You Attract WHO You Write About
Derek Cladek on May 27th, 2010
Whatever you write about on your blog is who you will attract. Kind of like whoever you hang out with is who you will become like. My mom always told me that when I was growing up so hanging out with some kids was out of the question. It wasn’t like we were smoking pot or doing drugs back then, we were just being kids and possibly being a little mischievous. You will find a ton of blogs talking about making money online because that is the crowd they are trying to attract. These people are looking to make their living online and so selling to them is much easier than some random visitor.
I only bring up this point because I talked about going to Uganda Africa to build a pig farm and many of my visitors since those first post have been people begging me to give them money or to help them start a pig farm somewhere in Africa. I did go to Uganda in the summer of 2009 and had a 45 foot by 15 foot building built to raise pigs. The farm is about an hours drive outside of the capital city of Kampala Uganda. It always depends on the condition of the roads because any road off the main road to Kampala is dirt with rather large ruts. After a few rain showers and you will be fording small rivers in the roads making your travel time to the pig farm much longer.
The purpose of this pig farm is to help support orphanages that are being built by a non profit organization that has been in Uganda for the past 22 years. The idea was to build a pig farm to generate money to help start other businesses throughout Uganda. These businesses would then generate enough capital to support the overall cause of raising orphans and to better help these people’s lives. It was a project that made sense, so I asked a few friends who donated money and in 2009 I brought with me $3,500 to build the farm.
I visited the pig farm a few weeks ago, May 2010 and their biggest complaint was that they needed more room. With six large pigs, four girls and two boys, one had just given birth to 10 piglets and three others were about to give birth. One of the obstacles, and there are many, is to teach these Africans to take the money from selling piglets to buy food, medicine and to start building onto the current structure. Instead of relying upon or always asking for money, they need to start using the resources they have to get the job done. In the America if we need to expand our business we either take the profits we have and build, or we go to the bank and get a loan. In Africa its something that needs to be taught.
Feeding the pigs is one of the biggest headaches right now. Cost of feed keeps going up and for a bag of Bran, it cost around 30,000 shillings (the current exchange rate is 2,233 shillings to the US dollar, the highest I have seen it). This could make a bag of Bran cost $13.44 and the bags usually last one week. We had planted Matoke trees around the piggery to help feed the pigs when those trees started producing its fruit. Another resource we are looking to plant are sweet potatoes to help supplement the food the pigs eat. Eventually we want the pig farm to be completely supported by the land and not outside food sources. This is also something that needs to be taught to the Africans because they expect the white man to pay for everything, including food.
Matoke Field
I write all of these because I do get request for help, to send money to help someone start a piggery. I understand its difficult and I had to start a business with very little, but once you start something continue to grow it and expand and eventually you will have a successful and unstoppable business.
