Networking comes good

Thursday 25 October

Felicien is quite outspoken. Chemical fertiliser and pesticides poison the earth and poison people. What a relief to hear those words from the mouth of a young Rwandan! He is 25. He works for a small British charity, Rwanda Aid (www.rwanda-aid.org), based 100 yards from my guesthouse.

Alphonse and I are meeting him at the suggestion of Mary, friend of Dorothy and Vern (with whom I stayed in Byumba last week), retired from a career in NGOs and the UN, and now a VSO volunteer director at Rwanda Aid. It turns out that Felicien and Alphonse know each other from church: Felicien's wife works on the student support team at Friends School Kamembe. (I learnt yesterday from Dieudonne, the new head, that over half the students are genocide survivors or orphans, so support is essential.)

This morning I was trying to be tactful in expressing my dislike of chemical treatments. Before the class assembled, Odette, the pastor at Cyete, wanted me to see her garden, where she has been growing food since my first visit.

Odette and Alphonse with the unmodernised market behind

She has the ingredients for several large compost heaps,

not yet assembled, bought from whomever is responsible for cleaning the old-fashioned market when the traders have abandoned their debris. But she uses chemical fertiliser to boost the growth of her plants after starting them with natural compost.

She is planting a variety of potato new to this region and has been told to spray with insecticide every week. I suggest she might wait to see if she gets any pests, as the insecticide kills the benefical insects as well as the harmful ones. This is my first attempt, she says. I'd better do what they tell me.

Later, in class, I ask who uses artificial fertiliser. All but three. One of those says she gets better yields using only compost and manure. The others are dubious. It's not easy to go against the Monsanto orthodoxy promoted by officials at every level

It has been raining on and off all morning, often too loud on the tin roof for teaching, so I am short of time. I focus on the reasons for eating a varied diet - Odette has said the women need to know why to eat what they are starting to grow. I can't give recipes for plant tea or liquid manure. I can't even discuss the ingredients for compost, to revise what I taught last time. What I can do is encourage the group to look for information and support from local experts, who will know more than I do about local conditions. I mention my planned meeting with Felicien. Odette knows him slightly.

With Mary's encouragement Felicien takes Alphonse and me out to the farm where he does five-day organic trainings.

Here is the kitchen garden in front of the training and accommodation block

There are kitchen garden beds, pigs, cows, chickens. I learn later there is a widespread problem with rabbits weakened by inbreeding succumbing to disease, so we see no rabbits. He has a sequence of compost heaps and a tree nursery for fruit and fodder trees which he gives the students to plant at home.

At one side of the site is a demonstration smallholding, to show what can be achieved on a modest plot. Students who practise what they learn on the first course may be invited back for animal husbandry training and leave with a piglet.

He agrees to train six women - two from each of the groups where I am working this week, so they can train the others. It will cost them nothing, but they need to be free to leave their families for the residential course, where children cannot be accommodated. Alphonse undertakes to liaise with the pastors and the groups. I hope the women come forward.

I was permitted to photograph this wonderful bundle of pumpkin leaves and bean leaves in Cyete market, but not the trader who carried it on her head. Alphonse asked if you could harvest the beans as well as the leaves. She replied that the plants yield better if you take off some of the leaves.