Training young Tanzanian agricultural managers

By Don Lotter, Ph.D.

Part of our mission at food water shelter is to train Tanzanians in permaculture systems and agricultural science. We have two managers at the Kesho Leo Permaculture Farm - Elvis Mariua and John Melau. Elvis takes care of the crops and John is the animal caretaker. Since I, Don Lotter, am a crops and soils specialist, I have brought in an expert in animal husbandry, Brighton Nzama, to visit every other week to train John. Brighton received his training at the Livestock Training Centre in Tengeru, outside of Arusha. He has the highest recommendations from the Christian Brothers school next to us where he works, Edmund Rice Secondary School.



Brighton has been teaching John how to manage and care for the dairy cows (2), pigs (7), and goats (4) that we have here at the farm. One of the cows was obtained quite sick because she had swallowed a plastic bag. She needs to gain weight and Brighton has put her on a special diet to get her weight back. The other cow is pregnant and John will be learning how to assess the progress of her pregnancy.

In the photos above, at left Brighton talks to John about the medicines and vaccinations that animals require. At right, Brighton demonstrates the trimming of cows' hooves, as Kesho Leo boys look on.

Since almost the beginning, when we first hired our team of Tanzanian staff to build Kesho Leo, a savings matching scheme was started for our workers. How the savings matching scheme works is that we offer each fws employee a savings facility. This is very handy for our workers, as none of them have bank accounts.. much easier, safer, and less tempting to spend than if it were kept under the mattress! The money can be withdrawn whenever it’s needed, but the really great thing is that if the money is being put towards something for the future, fws would match it 100%. So if one of our employees wanted to go to school, buy land, build a house or plant maize in their shamba (Kiswahili for farm), and they had saved, say 40,000 Tanzanian shillings (about 33 aussie dollars), then fws would double it and give him or her 80,000 tzs. This has been a very motivating reward for saving, as well as giving our employees access to something like a bank account.. something they could not afford to have on a local wage. Even though the scheme has been very successful so far, we have had to discontinue it because of lack of funds.. our employees were just too good at saving! Hopefully it’ll be started up again sometime in the future, but for now I’d like to just share some of the success stories:

Midmi is one of our night askari (security guard). He lives in a hut with his wife and two children about half an hour drive from Kesho Leo, and rides his bicycle to work every night, six nights a week. Midmi has been saving all year, and in December he had saved enough for bricks and cement to start his new house. I visited his boma on the day we delivered his cement for him, and he showed Mudi and I the channels he had dug out that will form the foundations of his new house.

Aggie bought a small piece of land near Kesho Leo where she plans to build some rooms to rent out one day.

Elvis used his savings to get his drivers license, increasing his future employment opportunities.

Peter Tosh/Toshi/Chechi used his savings to buy clothes and blankets for his gorgeous new daughter when she was born in October. Hongera sana Toshi!

Gaudens used his savings to build a new livestock shed on his shamba, using the one at Kesho Leo as inspiration.

Lucas bought a small business, something he had been saving for and planning for a long time.

Simon has qualified to go to a business college in Dar es Salaam in 2010 to study accounting, and has been constantly saving and studying hard all year to do it (well, he is when he’s not trying to make us laugh, anyway!).

There are lots of other stories, but to list them all I’d need much more room than one blog can take up. It really is unfortunate that we’ve had to stop this scheme, as you can see it helped to make a lot of things happen for the people living in our village.