Composting
Tanzania, Africa
Moses went back to the village this past weekend. I am anxiously to talk to him. It had been over 7 weeks since last time. We lost touch with the villagers for a few weeks due to communications issues but finally heard back from the group leader the week before this visit. She said much progress had been made. We were thrilled.
Moses finished the training on composting during the last visit. Composting usually takes 2 months to prepare. As the farming season kicked off this month in the village, we were both eager to learn more about their progress. Composting uses natural materials, such as leaves, manure etc, from their farms and surrounding areas to create organic fertilizer. This will not only help improve their soil and increase yield but also maintain their tradition of not using any chemical materials for their farms. It costs the impoverished farmers nothing! On top of that, composting piles expand the arable land because you can plant more crops on a half-dome surface than a flat land.
This is a critical milestone for us. If the Tanzanian farmers have shown success and proactiveness through the composting project, we would begin to expand our program and possibly provide additional assistance for farming materials.
We usually have our meeting around 1 or 2 a.m. California time to review the results and observations from the visit as soon as Moses comes back from the village but delay was common. The mini bus was always late. I waited up until 4 a.m. and finally had to go to bed. During the week, Moses works for a small NGO in Arusah whose founder does not approve of the participation in this project so Moses always has to play hide and seek on Friday afternoons when he has to take off early to go to the village to work on my project. I am glad that he has stuck with the project.
For now, I have to wait to hear from him.
Moses went back to the village this past weekend. I am anxiously to talk to him. It had been over 7 weeks since last time. We lost touch with the villagers for a few weeks due to communications issues but finally heard back from the group leader the week before this visit. She said much progress had been made. We were thrilled.
Moses finished the training on composting during the last visit. Composting usually takes 2 months to prepare. As the farming season kicked off this month in the village, we were both eager to learn more about their progress. Composting uses natural materials, such as leaves, manure etc, from their farms and surrounding areas to create organic fertilizer. This will not only help improve their soil and increase yield but also maintain their tradition of not using any chemical materials for their farms. It costs the impoverished farmers nothing! On top of that, composting piles expand the arable land because you can plant more crops on a half-dome surface than a flat land.
This is a critical milestone for us. If the Tanzanian farmers have shown success and proactiveness through the composting project, we would begin to expand our program and possibly provide additional assistance for farming materials.
We usually have our meeting around 1 or 2 a.m. California time to review the results and observations from the visit as soon as Moses comes back from the village but delay was common. The mini bus was always late. I waited up until 4 a.m. and finally had to go to bed. During the week, Moses works for a small NGO in Arusah whose founder does not approve of the participation in this project so Moses always has to play hide and seek on Friday afternoons when he has to take off early to go to the village to work on my project. I am glad that he has stuck with the project.
For now, I have to wait to hear from him.
posted by Nancy at 3:01 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home