Our 2nd day at GBIACK, Friday, we visited two other farms. But first we were invited to plant a tree at the GBIACK demonstration farm. We were very honored to be asked to contribute in this way, and the tree will bear our name, so everyone there will remember us. While we only spent a few days with Samuel, Peris and their children, we stayed at their house, ate meals together and spent long amazing days together, so we felt like we knew them already for a long time once we left, ensuring that we will not forget them either!
After we planted the tree we set out for the area surrounding Thika again to meet farmers. We traveled with Samuel, Peris and a lovely soft-spoken young man named Sammy who does community outreach and farmer training with GBIACK. The first farm we visited was the home of three brothers, and the youngest, Samuel Gitau, was trained by GBIACK last year and enthusiastically led our tour. There are 3 acres divided evenly amongst the three brothers, who have been on this land since 1978. They are part of a larger group of 25 farmers who did the training together. It was great to see how confident Samuel was of what he had learned and been implementing for the past 6 months, and how pleased he was with the results. It was a really beautiful farm, on sloping land leading to a small open valley below, with a stream running the length of the valley. We encountered many women farmers during our tour, who we assume were wives or family members, although Samuel’s wife died last year. We found this out when we asked about a bunch of red flowers and dark green plants we could see growing in the midst of corn stalks. We thought maybe it was another example of intercropping, but Samuel explained that it was his wife’s grave (an awkward moment). We visited it together, and he explained that this is how burials are done here. There was a cross with her name on it, and it was clearly well tended to.
Samuel was growing French green beans that looked amazing, tomatoes, corn (ubiquitous), bananas, pumpkins, cassava, sweet potatoes, amaranth, papaya, mango, rice – an experiment – and much more that I am forgetting now. The three brothers were very thin, perhaps malnourished, but had the energy and resources to improve their lives, thanks to biointensive farming.
The second farmer we met, Godfrey Ndegwa, is a retired teacher who, along with his wife is HIV+. A lively, articulate and gregarious man, he was very happy to show us his farm and extol the virtues of GBIACK and biointensive farming. We started with a funny moment – at the beginning of our interview with him, surrounded by his maize crop, he said he was very happy that GBIACK had taught him to plant GMO crops. He seemed serious, so we were a bit stunned and quite confused. But then we realized he had meant to say that he had learned about the problems with GMO’s.
He has quite a few coffee plants on his 2.5 acre farm - it turns out that they are the only plants remaining from what used to be his sole crop. He explained what a terrible market coffee has become: you have to sell to the Kenya Coffee Board, and you receive 10 shillings per kilo (only about 15 cents!)…But 7+ of the 10 shillings go to brokers and factory workers, leaving 3 or less remaining for the farmer to pay labor and inputs (overhead). As Godfrey said “A farmer grows coffee to become poor”,
We were in a bit of a hurry to get back to town for a meeting, and Godfrey was disappointed as his wife had expected us eat lunch with them. It is his custom that if we eat something at his house, it will bring good blessings to their home, so he peeled some yams for us to eat before we left. It was purple and a bit odd, starchy, but it tasted good.
Our meeting was with Africa Biodiversity Network, ABN, which is a member of Kenya Biodiversity Coalition. They have a nice office in Thika, and we enjoyed meeting with Anne, their Director of Advocacy. She told us about their amazing programs, addressing organic farming, agro-fuels and climate change, and their network of partners in multiple countries. We hope to stay in touch and share information with them about AGRA.
When we got back to GBIACK we walked over to one of the three children’s homes they work with, Child Rescue Center International. GBIACK trained two of their staff to grow enough food for the home. However we learned that the Center’s water had been cut off due to them not paying their water bill as the price is exorbitantly high – much higher than the rate people pay just a couple of miles away. We were very happy when it rained the next day, because the children’s garden clearly needed to be watered. Along with playing with the super cute kids there, we had the privilege of meeting the Center’s founder and director, a young energetic man whose dream was to help kids like himself, who were forced to live in the streets.
We had an amazing time at GBIACK, and are very fond of Samuel, Peris and their extended family. They are incredibly generous people, helping as many people in the community as they can despite living in quite difficult circumstances themselves. GBIACK only formed last year and has already trained 3000 farmers, including the widows we met. They also train young women to become self-sufficient by teaching them tailoring skills....their integrated approach to community development is an inspiration.
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