I don’t quite know how to describe the wonderful time I have had here in Kanyawegi. The people are so friendly and welcoming, I really feel at home. I have made many friends, both adult and children, that I will miss seeing at the markets, the health centre, and around the community. It will take some time to stop expecting to hear little voices yelling “muzungu, muzungu – how are you?!”

This has been a tremendous learning experience for me. I have gained so much experience living and working in another cultural context, about “Kenyan time” and having great patience. I love the ordered chaos of the markets, the haggling, the squished and bumpy rides in mutatus and tuk tuks. It has been very humbling to live among such happy people who don’t have the Western reliance on technology and electricity.

In turn, I hope that I have been able to impart some knowledge on food security and nutrition on the community, and that this knowledge will continue to grow and spread.

Wanere, Kanyawegi! I hope to return one day soon.

CHW Training

I have completed training the CHWs; they are now ready to continue the IYCF Workshops year round.  Our second day of training discussed complementary feeding: why it is important and what constitutes good complementary food.  I also performed a demonstration for making enriched porridge (nyuka).  The CHWs all tried it and told me it was very tasty!  They were all surprised at how thick the porridge should be, and learned to add oil, sugar and iodized salt for flavour, vitamins and minerals.

The Kanyawegi CHWs

Agriculture Committee Sac Garden Workshop

With facilitation assistance from the Ministry of Agriculture, I performed a full day sac garden training for the district Agriculture Committee.  The training instructed committee members on how to hold their own workshops for members of the community and CHWs.  Topics included planning a workshop, understanding why sac gardens are beneficial, how to build a sac garden, and how to maintain it through the growing season.  We discussed watering and pest control at length.  Then we went to a committee member’s house for the hands-on portion, and built a very nice garden!  We usde materials from the property to keep costs low.  Only the sac was purchased in town, and this was because the plastic sacs outlast the burlap style.  The committee was very enthusiastic, and I have high hopes that our garden will be well maintained and produce many healthy vegetables!

The 2014 Agriculture Committee is looking forward to a bountiful harvest from their new sac garden

On July 26, our community partner, Maurice, was married, and we GIVE travellers were lucky to be invited to take part in his wedding!  It was wonderful to see a Kenyan wedding and all the traditions.  There is a lot of dancing and singing throughout the ceremony.  Much of it is meant to “entice” the bride to get married, promising gifts.  Even in the church, the bride and the wedding party danced slowly down the aisle. We drove to the beautiful Kit Mikayi for wedding photos. The gifts received were very different than what you might expect at a Canadian wedding… my favourite was the goat!

The IYCF sessions held twice weekly have been going very well.  Turnout ranges from approximately 20 – 35 mothers at each session.  There have been some great questions about breastfeeding and local beliefs of what a young child can or cannot eat.  I am hopeful that many of the mothers take some of the information we share and apply it to their home lives.  If they keep the handouts they are given, they will have access to reference some of the information.  I was very pleased to hear today from a mother that her child usually doesn’t eat nyuka (porridge) when she tries to feed it to him, but today he liked it!  I have heard this before; it comes down to flavour.  Without the added oil, sugar and fruit, plain porridge is not very good.  This to me signals that our porridge lessons are working, and the mothers are learning how to make it nutritious and tasty!

This week I held the first of two CHW IYCF Training Sessions.  With the District Nutrition Officer, Elizabeth, as co-facilitator, I talked about the 3 Food Groups, nutrition for women of reproductive age, nutrition for pregnant and lactating women, exclusive breastfeeding, food safety and hygiene, and malnutrition in children.

Only 3 food groups? Yes, in Kenya the food groups are organized differently than in Canada.  The groups are:

1. Energy foods, which are fats and carbohydrates, such as maize, cassava, oil and butter
2. Body-building foods, which are proteins such as meats, fish, beans and lentils
3. Protective foods, which refers to the vitamins and minerals found in fruits and vegetables, such as bananas, papaya, tomatoes and kale

Of course, we recognize that there is crossover of the foods found in each group (for example, meat is high in iron), but this classification makes meal planning quite simple.

I was very impressed with the amount of knowledge the CHWs had regarding these topics.  Afterward, many of them told me that they were grateful for the new information they had received, and they learned many new things. They even sang me an ero kamano (thank you) song at the end of the session, which was very touching.

Women sort fish and shrimp on the banks of Lake Victoria. Omena – a tiny fish – is the main source of animal protein in the area.

The five day annual Agriculture Show took place this week in Kisumu.  The atmosphere was very carnival-like, though there were no rides.  There were many school children on field trips wandering through the exhibitions.  We noticed how much better condition their clothes were in compared to students in our district. Many took lunch breaks in the shade and were drinking soda and eating snacks like potato chips; luxuries you would rarely see in Kanyawegi.

So many of the plants on display we Canadians take for granted, such as eggplant, rosemary, thyme, and dill; however, to Maurice they were new and exciting.  I was pleased to see sac gardens on display in many exhibits!  They called them “multistory gardens,” but the idea was the same.  They were made of 3 or 4 sacs sewn together, and grew approximately 4.5’ tall; much larger than I’ve seen before.  Around the base grew lettuce, and in the sacs were usually kale in the bottom half and spinach in the top half.  Here the spinach is a Foodhook Giant variety, which looks a lot like Arctic Chard.  There were some other innovative ideas like tire gardens, and integrated gardens.  Integrated gardens utilize the space on top of chicken (or rabbit) coops to grow a leafy vegetable.

I also learned about an unrefined cane sugar that is fortified with a local dark green, leafy vegetable “crotolaria” or “miro.”  It was very tasty, and provides some vitamins and minerals.

Now this is a BIG sac garden! (Kisumu Agricultural Show 2014)

GIVE – Global Initiative for Village Empowerment – is a Canadian Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) created in 2006. GIVE is a community-based initiative that operates sustainable programs based from the Kenya office located in Kanyawegi, near Lake Victoria.  The goal is to eventually leave Kanyawegi with the residents fully self-sustaining the projects.  We involve community members at all stages of the process, including village chiefs and district officials, local translators, and community health workers (CHWs).

GIVE office and community bank

There are four components to GIVE – Finance, Education, Health, and Food Security and Nutrition (FSN).  I am one of four travelling members of the FSN Team.

The FSN Team focuses on three main areas:

1. Infant and Young Child Feeding Practices (IYCF)

Starting in June, we are running IYCF workshops twice per week at the Ober Kamoth medical centre.  Attendees are pregnant women and mothers with children under 2 years of age.  Periodically, CHWs attend the sessions to observe how we perform the workshop.  During July and August, we will run two half day train-the-trainer workshops for the CHWs, providing detailed instructions on how they can run the sessions during the rest of the year, and eventually after GIVE leaves the village.

The workshops follow the guidelines of the Kenyan National Strategy for IYCF and the recommendations of the World Health Organization (WHO).  We promote exclusive breastfeeding for infants less than 6 months old, regardless of HIV status.  We then provide detailed information on recommended complimentary feeding for children 6-24 months of age.

We also include a demonstration on how to correctly make thick, enriched porridge for complementary feeding of infants 6-24 months old.  The porridge base is made with a flour mix of millet, sorghum, maize, and dried cassava. We add oil, sugar, iodized salt and a mashed fruit that changes each session (i.e. banana, mango, papaya).

2. Food Security: Sac Gardens

Procuring a variety of vegetables can be expensive, so community members may not receive the range of micronutrients required to maintain their health.  A sac garden offers an inexpensive way to produce nutritious food for families, without taking up much space.  Sac gardens are made using items that a family will already have at hand.  An empty flour sac is most often used, supported by sticks placed vertically in four corners.  A middle column is built from rocks to provide drainage, surrounded by soil mixed with dried manure.  Slits in the side of the bag provide growing space for kale, and the top is filled with tomato and onion plants.

We provide a train-the-trainer workshop for the local Agriculture Committee, who will train the CHWs to disseminate the lesson, demonstrating how to build the garden and providing information about plant care.  For example, onions are planted to provide a natural form of pest control as well as nutritious food.  We interview the CHWs each summer at their homes to determine how their gardens progressed and what types of problems they came across.  Using this information, we can adjust the advice about pests and growing conditions.  The success of CHWs gardens is vital in the knowledge transfer to the rest of the community.  Some CHWs have been able to grow enough vegetables to feed their family and have excess to sell, increasing their income to procure a variety of foods.

3. HIV/AIDS Awareness Soccer Tournament

Every Saturday for 3 months, GIVE hosts a soccer tournament for the local primary schools. The tournament is designed to spread awareness about HIV/AIDS transmission and treatments.  The Health Team is available to speak about HIV/AIDS and answer any questions the children may have.  The FSN Team speaks with children about nutrition and provides a midday healthy snack of samosas, bananas (rabolo), and Quencher, an energy drink.

Fun at the soccer tournament

For more information about GIVE, please visit http://www.givesociety.org/