Fuel efficient cookers at the Ruuju School Kitchen

Jan 27, 2007
Teresa Mellish

We saw fuel efficient cookers in use at the Ruuju school kitchen yesterday. There are three cookers in the newly built kitchen at the Ruuju school in Marega.

These cookers are manufactured by Boto-Solar Systems Ltd in Nakuru, Kenya. They are insulated around the outside to contain the heat. The cooking pan sits down close to the fire and is covered with a large top. There is no smoke in the kitchen because it goes out the three chimneys.

The heat comes from wood which is placed in a fire-box below the cooker. The cook told us that she only uses two small bunches of branches (wood) to cook the food in a cooker.

She was using three cookers to prepare lunch for the 450 students at the Ruuju school. One cooker had porridge in it made for the 72 primary (kindergarten) school children made from finger millet and sorghum and some beans. This would be fed to them at 11:00 before they go home for the day. The other two cookers had maize and beans for the rest of the children. Vegetables from the school garden were also added. The kale and carrots were harvested fresh and washed.

Muchui Tomatoes

Jan 27, 2007
Ken Mellish

The Muchui Business Center has grown since we have visited last year. The sixty women in this group have been our partners for ten years since we supplied them with water tanks to collect water from their house roofs. The business center was established to enhance the marketing of the trees started in the small tree nurseries at the members farms.

The green house was built last year to provide space to graft and develop the macadamia tree seedlings. When these were moved out to harden off before grafting there was room in the greenhouse. The staff at the center planted tomatoes in the space. We were very pleased to see the healthy plants in uniform rows with clusters of green fruit. These plants were only six week old and already had full sized fruit.

Why use a greenhouse a few miles from the equator ? The plastic cover keeps of the rain and heavy dew which allows blight to form. This reduces the need for fungicides. Also, the house increases the nighttime temperature which speeds up the growth.

Jennifer's maize crop

Jan 27, 2007
Teresa Mellish

Jennifer Murogocho says she always wants to be at her shamba (farm) now so she can watch her maize (corn) grow. She has 3 ½ acres of maize which already had cobs on it. It is so tall that we could not reach the top of the plants. Jennifer is the chairperson of the Muchui Womens Group who farm in Kirua, an area near Meru.

What a difference from last year when the members of the Muchui Womens Group had no crops growing at all because of the drought. Now the entire area is green and the maize crop will be ready to harvest in about 6 weeks.

The problem we discussed with her this year is how she is going to store all the maize. What a good problem!

The Garden at Ruuju School

Jan 27, 2007
Ken Mellish

Last year when we visited the Ruuju School in Meraga they showed us a patch of tropical couch grass behind the school where they wanted help to plant a garden to feed the children lunch. It was not a pretty sight. We had seen pictures from Shaad of how productive the garden had grown in our absence but to see it for real was very exciting.

The garden supplies vegetables to feed the students at noon. Cabbage, tomatoes and kale look robust in the rain. Small passion plants start to climb the fence and new pea plants just poke above the surface. There is a bunch of kale seedlings in the nursery ready to plant out in the main garden. In the back there are tall corn plants maturing to provide the staple corn for the noon meal.

We hear stories about what the noon lunch has done for the school. Last year there was a shortage of food in the area as a result of the drought. With the feeding program the children came to school. The average marks in the national tests was higher. Also, now there is clean water at the school piped in from a spring that fills the water tanks at night when there is not enough rain. Farmers Helping Farmers bought the pipe and the tanks. Now students have all the clean water at school and even carry some home for drinking. The biggest thrill is to be told there is a sense of excitement and pride at the school and to hear plans for the future.

Many people made this happen. Colleen Walton was the driving force last year who got the project started. This involved planning the garden, the cook house and the storage. Mary Driscoll and Heather Angell helped with the garden plan and even piled weeds. Shaad, our Kenyan agent, who helped start the project and traveled down a difficult road every month kept the project moving. Damaris, the hired horticulturist, worked daily to plan, plant and weed. The Parents Committee and the Headmaster all played key roles.

The garden is tangible evidence of something bigger that has happened. All these people have learned to work together. The Canadians again learned how to make the hopes of Kenyans grow and Kenyans learned how to spend Canadian money wisely and the children have benefited.

Visit to Wakulima Dairy

Wakulima visit Jan 23, 2007
Ken Mellish

We have come home to the Wakulima Dairy. Farmers Helping Farmers was introduced to the Wakulima Dairy ten years ago when it was a small Self Help group which was collecting several thousand liters of milk from its members in the mornings and selling it uncooled to Brookside Dairy near Nairobi. Now Wakulima Dairy is an incorporated company which collect 20,000 liters of milk a day from its members and offers a wide range of services including banking, veterinary services, feed store, and a milk testing lab. This dairy pumps $8,000 a day in to the area and the effects are seen everywhere.

Returning to Mukerweni where the dairy is located has that comfortable feeling of coming home. It starts before we arrive with a stop at the supermarket. We know the best place to shop from experience. The Uchumi at Karatina offers a wide selection of goods. We have a list including soap, salt, bottled water, beer rice and flour. The store has a wide range of goods including school supplies, some hardware and household goods. The store is clean and well lit. The goods are scanned out at the cash and bagged to carry out. Fresh fruit and vegetables will be bought at a traditional market where the vendors sit to sell bananas, mangos, cabbages and all other produce in season.

Arrival at the Wakulima Dairy is always exciting. There are changes starting at the front gate. Teresa’s tree has grown. A pine planted in 2002 is now about 30 feet high and has a fresh new sign with her name on it. On the other side there is a new sign with the Mukerweni Wakulima Dairy Ltd. The group has grown from a Self Help Group to an incorporated company. There is a group to greet us. Everyone is familiar except the new manager. There are hugs and a few tears. Again there are changes; the can wash bay is finished and there are new offices for the vet services.

After tea and an update on what old friends are doing we are down to business. We meet with the dairy management team from the board of directors. They are prepared for us dressed in “office casual” with a list of topics. We add our items to the list and the agenda is agreed.

There are old problems to deal with. Farmers Helping Farmers has funded a heat recovery unit for the milk cooler and it is not working. They have brought a refrigeration engineer to answer our questions. The milk cooling system is a 10,000 liter tank similar to those found on large farms in Canada. This is the key pieces of equipment which Farmers Helping Farmers funded in 1997 which allowed the dairy to cool milk. This allowed the dairy to pick up milk from the evening milking and cool it for shipment to Nairobi.

The heat exchanger will lighten the load on the tank compressors, halve the power requirement for cooling the milk and produce hot water for washing cans and the cooling tank. However the initial installation was not done correctly. The unit was not placed on a solid floor and filling and emptying with water caused it to flex the floor and break the coolant pipes. The cooling engineer offers a solution which involves relocation and an extensive installation of computerized controls for the cooling system. After a heated discussion we are able to simplify the plan and break the job into the relocation of the heat recovery system and the new controls. Practical experience from our Canadian farms allows to ask the right questions. We again find that things are the same world wide: engineers complicate things, tradesmen blame the previous tradesman for problems and the customer wants to pay less for more !

After the session in the milk cooling plant we are back to the board room. The next topic is biogas. At a previous visit some of the women have asked Teresa about biogas units. These would harvest cooking gas form cow manure. The gas would reduce the time the women needed to find firewood and reduce the destruction of trees. At that time the only units available were expensive concrete units. However, The Farmers Helping Farmers team had seen some highly efficient plastic tube units in Embu Kenya last year. These were demonstration units put in place by KARI. KARI is the equivalent of Agriculture Canada.

These units were very low cost, built with available materials and very efficient. Two buckets of mixed cow manure and water will generate enough gas to cook all the family meals. The key component is the plastic tube which is one meter across made of black sun resistant plastic. This tube is sold by Wakulima dairy for their farmers to store Napier Grass silage. Again the management has brought in an expert and again the task is to ask the questions that simplify the job and reduce the cost. It is agreed that Farmers Helping Farmers will fund two units to demonstrate the process and then if CIDA money is approved the number can be scaled up. The details of implementation are delegated. Ken and Gerald will discuss details tomorrow and Bernard will be the staff member who will be responsible for implementation. It is satisfying to see how the Wakulima board works and the familiarity with the Canadians makes work easy. There is trust enough for disagreements and a sense of working with people which have been your partners.

The next item is schools. Almost every Wakulima board member sits on a school board. Farmers Helping Farmers has become very involved in the local schools. Three of the local schools are twinned with Prince Edward Island schools and each year several preservice teachers from UPEI come to this area to get their international experience. Teresa has twinning letters for exchange and a list of cheques. These are from donations in PEI and will be used for school books and school improvements. The following day Teresa and Gerald will visit the schools, deliver the cheques and make plans to come back in two weeks to see the books and get photos for the donors. There are ten schools on the list!

The next two items on the list involves other dairies. The near by Embu dairy is a new partner with Farmers Helping Farmers and they would benefit from mentoring by the Wakulima group. The Wakulima group agrees to host the Embu group next Thursday and discuss their plans. Again details are delegated.

Also, Farmers Helping Farmers is looking for new partners. As projects mature it is time to move on to other groups. We will need Wakulima assistance to access new dairy partners. A plan is made for tomorrow. James, the vice chair of Wakulima, Ken, Daniel, Shaad and Esther, Wakulima treasurer will travel to Othaya Dairy for a first visit. Esther is key as a Kenyan woman who understands the value of a shilling and tolerates no waste. She will send the message that money must be accounted for to the last shilling and that women are to be treated as equal partners. It is only a half a hours drive and the activity should only take the morning. The new dairy has already made a presentation to the Farmers Helping Farmers council here in Kenya and has some concept of how we work.

Lunch back at the house is time to catch up on news. They ask about Sandra MacKinnon, the “bee man” Stan , Trudy and Liz. Also there are questions about visitors from early years: Karl Winter and Katie van Ekris.

In the afternoon there is time for a quick visit to the SACCO; a credit union. Several years ago the dairy proposed that we supply some funding for dairy cow loans. Credit was difficult to get for farm loans and interest rates were very high. Farmers Helping Farmers with CIDA assistance provided $40,000 for a revolving loan. We have been getting reports that the money was loaned out, repayments were coming in and new loans had been made. The first impression at the SACCO is that there were no long line-ups of customers which we saw previously. We meet with Paul the manager and find out that computerization is complete and the service time for members has been cut dramatically. He also tells us that the SACCO now has 11,000 active members. We get some stories about the cow loans how they have accumulated 1,000,000 shillings (60 ksh/ $CND) from repayment and will soon call for new loan requests. They interview all applicants and have learned what questions to ask. Two of the cows purchased under this program have died and one owner also has died. The loan was life insured so repayment will be possible. The reports are good and everyone is upbeat because of the rain and good crops.
Milk income is paid through the SACCO and farmers are able to get advances for school fees, vet fees, feed and food in times of food shortages.

Daniel has gone in a different direction for the afternoon. He has gone out on a “milk pick-up route”. This involves going out to pick up milk from the farmers along the roads of the district. The truck, or lorry as it is called here, is a one ton with a rack on the back. It is loaded with empty 40 liter cans and equipped with a scale to weigh milk. The truck drives to various stops in the district where farmers line up with their cans of milk. Yesterday this varied from one half a liter to 30 liters. Each can is presented to the weigher on the truck, the milk is weighed and the farmer’s card is filled in with the amount of milk delivered. These weights are recorded on the weigher’s report and entered in to the dairies computer. At the end of the month the milk income is deposited into the farmer’s account at the SACCO.

Most of the farmers delivering milk are women who do the bulk of the work on the small farms. They have seen Canadians on the milk truck before and there is quick recognition. Everyone knows that it is the Canadians who made it possible for the dairy to expand and enable the community to prosper. Milk is picked up from 250 farmers and the truck returns with is load of filled cans to be dumped into the cooling tank.

Daniel says the experience is indescribable. It is so different from the Prince Edward Island experience where a bulk truck back up to the farm tank and pumps off 4,000 liters of cooled milk in a few minuets. However, this is a place to meet people and neighbors visit and exchange news. We are sure that a Prince Edward Island farmer in the back of a Kenyan milk truck helping to empty cans would be a hot topic on the way home from the milk collection point.

Later in the evening we sit and discuss the day. There are two power outages and we scramble for flashlights using cell phone light to find the way. It has been a big day and tomorrow will be another one

A well-managed profitable farm

A well-managed profitable shamba
By Teresa Mellish Jan 20, 2007

We saw a well-managed shamba (farm) today which was profitable. The farm was three acres, of which two acres was in tea. The other acre was used for the dairy operation .

The farmer, Mr. Salesia K. Kanake, told us that he was making 8,000 KES profit per month from the dairy operation. He was shipping forty litres of milk each day from the three cows he milked. He had three calves, one 9 month old heifer and a 6 week old calf. Daniel Bondt and Ken Mellish, dairy farmers from PEI, agreed that that any Canadian farmer would be proud to have such good looking calves. Mr. Kanake told us: “ Since I went to your information session last year and had listened to the advice about how to feed calves, I have better calves.”

During the past year , Mr. Kanake has been working with the agronomist, Mr. Stephen Chadi. Stephen is employed by the Embu Dairy Cooperative Society, with funding from Farmers Helping Farmers and the Canadian International Development Agency, to show dairy farmers how to grow and harvest better crops to feed their cows so they can increase their milk production.

We were delighted that Mr. Kanake is doing many things that we have been recommending for the past two years. He is cutting and feeding his napier grass to the cows when it is about 1 metre high, which is the height which will give him the optimum yield and quality. He is improving the protein feeds for his cows including growing desmoduim (a legume), sweet potato vines and calliandra (forage tree). He has cut and preserved napier grass as silage in a polythelyene bag when it was available during the wet season so that he had feed for his cows during the dry season. He is also using the manure produced by the cows to fertilize the napier grass.

We were so pleased to also see a bio-gas digester on the farm. The manure is used to produce gas- which is used as fuel for cooking. This means that the farm woman can cook the family’s food without having to inhale the smoke from a wood fire.

First impressions

Daniel Bondt is experiencing his first visit to Kenya. Daniel has traveled many other places in the world but this is his first time in Kenya. Daniel is a semi-retired dairy farmer from Kingston.

Although he has only been here a few days, he has some first impressions.

He is so impressed with how well dressed the people are that he meets in Embu. He also commented on how polite they are; he has been taking early morning walks and people always greet him. He has also been to two farms and has noticed how everyone greets him.

He noted that many people speak English- he had not expected that so many people would speak English.

He too has noticed how green the crops are as a result of the recent rainfall.

He has observed that people are very industrious- particularly with the limited tools they have to work with.

He has seen so many young people in Embu town- both boys and girls.

Daniel went to church this morning (Sunday) with the Secretary of the Embu Dairy and he visited the nearby KARI research station dairy barn early this morning before breakfast where he helped the workers to milk the cows by hand. Daniel, Teresa and Ken went to the Secretary’s home today for lunch

Everything is green

EVERYTHING IS GREEN !
by Ken Mellish
Jan 20,2007

We are in Embu and every thing is green. The corn is tall with huge ears and the grass is lush. We see fat donkeys pulling carts and well fed cows grazing by the side of the road. People are roasting long ears of corn by the roadside.

We arrived in Kenya on Wednesday. The country side looks wonderful and there is such a contrast in the vegetation from the a year ago.

Last year it was very dry and the crops had failed. The corn and grass were stunted and brown. There was not enough food for people to eat in many areas. This time there has been rain falling since October and in many areas there were floods in December.

We met with the new Board and Management at the Embu Dairy Cooperative Society. They were elected only a month ago and are starting to develop a plan. They have many challenges to deal with. Ken Mellish and Shaad Olingo, our Kenyan Field Officer, plan to work with them to see how they can meet these challenges so they can continue to sell the milk for the 3000 families who produce milk from their cows. Farmers Helping Farmers started working with the Embu dairy last year. With CIDA assistance we were able to purchase three small milk cooling tanks. The tanks are located in the countryside and the farmers milk their cows and carry the milk to an assembly point where it is picked up. Pick up may be by either a small truck with milk cans or a bicycle equipped with plastic containers to transport up to 100 liters of milk. Having the coolers improves the marketing of milk by the farmers.

This morning we will meet with Stephen, the Agronomist and Faith, the Milk Quality Control Officer hired last year by Farmers Helping Farmers. During the afternoon we will go to see one of the milk coolers and visit a dairy farm.

We are staying at the Guest House at the KARI Research Centre. This house was built for visiting researchers and it has four bedrooms, a kitchen and a living room. When we arrived yesterday evening we went out to the market to buy food. We also had to buy a new gas cooking plate for the kitchen- and Simon, our driver and Teresa Mellish had to visit three places to buy the cooker, the gas and the regulator. Ken, Shaad and Daniel Bondt went to the open air stalls to buy fruit and vegetables. The vendors have a good selection in their stalls which comes from the farming areas around Mount Kenya. We couldn’t find eggs yesterday, so Daniel went out this morning before breakfast to find eggs for breakfast.

We are getting oriented to the time change- we all had about 5 hours sleep last night. Still not enough sleep but an improvement over the first few nights here.

2007 - Farmers Helping Farmers Depart for Work in Kenya

Eight people will leave for Africa soon to spend up to a month working with four Kenyan projects.


(Pictured back row l-r: Andrea Dube, Olivia Harvey, Danny Bondt front row l-r: Heather Angell, Dr. John van Leeuwen, Ken Mellish, Teresa Mellish Missing from photograph: Anna Portnoy)

Dr. John van Leeuwen from the Atlantic Veterinary College along with three 4-th year veterinary students will help the dairy farmers in the Wakulima Group as well as the Embu Group to improve the health of dairy cows and calves. They are taking donated veterinary pharmaceuticals for their work valued at $30,000. Anna Portnoy from Bonshaw, PE, Olivia Harvey, Petitcodiac, NB and Andrea Dube , Lake Echo, NS are all looking forward to their first visit to Africa. This is part of their veterinary training and this international rotation gives them experience working in a developing country while they help Kenyan farmers. They are receiving support from the Atlantic Veterinary College, Pfizer, Wyeth, Schering, Intervet as well as Vets Without Borders and the World Vet Congress Foundation. Danny Bondt from Kingston is traveling to Kenya for the first time. He plans to visit all four projects. As a semi-retired dairy farmer, he is looking forward to working with the dairy farmers in the Embu project and showing them how to get more milk from the cows by feeding them better.

Ken Mellish from New Perth has been to Kenya several times and he will be working with the dairy farmers at the Wakluima project to oversee the installation of a heat exchanger at the dairy plant. The exchanger will take the heat from the warm milk as it is cooled, to produce warm water to be used for the washing of milk cans. Clean milk cans contribute to improving the quality of the milk. Ken will also work with farmers to install bio-gas digesters which will use manure to produce bio-gas for fuel to cook food. He will also work with the Muchui women to identify drought-resistant crops which will grow better in the very dry area they live in.

Teresa Mellish from New Perth will be embarking on a new venture for Farmers Helping Farmers. She will be assessing the health of the members of the Muchui Womens Group. She is also taking necessary medical supplies valued at $11,000 to the hospital and clinic in the area they live in near Meru. These are donated by Health Partners International of Canada. In addition, she will work with the Ruuju women to develop a project. These women now support the project at the Ruuju Primary School in Marega where over 400 children are being provided with a school lunch using the vegetables they have grown on the school property with funds provided by Farmers Helping Farmers and the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). She will also visit all the twinned schools and will be delivering the funds raised through a special Christmas promotion to Experience Kenya for Christmas.

Heather Angell from Grand Pre, NS will also be working with the group to evaluate the projects funded by Farmers Helping Farmers. This is required by CIDA which has matched the funds raised by Farmer Helping Farmers for these projects.

The group is looking forward to a huge change in Kenya. There has been a lot of rain since they visited last year- when the entire country was drought stricken.

Our Last Days in Kenya

Submitted by Jessica Hughes
UPEI Preservice Teacher
April 19th, 2006

Only 4 more days left to go! Our last full weekend here turned out to be very busy and eventful. On Thursday and Friday, all of us went to a local beauty salon to get our hair braided...and it was a very painful experience for some of us. Friday night, we went to Nanyuki with some of the staff from Kihuti Secondary school. We had a fun night of dancing, and ended the night eating chips (french fries) at Starbucks hotel in Karatina. A very fun night!

On Saturday, we attended the Gathukimundu Prize Giving Ceremony. It was late getting started, but it was a full day running from 2 p.m. - 7 p.m. They presented many awards in different categories to the students. It is a day the children look forward to and are acknowledged for their hard work. We were disappointed that the students were unable to do the songs and dances they had prepared for the day, but unfortunately they ran out of time. Afterwards, the school presented us with traditional baskets with our names, the year and the name of the school woven into it. A very nice gesture and we were all very touched!

Sunday, we celebrated Easter by going to the Stem Hotel in Nakuru to go on a safari. It was a very nice time. The highlight was the hundreds of flamingoes we saw in the National park. We also saw rhinos, buffalo, waterbuck, a hyena and numerous families of babboons. It was a very fun adventure! On our way home, we were invited to our friend, Shaad Olingo's house for lunch. We met his wife and six of his eight children. So now we are ready to spend our last four days in Ichamera. We have arranged to do some videotaping field day seminars for farmers to be played at the Sacco, (local bank). We are also going to see the collection route for milk.

On Saturday, we have planned a farewell party for all the people that we have met here. It will be a sad day. Our trip is almost at an end, but we will send one more blog to tell you about the rest of it!

The School Term Ends

Submitted by Jessica Hughes
UPEI Pre-Service Teacher
April 13th, 2006

This past week flew by like whilwind. Our trip is quickly coming to an end and we all have mixed emotions. Yesterday was the last day of school for Mwati and Kihute, with Gathukimundu finishing today. We all found it hard to say good-bye to our students. These people have been in our lives for the past five weeks and it is sad to leave them. The memories we have will be with us forever. Kihute finished with a ceremony where they presented the students with award for the higest averages in each form (grade) and all the students cleaned up the school, closing with a prayer, song and well wishes from all the teachers. Mwati closed with a small ceremony, presenting Meredith and Jessica H. with small tokens of appreciation and all staff and students said their good-byes. A prize ceremony will be held this Saturday, April 15th, for the students at Gathukimundu and all of us will be attending. We have all completed our assignments and will be coming home with Kenyan questionnairs, video documntaries of both students and teachers and of course, letters for the students in Prince Edward Island.

On Tuesday, Meredith, Shauna and Jessica H. completed a documentary of the day in the life of a Kenyan Teacher, videotaping and questioning the Headmistress of Gathukimundu, Lucy. Tuesday also marked the end of our football practices with the girls at Kihuti. We arrived to start practice, but the torrential seasonal rain kept us from actually going on the field. Instead we resorted to sitting in a classroom for 1 1/2 hours. This provided us with a good opportunity to talk with the team members and present them with Canadian Tattoos we brought with us.

On Saturday night, we spent the the night at Green Hills Hotel in Nyeri, compliments of Farmers Helping Farmers. We had a day of relaxation and a night of fun at the disco located below the hotel. It was a welcome addition to our usual weekend activities. We still have a lot more to do before we leave Kenya on April 23rd. We have the prize giving ceremony at Gathukimundu on Saturday. On Sunday, to celebrate Easter, we have arranged to go to Nakuru, to go on another Safari at Lake Nakuru National Park. We hear they have flamingoes. We will be staying Sunday and Monday nights. We arrive back to Mukurweini on Tusday, when we will be starting some work at the Dairy, including going on a milk collection run! We will be very busy!Our time here is flying by, but please keep checking for updates on our latest adventure!

Global Classroom Highlights

Submitted by Trudy White
April 14, 2006

Now that the dust has had a chance to settle, I’ve been looking at pictures and thinking back over the three weeks I spent in Kenya with the Global Classroom teacher team. It would be impossible to describe all of the highlights of our visit, but I will try to share a few. Our welcome to Kenya was warm and gentle as we visited the farm of an old friend, Rhoda Ole Sein, and her family. On their farm we saw our first Kenyan wildlife – zebras, gazelles, and even a giraffe - grazing alongside the family’s cattle and sheep. We also got our first glimpse the devastating effects that two years of drought has had upon the farmers and animals of Kenya. We would see and hear much more about this in the days to follow.

We spent our first week in Mukurwe-ini, where our hosts were the members and staff of the Wakulima Dairy. We toured the Dairy, the Sacco, a local health clinic, a coffee farmers cooperative, the market, farms, and 10 schools! We had several very candid discussions with Kenyan teachers who welcome as colleagues and shared their challenges and successes with us. We also billeted one night with local families and we were welcomed everywhere we went. A highlight for me was seeing how proud everyone was of the new Wakulima Dairy facility and hearing about how far they have come and how much of a difference this project has made throughout the community. Before leaving Mukurwe-ini, we hosted a welcome luncheon for the pre-service teachers who were arriving just the day before we moved on. Even in that brief overlap, we felt very confident they were well on their way to an amazing teaching/learning experience.

From Mukurwe-ini, we traveled to Meru. We were welcomed with dancing and singing by the Muchui Women’s Group members. We saw the water catchment tanks and tree nurseries sponsored by FHF and individual Islanders. Lauren Gill- O’Brien was delighted to find herself at a shamba boasting the tank sponsored by her own Vernon River Millview 4-H Club. The women also thanked us many times over for the food supplies and seeds provided by the FHF agriculture team in February and to which we added our own donation of more bean seeds. However, with predictions that the rains will be late and sparse again this year, it was hard not to wonder and worry about how these wonderful people are going to fare. Before leaving Meru, we also visited a local primary school, St. Lucy’s School for the Blind, and St. Theresa’s Maternity Cottage Hospital.

Our next stop was Kericho, in Kenya’s tea growing highlands, where we visited a tea farm, a tea packing plant, and 3 more schools! Even in this seemingly lush region of the country the drought has reduced tea yields and everyone is feeling the effects.

Then, we moved on to Kisumu, situated on Lake Victoria. In the Bondo area, we visited a CIDA- sponsored micro-finance project which is helping fishermen to find alternatives in the face of a collapsing fishery. We also visited the Millennium Demonstration Village project at Sauri, headed by Columbia University’s Earth Institute. This ambitious project aims to demonstrate that sustainable development is possible and that the Millennium goals are, indeed, attainable. Agriculture, health, water, education, sanitation, and infrastructure are all being addressed through a partnership approach involving the community, government, other NGO’s and the Demonstration Village Project. Only a year and a half into the project, the lessons learned at Sauri are already being applied and adapted to12 other villages in different agri-systems throughout Africa. And in Sauri, the project is now being scaled up ten-fold, to a district level.

Our final destination was Nakuru, where we visited a home for street kids called the Child Discovery Centre. Although this project was just started in 2002, the Center is now caring for more than 140 children. Last, but not least, we visited the Lake Nakuru National Park where we added lions, a leopard, a jackal, and black and white rhinos to our now long list of wildlife sightings!

Needless to say, we were very busy but we loved every minute of it! We are now anxiously looking forward to the return of the pre-service teachers in order to hear more about their experiences of teaching and working in the Mukurwe-ini community. Over the next weeks and months, we will also be putting all we’ve seen and learned into lesson formats for Island school children.

All in all, this was a very special journey for me. I was able to visit some old friends like Rhoda, Shaad, and Gerald, and I made many new friends. I felt very privileged to be seeing the projects and meeting the people I had heard so much about over the years of my involvement with FHF. I would like to thank FHF’s Board and the GCI Management Committee for giving me this opportunity and all of the folks in Kenya who worked so hard to make our visit successful. I will always remember it.