Mama Flora

On my farm I grow bananas, maize, beans, soya beans, sweet potatoes, cassava, kale, cowpeas, miro, murere, jadrofa trees, muringa, napier grass, Boma Rhodes for the cows. We also have cattle, goats, sheep, chicken, and a cat! (Suzie.)

Since the resource center started and they started giving agriculture lessons, I have learned new ways to use planting and maintaining the crops that I have. It has really helped me get proper maintenance of the crops, particularly perennial crops like bananas.

Since I started learning and putting what I learned into practice, for example, the bananas are now doing well. Before I was getting small bananas on each stem, but now I’m getting big fruit that we can sell and that our family can eat. For a long time we were never eating ripe bananas, but now there are plenty. For several years there was no sakumawiki on my farm, but now there is plenty, even during the dry season, thanks to good planting techniques. Also through the water harvesting lesson, I learned how to harvest the rain water and preserve it and use it during the dry season for vegetables and all that.

Through the lesson for making compost manure, it has reduced my cost for fertilizer because I have dairy cows and the remains of farm produce that I can mix together to get enough manure to plant vegetables, grass, maize, and now I am using no artificial fertilizer on my farm.

I have attended all of the agriculture lessons at the center. I would love to learn even more, including how to use a computer.

I’m hoping that in the next five years my farm will be producing 10 times what I’m getting now because just within a few months, I’ve seen a difference. If I put what I’ve learned into practice, I’m predicting a big change in what I produce on my farm. I’m also predicting that with the livestock lessons I’ve taken, the dairy cows I have are changed and the purebred cows that I have are producing more milk, maybe so much that the vehicle will be coming here to collect it and take it directly to the factory! I hope to be supplying to the community if my neighbours and others in the community don’t have enough. I want to be a full dairy farmer within this five years.

What will the community get from the centre?

The first thing that the community will get from the resource centre is the lessons that will assist the community. Second, we have employment for those working at the centre. Third, we have the farm produce that is being produced. When we expand the projects like chicken, it will really help the community. With the water at the centre during dry season we will get more of the farm produce. We will do the watering of the vegetables and plants to supply to the community. There is also the chicken project, bananas, dairy cow – the milk will be supplied to the community to use.

How has the centre impacted women in the community?

First impression for the women is when the girls came in August for the leadership training and what they learned has really changed the thinking of the women in the community. Most women thought that there was some specific work for women and specific work for men. Now, for example, you find there are more women than men learning at the centre. It’s really changing the attitude of the community towards women. Computer lessons and other such lessons, if the women can be given first priority to learn, it can change the community at large.

Two, if the board can organize another leadership training for all the women, not just the girls, but training for women who are married and who will stay in the community, it will have impact for the local community.

How else can the centre help the community at large?

First and foremost, what I’m looking at now that can assist the community at large is to train the boys who ride the pikipiki (motorbikes) that are now serving the community all over. The boys that are riding the pikipiki, they re not trained. I’ve never heard that there is a place to train these boys. If we can start training for pikipiki, it will really assist the community and reduce the accidents that happen now. If that one starts at the resource centre, it will bring light to the community, it will be the first time we have training for the drivers. Also the computer lessons will assist the girls in the community. This is why I want to learn to use the Internet myself. We can have girls and school children coming to learn the computer and it will help them communicate the world over.

We don’t have enough computers or modems to give the students to learn. If friends can find a way to help to supply more, it would be very good. If there are pikipikis for training, we can get somebody to train the boys how to drive, but right now there is no pikipiki to use to learn. If this could happen, the training would expand beyond this community into surrounding districts and ultimately the whole country. You could also add training for mechanics to fix the motorbikes, then the drivers would be coming from all over, from there they could learn how to fix their own pikipiki in case of an emergency.

Many aid agencies seem to have trouble building programs that last. How do you think the centre is different?

There is a saying that I really like that a friend used to use, that “You stay with them, learn what they do, and do with them.” It’s good when friends come from outside and when donors come because they bring their thoughts and their resources and we put them together with the thoughts and resources that the community have and they stay when they leave. But when someone comes and says this is what you do, when they leave it will not be maintained. I would feel the same thinking from the resource centre could be sold to other friends in other communities so that we have a place where the community will come to learn things and we have a donor who will learn and who can leave the knowledge and the resources to leave with the community, not just come and say, I build for you this, and then leave.

For the future of the centre, the construction and land is not enough. If there is a way to expand the land and construct enough buildings, we will need them for the centre to expand into all of the projects that we want to run, but right now the buildings are not enough and the land is not enough. We hope to get more friends to come in and assist in such a direct way.