Our visit to Fairtrade producers in Africa

Ian and Shelagh Baird-Smith are Shared Interest ambassadors and the views expressed herein are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Shared Interest Society.

We’re getting really excited as our trip to Kenya and Uganda is only two weeks away. For the past two years we have visited Rukungiri in southwest Uganda with Mission Direct and this year we’re planing to go independently. At the Shared Interest AGM in York in March we met Rachel Ngondo who runs the Nairobi office and we thought “Kenya’s next door to Uganda, why don’t we call in on the way?”

So, we booked flights to Nairobi and Rachel and her assistant Jane Ngora have helped us to find a hotel for three nights which suits both our budget (limited) and their concerns for our safety.

They have planned for us to visit Trinity Jewelry and Undugu Society in Nairobi, who have both been with Shared Interest for a number of years. Also in Nairobi is the Bega Kwa Bega handicrafts group who have just joined. We are hoping to be able to visit all three in one day. It will be interesting to hear stories from both long-standing and new members of the clearing house.

From Nairobi we will either fly or take the bus to Eldoret in the west to visit Mace foods, a chilli producer with growers scattered all over western Kenya.

After that we will go on into Uganda by bus, where we are planning to meet up with some of the friends we have made on our previous visits, and possibly call in on some more Shared Interest partners as we go. Rachel has given us information about several that are more or less on our route, but as we will be using local transport and travelling by “Africa time” we are not sure how things will work out.

This is all a big adventure for us, and a bit of a regression too as we will be backpacking for much of the time – something neither of us has really done before! We will be taking loads of photos and video and hope to be able to post a travel diary as we go, African internet permitting.