The Farm Project

In support of the Children's Center, PEMU acquired 3 hectares of land within the village to grow crops with the intent of becoming a fully self-sustaining operation.

The PEMU team walk alongside the maize crops growing on their plot of land.

The main crops grown this year were corn and beans, key components of the children's daily diet, and there are plans to add others like cassava and sweet potato.

The beans were the first to be ready and a few harvests have been made, each yielding 10-20 kg. 4kg/day are used to feed the children.

Dried beans harvested from the land.

The first corn harvest took place at the end of July and resulted in enough grain to yield 650kg of corn meal, which when cooked into posho, a mixture with water that becomes dough-like, will feed the orphans for about 5 months. This helps lift a tremendous weight off Brian and his team.

Mary Kamega, the Center’s cook, prepares posho for the children’s lunch in the open air kitchen.

The meals prepared for the children are simple, but nutritious and filling, and always eagerly awaited and enjoyed.

Children at the Agape Children’s Center wait in line for lunch service.

Young children at Agape enjoy their lunch.

The team are now focused on preparing the land for the next planting season; the rains have already started.

Clean Cookstove Project

When we arrived in the Maasai village, we were taken to a traditional boma (homestead) with an open-fire stove and welcomed inside. The air was thick with smoke and it immediately overwhelmed us. Our guide suggested we crouch closer to the ground, where it would be easier to breath but it didn’t really help. One member of our group had to step outside.

This small, circular hut houses an entire family; it’s where they eat and sleep. It was hard to imagine how anyone could spend a minute in there, let alone day in, day out, over a lifetime.

The indoor smoke from open-fire stoves is a major global heath risk, causing cancer, emphysema, pneumonia, burns and blindness. 4 million people die each year due to exposure to cookstove smoke.

In Tanzania, 95% of people rely on cooking with wood and coal. As women are the primary homemakers, spending time indoors cooking meals for their families, they are disproportionately impacted by the exposure.

The Clean Cookstove Project works to replace hazardous open-fire stoves with clean-burning ones. Teams of all-women engineers install the smoke-removing and efficient wood burning chimney stoves, removing 90% of the indoor smoke pollution.

During our visit to the Maasai village in the Monduli District of Tanzania, I was able to witness the benefits of the project.

After the boma with an open-fire stove, we were invited into one with a new clean-burning one. The difference was immediately apparent and the benefits of the project couldn’t have been made any clearer to us. The air was breathable and our eyes stopped watering.

Engineers work on the installation of a new clean-burning stove.

We then observed the project engineers in action, as they built a stove in a neighboring boma. Built primarily with bricks and clay mortar, the design allows smoke escape through the roof. A basic and simple design, with tremendously beneficial impacts for families.

Our guide for the village visit

There were a couple of things that struck me most about this visit.

One was how a major heath issue could be tackled with a relatively simple, affordable solution, debunking any notion that it takes major funds or ideas to solve the world’s problems.

Second, that local, grassroots efforts are truly critical in bringing these solutions to life. For these projects to be successful, they must be framed within local cultural norms and traditional beliefs and practices. Applying a Western approach without considering local realities doesn’t work.

In this case, the Maasai are able to continue living a traditional way of life while realizing significant health benefits through the improved air quality within the boma.

During our visit, we witnessed the birth of a baby goat. Livestock, including goats, are a primary source of income for the Maasai people

For more information, visit the following sites:

https://planeterra.org/what-we-do/our-projects/maasai-clean-cookstoves-tour/

https://boblange.wpengine.com/about-us/

Photographs taken in the Monduli District of Tanzania. September, 2016