First-hand experience with Sustainable Agriculture Program

I spent 2 weeks camping and vaccinating chickens. One week was in Monduli and the other in a village a few kilometers away. We trained 4 community vaccinators in each village by going with them for the first half of the day vaccinating chickens and having classes in the afternoons about the disease we were vaccinating against, how the vaccine works and how to properly use it, and general chicken care. My third week of camping was in the same village, working on building hafirs for water storage and training villagers on making sack gardens. Most of the teaching was done by demonstrations and physical work and walking the villagers through how to make each thing. My final week was spent manning a GSC BIA booth at the nane nane agricultural festival in Arusha.

The best thing was being able to camp in rural areas, especially Lashiane, because we were able to have first-hand experience with Maasai culture, which not many people have had. I was most immersed during my 3^rd week of camping, when I was the only SA volunteer left in the country so I camped with only Tanzanians.  This and my homestay provided me with the most insight into Tanzanian culture.

-from Karen G., GSC Volunteer Tanzania, Sustainable Agriculture Program

Further information about Sustainable Agriculture Program  can be found at http://www.globalservicecorps.org/site/tanzania-agriculture-and-food/

What Our Volunteers Say About Sustainable Agriculture Program

My work was divided between two different subjects. I did both community trainings in BIA and was one of the first groups to start the chicken vaccination program against Newcastle Disease. We did community trainings in Laiser (a sub village of Ilkaryon and Monduli (twice), and we did chicken vaccinations in Ilkaryon and Monduli. The trainings consisted of partially classroom lessons, where we would teach the basics of BioIntensive Agriculture, and partially of practical application of the lessons. With the group, we built a compost heap, dug a double-dug bed, and made a nursery and a sack garden. During vaccinations, we would travel by foot throughout a certain village for several hours in the morning vaccinating chickens and explaining the program to farmers, and in the afternoon would conduct lessons with the vaccinators about the disease and about their responsibilities.

I think the work we were doing was very important and I could see the effects it was taking as we revisited certain areas and saw progress that had been made, so in that sense it was very rewarding and I felt like I was doing something.

My time with my homestay family was amazing, they treated me as a daughter and I felt completely at home with them. I had many talks with them about the difference between American and Tanzanian culture, which provided me with an insight I would never have otherwise been able to gain. I learned so much from them, and they completely transformed my experience. I also thoroughly enjoyed camping, because it was a great way to establish camaraderie with my fellow volunteers that may not have formed otherwise. To put it simply, my favorite parts were homestay, chicken vaccinations, camping, and the relationships I developed, both with people in Tanzania as well as with other volunteers.

-Selena E., GSC Volunteer Tanzania, Sustainable Agriculture Program

To learn more about how you can participate on this and other sustainable agriculture and food security projects, go to http://www.globalservicecorps.org/site/tanzania-agriculture-and-food/

A Global Service Corps Sustainable Agriculture Success Story

  Editors note: The Kitomaris are a Tanzanian family who learned about bio-intensive agriculture through training provided by Global Service Corps sustainable agriculture program.

The Kitomaris have six children, which they will struggle to put through school. In recent years the imperative of intensification has increased as farm sizes have become smaller through passing parcels to children. Few families live in traditional houses, and family sizes are getting smaller. This imperative has caused the Kitomaris to become fully converted to bio-intensive agriculture. Behind the Kitomari farmstead is a garden with eight large compost piles 2×1 meters square. Here, the Kitomaris share the secret of their success, and the reason they get so many visitors. In 2002, with the help of Global Service Corps volunteers, they learned to make compost and how to utilize it in ‘deep dug beds.

“We were so amazed to see what a difference the compost and deep-dug vegetable beds made in our farm. We stopped using chemicals. We soon had too many vegetables and our neighbors began to come to buy from us in the dry season when they had no gardens. This was the start of a small revolution on our farm.”

Soon their farm had drawn the interest of visitors from Heifer International, and the Kitomaris became farmer motivators in fish and goats. The latter helped them to increase their compost-making to much more than they needed on their small farm, so they began to sell it!  How strange that anyone would make a business of selling compost, but at Tsh 20,000 per pile it has proven to be a good income generator.

The Nambala neighborhood now knows that they can get advice if they want to dig their own deep-dug vegetable beds. While at first, it seems like a lot of hard work Mr. Kitomari says, “once the beds are established, they last for three years without re-plowing, and they don’t stop producing. We follow one crop with another and they use so little water compared to our old system.”

Using the techniques taught by Global Service Corps, the Kitomaris have seven beds which produce abundant green vegetables for their meals, and they sell green, organic vegetables to their neighbors all through the year!

 Photo: Mr. Kitomari on his families farm

Maasai Tribal Village Weekend – I am in Awe

Editors note: Jennifer R. is a current participant in the HIV/AIDS Education and Prevention Program in Tanzania. She will be working with us for the next six months. We look forward to receiving more posts from her throughout her time in Tanziania! Thanks for the post Jennifer!

 

This past weekend, I had the pleasure of traveling to a place that was utterly other-worldly. It was like I walked onto the Discovery Channel or into a National Geographic special. I am going to use this word a lot in this entry, but I am in utter awe of all that I witnessed, just utter awe. There are few times in life when you experience true awe, I spent an entire two days like that. It was magical, mysterious, mystifying, miraculous, shocking in a fabulous way, or in a Sidipi (said see-dee-PEE) way, which is the Maasai word for fabulous. My descriptions here will never do it justice. I just cannot describe the stirring in my heart that happened while we were out in uncharted territory. It was as if I was standing in the spot where the birth of the human species took place, watching it as it would have taken place at that moment in history. It was truly an experience of a lifetime.

A group of seven from GSC were invited to be guests of Isaya and his Maasai family at his tribal home, a Boma (family village) deep in the heart of the Maasai Tribal lands about an two hours outside of the Arusha city limits. I have written about Isaya before, he was a translator at my school during the weeks of HIV/AIDS Day Camp. He is a warrior and a tribe chief for the Maasai Tribe of Tanzania. He is also one of five Maasai warriors that ran the London Marathon last year to raise money and awareness for their clean water project. You can find more information at www.massaimarathon.org

Here is some general information on the Maasai. They have been living this tribal lifestyle on these lands of Tanzania and Kenya for hundreds and hundreds of years and have actively discouraged modernizing or changing their nomadic way of life. It was like I stepped back in time to watch people live before the dawn of modern civilization. The traditional Massai Lifestyle centers around their cattle which constitutes their primary source of food, but they do also grow maize quite a bit now. The measure of a A Maasai myth relates that God gave them all the cattle on earth, to be put into their keeping. They are a large but very close community that works together to raise the cattle and the children and cultivate the lands that they live on. The society is patriarchal and polygamist, the family we stayed with had 1 baba (dad), 2 mamas/wives, 20 watoto (children), 10 from each wife. They all live together on the compound of land called a Boma, along with all of the cows and goats. Maasai men’s wealth is in terms of his cattle and children. A herd of 50 cattle is respectable and the more children the better.  A man who has plenty of one but not the other is still considered poor by Maasai standards. 

The patriarch of the Boma is Isaya’s father. He has his own hut and each wife has her own hut.  The culture dictates that after a woman has given birth to more than 5 children, she gets to have her own hut to live in with the children.  They build each hut in 3 days.  The hut framework is formed of timber poles fixed directly into the ground and interwoven with a web of smaller branches, which is then plastered with a mix of mud, sticks, grass, cow dung and urine, and ash. Within this space the family cooks, eats, sleeps, socializes and stores food, fuel and other household possessions.  Each hut also has a place for baby goats and baby cows to sleep so they are safe during the night. Isaya explained that the hut lasts about 10 years and then they start over and build a new one. This is where I slept, 4 of us in a bed made for 1 ½ to 2 people, with a 1 day old baby goat crying under us all night. I slept in my clothes and shoes, we did not shower for 2 days while tracking through the cow dung and goat dung and whatever else is out there. The flies are unbelievable, there is no way to describe how many flies are all around you.

Whisperers in the Jungle – A Great Organization and a Great Learning Experience

Editors note: Jennifer R. is a current participant in the HIV/AIDS Education and Prevention Program in Tanzania. She will be working with us for the next six months. We look forward to receiving more posts from her throughout her time in Tanziania! Thanks for the post Jennifer!

 

On Saturday, I was honored to attend the graduation ceremony for an HIV/AIDS training performed for a group called Whisperers in the Jungle. This is a extraordinary organization that helps support street kids here in Arusha. It was created to give kids without homes a place to call home. These children have been chased away from their childhood homes for a variety of reasons, such as an abusive parent, alcoholism, or flat-out starvation. Whisperers in the Jungle provide a safe place for them to form a new family with people of similar circumstances. It gives them a home to go to, sponsors them to receive an education when possible, English lessons, business training and money management skills, and now HIV/AIDS training. It is run by an amazing man named Cifa Chalo, who started the organization and manages it. He spoke to the kids and to us on Saturday, and I found it so moving, I wanted to share it with you.

He explained that the Jungle can be a metaphor for life. If you yell in the Jungle, it produces an echo and you can be heard. But if you whisper in the Jungle, everything must be quiet for you to be heard and it is harder to hear any one person alone. Whisperers’ kids had only learned to whisper in the jungle of their lives, so we must help, by stopping to hear them. The Jungle has many dangerous animals prowling through it, as does life. The dangerous animal that the Whisperer kids learned to conquer this week was HIV/AIDS. He went on to expand his metaphor by explaining that the Jungle can also be cities with large populations, such as Arusha. If the kids, or any one person, whispers or even shouts, they cannot be heard. So Whisperers in the Jungle helps them, gives them a voice to be heard and introduces them to each other so they can form a group and become a family, and GSC helped give them a voice to prevent themselves from contracting HIV/AIDS.

Fun Facts about Arusha

Editor’s note: Jennifer R. is a current participant in the HIV/AIDS Education and Prevention Program in Tanzania. She will be working with us for the next six months. We look forward to receiving more posts from her throughout her time in Tanziania! Thanks for the post Jennifer!

 

Fun Facts about my new life and home…

Arusha has definitely been an interesting place to live in. I have only been here a few weeks now, but here are some first impressions:

• The amount of dust is outstanding, it covers everything. Because of this, I have severely changed my view of cleanliness.
• Almost everyone, EVERYONE, knows how to say “Good Morning” in English. This is how I am greeted all day and night, no matter what time it really is. I found out it is because these are the first words kids learn in English, so they can go to school and say “Good Morning Teacher”.
• Tanzanians talk very softly, sometimes I have to make the students stand up and ask them to yell just to hear them. But on the street, everyone here also LOVES to say hello to the Muzungus, or white foreigners. They will yell “hello” or “Mambo” at you and get louder and louder until you just go ahead and answer back “Hello” or “Poa”. They seem to get a huge thrill from this. It is normal and customary for Tanzanians to always greet each other, but we are the only ones who get yelled at. We are truly fish out of water here, I am enjoying being different, but it is definitely an eye-opening experience.
• The students in our class move their desk forward instead of their chair back when they are called on to stand and read or come to the board.
• Herds of goats wander through our field next to our classroom, it is surreal to watch out of the classroom window.
• We run on an entirely different schedule here, on African time, which usually means everything is always late and you can’t seem to help it. They are even worse than New Orleans people, my friends and family at home you have met your match!