Field Trip to Bondo

Monday we loaded a 14 passenger matatu with members from the co-operative group and headed off to Bondo in Nyanza Province (about a 2 1/2 hour drive) to visit some of Alex's groups.  Our first stop was Dala Rieko, "a meeting place for sharing of knowledge and good practice".  The site is run by a Norwegian NGO headed by Tor Rafoss.  Alex has been working with Tor for 7 years and tells us that he used to be a very large donor -- now he has shifted all of his efforts into training and capacity building.

Rod looks on as Alex shows off home-made chicken feed and organic pesticide.

The centre was so impressive.  They train youth in permaculture and organic farming.  They make their own feed for kukus (poultry) and fish.  They are experimenting with spirulina, goji berries, pomegranate, and aloe vera which command a high price in the export market.  You can't erradicate poverty by only selling to each other, you need to bring money in.  They have a brand new eco-san toilet -- separates "long call" from "short call", composts and both make excellent fertilizer.  They have an inexpensive, manual irrigation system when used with mulch means that you can have one harvest after another without having to wait for the rains.  Now you might get one good harvest, plus one small one if you are lucky, of maize.  With this system, you can expect 4 harvests!

Irrigation system (only 10,000 Ksh) and no-till bed with water hyacinth mulch

Alex promises to get the recipes for mulch, compost, chicken and fish feed, and organic pesticide.  Simple, inexpensive, totally do-able solutions that can be implemented immediately without donor support.  They were really excited about this stop.  We are going to arrange a visit with KASFOOC and Fredrick before we leave.

Meeting under the shade of a fragrant tree.

We also visited a women's group that is doing extremely well -- with no donor dollars!  They have two main income generating activities; both are doing extremely well.  First is omena (tiny dried fish).  These are plentiful in this region, right next to Lake Victoria.  The women add value by frying and packaging them.  They sell them to Nakumat and bring in 10,000 Ksh every two weeks.  "How did you get them into the store?" asked one of the visitors.  "We just spoke to the manager of the store."  Simple.  They did have to get a certificate from public health in safe food handling, a course offered for free.

The group did a demonstration of their second income generating activity -- table banking.  This was quite a long process, but we watched the group raise 3,000 Ksh in the course of a single meeting.  They have a cash box, with three locks.  Three different members each take a key and another member takes the cash box -- for security and transparency.  The group has two treasurers and keeps impeccable records.

Table banking: three padlocks, pass books, coloured money bags each fund.

Once the box is open, each member contributes, one at a time, 20 bob to the "social fund".  This fund is used if a member falls ill or there is a funeral to contribute to.  At the end of the year, if they haven't needed to use the fund for support, they may choose to have a Christmas party or divide the money up amongst the members.  The second step is savings.  Each member, again one at a time in front of everyone, buys "fish".  They speak in a language that makes sense to them.  In this region one fish goes for 100 Ksh.  So, instead of buying "shares", they buy fish.  For each 100 Ksh they put into savings, they get one "fish" or "share".  Members "buy" as many "fish" as they want and their passbooks are updated.

The next step is micro finance; paying back loans that were taken out the previous month.  Loans are available to each member based on how many fish (shares) they have in their savings.  Loans are always for one month and are charged a 10% interest (that's 10% per month).  They have never had a default on a loan.  The final step is to lend out new loans.  When we started, the group announced that they had 8,000 Ksh in outstanding loans.  At the end of this meeting, after savings and loans were paid back, they had 11,860 Ksh in loans.  All the money that comes in is loaned out again.  If it's not, they deposit excess into the bank.  The group has a goal of buying a tractor within two years; that will cost a couple of million shillings.  No one in our group had ever imagined that a group of rural women like themselves could even dream of buying something so expensive.

We celebrated with a meal and a song before we headed for the long drive home.  

Celebration Feast -- ugali, potatoes, rice, omena, fish, kuku, stew, skuma, cabbage.

Don't forget about us!