Wednesday 19 November 2014

Revisiting Mwana N'Shuti (Child my Friend)

In 2009, at the beginning of the Growing Together in Rwanda project, I supervised the making of a compost heap in the grounds of this training school for vulnerable teenagers, started by the Friends Church as an initial post-genocide project in 1998. Antoine, my host - with his family - for this visit, is now coordinator of Friends Peace House and director of Mwana N'Shuti on a shared site. One of the men working with me today remembered me from the lesson in compost: here is the current heap being raided for dry material to protect our seeds from excess of sun or rain.

Today's project is to plant a section of the school field with some of the seeds I've brought from home. The great bundle of packets, donated because they will be out of date by next year's spring planting, enthralled Antoine's family on Tuesday evening. The tendency here is for any difference of variety to be met with suspicion - a lettuce or cabbage with a pink tinge must be diseased, for example. Antoine made a selection suitable for experimental planting: a dark cabbage (only white is known here, apart from a kale from Kenya which some are prepared to try), two kinds of sweet peppers, leeks (which don't even have their own name in Kinyarwnda distinct from onion, though I've seen them in the main markets), spring onions and chives, an Italian summer broccoli with small heads ('Yes, it's a kind of cauliflower, but you cut the florets and more should grow'). Finally there are 3 kinds of lettuce. I explain that they may not germinate if the temperature is too high, even in the shade.

A team has been assembled including two members of the conservative agriculture programme, the visiting entrepreneurship lecturer - goodness knows why but Antoine hs his reasons for everything - and some extra muscle power. Safari sets to with sticks, string and a measuring tape to mark out beds a metre wide for easy access. Much time goes on removing stones and grass roots though a first pass with hoes has obviously been done quite recently. Channels are marked and the seeds carefully spaced.

In the foreground Antoine takes his turn at sowing while in the background a shady bed under two trees is prepared for the lettuce

I comment on the gender of the participants. 'Cultivating' is traditionally women's work, and low status. The men are quite comfortable to be changing with the times, though when we come to discussing how these unusual foods might be cooked and eaten they say they'll consult their wives - not a distinctively Rwandan response.

When I first visited Rwanda(as a folk dancer) somebody mentioned a programme devised by two white Zimbabwean farmers they called 'Farming God's way', now renamed 'Foundations for farming'. It recommends various conservative techniques - minimum till, natural compost, terracing for soil and water retention, and mulching to reproduce'God's blanket' which occurs naturally on uncultivated land where leaves and other natural detritus cover the soil and replace nutrients as they rot. Mulching has been widely adopted here. I'll leave our morning's work with a picture of the finished beds. The stakes are in preparation for making a shade canopy to replace the 'blanket' once the seedlings are established.

Mwana N'Shuti is currently preparing to open a cookery course, assembling equipment and writing grant applications. A small cafe for staff at both establishments and also the motor mechanics who now rent a space for a repair workshop alongside the Mwana N'Shuti training in vehicle maintenance is about to open. It will begin with tea and snacks but could go on to serve food prepared by the cookery students. Some good synergy here.

There is no cafe within convenient distance. This young man arrived with his bucket of filling snacks and settled on the bench next to me. 5 or 6 of the planting team bought from him - a chappati folded over a samosa was the favourite. In the bucket with the food were a fork and a thin plastic bag to use as a glove, so the food didn't have to be handled directly. Somebody asked me jokingly whether he might die from eating with unwashed hands. Consciousness of the benefit of good hygiene has certainly advanced over the years of my visits.

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