Slow Food Thousand Gardens Inaugural Ceremony at the Watoto Foundation

August 17, 2013 – Watoto Foundation/Slow Food Thousand Gardens Inaugural Ceremony

On my final day in Arusha-region, I went to the Watoto Foundation where we were to hold the inaugural ceremony for the Slow Food Thousand Gardens project.  It took over a month’s time, but we were finally able to solidify the sponsoring/partnership between Slow Food Mohawk Valley in New York State and the WF in Tanzania.  At the ceremony, those present included my homestay mother, Helen who the Coordinator of the Slow Food Thousand Gardens Project in the Northern Zone of Tanzania), Aristarik Lucas (Slow Food Youth Network Coordinator, Arusha), Noud Van Hout (Founder and Director of the Watoto Foundation), five staff members (Watoto Foundation), and over 50 WF students.  We began the festivities by gathering and discussing Slow Food.  Helen gave a brief introduction and then asked what the boys’ hopes and expectations were on the garden project.  They replied with moving answers:

-Educate the community back home, with an emphasis on reducing idleness and being a more active member of the community

-Maintain traditional indigenous crops such as cassava and amaranthus

-Educate AIDS patients on good nutrition

-Teach others about biopesticides

-Have good nutritious meals in the Watoto Foundation kitchen

-Supply organic food to the Kiboko Lodge and local markets

-To own an organic garden in the future to generate income and each on the use of herbs and organic products

-Not to buy vegetables for the Watoto Foundation (growing their own will save money)

-Improve health of students and general self-improvement

-Create self-employment in the future (e.g. "start a company/build a place to grow these foods, teach others, and sell products")

Through the generous donation made by Slow Food Mohawk Valley, the Watoto Foundation was able to purchase:

-Cuttings/splits, seedlings and seeds such as: aloe vera, coco yam, rosemary, lemon grass, papaya, moringa, hot pepper, spinach, swiss chard, pigeon peas, rosela, climbing beans, neem, and herbs

-Tools: sprayer, small garden hoes, watering cans, garden works, rakes, fork hoes, garden hoes, drum for mixing biopesticides, and garden signs

With hopes to purchase local chickens, honey bees, and tilapia for a fish pond.

Their future plans include:

-SF Youth Network Coordinator will train the students on good gardening practices from the Thousand Gardens handbook

-Youth Network Coordinator will make follow up on the garden in 3 months (asking what they've accomplished and if their hopes/expectations have changed)

-Youth Network Coordinator will present to the Watoto Foundation staff and students after attending the Tanzanian Slow Food National Meeting in Morogoro in August 2013

-Provide morgina seeds to students to plant back at their homes for nutrition and disease prevention

-Students will talk to their parents and grandparents at home to get information on food traditions and to bring heirloom seeds back to the foundation to be planted at the WF garden 

It was a wonderfully inspiring event and I was happy to be able to say a few words to the boys myself, though I am not sure how many were lost in translation from English to Swahili.  I thanked them and told them how inspired I am by all of them; how each of them can do anything they put their mind to and that the future has no limits (because realistically, they’ve come so far as former street children); and how Slow Food has been such a powerful force in my own life, helping me build relationships and community wherever I go in the world, that I only hope it can be just as inspiring and educational for them.  During the handing over of tools, the sign posting, and the planting, the boys were once again overflowing with energy and enthusiasm.  I am so grateful to have been a part of this beautiful exchange and cannot wait to hear about its future progress.

An inaugural planting of Aloe Vera

With my homestay parents

Host mom!

With my homestay sister