Dry Season, Wet Season, and Coffee

Please excuse me for all the landscape pictures this post! I wanted to fill you in on some of the season's we experience here in Uganda. Uganda has a defined dry season from December-March and a defined rainy season from April-June. From July-November the weather can be either rainy or dry.

This is a picture of our school compound at the end of dry season.

Same shot after a couple of rains

A couple of week back, I was doing a "When Helping Hurts" training in a village that is on the slopes of Mt. Elgon. The elevation of this village is probably around 4500-5000 ft above sea level. The climate and soil is very conducive for bananas and coffee. The rest of the pictures were taken during the end of the dry season.

In this area, there are rolling hills, as well as steep cliffs.

When I arrived in the village for the training, the coffee was in full bloom. In fact, as I was traveling up the mountain, I could smell the coffee flowers even before I saw the coffee trees. Coffee has a very pleasant and unique smell. Because there were so many coffee trees in the village, every where I went smell like coffee flowers, even inside the church.

The trees had a lot of flowers on them!

The flowers are a pure white color.

This village has such a wonderful feel; you walk through coffee and banana orchards that surround the homes and farms. Almost every home has at least one milk cow which they harvest 1-2 gallons of milk per day. The cows mostly eat banana stems.

"The Homestead"

The second day I was there, some type of moth showed up by the thousands. I was very intrigued by the way these moths were drinking the nectar. Every time there was a break in the training, I was outside getting pictures or videos of the moths drinking the nectar.

A moth drinking nectar.