Maze Mill for the Women

One of the very first things I did as an emergency aid worker in Uganda, that was NOT emergency or aid, but rather community development.   I wanted to get a maze mill for Midigo. It took some work, I convinced my superiors that it was actually part of a plan to build an air base closer to Sudan.

However, it ended up, some of my proudest momements are surrounding this maze mill and that group of women who took care of me while I had malaria. If I had not gotten malaria that night, and they had not taken care of me that night, I would not have taken the time to learn something about the local women...

I do remember the day we delievered the mill very well. We had driven all day from Kampalla to Midigo. About 14 hours, mostly over the worst roads you can imagine. The roads were so bad that the door on one of our SUV was bent on it's frame by the time we arrived.

Driving into Midigo is such a happy time for me. It always starts about 5 miles outside town. The children know me by now. They are so excited to see us. They all hear our trucks and run our of their houses, with huge smiles on their faces, waving and yelling! This progression continues all the way to town. Where, by now everyone has gathered to see what the fuss is about.

We made sure the "womens group" as they call themselve, and each town has one, was brought to the front. We opened the door to the SUV and "Yi EEEEEEE!!!!" The women yelled this for a good 15 minutes or so as we unloaded it. Needless to say they were happy.

The maze mill was really just a good sized deisel engine, which had a series of PTO connections. The one we purchased had a grinding mill for one PTO and a small generator on another. We gave them two 5 gallon containers of deisel and hired a mechanic to set it up for them. However, there would be no additional support from us. We really wanted these people to take ownership of it.

Typically, these sort of things would not work out. Usually they would run for awhile, but no money would be saved and the first time it broke down, that would be the end of it. But I really want to give them the practice of putting this together. Perhaps the next time they would be able to take it further.