By Sara:
Recently, I had a great visit back to Kalaki, to a place where I did a variety of nutrition trainings over several years. We talked about the basics of nutrition, vegetable gardening, moringa, chaya, and how to improve the food value of what we serve to our children.
I wanted to know if there had been any impact on the lives of the people I taught there, so Tom, our friend who coordinated the group, helped me organize visits to some of the group members' homes. We visited six different homes and talked to the families we met there, learning about the ways they put what they learned into practice and what they found most helpful from the trainings.
Everyone had chaya growing at their home and we even met a man, Omena, who received chaya cuttings from his neighbor, even though no one in his family had ever come to a training. Omena's son has anemia and the family had been struggling to buy him leafy greens to eat every day, especially during the dry season, after a doctor told them they needed to have greens be a central part of his diet. Now that they have chaya, however, they don't need to buy greens during the dry season anymore. Instead, they always have chaya, even when it is too dry to grow other types of greens. This helps them take care of the health of their son and has saved their family money. Now, they are sharing chaya with many other people since it is planted in a prominent place in their yard. Every time a visitor comes to their home, they notice the strange plant and ask about it. Omena and his family teach them what it is and give out cuttings so their visitors can go home and plant it too!
Two of the ladies we visited from the group gave testimonies about how they have added moringa to their diets. They told us that they (the group members) are the only ones in the community who know the value of moringa and know how to eat it. I had to encourage them to share with their neighbors what they know, rather than keeping it to themselves, but I suspect they just don't want to compete with other people in harvesting the moringa growing around the village! In all seriousness, though, they both enjoy eating moringa. One of them, Aleso, has also added more variety to her family's diet by planting a kitchen garden of tomatoes, eggplants, and onions. She also planted more fruits around her home, including avocado trees, oranges, and bananas. This was a result of learning the importance of eating many different foods and including fruits and vegetables in your everyday diet.
We also had a fun time visiting the wife of Bishop Martin, the Pentecostal bishop of that area. He attended my training on chaya back in 2018 and his family has been promoting chaya to the community ever since. All the people we visited told us that the bishop and his wife are the main suppliers of chaya to everyone who wants it. When we went to their home, his wife also shared about how she is using the knowledge I taught the group about using local plants to protect your harvested crops. She uses plants like lantana, neem, and eucalyptus to protect her green gram, sorghum, cassava, and sweet potatoes from weevils during storage. She told us that she has successfully kept those harvested crops for over a year without them getting affected by pests.
It is always encouraging to know that what I am doing made a difference. But it is even more exciting to see the people I taught passing their knowledge on to others around them.
