First Annual Report for Jambo! Cafe

The idea for Jambo café started in October 2011 when Bethan and Gareth Shrubsole thought that a café in town would be a good outreach and refuge for foreigners who want to relax and meet other foreigners in the area.  They pitched the idea to a small group of women in Kasese Central Baptist Church as a business plan and six women came forward to start saving.  It was agreed that they should save 500/- (12p) per day for a year and then apply for a loan of 4 million shillings (£1000) as it was predicted, through research, that this was how much it would cost to set up the business.

As the women were saving, Bethan Shrubsole taught them how to bake cakes every Friday afternoon in her home.  The money for the ingredients was taken from BMS World Mission Uganda team’s ministry fund.  Towards the end of the year of saving the women did research about the business and wrote an extensive business plan including expected set-up and running costs, profit/loss predictions and market research in town.  At this time two women had started to fall behind in their saving.  They decided that they could not afford to stay in the co-operative.  Bethan encouraged them to continue saving and helped them find revenue as these two women were particularly in need of a form of business since their families had no other form of income.

Customers enjoying Jambo's birthday party 4th March '14

 

The women submitted their business plan to a Savings and Credit Co-operative (SACCO) who said that they had been approved for a 4 million shilling loan to be paid back over one year.  Although the women were nervous of making repayments, it was decided that they could manage, according to the predicted sales and profit.  However, after several weeks the SACCO had still not come up with the money and it looked unlikely that they could as there were rumours that there was no money in their business to lend.  By this time the women had rented a building (using money borrowed from Bethan and Gareth that would be paid back by the forthcoming loan) in town ready to fill with the oven, sofa and cupboards etc that they would buy with the loan.  When it was obvious that the loan was not coming, they decided that they should not delay in opening since they were wasting rent on the property.  Bethan and Gareth put a plea out to some churches in the UK and they were sent some generous donations towards opening the café.  The donations were both monetary and gifts including cake tins, icing bags, cake decorations and the like.  The women paid back the loan to Bethan and Gareth and contributed things from their own homes such as a coffee table, blender, mixing bowls etc.  The café opened on March 4^th 2013, 18 months after the idea had been put to them!  It started slowly, using an electric hob lent to them from the BMS Uganda volunteer team’s box of kitchen equipment and they used Bethan’s oven to bake cakes, which were then taken down to the café each day as needed.

The money sent to Jambo! café from UK churches and individuals amounted to just over 4 million shillings (£1000).  The women bought a cooker and gas canister, a display cabinet and bookshelves.  They later added a fridge, freezer, cupboard and blender, toastie machine and toaster and electric kettle with money they had saved from business profit.  Bethan helped the women from time to time offering advice, teaching new recipes and helping with icing special occasion cakes for customers.  Books were donated by foreigners who were leaving town, and crafts were made by the Jambo women to sell in the café for extra income for the individuals, and the business takes a cut of the sales.  It was decided right from the start that 10% of profits would be tithed to Kasese Central Baptist Church, then the remaining 90% would be shared half for saving in the business account and half for sharing as wages according to how much each woman had worked that week.

Jambo! cafe's "customer of the month", Alex #2, cuts the birthday cake.

 

No one took home any money in the first two months of March and April but by May wages were being shared out and money was being saved.  The money that is saved is also used for electricity and water bills and any improvements to the café such as another plug socket for the new computer station and a new ceiling fan.  In July some volunteers from St Andrew’s Street Baptist Church came with a laptop donated from Tools With A Mission (TWAM) and the women bought a dongle so they could offer internet services.  The internet has mixed use and has not been as popular as was hoped because most of the customers at Jambo have their own dongle to use portably with their laptops.  However, Jambo! may find a way of getting wifi so that customers can use their laptops in the café, since there is only one other place in town with wifi.

From July – December the women were taking wages home according to how many days each woman worked.  It was becoming clear that some women were working more than others as some had small children that they could not bring with them to work nor did they have someone to care for them at home.  Another woman was a teacher who could therefore only work Saturdays but often needed to do housework on Saturdays so could not come to work.  Another was on maternity leave so the burden fell on just three of the women.  There were some disagreements amongst the women about how the business should be run.  Some people had higher standards than others and were trying to keep these standards high and others were seen to be slacking in their work for example not serving customers well or not cooking in the uniform way that had been decided amongst themselves so that customers get the same thing whether it is cooked by one woman or another.  There were also some complaints by customers and government officials that they couldn’t recognise some of the women who worked there because they worked so infrequently and were not keeping up with new recipes that Bethan was implementing to help add flavour and diversity to the menu.

In December it was clear that three of the women wanted to leave the café so a meeting was held in January where Bethan mediated.  We tried to find a way of fixing relationships and bringing everyone back so that each woman worked equal hours.  However, one was still a teacher and not able to work the two days that were required to work equally; one had a disagreement with another woman at Jambo that she could not resolve and another wanted to start her own business in town away from Jambo.  It was agreed that they would receive their initial savings back over a set period of time so that they would be bought out of the business.  Therefore there were now three women remaining in the co-operative working at the café.  One of the women was pregnant and went on maternity leave in December, gave birth in January and is yet to come back to work full-time although she helps out when there is too much work or the other two women need to be elsewhere.  The two women have been working six and a half days a week for almost five months now and are getting tired so waiting for the third to come back from maternity leave!  However, despite being tired, they are so happy to be running a successful business and they enjoy their work, which is obvious when you see them interacting with customers and baking new things such as bagels and croissants.  Since January many weeks have had more than 100,000 shillings to be shared in wages, and profits have been high.  There are so many customers from all over the world, even Ugandans, and many are so fond of spending time at Jambo that they even begin to call it home!  Some come to meet other ex-pats, some come for the food and some come because it is the most comfortable place in town to sit (it has a sofa) and pass the time.

American pancakes served on "pancake day" for Jambo's birthday celebration

 

One of the main aims of Jambo! cafe was to share God's love with customers.  Although the first six months or so was spent concentrating on setting up the business side of things, once the business was stable the women started running an Alpha Course, which was when the café started opening on Sunday afternoons in order to accommodate it.  It has been run by Kasese Central Baptist Church’s pastor, and Jambo woman Alice’s husband, Alphonse.  Attendance has been low but discussions have been pertinent and open with those who have attended.  One problem with attendance is that people are always leaving Kasese or coming for a short time only.  There have been at least five people (excluding BMS staff) who have attended Alpha at least once and there are two who have attended for most of the course.  The Jambo women are keen to keep the course running and try to find more ways of reaching out to the ex-pat and Ugandan community with evangelism.

One form of evangelism that they wanted to do was to borrow a projector and show the Nativity DVD produced by the BBC two or three years ago.  They would also like to show the Passion at Easter time and other Christian DVDs.  If they managed to get a projector they would also show mainstream movies (that were appropriate for Christians to be watching) in the café and have ‘movie nights’ for customers on a regular basis to show love and care for the customers since many are home-sick or lonely and love to use Jambo as a place where they feel they belong and can have a bit of ‘home’ together with other foreigners.  The women managed to borrow a projector only once from a mission hospital 40 km away, which didn’t work in the end and was not at all convenient to borrow or return.  A recent donation from Livingstone’s Café, Cambridge, will enable the women to buy a projector in the UK and bring it out with a visitor in May so that they can achieve their aim of showing movies both mainstream and Christian in the future.

These Ugandan-Americans come regularly for their breakfast at Jambo!

 

The café has made more than 5 million shillings (£1,250) in profit over the year.  Although this is lower than was predicted in the business plan, it is considered a success because first it is a profit and not a loss and second that they have made more money than the initial investment of donations.  There has also been more than half a million shillings (£125) given to the church in tithes, with an additional donation of 50,000/- (£12) towards the baptisms that took place in December.  2.3 million shillings (£575) have been saved or reinvested in the business and 2.7 million shillings (£675) have been taken home in wages.

Jambo ladies would like to thank everyone who helped them to set up the business whether by sending money, sending resources or sending good wishes and prayers.  Alice, Eliza and Moreen are now earning wages to support their families and have a business that they feel proud of.  They are giving their customers (most of whom are foreigners) a place to feel welcome and at home and are reaching out through evangelism to share God’s love for them.  They appreciate all the help they have been given and are astonished that so many people care for them and their business.  Bethan has also taught them how to use the internet to look up new recipes (Alice recently used the BBC good food website to look up a new pancake recipe!) and to view the Trip Adviser website that Jambo has a page on to read the reviews and see how they can improve.

At the recent one year anniversary party we had at Jambo a survey was handed round in which the twelve customers present wrote down what they loved about Jambo and what could be improved.  They loved the western food and the friendly atmosphere the most and offered some ideas for new recipes that could be added to the menu although the most desired thing was bacon that cannot be found anywhere in Kasese!

Jambo! is a beacon, providing a caring home for lonely ex-pats and sharing God's love to those who come.

 

Updates from Kasese.

We’ve had a busy few weeks since Jan 7^th when we returned to Kasese, to find it very hot, dry and dusty.  You may remember that we were excited that the Mayor of Kasese Municipality officiated at the graduation ceremony for the third and final course of BMS funded carpentry and tailoring trainees in Acholi Quarter.  The Mayor had publicly promised to help us apply for government funding to re-open the skills training project in 2014, so Alfonse and I went to see him on the first Thursday back.  The Mayor was very helpful and explained that the President’s 265Bn Shilling Youth Livelihood Programme which was announced with much fanfare last year is in fact a system of loans rather than grants and therefore of no help to us.  However, he encouraged us to apply to the Rwenzori-Luwero Triangle Development Fund, a less publicised branch of the Office of the Prime Minister, which funds projects for youth in these two regions of Uganda which were beset by conflict in the late 1990s. The only catch was that the application deadline for this financial year was the following Monday morning!  Inevitably that lead to a busy weekend, but with a good team effort we got everything in on time, including all the stamped and signed letters from various other local officials which are integral to Ugandan governance.   If this grant is awarded then we would get 60% funding in Jul/Aug which, combined with student contributions would enable us to re-open the skills training centre in Aug/Sep and run another year of carpentry and tailoring courses.

In the meantime the Daycare re-opened this month, now funded by a combination of increased parental fees (from 10p per day to 20p per day), a couple of donations from our Home Church’s Sunday-school, and money that had been saved in the bank over the last two years from parental fees, selling furniture and clothes made by our trainees etc.  Provided that at least sixteen children turn up, and pay, every day, then we’ll have enough money to keep Daycare open throughout 2014.

The next challenge awaiting my return was that the women at Kiburara Bible College had decided that they no longer wanted to continue with the project to make charcoal briquettes from agricultural waste.  There’s no denying that the process is physically hard work and involves heat, smoke and getting dirty hands, but this was a big disappointment to us, as what happens at the bible college often determines what happens in Baptist Churches across the district.  We visited the college with Alfonse and Isaiah’s Mum, who is now the expert in both making briquettes and cooking with them, from her tireless efforts in Acholi Quarter.  We were able to demonstrate to the women there how to improve their process to make it less labour intensive and helped them make some good briquettes, but they remained unconvinced.  If truth be told, the bible college is well supported from the US and so doesn’t suffer the same issues of fuel poverty as some of the mountain villages, and some of the wives of senior Pastors there are perhaps not the most inclined to get their hands dirty.  They told us of two churches which are still very keen and implied that the remaining churches who had applied for the project are sitting on the fence waiting to see if it succeeds or fails elsewhere before they commit themselves any further. 

Therefore we felt some pressure as we drove up to Kalehe BC a week later with a car full of charcoal equipment.  As part of the final year plan to delegate more responsibility, we left Isaiah and Natalie (our BMS Development intern) at Kalehe to conduct charcoal training while Alfonse and I drove on up to Muhindi BC, a few kilometres higher up the same steep and rocky road to monitor their solar project and update their phone –charging system to the new USB Multi-charging hubs now sold in Kasese by “bboxx”, a UK based company.  This visit was encouraging.  Muhindi is inaccessible during rainy season so we’d not been there since the installation in August.  It’s a small church in a small and isolated community but since we set up the solar project their church membership has doubled as people who come to use the lights for homework or to charge their phones are drawn to hear the Gospel and join the church.

On safely returning back down to Kalehe it was wonderful to see a grinning Isaiah and four hardworking women from Kalehe BC churning out their first charcoal briquettes.  Isaiah has always been a dedicated hard worker but he has also become a confident and thorough trainer.  Whilst in Kalehe we also continued with our on-going trial of “Gravity Light”, an ingenious British invention for a low-cost, no maintenance lighting product, which we’re trialling on behalf of Deciwatt (www.deciwatt.org). I’ll be able to write more about it once the trials are completed. 

Two days later we were off into the mountains again (dry season is the time to visit remote places on poor roads) to install a solar project at Kyabayenze Baptist Church, and to continue Gravity Light trials at two neighbouring villages.   We went with Eliza (who works at Jambo! café) and comes from Kyabayenze so we stayed at her father’s place and met some of her twelve brothers and sisters.  It was interesting to see such a town girl back in her mountain village with her family and to hear her perspective on the pros and cons of living somewhere which is so beautiful, but where life for a woman is a steady grind of collecting water and firewood and tending children, all of which have to be carried over a dangerously swaying and increasingly bent wooden bridge.  We’ve now completed seven solar projects and have just one remaining, which Amisi and Isaiah will do next month.

A week later we had to return to Kalehe for the Gravity Light trials and we visited the women we’d taught to make charcoal.  They were cooking with their own home-made charcoal briquettes, a delicious meal of rice and chicken stew, which we were very happy to eat (not all project monitoring involves pouring over dull record books..!)    When we thanked one of the women she said “If I had cooked that meal on firewood I’d be crying from all the smoke, but these briquettes are smokeless”.  To eat such delicious food that had been cooked on a free fuel by a happy and tear-free cook, was a great endorsement for this project after the discouragement from the Bible college.  We are now re-motivated to keep on trying this project at other churches.

I’ve had to work a few weekends recently, so when I’m not working at a weekend we like to do something special as a family.  Three weeks ago our new thermometer was recording daytime temperatures of 35 or 36c every day with a peak at 37c.  I love the sun, but this is really quite hot, so we escaped on a Saturday by driving up to Ruboni community camp, which is only about 20km from Kasese but is 700m higher, just outside the gate for Rwenzori Mountains National Park.  Despite the name we were unable to pitch our tent there so stayed in a cheap room instead and enjoyed the views of the mountains and playing with the boys by the Mubuku river.  Paddling their feet and throwing stones in a river can keep our boys amused for hours.  Sadly we didn’t have hours as the rain clouds loomed overhead and we legged it back to the camp just in time to avoid a phenomenal hailstorm with balls of ice bouncing through the windows and over the floor.  Snuggled up in cosy jumpers and coats shouting over the drumming of hail on the roof was a bizarre sensation when hours before we’d been sweltering in our house in bone-dry Kasese!  Even more bizarrely the following day a local man showed us the hot spring beside the river where a thin wall of pebbles separate the cool and fast flowing Mubuku river from a still pool of almost boiling hot water!

Last week we swapped the mountains and rivers of Kasese District for the hot dusty plains and iron-red soil of Acholi-land, in northern Uganda, where Bethan first came during the civil war back in 2004 and again in 2008.  I was there with BMS colleague Alex Vickers, who has done excellent work with farmers who have recently returned to their lands in post-war Gulu, to continue the programme of training and development discussions with the three BMS Development interns currently in Uganda (1 in Kasese, 2 in Gulu). These discussion sessions are always balanced with relevant project visits and it was wonderful to see farmers now prospering as a result of BMS’ projects in Gulu.  With a bit of juggling of childcare between us and some late evenings, Bethan also managed to do some good work following up the Music Therapy CBO “Music for Peaceful Minds” (MPM), which she set up in 2008 and which has recently appointed a new music counsellor, who needed some training.  For more information about this work you can see MPM’s blog http://musicforpeacefulminds.blogspot.com   The Gulu-Kampala road however, seems to have got even worse in the 2 years since we last drove it, so we were very thankful when we arrived safely back in Kasese after 2 consecutive days in the car.

 

Prayer Requests:

·         That we will get the government funding we’ve applied for to re-open the skills centre in 2014, and enough fee-paying children to keep daycare running.

·         For the continued progress of the charcoal making project.

·         For our intern Natalie Fabian who has temporarily returned to the UK for some tough interviews and selection tests to study midwifery next year.

·         Give thanks for the real progress so many people are experiencing in so many ways in northern Uganda since the war ended in 2006.

·         For all those affected, in whatever way, by the severe anti-homosexuality bill signed by the Ugandan President this week and the ensuing media frenzy, “witch-hunts” and bitter arguments it’s engendered, both within Uganda and world-wide.  Whatever one’s opinion on these matters, they are issues of morality, not criminality, and this bill has unleashed hatred and malice on both sides.

 

Noeline's blog

For followers of Noeline please see her new blog: http://CreationsbyNoeline.blogspot.com and support her through that.  Thanks!

Noeline's New Email

Just to inform you that Noeline now has an email account so you can contact her directly if you need to buy any creations from her in the future.
Noeline_Uganda@yahoo.com
She is still able to make things and send them home via one of our many visitors/friends throughout the year so please get in touch if you need anything unique and African for your friends or family gifts.

Holiday in Numbers - By Bethan

Happy new year to everyone reading our 2014 blog!

We have just returned from a fabulous month-long holiday in the UK.  Gareth likes putting everything into numbers and comparing it to previous numbers ;) so here is a summary of the month:

We had 3 trips to Van Hages in Ware (a garden centre with animals and ride-on train); we took the boys to soft play (with or without their cousins) 5 times; we visited 11 different peoples’ houses and met about 65 friends and relatives!  We reunited 7 Shrubsole cousins and 4 Lee cousins, drove 1,200 miles including a complete lap of the M25 and filled up our very thirsty hire-car from ICTHUS 5 times!  Sam watched The Snowman and The Gruffalo’s Child about 7 times and told me he was scared of Santa Claus almost every day in the week before and the week after Christmas, especially at his Grandad’s house that has a chimney!  We smuggled 6 blocks of cheese and 10 packets of chocolate to take back in our 3 suitcases and spent 17 hours on 2 flights with 2 small boys, 1 of whom sat or slept the entire time while the other one ate, slept, screamed and flirted with other female passengers!  I carried 1 bag full of 16 of Noeline’s sleeping bags and 14 of her purses that she had sold. Gareth and I had SIX dates away from our boys thanks to the 4 sets of people who babysat for us!  (For the previous 14 months in Kasese we had been on 3 dates due to only having 1 babysitter!) We must have eaten 3,000 calories each day meaning that Gareth put on 7 much-needed pounds and we gorged on gourmet crisps and posh cheeses and Sam enjoyed ham sandwiches that we can’t get in Uganda.  Finally, if Sam was summarising he’d say that we went on 1 London bus, 2 DLRs, 4 underground trains and several over-ground trains, 2 aeroplanes and rode in 3 holiday cars!  Jonah would say that he hugged and tried to kiss about 28 young women, at least 20 of whom were complete strangers!

So what lies ahead for 2014?  Gareth is trying to keep his 7 pounds for when he is sick (inevitable for him!) and we have made long lists of jobs that need to be done.  We are continuing with projects begun in the previous years but this year we are trying to hand them over as much as possible to Ugandans.  Our aim is that as the year goes by we will do ourselves out of a job and be able to leave Kasese on December 31^st knowing that what we have started here will continue with people who are confident and well-trained to run the different projects.