About fish heads and warm smiles
Today we went on our first field trip together with the area manager of WorldVision a large international NGO.
One of the key things that strikes me every time is how genuinely grateful these non-profit organisations are for the interest we show in what they are doing…The general makeup of these people is one of extraordinary drive and knowledge of the emerging market. It is absolutely eye-opening and humbling at the same time to have been given a chance to work alongside these selfless individuals.
We met six farms and in the fourth we had lunch; ‘a feast’ of different dahls, potatoes and oh, before I forget: ‘Fried fish heads’…It was really great to meet the people we have been ‘talking about’ in the last two weeks. They were incredible friendly and hospitable and clearly would not let us leave without having tried every dish they had prepared. A true ‘tasting adventure’ to say the least!
Judging from the six different farming families we have met with today, economic awareness in the rural farming community is a real issue. This, in my mind, most probably creates the biggest hurdle to bring the various interventions in the field to a successful outcome. WorldVision does a lot in this area with regards to feed management and cattle management training. We also saw plenty of examples of the positive impact an implementation of improvements can have. This was really great to see as this proves that with the right enablement and targeted funding, our objective of lifting the monthly income of the dairy farmer with LKR 8000 can be achieved.
From Monday we will be assessing a brand new value chain to verify our new proposed assessment methodology. Now we have become ‘true experts’ in silage production, lactation cycles and general needs of a milk cow, I am curious to find out what weird and wonderful direction we will be pulled into next!
On the 5 hour bumpy drive back to Colombo, sleeping is out of the question. (Your head would in fact roll off …)
While our driver is swerving past the ‘ten thousandth’ tuk tuk and just about prevents a street dog from meeting his maker, I have a lot of time to reflect on what I saw today and gratefulness is pulsing through my veins for the life I have been given.
