores of Africa in time to harvest the crop Justin and Dad just finished planting. Barring any unforseen problems and, of course, pirates.

And it should be noted that we are already the proud owners of a 1/64th scale 1420.

Pity Party

When people see me dragging my three kids, by myself, into church or to get groceries, there is always this look of sympathy and worry in their eyes. "How are you holding up sweetie?" they often say and offer to bring me a meal through the week or watch the kids while I run errands. Don't get me wrong, I could absolutely not make it through these weeks of Justin's absence without the help. I'm grateful every time someone offers to carry a child for me or hold the door for us or bring over Chinese take-out.

Some have even gotten in the habit of saying things like "I sure hope Justin is planning to take you to the beach when he gets back!" as if he's been gallivanting around the globe hopping from resort to resort. If sleeping on a concrete floor with a thin piece of foam for a mattress and eating beans and rice for every meal is a vacation, then, yes, he's certainly living it up and owes me a tropical getaway.

The truth is, life is not daisies and roses for any of us when he's gone. No question about it, we lived much easier and simpler lives before we got involved with this project. The going and coming, the frustrations of dealing with foreign politics, the red tape, the language barrier, the food, or lack of, the financial burden....all of it can seem a little overwhelming at times.

So why do we keep doing it? Why do we keep going back?

Simple. Because of Daniel. And the nearly 1 million kids just like him.

On our first trip to Rwanda back in 2008 Justin and I did a lot of driving around the country scouting locations for a possible farm site. When we would reach our destination, before we even stepped foot out of the vehicle, we were surrounded by kids.

Kids are everywhere in Rwanda and here are some of their sobering statistics:

1% of the population in Rwanda has any type of Post-Secondary Education
34% of the households are headed by widows
13% of households are headed by children
26% of the population under the age of 14 are orphans (somewhere between 825,000 and 1,000,000 children)

It's been said that a nation cannot prosper unless it cares for its most vulnerable and nowhere is this more true than in Rwanda.

So how does modern farming help someone like Daniel, his 6 siblings and the hundreds of thousands of orphans in his country? Right now, it looks like producing better seed and more of it so the local farmers (which make up over 90% of the population) can buy it at a cheaper price. It also means making mechanization available to even the small farmers and training them in best practices like seed bed preparation and plant health. We hope, at some point, to introduce animal production so Daniel and his family can afford to include meat as a regular part of their diet and so that meat can be raised, butchered and sold in a more regulated way.

In the long term, we hope what we are doing will attract other business owners around the world to begin to see Rwanda as a global partner and a strategic place to invest.

A country with over a million little mouths to feed will soon have a million teenage mouths to feed and then a million adults who need jobs and need industries in which to work and specialize. Farming in Rwanda has to become a more diversified business and we hope what we're doing is contributing to that end.

So, while it's certainly easy for me to slip into pity party mode from time to time, when I haven't left my house or talked another adult in days, I need only look at these pictures of sweet Daniel and remember that I care about his little future. I care that he has all of the opportunities as he grows up that my children will have.

That being said, there's always room on the pity porch for some shrimp lo mien and bottle of Riesling if you happen to be in the area.

If you would like more information on sponsoring a child like Daniel, please visit the ProCom Rwanda website by clicking here.