Rotaract Meeting &Tilapia

Tanya and I just returned from a Rotaract  meeting at the local university.  The club is just starting its semester with 20 members and a full plate of activities planned.  President Anathasius and Secretary Abraham led a good meeting.

Short video of Rotaract meeting HERE

Feb 4th there is Kakamega clean up. Their motto this year: "Everyone is blessed to be a blessing to be a blessing to others".  Saturdays they visit Rotary High school to give talks, tutoring and organize games (kids got o school on Saturdays but not all day).  They will also visit childrens homes.  Last year they volunteered at a Womens maternal Health clinic. They were touched by one 18 year old girl who had 5 kids and a 24 yr old with 6 kids.  They want to continue with adult education.  They also plan on sending a few students to the annual Rotary leadership conference in Nairobi March 14th (RC Kakamega usually sponsors 2, but they hope to send 4 first year students (because older ones have exams and it sows seeds for future Rotaracters).

After that we met with Nahn Nygeun from Houston who has alot of info on tilapia.  He is keen to do aquaponic fish farming. We met him through our neighbours Sanford and June.  He gave me a much needed feed table for tilapia showing feed rates in % bodyweight per day for various size classes (ages) and water temperatures. I have spent hours unsuccessfully googling for this format.  Fantastic. He gave me a great tilapia aquaculture meta study I am eager to review.  He has a great story of being born poor poor in Vietnam and coincidentally Rotary sponsored his family's escape from Viet Nam in 1980.  Now here he is, like me, with a fish fetish and a whole country dying to farm fish.

During the day I met with a local hatchery operator.  She, Joyce, is new to the game and somewhat self taught, so I think I will get fingerlings from Kisumu.  But she is independent woman fish farmer and willing to teach our widows what she knows, and she does have the real -world experience and the tilapia economics down pat.  She is also on the committee to bring a fish processing plant to the area, so she is an excellent contact for marketting our widows fish.