Eighteen months ago the school grounds at Lokusero primary, in Kenya, were regularly visited by elephants. Elephants drank from, and damaged, the water storage tanks and rendered attempts to garden or have a student farm pointless – too much ended up eaten or trampled. Everyone was thankful (though perhaps not the elephants ..) when Borana wildlife conservancy assisted by enclosing the school grounds with elephant fencing. It meant the environment club could embark on long wished for projects – to plant shade trees, ornamental plants, and an organic garden to grow vegetables and other foodstuff.
This is how one corner of the compound looked, when the fencing was just erected.
Fast forward to July 2024, and the school clubs, facilitated by teacher James Mungo have transformed the space into a productive, nutritive, outdoor classroom!
When they started the school had only cutlasses and buckets so we helped out by sending simple tools and PACE action sheets. The action sheets cover topics like conservation farming, composting, mulching, natural pest control. The first set of tools included wheelbarrows, watering cans and drums to make ‘plant tea,’ a kind of home made organic fertiliser. They said rakes would help, to gather grass cut on the playing fields for composting and mulching, and having succeeded in making their plant tea received sprayers to apply it to their growing crops.
It’s been a joy to see the kids learning how to use and care for their new tools, and learning new techniques to grow healthy foods! They have certainly done well, producing regular green vegetable crops and most recently a fine harvest of maize. Last week James wrote “after lots of hard work and taking care of our organic corn, today we were finally able to enjoy the fruits of our labour. We boiled the green maize and all enjoyed a hearty meal. Thanks to mulching, zero tilling method and all the tools you provided. The children have learned what they can do to create food security.”
Food security is a very real issue in these rural areas, one that impacts on the health and well being of local communities, but also the wider environment and wildlife. Knowing how to produce ample food crops, and productively use their often poor soils improves standards of living. Increasing productivity also reduces the need for more farms encroaching on wildlife habitat.
When asked if there were one or two things the kids say they have learned from Environment club this past year, this was the response – “We’ve learned what organic farming entails, composting and use of organic compost, the types of crops that are in the garden and their nutritional content, pest control using environmental friendly methods, zero tilling with mulching, lastly about the use and care of farm tools: wheelbarrow, water cans, jembes, hose pipes, rakes and hand forks.” With an addendum – “There were other lessons as well, like teamwork, use of leisure time, improvisation especially from making scarecrows which we used to scare birds, and lots of communication and collaboration learning.”