Follow up

On our way to a Mutura participant's garden, passing fields ready for planting

This week I have been back to two groups of women I first visited a few months ago, at Mutura and Burera, in Northern Province. Both say they are delighted that I wanted to come back – so often they have a training from somebody they never see again. The work follows a similar pattern for both groups: visit some participants' kitchen gardens; talk about cooking – not overcooking - the new vegetables and about the way different foods complement each other and improve nutrition in a good mixed diet; consider the needs of different age groups and genders, and especially weaning. The Mutura participants drink hot tea on a cold morning

My parting gift to each group is a collection of seeds – some bought locally, some bought in London and some saved from my own vegetable garden. 'We will plant these seeds in our hearts and minds as well as our gardens', say the women from Mutura.

Driving with Antoine between the two locations, I notice considerable deterioration in the road surface, even since November. This road was surfaced in 1986, he tells me. Properly mending small holes would make good sense. But there is no budget for running repairs, no follow up. I read in the English language paper a few days ago that the East African Economic Community has agreed a standard weight limit for heavy goods vehicles, eliminating the need for frequent weighbridges and the attendant temptations to bribery. Rwanda's current limit is lower. Will provision be made for this road – one of only three to Uganda with proper crossing facilities – to bear the heavier loads? Possibly not.

Antoine tells me later that he is very impressed by the group at Burera. All the 15 women who learned to plant in sacks last time have returned – and arrived on time. All say they have planted a sack and enjoyed the vegetables. In the go-round Vestine says her 12 year old daughter now has her own sack; Joyce has been commended as an example in her umudugudu (group of 10 or more households); Katharine's neighbours are coming to learn from her, as are Josephine's; Florence's family are eating plenty of vegetables; best of all, from my point of view, Angelique has started a second sack. That's what really matters, I say: not that you ate well for one season but that you'll continue to benefit.At Burera, Modeste poses beside her sack containing cabbages, parsley, celery and onions

When I raise the topic of weaning, the pastor interjects that there is no kwashiorkor here, whereas at Mutura it was raised as a concern. Protein is more available here, with peanuts in the local market and small fish, eaten whole, from the lake. But the real difference seems to be in the kind of support given by the local health centre. Here, the women say they are given guidance at the clinic; in Mutura most follow customary practice but with fewer resources than before the war. Learning new practices, developing new attitudes, can't happen without patient support.

Follow up could be crucial, also, for the groups of Batwa revisited last October, a year after my first work with them in 2010. Particularly poised between forward momentum and dispiriting inertia is the community recently rehoused in the campaign to get rid of grass-roofed huts and given a little land to cultivate. Without encouragement they may well give their land away. A proposal for further training in cultivation and cooperation, with follow up visits for several months, is on its way to AGLI (see note to previous post). But last year's main funder has said it will not renew its grant. And my active involvement in Growing Together is due to end this year.

Who knows which seeds will bear fruit?