January 24, 2022 – After an incredibly successful start, Croatian celebrity chef Mario Mandaric aims to expand his Ugandan well project to 100 wells per year.

It all started at a car rental counter in Zagreb.

A boy meets a girl.

Within days, he had convinced her to spend the winter with him in Africa. She suspected he was probably trafficking people under his guise of digging wells in remote villages in Uganda, she had never been to Africa, and she was afraid of grasshoppers, as we previously documented on TCN, but she decided to join him. Even though it was grasshopper season.

Together they would work with Uganda water aid donate and dig a well in a remote village in rural Uganda. In an attempt to make a bigger impact, celebrity chef Mario Mandaric hosted a series of charity dinners with Zagreb’s only Michelin-starred chef, Bruno Vokal de Noel, with one dinner alone raising enough to a new well. Check out one of the meals from my time in Croatia in Michelin Starry Nights in Dubrava as Vokal, Mandaric Cook for Uganda. With Matea Kristic the charming hostess and fundraiser, the couple soon had enough for three wells.

And so they left…

To be honest, I feared for Matea. As beautiful as she was, she seemed a little frail to endure the challenges of rural Africa, especially with that fear of grasshoppers.

How wrong I was!

Not only did she overcome her fear of grasshoppers by eating a large portion of them, but she more than got her hands dirty and she certainly taught the locals how to dance.

The Imotski Shuffle is going viral in Ugandan villages.

And a small investment can have a huge impact on the lives of villagers, who previously had to walk for miles, often over swampy terrain that cost many of them their lives, just for the most basic necessity of life – drinking water.

As Mario explained to TCN:

“Building a well has the power to not only save lives, but to transform them! Women and children in Africa walk for hours every day to fetch water, often from unsafe and unsanitary sources, and have to carry heavy loads of water just to meet their basic needs.
When you build a well in Uganda, you free those women and those children can go to school, crops can be watered, and women can learn skills or just take time to enjoy life with their families!”

“Most of the children in the villages have fathers who died trying to get water from the marshes. This is a high impact, low cost initiative, with each well having a direct impact on about 300 people We have been overwhelmed not only by the hospitality here but also by the level of support for the project. current course.

“Now the plan is to build 100 a year and crushing the prices, so more people can afford to donate the well now. wells priced at 1800 euros each These are now the cheapest wells in Africa and are of the same quality as when they cost 5000 euros.

“When you donate a well, you get all the information about the village where the well will be, photos of it being built, photos of its use, and stories of the people who directly benefit from it. Plus the 4 year warranty.”

After a few weeks of experiencing Africa in the raw, a well-deserved break for the couple as they headed to Zanzibar to stay with Croatian tourism legend Toni Raguz, whose luxury 5 Star Collection Baraza Resort and Spa Zanzibar was named one of the top 20 beachfront hotels in the world, as well as one of the best in Africa. And Mario brought some luxury cooking to the table, as part of raising awareness for the project.

17 wells financed, 83 to be done. Are you interested in donating to this great project? If so, you can contact Mario by WhatsApp at +255 772 323 468, via Facebook, Where through its website. And if you donate, consider Croatian cultural promotion – the Imotski Shuffle could become a global thing.

And when the couple return to Zagreb, they’ll be diving into a pretty cool new gastronomic project – a teaser in Local Knowledge with a Foreign Eye: When Gourmet Visions Collide.