Food for Thought

I'm so lucky to have such a great group of people to support me in my adventures. Now that I'm back in Canada, my adventures may slow down, but I thought I'd try to keep the blog going.

I wanted to share with you a story about a friend (soon to be neighbour) of mine.

A few weeks ago, as she was passing a drug store, she saw a sales clerk throwing away a cart full of bagged milk. She stopped to ask if it had gone bad and was told that the expiry date was the following day so it had to be thrown out. Instead of walking away from this situation, this friend asked the sales guy to load the milk in to her car. She then brought it to the Mission, a homeless shelter, where they did not have the funds to buy even powdered milk, let alone real milk. The Mission was very appreciative and the drug store didn't know the difference. As this friend delved deeper in to the situation of waste from this particular drug store she did not get the results she'd hoped for. The manager suggested he would be locking his dumpsters from now on, instead of providing it to the needy, due to a bad experience he'd had. At this my determined friend went home and called the head office to find out about the store policy. She had researched other groups and found out through Second Harvest in Toronto that stores are protected from being liable when donating food in good faith. So why is it that we still have food being thrown out when people rely so heavily on food banks? How can we be so quick to throw out food, before it's even expired, when other people are hungry? Imagine if every store donated their near expiration food to organizations that could use it quickly?

When she shared this story with me, I was inspired. She's still working on the situation and should be receiving a copy of their store policy soon. She saw something wrong and took a few minutes of her time to make an important contribution to other people's well being.

Sometimes we recognize helping people as charity work done in other countries. Sometimes we justify our inaction to our location or time constraints. What we have to remember, as part of the global community, is that the actions and decisions we take in our own local communities are just as influential as any work being done overseas. We all have the power to make change, it's just a matter of standing up for what is fair.

Urban Growing

Lucy and I.

For my last few days I checked out different projects around Nairobi. Oddly enough everywhere I went growing bamboo came up a lot.

I started out by going with a 65 year old man I met at the hostel to see a bamboo plantation. This was a man who has put a lot in to starting imported bamboo seedlings to sell on a commercial scale for furniture, but also as a fuelwood to dry tea at some of the big plantations. It was a bit confusing as he doesn't want to sell too much, but he's not interested in small scale. His farm was beautiful and the idea is good, he's just trying to work out some of the kinks in his plan.

The Headquarters.

 Monday I went to Kibera, a well known large slum in Nairobi. I met with Ras Ambassa who works with the Haile Selassie I Foundation and Shiriki Organization. They run youth organic farming projects outside of the city, though they also had a small tree nursery behind their main office. The organization also makes sandals from old tires, which were pretty neat. We spent a few hours discussing organic farming, but mainly talking about Ras Tafari. It was very educational. I enjoyed that many of their principles are similar to those of permaculture in that people care for the earth, they care for their fellow people and they practice fair share. There were a few points I took issue with, but this is the case when discussing any one faith.

Organic kale, spinach, cowpeas and onion.

Tuesday I met with a woman named Lucy who I had met at the permaculture course. She is an amazing Kenyan woman who has worked with the Kenya Institute of Organic Agriculture for many years. She invited me to come see the projects she was working on with COOPI in Huruma, another slum outside of Nairobi. There was a presentation being given to the community, mainly the women of the community, on none other than bamboo! I liked the concept of growing bamboo more in this context as it is planned to be used for income generation and will grow well on the grey water that is rushing in to the river that flows through this slum. Ideally the bamboo will purify some of this water as well as being a material to work with in making different types of marketable goods.

River side farming.

Lucy also showed me the small plots they had where they were growing with the garden sacks. In one fenced area they had around 40 bags and in another 68 bags and a cow. It was inspiring to see so many people interested in growing food. There was also a lot of independent pieces of land growing different foods on them... it looked like the Kenyan countryside compacted beside this small river. The project faces different challenges, but are working through them and expanding to include more of the community and train them in organic food growing.

Wednesday I went to visit Amrita Childrens' Home in Athi River, outside of Nairobi. This home is sponsored by Amma, the hugging saint (I'd probably let her hug me). Here they are starting small and hoping to be certified organic. The teacher I had for the permaculture course, Warren Brush, had done the design last year and two girls who had taken the course in previous years were working on the upkeep. It looked great and it was amazing to see how quickly this piece of land came to life after only 8 months. Currently the kids who come to school there are being fed lunch with foods that all come from their kitchen garden as well as being involved in the maintenance. Pretty super.

I also met with a friend of a friend who introduced me to many different projects happening in Kenya and the idea of numerous grants being offered to do similar work. So now it's time to hibernate in Brockville with my computer and start putting the pieces together to develop a program. Any ideas are welcome and I look forward to seeing you all soon!

Winding Down

Here I am back in Nairobi, after a wonderful few weeks enjoying the beaches on the coast.

New Years was spent around a bonfire drinking champagne and eating a fire-grilled Kingfish. We camped on one of the most beautiful beaches I've seen, falling asleep and waking up to the lapping of the ocean. Just beautiful. The newspaper guy would come in the morning, after the mandazi and samosa woman, the fruit guy and the fish guy. Almost like room service to our tent!

view from the tent.

And now it's back to city life. For my last week here I hope to pack in seeing as many projects as possible. I've been in touch with children's homes that are practicing permaculture, slum project working with organic agriculture and today I go to see a bamboo plantation.

The ideas are churning in my brain and I'm looking forward to getting home and putting some plans into action. I'm soaking in as much sun as possible now before I hit the Canadian winter, but am looking forward to being home. See you all soon!