Su Kahumbu

also on this reuters report

Victor, Moha, Hassan and the others are probably the most interviewed and filmed folk in the Kibera slum home to over 1,000,000 inhabitants.
The success of the farm is now being looked upon as an interesting solution to urban food security and as a role model farm being emulated by a number of Youth Groups within Kibera and Dagoretti slums.

Kenya is now in it’s fourth year of failed rains, with the effects of famine being felt country wide, resulting in power rationing in the capital city of Nairobi due to low water levels in the hydro electric dams. Crop failure is the norm, talks of food security are high on donor and government agendas, the next few months as we wait for the November rains, will be telling. Kenya sadly is facing a huge famine……………again…………………sigh

And what have we done?
We’ve given our farmers subsidised fertilizer and ‘improved’ seed varieties …….and left them up to ’shauri ya mungu’………….God will take care of us from then on, we have resorted to praying for rain.
And when and if it comes , no doubt it will come down in bucket loads flooding the plains and damaging the soil resulting in sweeping erosion before disappearing again , for years?
And we will blame the Government again. Where are the dams? The water catchment areas? The rain harvesting plans etc. And the Government will figure on bigger priorities, why build dams when the rains have gone afterall?

So this is the way I see it. The farm in Kibera is green productive and sustainable. Why? Drip irrigation and hard work that repays. It is small in size. But then so are most of our small scale rural farms. So why are our small scale farmers not doing the same. Simple, they do not know how to.

The avarage age of Kenya’s small scale farmers is 65yrs old, 70% of whom are women. Many have never left their villages and sell their goods at farm gate to brokers. How would they ever know about drip irrigation? Could they afford it? Would they know how to install it? Are they too old and is it too late? The fact simply is with global climate change we must change our production methods with the biggest change being made around our water use. So we must make drip irrigation, installation maintenance and affordability, available to our small scale farmers in order to feed ourselves as a nation.
Kibera is a great example. The Youth are longing for employment, are not interested in the hard labour of digging the hardpan soils yet are easily converted to agriculture with exciting new technologies. They require capacity building, skills support and encouragement which will ultimately result in employment. If we can make this happen for the Youth they will feed the nation. Green Dreams Foundation is working on the journey.

Su called me to tell me that the sunflowers have opened! Recall that They were planted at the end of July using our seed planting gadget (a simple plastic water pipe with a twig taped at the end to create the hole and direct the seed while saving the planters from endless backaches) – I wrote about this and other innovations in Kibera on Afrigadget blog here. It had been months since I’d seen the farm, Peter (BBC Correspondent for East Africa) and I rushed over with Su to get photos knowing that the sight had to be spectacular. Don’t tell him but “Yes” we’re trying to get BBC interested in covering this wonderful positive story out of Africa

We met Abdulahi at the entrance of the farm which is nicely fenced – he had erected a sign banning all photographers!

I discovered that the sunflowers were there for a purpose, and it was not to beautify the farm. Earlier in this blog Su had mentioned slightly elevated levels of heavy metals in some parts of the shamba (farm). It turns out that sunflowers have a unique ability to extract zinc! It’s complicated interaction between the secretions from earthworms which causes the binding of heavy metals which in turn allows plants to take them up. Sunflowers are extraordinarily efficient at this.

The sad news is that you can’t eat the seeds or compost the leaves as this is where the zinc accumulates. The flowers and leaves sadly have to be burned (even though I’d love to take some home to adorn my living room).

The worm farm has evolved! Here’s the new look, a half barrel filled to the brim with material and worms. The litter around is about to go into the tank.

Su and Mohammed spent some time digging in to look at the little critters which were buried deep because the top few inches were quite dry. He was advised to add more water. The worms digest all the household and crop waste and every month the team pour water ontop of the entire tank and catch what comes out. The worm poo which is conveniently called ‘casts’ dissolves and out comes a nutritious brown liquid that is imaginatively called ‘worm tea’. Anyone for a cuppa?

The worms here are a peculiar blue colour …I hope it’s not a bad sign!

Someone on the afrigadget blog asked how the water for irrigation is paid for? Well, here’s the story. The youth reform group own a watertank and they provide a clean water service to anyone in the community. They sell water by the 20 litre jerrycan to anyone in the community. This generates the income needed to pay for the farm irrigation water.

We also heard how these ex criminals challenged a mafia like group up stream the previous week – these guys had disconnected water to the community of hundreds of thousands of people. I can only imagine the image of ex criminals walking over to the water control valve where they organized the permanent opening of the water supply line! The community was so pleased to have water again that all manner of in kind donations for the construction of the community center were received.

Here’s Abdulahi

Victor

And Moha

And here’s Su with the guys during the ‘inspection’

Ok, for some reason lay out is completely all over the place!

To begin with, I needed to see the area in question and my friend Wakio Seaforth went into Kibera with Mr Saidi one of the representatives of the group. She returned with the following pictures

From then until now the youth have worked at a terriffic pace to make their dreams come true. Assisted by Dominic Wanjihia who trained them in setting up their drip irrigation system, Johara who arranged the soil tests, Zak who assisted in the early days, Claire who made the connections, raised finance and guided the group with their finances and myself…mainly co-ordinating, planning and advising, the following pictures are a testimony to the youth groups hard work and success.