Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
with strategic plantings of crops (nutrient-rich fruits and vegetables, along with some
root, grain, and fodder crops), he healed the land as well.
Once the clinic and shamba (small farm) were running, Wanja was able to reduce
return business among mothers with malnourished children by keeping them there
during the treatment of the children and teaching them to increase the child's intake
of essential nutrients. Lessons included growing nutritious crops they had not seen
before; tending sheep, goats, swine and rabbits; and incorporating these animal source
foods into their children's diets. These women in turn taught others, and this had a
long-term effect on nutrition among the Tiriki. Innovative approaches to improving
nutrition of rural populations like those of Dr. Wanja in Kenya are occurring in many
developing countries through visionary cross-culture self help programs.
*
European medical students also benefited from Fudumi's educational mission.
While hiking among the fruit trees, I once encountered a sunburned Dutch medical
student crouched down and cultivating some vegetables on the reclaimed hill farm at
Fudumi. This young summer elective student used a short-handled jembe (a type of
hoe) to weed and at the same time extend a shallow trench that carried the slurry from
the home-built manure-powered methane digester at the top of the hill.
1
“Fertigation”
with the digester slurry provided both water and nutrients that would find their way
through the food plant into otherwise-malnourished children. When asked what she
was doing, the intern answered, “I am learning medicine,” and returned to her work.
Without a doubt, this young woman's experience taught her and her future patients
that sound nutrition, appropriate seeds, and a hoe may be as important to health as
pills and a hypodermic syringe.
Another technique Stephen Wanja used to insert critical micronutrients into the
young population was through his rabbit program. He noticed that children spent
some time trying to catch wild rabbits and other small game to feed themselves, inde-
pendent of their parents' provisions. This took a lot of time and energy with infrequent
reward. To help the young children, Dr. Wanja brought some fast-growing domestic
rabbits from Europe, taught the children to spend their time gathering foliage that
could not run away and feeding it to the rabbits. In this way, they had an independent
ASF supply that did not cost them so much in time and calories as hunting would. The
children paid their gift forward by passing along rabbit rearing tips and a pregnant
doe to the next child, and the rabbits spread across western Kenya, providing a seg-
ment of the population with its own independent supply of ASF.
Many of the aspects of Dr. Wanja's practice are instructive to those who would
improve nutrition in settings such as his. Wanja not only knew how to contact experts
in fields related to the health of his patients (I provided him with dual-purpose goats
and the skills to deploy them); he had broad interdisciplinary knowledge. Too often,
when extolled to take an interdisciplinary approach to a problem, we assemble an
unwieldy team of experts. Frequently, it is more effective and efficient for an indi-
vidual or a very few workers to learn several disciplines themselves. In many cases,
that single person can carry out the interdisciplinary strategy, and where that person
*
For example, Growing Hope Together, Inc. (www.growinghopetogether.org) is a non-profit organiza-
tion established in a rural community in upstate New York. Its mission is to connect children, families,
schools, and communities in different cultures. It is launching a coordinated cross-cultural school
gardening initiative in Newfield, NY Central school and Simenya primary and secondary schools in
Nyanza Province in western Kenya. The project is designed to improve experience and knowledge
in agriculture while introducing nutritious foods into the diets of these children. This is only one of
thousands of small non-government organizations (NGOs) now doing work once left to a few larger
institutions and government agencies. The reader is encouraged to find one or start one in his/her own
area.
