2006-01-21T07:53:00.000-08:00

Small-scale gardens in Kenya

On December 31, 2005, 4 students from the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point College of Natural Resources left behind the snow and ice of Wisconsin to visit a land of eternal summer. Those students were Ben Wojahn, Chris DeChantal, Zack Gaugush and myself, and the far away land was Kenya, adjacent to the Indian Ocean and straddling the equator. We were sent by the Global Environmental Management Education Center (GEM) as Student Ambassadors to work on a project shared with Marquette University, with the goal of increasing the nutrition of people affected by HIV/AIDS by promoting the construction of small garden systems (check out this article to learn more about the project).

If I painted a picture of tropical fruits, lively music, white-sanded beaches and exotic animals, I would only be telling half the story. The other picture is not so pretty. The HIV epidemic has hit sub-Saharan Africa hard. Nearly one-third of Kenya's population is affected, leaving children orphaned and making work difficult. To make matters worse, Kenya is in the middle of a terrible drought. Crops are failing, leading to famine, and clean water is scarce. City slums are so crowded that families are practically living on top of each other in homes built of scraps amidst garbage, human waste and other contaminants. Some aids victims are lucky enough to obtain anti-retroviral treatment, but without proper nutrition, the medicines won't work. The goal of the HIV/AIDS small garden project is to teach people the skill of producing their own nutritous food to aid in the treatment of AIDS.

For those of you that are not familiar with square-meter gardens (also known as square-yard and square-foot gardens), this is a method of gardening that requires minimal space, water and labor. The garden is one square meter in size, which is divided into 9 square-foot squares. First, you need a frame, which can be wood, brick, stone, or even just soil. The frame is filled with pure, finished compost, and the square feet are marked off using string or sticks. A different type of crop is then planted into each square. The number of plants depends on the size of the veggie, for example, in a one square-foot space, you can plant one tomato, 4 spinach, 9 onions, or 16 carrots. By planting a different crop in each square and avoiding planting 2 crops of the same family next to each other, the diversity helps to reduce the amount of pests attracted to the garden, and the proximity of the plants minimizes weed growth and water loss. When a crop is harvested, a little compost can be added, and a new crop planted in the space, thus extending the garden’s productivity. This method of gardening is ideal for the HIV/AIDS patient in Kenya because it requires little work to prepare, and little land and water are needed. Compost can be made for free, most of the materials can be prepared from scraps, few seeds are needed, and by saving and sharing seeds one can eliminate purchasing them altogether.

Nairobi

Our first task was to meet Nicholas Sayano, the GEM HIV/AIDS in-Country Coordinator. Nicholas is a Kenya national who formerly worked for the Kenya Institute of Organic Farming (KIOF), and now works full-time for the project. His office is a short walk from the Rusam Villa Guest House (our home away from home), and is complete with a demonstration garden and nursery. After learning more about the project, discovering the common vegetables consumed in Kenya (which include what we might call weeds, such as amaranth, spider weed and black nightshade) and identifying some of their pests and diseases, we were ready to get to work.

Our first Kenyan supper was celebrated at the Carnivore. The name says it all: all the grilled meat you can eat, with everything from beef, goat, lamb and chicken to unusual meats like camel, crocodile and ostrich meatballs. Waiters walk around slicing meat onto your plate until you “surrender” by putting down your white flag. Our subsequent meals were not quite as exotic, but equally scrumptious. Local dishes include kitheri (a psole-like stew of hominy, beans and meat such as goat), chipati (a flat, tortilla-like fry bread), ugali (polenta made of white corn), meat stews and fish, most of which are ususlly eaten with one's hands. I was impressed by the intense flavor of the foods, especially the curry-inspired dishes.

The Kenyan countryside outside of Nairobe was dotted with small shanties built of scrap metal and tiny fields supporting spindly corn. Ruai is suburb of Nairobi located about 30 minutes outside of the city. The village’s Catholic Church houses a clinic that serves HIV/AIDS patients. There, we trained a group of enthusiastic nurses and women from the community. Despite our lack of understanding the Kiswahili language, we found we were able to communicate efficiently with the women’s broken English and Nicholas’ help. The women were a pleasure to work with, and we promised to find time in our
schedule to return and help install a compost pile and plant some
seedlings into the garden’s new addition.

The next day we set off for the Kenya Institute of Organic Farming (KIOF), where future farmers from around the country come to learn about various aspects of organic agriculture, natural resource management and rural development. We met 4 students: Geoffrey, Joyce, Jack and Purity, who spent the first day showing us around KIOF and pointing out the various examples of strategies for conserving water, managing soil, and raising various animals. Seems like their biggest agricultural problem is finding a way to keep the wild zebras from eating all the corn. We spent the next two evenings eating our suppers huddled around the kitchen table by the light of a lantern, and preparing for bed with a single candle. The electric wires had been stolen during the holiday break, and wouldn’t be replaced for a week.

The following morning after a typical breakfast of bread and butter sandwiches and tea, we installed a square-meter garden at KIOF with the students. Three of the students we were working with will be following up on the GEM project by living and working for several months in the communities where we trained installed square meter gardens. In the afternoon we visited the Sustainable Agriculture and Community Development Program (SACDEP), the former place of employment of our friend and colleague (and new mother) Doris Onesmus. We arrived there in one piece thanks to the matatu driver, who was the first and most responsible we would meet. Matatus are vans that serve as small busses, traveling along a pre-determined route at rapid speeds with music
blaring and passengers packed like sardines or hanging onto the side of the van with the door wide open. Supposedly laws have been passed to force drivers to be safer and more responsible, but whether or not the laws are enforced is another matter. SACDEP was like an oasis in the middle of a desert. The gates opened before us and we were greeted by monkeys chasing each other along the green treetops, and hillsides covered with crops irrigated by runoff from the tilapia ponds fed by wind-powered pumps.

On our last evening at KIOF we paid a tribute to CHEERS, the friendly little roadside pub where we learned that Kenyans can DANCE! So we shook the floor and rocked the house until we dropped, then headed back for a lantern-lit meal huddled around the kitchen table.

As soon as the doors to our plane from Nairobi opened in Mombassa, a hot and humid air rushed in and surrounded us, enveloping our senses like a sauna. I know… I grew up in Florida. I lived in the deserts of Texas and tropical Paraguay. I should be used to the heat. Well, coming from Wisconsin’s winter wonderland, this was quite a shock to the senses and took some getting used to. And what better way to acclimate than a weekend on the coast? We spent our weekend-off exploring the shoreline like children: turning over shells, poking sea slugs, handling urchins and starfish, swimming, splashing, and trying to kindly avoid the vendors that waited by the gate of our guest house for any opportunity to sell us a sea shell.

Mombassa is a bustling city built on an island, only second in size to Nairobi. There is a large Muslim community, and many women cover their bodies and heads with black material. We imagined their attire to be pretty uncomfortable, given the high temperatures and humidity.

Voi
We probably would have arrived in Voi in half the time it took us if there were a decent highway, but we spent three hours speeding up and slowing down for pot holes, and sometimes driving off the road altogether because the dirt trail was smoother than the bumpy road. As we headed east, the air became drier, the soil redder, and the landscape more rugged. The image I have of Voi is of a small town surrounded by mountains and framed by fields of agave (century plants). In Mexico agave is used to make tequila; in Voi it’s used for fiber. The small-town feel was quite a relief after the hustle and bustle of Nairobi and Mombassa.

Masai Mara
After leaving our new gardening friends in Voi in the hands of KIOF student Jack to follow up on teaching square-meter techniques to enthusiastic members of the community for the next 5 months, we headed back to Nairobe where Chris and I said farewell to our 2 comrades. Ben and Zack embarked on a plane to explore the lively city of Amsterdam and its surrounding countryside, while Chris and I set off on a safari to Masi Mara National Reserve. The Masai Mara region lies in the southwest corner of Kenya, bordering Tanzania. The open grasslands are home to an incredibly rich and varied wildlife, including giraffe, zebra, elephants, hippos, lions and cheetah, and the annual migration of millions of wildabeast and antelope. The Maasai Tribe also makes its livelihood off the Reserve and surrounding land, where the nomadic pastoralists watch after their herds of cattle and other livestock. They often migrate hundreds of kilometers with their herds in search of water and richer pastures, wrapped in red blankets to ward off lions and other predatory animals.

On Thursday, January 23, Chris and I met Ben and Zack in the Amsterdam airport, and many hours later we arrived safely in Stevens Point, ready to take on a new (and for the three fellows, the last) semester at UWSP.

Under African Skies