There and Back Again: the World Travels of a Watson Fellow: Watoto Foundation and the Best Farmer

Tuesday, July 2, 2013

Watoto Foundation and the Best Farmer

July 1-2, 2013

Today I visited an organization called the Watoto Foundation, which I may have mentioned in a previous post. They are a Dutch-founded NGO that helps “hard core” street children in Arusha by housing them, having them attend academic classes in the morning, and then teaching them trades in the afternoon. While this may seem unrelated to my project, I am actually helping coordinate a partnership between Slow Food Mohawk Valley (back home) and the Thousand Gardens Project of Slow Food in Africa. By connecting my homestay mother to the SFMV chapter chair, we might be able to establish a “sister” garden here, which would be most exciting! I took a tour of the facilities, which include extensive gardens, animal husbandry, workshops (carpentry, welding, electrical, auto repair), dormitories, communal kitchen and dining, a biogas production system, and sports fields. They organically grow bananas, coffee, papaya, maize, cabbage, sweet potatoes and beans to name a few crops and are blessed with fencing and drip irrigation. The Foundation currently has 54 boys, ages 13-18, and also has a tourist lodge affiliated with it, which employs many of the older boys, training them in cooking, hotel management, and business. They grow food for home consumption, the lodge, and some sales (eggs, meat, milk etc.). I am excited to work out the details with my homestay mom of figuring out how we can pair SFMV and the Watoto Foundation, which could deeply benefit from acquiring more seeds, signage, water cans, more hand tools, and training in seed saving and post-harvest handling. In addition to touring the grounds, I spent a little bit of time in the garden with the boys. They are all so polite, coming right up to you, “Hello, how are you?” they proudly say in English, shaking your hand.

Harvesting beans

Weeding

Posing with some of the boys and my homestay mom Helen

Helping prepare dinner

The following day, I harvested moringa from my homestay garden and started removing the leaves. Apparently this plant is good for people with HIV/AIDs and treats a number of health-related ailments. We will dry the leaves, grind them, and make them into a powder to package and sell. After this, I took a field trip with 13 boys from the foundation to meet “The Best Farmer.” Who is the best farmer, you ask, and what does this even mean? His name is Zadock Kitomera and he was chosen as Arumeru District’s best farmer in 2012 for his best practices (chosen by the district agriculture staff). After visiting his 1.5 acre farm, I can definitely see why. Although a relatively small plot of land in the nearby lowlands, it was incredibly diverse and dynamic. He has been cultivating vegetables organically since 2000, when he first learned and held a strong opinion about the negative effects of using chemical fertilizers and pesticides. He went on for a bit about how they are causing cancer, shortening people’s lifespans, and have no place in our food system. He has vermicompost (worms) for small-scale compost production, in addition to several hot compost piles for larger volumes (which he then sells to places like AVRDC). He has constructed a number of different raised bed models made out of local materials, including one from an old truck tire! He keeps animals (goats, chickens, and cows for milk and eggs) and has four fish-ponds where he raises tilapia. Moreover, his farm has its own biogas producing scheme from the animal manure, which he can then use to cook over a stove. Although the Kitomera family farm is small, it is incredibly diverse and robust that attempts to operate on a closed loop system: the animal waste provides fertilizer for the crops, excess vegetation from the fields feeds the animals etc. I was quite impressed with his knowledge and passion to teach others about best practices and also about the Watoto Foundation boys’ eagerness to learn. They had notebooks and were scribbling notes in Swahili as Zadock explained different aspects of his operation. It seems that he goes against many of the notions I’ve heard so far (i.e. that small farmers in Tanzania are more interested in increasing their yields for profit and therefore aren’t incentivized farm organically), which was exciting to see another side to the story. What’s more is that he’s also a member of Slow Food!