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Kenya: Garden in a Sack
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The East African (Nairobi)
2 June 2008
Posted to the web 2 June 2008
Francis Ayieko
Following shortages in Nairobi after the post-election violence that hit Kenya early this year, a French NGO is now showing residents of Kibera how to survive with less effort.
JANE LIHANDA IS ALL SMILES as she stands outside her shanty in Nairobi's Kibera slum admiring her "sack garden." She has just finished plucking sukuma wiki (kales) and spinach for lunch.
At a time when virtually everyone is complaining of soaring food prices, Ms Lihanda is happily harvesting vegetables at her doorstep. "I count myself lucky that I can get vegetables for free at a time when even people from upmarket estates are complaining of high food prices," she says, pointing at an earth-filled sack planted with a variety of vegetable seedlings.
Like Ms Lihanda's, most doorsteps in Kibera today are flanked by earth-filled sacks planted with kales, spinach, onions, tomatoes and any other vegetable they need for subsistence.
In one of the largest slums in the sub-Saharan Africa, residents have found a way to deal with the food crisis through a French-funded small-scale urban agriculture project. The project, started after last year's post-election violence, is now changing lives in the slum for the better. It involves planting vegetable seedlings on the sides of earth-filled sacks that are placed on the doorstep or rooftops.
Beneficiaries of the project say that besides being a source of food, it has also become a source of income. Those with more sacks sell the surplus vegetables.
For instance, Mary Anyango, who has "six gardens," or six sacks, uses what she harvests from three sacks and sells the rest.
Ms Anyango's family of five feeds on one sack of sukuma wiki for three days whenever the harvest is ready. "When we get around to the third sack, the first one is ready for fresh harvesting," she says. The other three sacks, she adds, earns her about Ksh120 ($1.90) a week. "The money is enough to buy charcoal and cooking fat."
The mother of three says that her husband, who does casual jobs in Nairobi's Industrial Area, now only needs to budget for maize flour and the monthly house rent of Ksh400 ($6.30).
"Life is a little better for us now," she says. "It is not like in January when going without food was the order of the day."
THE PROJECT IS AN INITIATIVE of Solidarites, a France-based non-governmental organisation. It is part of the government of France's response to the humanitarian crisis that hit Kenya when violence broke out in the country after last December's general election.
Alain Joyandet, French Secretary of State for Co-operation and Francophonie, who was in Kenya recently, says his government will continue to support the initiative in Kenya to help the areas affected by post-election unrest to recover from the humanitarian crisis.
Speaking during his tour of the France-sponsored projects in Kibera, Mr Joyandet said that Solidarites will continue to support the free provision of seedlings to the residents and also offer training.
It is the second part of Solidarites' two-phased programme in Kibera and hopes to benefit 18,000 people.
The first phase was food distribution, which has ended. It covered Kiambu district as well. The second phase is small-scale urban agriculture. Initially, the project targeted the most vulnerable groups in the slum - the extremely poor and those with HIV and Aids.
The initial beneficiaries were selected from the most vulnerable people who were identified by their community mobilisers. But it is now open to most residents of the slum.
The NGO received a grant of 200,000 euros ($19.6 million) from the Comite Interministeriel d'Aide Alimentaire (Interministerial Committee on Food Aid) to fund the two programmes.
At Kibera's Makina Village, Solidarites has put up a nursery where the residents can collect seedlings.
To help the newcomers understand the concept, they have put up a demonstration site with a section for distributing seedlings so that those who have mastered the concept can simply carry the seedlings home and start their own sack gardens.
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"With this project, nobody, especially among the womenfolk, has any excuse to be idle," Agnes Ndalo, one of the beneficiaries, says. "The traditional housewife who would spend hours on end in a neighbour's house in fruitless banter is no longer here. Women are busy tending their sack gardens, replacing dead seedlings or watering them."
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