By Sarah Anderson
Published in March 2006
A group of mothers, grandmothers and a few men, all farmers, are seated beside me at the Ugunja Community Resource Centre’s Technical Institute. These 40 community members, known as the Change Team, have been attending training in participatory community twice a month for two years. My partner Julian and I arrived in western Kenya to spend five months volunteering, learning and developing the partnership between UCRC and The Working Centre. Today we are attending the Change Team graduation.
After a morning review session, the smallest woman stands up to lead the group in a song:
Kawuoth nono kang’ato. Wach puonj ema okela dalani
I don’t go to your home just for the sake of going. I go with skills and information to share.
It feels good to sing with them, trying to follow the dancers’ rhythm as they move in a circle.
The tin roof is heating the room in the mid-day heat, but during this sea-son of almost daily short rains, I know that rain will fall on Ugunja; cooling me and watering the maize, skuma (kale), sweet potatoes, oganda (beans), bananas, sugar cane, and cassava and fruit and firewood trees growing in the hilly family farms all around us.
When I sing the words of the song later that day, my friend says “Yes, that is the Change Team song. They like to sing that one.” Following the song’s message, the Change Team will share their knowledge and skills with members of their groups, neighbours, friends and family to pass on practical ideas: how to build sanitary latrines; community mobilization tools; and – important for a district where livelihoods are based in large part on subsistence farming – the latest sustainable agriculture approach.
Christine, a Change Team member has offered some of her cassava to a group of farmers as part of UCRC’s cassava multiplication initiative. Situated off a narrow red dirt road, Christine’s farm brimmed with life: fruit trees, hanging birds’ nests, flowers, chickens, cattle and skuma – a mixture of her agricultural skill and the new ideas she had gained through training.
Though less nutritious than maize and millet, cassava is important for local food security because of its ability to resist drought and pests. For several years local cassava production was stopped because of diseases affecting the crop and a general decrease in local soil fertility. To address the loss of this crop, UCRC sustainable agriculture extension workers researched disease resist-ant varieties of cassava and began introducing them to local farmers.
As part of the cassava multiplication initiative, farmers like Christine who received initial cassava cuttings from UCRC have grown them out, saving some for their own use. The majority of the crop is used to create more cuttings for other farmers who work together using opangas to harvest and cut the cassava stalks into 4 inch cuttings. These farmers will next year offer part of their cassava crop for further multiplication.
UCRC applies this multiplication model in all of its programs: sustain-able agriculture, women’s empowerment, communication technology, health & disability, and education. Working within Siaya District where the impact of HIV/AIDS and soil in-fertility causes extreme poverty, UCRC supports people to identify and accessing local resources to address the needs of communities, improve livelihoods, and share experiences so that others can do the same.
Since Julian and I arrived here in Ugunja UCRC staff Charles Ogada has left to volunteer at The Working Centre for three months. Just like in the Change Team song, we visit each other’s homes with skills and knowledge to share, and an openness to learning.
