Chaya and Moringa in Karamoja

 By Sara:

My friend Jane and I traveled to Kotido in the Karamoja region of Uganda (northeast of Soroti) to help train women how to use chaya and moringa for food.  PAG is working with World Renew on a project for improving child and maternal health in that region.  There is a lot of open land in Karamoja and some of it is very fertile, but people in the region have traditionally been cattle herders and there has been a lot of insecurity there.  Additionally, the area has a long dry season when they need to depend on stored food.

Chaya and moringa are perfect for nutrition in such a region since both are perennial vegetables which do not die during the dry season.  Chaya actually prefers drier weather and moringa is a tree, so it survives when it stops raining.

Several people and I donated lots of chaya cuttings to bring to these trainings so everyone could take some home after the teaching on growing and cooking it.  Most people have already planted moringa seedlings at their homes too, so they were inspired by the experience to take care of the seedlings.  Everyone is looking forward to eating greens, though they will have to be patient since it takes a while for anything to get growing. 

We cooked with both chaya and moringa so everyone could see how it is prepared and have an idea of what they taste like.  In the end, everyone only got about a bite of the different dishes we made, though, since the group the first day was about 200 people and the group on the second day was around 350!

Jane (in the black and red dress) giving some tips on the cooking process:

Each of these plates was given to a group of about 30 people to share:

On the last day, it was hard to get the attention of a huge group of over 300 people.  One of the PAG staff got a song going in order to have everyone focus.  It was some beautiful singing!