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5 April 2000
Is all this traveling just a dream or will I wake up and find that I have never
left the Llano Estacado? That is what I ask myself sometimes while on a
trip teaching workshops. Willa Finley, from Odessa TX, and I flew away
from these plains on March 6th for Kenya funded by Golf Course Rd.
Church of Christ, Midland, TX.
We arrived March 8th in Nairobi. We were met by Charles and Darlene
Coulson who live and work in the second worst slum in Nairobi where
several hundred thousand lost souls live. They have a project called "Made
In The Streets" where they take boys living, stealing and sleeping on the
streets and give them a home, food and training. The Coulsons care. They
live in an apartment building down the "street" from where the boys live. I
stayed in the WBS office apartment on the third floor across from their
apartment. Willa stayed in the guest apartment on the second floor. Since
the living room of a home in Africa is "public area", the only time they are
free from the ministry is locked in their bedroom or out to eat.
While I was at the farm, Willa investigated her moving there to work with
the farm [she was market gardening in Zambia for eleven years] and with
Darlene working with the street girls. She went to a number of ag offices
and got information which really helped me in my workshops. She needs
support to return ASAP to Kenya. The Coulsons have a farm about a half hour
drive outside the city where I
worked with the boys for a week and a half.
I taught classes to them and
a few farmers. Each one was assigned land on which to construct a
raised bed for corn, beans and some of the seed for new crops I had with
me.
The land is cotton blackland and literally was as hard as concrete.
The boys are hard workers and good cooks. From the street or not, I have
never seen a finer group of young men even when I was teaching school.
Any father would be proud of any one of them. One is dating the WBS
secretary and they will probably get married. Part of my heart is still with
those boys.
What was shocking to me was how dry Kenya is except in the highlands
in the NW. The rains had not begun. There is a long rainy season and a
short rainy season. There are few wells even though water is 200 feet
down. One farmer has cattle walking 9 miles one way to drink. No one
has the money to dig a well. Most people buy water for up to 10 shillings
[15¢] for 5 gallons. For people with little income, that is costly. Charles
has hired men to hand dig a well. That is the least expensive way to dig
one and it employs the local people.
This is Chales Coulson and the boys setting up their bucket drip irrigation
kits for their raised beds.
I took Tef seed with me, but it is old. It is a grain grown extensively in
Ethiopia that is similar to wheat. I read in a book I had with me that Tef
grows in cotton blackland. Since Charles wants to train the boys and girls
in market agriculture, I immediately realized that Tef should be a market
crop. He had told me that there are some Ethiopians that worship at a
church down the street and he knows several of them. I told him to ask
them where they get their Tef. At the airport on my way out of Kenya, he
said that they told him to grow it, they will buy it and if he needs seed,
they will get it from Ethiopia for him.
On March 20th I flew to Mombasa on the Indian Ocean. How beautiful! I
was picked up by Gabe and Jill Moudy from Kilifi, one hour up the coast. I
had two workshops: one up in the mountains [five hours roundtrip by car]
and one in Kilifi. This is among the Giriami people. A member, from further
up in the mountains, walked five hours roundtrip each day to attend my
workshop. How is that to make one humble! He asked for a workshop for
his home area. I told him Gabe can do it. Gabe informed me that those
are not mountains but hills. Since I am from Lubbock, those are
mountains! What really surprised me is how liberated the women are.
One
session had more women in it than men. They are very vocal and
knowledgeable. All my other workshops in Africa had only men, but
women produce 80% of all the family food. During the classes the men and women
sat on opposite sides of the room as is customary.
Sometimes an improvement is so simple. I noticed near a church building
a vine growing to the top of a very large tree and asked what it was...
Passion fruit. I asked if there was a market for the fruit. Yes, there was. [I
already knew the answer]. I said then why are you not growing it on your
farm? No answer. Farmers in Honduras are growing and marketing it.
Grace Gafner grows it in her garden. Here is a local crop with a market
and no one grows it. I am convinced that the solution to farm problems in
all these countries is a farmer's market. The farmer grows it, rents a stall
and sells it on Tues-Thurs-Sat mornings, puts the money in his pocket
and goes home with it. No one can cheat him like all the other marketing
methods in Kenya. I teach organic gardening and farming. Cottonseed and
soybean meals for nitrogen are not available. I discovered that copra meal
is available [$6 for 110 lbs]. Since the farmers have little cash, they need
to grow legumes to supply nitrogen.
Gabe and I visited the city market, the school of Agriculture, the
experiment station, a goat farm and a dairy farm. He wants to help the
brethren get into milk production. There is an unlimited market. Had I
known this, I would have gone more prepared to teach livestock in addition
to crops. I grew up on a dairy farm, lived in the dairy barn and worked on
the Texas Tech University dairy while in college, have a BS in dairy and
my heart is in livestock.
I flew back to Nairobi on March 30th. I met Oneal Tankersley at a
production studio where he was editing a video he had filmed. His family
and I spent the night at the Mennonite Guest House. We drove to Eldoret
which is up in the highlands. On the drive we saw zebras and baboons
along the road. I spent the night in the home of Keith and Grace Gafner.
Grace is a Kenyan and a great gardener. I held a workshop just outside
town. Many women attended. Here I got another surprise. These farmers
hire a tractor to plow, plant and cultivate. They have little profit from a crop
after paying that bill. They were really interested in the hand tools I
demonstrated. It was the first workshop interested in a scythe as they
grow wheat and hire a combine to harvest it. I could not believe that a
farmer with one or two acres hires things done. In Central America, a
farmer, practicing what I teach, will farm 10 acres by hand with handtools.
I went home with Dan Bell and he explained some things to me. These
people have been farming for only 30 years. They were pastoralists and
had to become farmers. Therefore, this is all new to them.
After the
workshop, six or so of them came to me and said that I had said
something in the workshop to indicate that I knew something about dairy
farming. They asked me to return and hold a workshop on dairy cattle,
forages and dairying.
Few farmers in Kenya grow anything for their
animals to eat. The cattle have to survive in the bush and nearly starve to
death. When there is no rain, they do starve.
Dan and Beverly Bell live in Kisumu which is on the shore of Lake
Victoria. He is buying a small farm. In fact, he had an agreement for one
but the owner cut down most of the trees so Dan refused to close the
deal. He is lucky in that water hyacinths are in Lake Victoria, just a few
blocks away from his home and that is an unlimited supply of free organic
matter for his garden and farm. Ducks love it.
He asked me to move there for three months and teach workshops all over
the area. I cannot do that, but I would like to go back and teach several
workshops and teach again in Eldoret and Kilifi on dairying. 80% of the
people in Kenya are farmers and, according to the newspaper, financially
much worse off now than they were ten years ago. Africa is 90% short of
dairy products so there is unlimited opportunity in dairying. They should
use milk goats who do much better than cows under their circumstances.
The prices they receive for their crops are below the cost of production.
Not only that, the companies buying them [usually a government agency]
pays only 30% on delivery and the remainder over the next year. Many
times they never get paid. Even worse, they pay below the world price but
sell at the world price. The government pockets the difference. For
example, the goverment pays the sugarcane farmer $25 per ton and sugar
sells for over $5,000 per ton. Otherwise, they sell to a middleman who
pays very little. That is why I take seed for new crops. If they do next year
what they did this year, next year they will have the same results as this
year - near starvation. Most cannot pay the school fees for their children
to attend school. Therefore, the poverty cycle continues. They have to
change, and will, if they are taught how. What I teach requires little
outside inputs. If they will apply what I taught they can double the yield of
the farm within three years. In addition, they can use the bucket drip
irrigation kits, which cost $10 each, to grow during the dry season if a
little water is available.
I thank God, Golf Course Rd. Church of Christ and Randy Prude for this
trip. April 25th I am scheduled to leave for Venezuela.
Ken Hargesheimer
Raised Bed Agriculture is a proven food production system that is
ecologically sound, economically viable, socially responsible and
Biblically based.
Copyright © 2000 Ken Hargesheimer
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