By Charles Onyango-Obbo

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Read Part I: In once-dreaded north Uganda, beauty grows from horrors of long war

On the outskirts of Gulu, Tonny Kidega, a veterinary doctor, is restless and, by all accounts, an innovative dairy farmer. He too is a child of the northern war, and spent two years hiding with his family in the bushes near the border with South Sudan. Eventually, as with ceramic artist and sculptor David Lukani Odwar, they were led out of the bush, and eventual safety and school, by their mother.

Read about David Lukani Odwar, whose journey began with his flight from Gulu

After university, Kidega took a well-paying job on a donor-funded project, and helped create a chimpanzee sanctuary. While he was being celebrated as a star, he packed his bags and fortune and went back to a Gulu that was still reeling from war.

He was going to start a dairy farm, with Holstein Friesian cattle. “Everyone thought I was a little crazy for walking away from a cushy job, but when they learnt about my dairy farm plans, they all thought I had truly lost my mind,” he says.

Barren land

Outside Gulu, he bought what at that time looked like barren land from a local clan.

“One of the elders, feeling guilty, came to see me privately and said, ‘son, nothing will can grow on that land. It is dead. And you can’t raise cattle there,’” Kidega remembers.

He soldiered on. His plan was to regenerate the land with organic manure, and throw a lot of science at it. When he was ready to buy cows, he went to western Uganda, the country’s cattle heartland. He wanted to buy just 20 animals to start with. Eventually he found a rancher who was willing to sell cows.

But even he thought Kidega was out of his mind. The view of northern Uganda then was of a backwater blighted by war, a land from which nothing fruitful could be produced.

“The guy said, okay, I won’t sell you 20, only 13. And I will come at the end the year to see how the cows are doing. If they are doing badly I will return your money and take back my animals,” Kidega says. They agreed, and he loaded his cattle, and off to Gulu he went.

Tonny Kidega, a dairy farmer, poses next to his equipment and hay in the shed. PHOTO | TOM AGABA ONYANGO

Wrote him off

Like the men who mocked the bead women at Through Art Keep Smiling (TAKS) Centre, the villagers laughed at Kidega. When he built a modern fancy shed for the cows, word went around that he was building a school, or a home for children orphaned by war. When it turned out it was for cattle, they wrote him off. His staff watched in bemusement when he grew feed for the animals, but didn’t think he was serious. When he brought the cattle, put them in the shed, and asked them to cut the grass and feed them, his supervisor quit.

He fought on, until his cows started producing milk.

“I wasn’t prepared for what was to come. Here I was in a place where they would compose poetry for a cow that gave 10 litres of a milk a day, and I had cows that were producing 38 litres a day. It was a cultural shock,” Kidega says.

He had so much milk he decided to give it away for several weeks.

“The milk was free, but no one near here, or even far, would accept it. They thought it was a dangerous chemical, produced in a plot with the government in Kampala to kill them,” he laughs.

He gave the milk to his workers to take and give away. Because they had the trust of the local communities, people slowly started accepting it.

“It took at least three weeks for us to make progress,” he said.

Ran into headwinds

After initial success, Kidega went to make yoghurt and ice cream. He was the first person in the region in recent times to make yoghurt and ice cream from milk produced on his or her farm.

He again ran into headwinds.

“It was both funny and tragic,” he says. “Everywhere my staff went, the people would randomly pick and buy ice cream or yoghurt, and give it to them to eat first. They would wait for up to 30 minutes to see if they’d die.”

“We became successful most of northern Uganda and did good business as far as South Sudan with our ice cream and yoghurt,” he says, “but we really ate a lot it to make the sale.”

“Did the gentleman who sold you the cows come as he promised?” I asked.

“Oh yes, he came. He asked if I wanted to buy more cows,” Kidega laughs.

A tight operation

Kidega runs a tight operation. He has refined his herd and bred them to such a high level. He harvests the cow dung, pumps it into tanks, and into the feed fields. He also extracts biogas that he pipes to his home for energy. It is very sunny and hot, but his feed fields are bright green. He has stacked up a lot of hay. There is a Land Rover nearby.

Tonny Kidega, a dairy farmer, poses next to Land Rover. PHOTO | TOM AGABA ONYANGO

“It isn’t a farm if there is no Land Rover on it,” he jokes. A bushel of hay is stacked in the shade, next to a tractor, and farm equipment.

“No one has laughed at me for a long time,” he says. “The other day a bishop came here all the way from Arua (a city in northwest Uganda) to buy hay. He is a man of God, so I sold him some. I couldn’t fill his complete order.”

Kidega says in a few years, the hills one sees in front of his farm will also be covered with hay. “The people around will grow most of it.”

He says business is good. “I can’t meet the orders,” he says. He no longer retails yoghurt or ice cream. He sells them wholesale.

We are sitting in the lawn outside the office building next to his home.

The sun sets, the temperatures drop, and he brings out the ice cream. As we lick away, he says pensively: “My biggest prayer is that we shall never have war again. Too many things break. I understand why people were suspicious of ice cream and cows that produce 40 litres of milk,” he says. “That is how you survive in war. You don’t stick your head out. You have to be wary of strangers and strange things.”

Odwar would agree. He heard the bead-weaving women sing at TAKS.