Hello everyone, this will be a quick update as I have no photos and I hope one of us will be able to put together  a proper post soon.  Since Zach arrived we’ve been a busy team, assisting communities with final preparations for the planting season.  We spent a couple days this week in Uwandani, providing training in the assessment and management of planting sites, and the community is on track to plant at least 30,000 trees this season.  As I may have mentioned in an earlier post,  Uwandani has yet to have their land surveyed.  Now that we know them better we are very motivate to try and raise the necessary funds for the survey.  Land security is essential for such long-term investments in the environment and community as tree-planting.

 We’re also in the final stages of constructing a ‘press machine’ for the production of organic seedling containers.  The material of choice in the tropics for raising seedlings is polyethylene, a relatively expensive and wasteful external resource.  To produce an alternative we are adapting a design provided by the Legacy Foundation, originally intended for the production of a charcoal substitute.  The ‘press’ is a simple manually operated machine that compresses mixed organic waste into a mold, and by experimenting with different mold sets and mixes we hope to come up with something suitable for raising seedlings in.  If each community nursery were provided with a ‘press’ they could reduce their ecological footprint and increase their self-sufficiency not only in terms of seedling containers but also in the production of a charcoal substitute for local households.

The next post will include photos of the ‘press’, but in the meantime those interested can check out the Legacy Foudation’s website.  http://www.legacyfound.org/

Share this page

Following up on a meeting with the Sheha of Uwandani, Mbarouk, Estelle, and I visited the community recently.  Mbarouk has been working to educate the community members on seedling propagation for some time now, and their experience growing Casuarina from seed is evident in their verdant nursery.  When we arrived a group was cleaning and planting mango seeds to use as rootstock for grafting, indicating that the community is more than ready to experiment with other tree species as well.  This is exciting for Estelle and I as we have identified several multipurpose indigenous species that if planted will greatly increase the diversity and yield of community planting sites on Pemba.  We hope Uwandani will be a leading community in this regard.

Uwandani Community Nursery

Preparing mango seeds for planting

The Sheha of Uwandani has indicated that a priority for the community now is to have their land surveyed and officially designated for community management.  Land tenure is a growing concern on Pemba as the island is becoming more attractive to developers and the pressures of unsustainable resource use and climate change are increasing.  Community members expressed specific concerns about hotel development, probably a response to what they have observed on Zanzibar Island in recent years.

Uwandani Community Planting Site

Baobab on Community Planting Site

There is also the existing practice of ‘White Block’ mining, which is the extraction of limestone from open-pit mines for building materials.  This is occurring at the outskirts of the community, in the same region selected for tree-planting, and is seen by community leaders as a necessary but unsustainable  economic activity.  Uwandani is hopeful that community forestry can provide a sustainable alternative to ‘White Block’ mining as well as land security.

'White Block' Mine

Undermined Baobab

Share this page

A visit to the community nurseries of Tundaua and Furaha with Mbarouk has brought us up to speed on the conditions of these two projects.  Both community groups had difficulty raising seedlings much beyond germination early this season, likely due to over-shading in the banda-style nurseries.  The light intensity has been corrected, a simple procedure when the roof is woven palm fronds, and with luck the fresh batch of seedlings will be strong enough to plant out when the rainy season arrives.

Fresh Clove Seeds

Tundaua has also been struggling with a low seedling survival rate in their planting site, due mostly to a harsh site and poor soil conditions.  The community is determined to establish a community forest though and this year has collected Clove tree seeds, which will require two years in nursery before planting out.  The commitment and motivation of this group in spite of the challenges and setbacks they are encountering is inspiring.

Mbarouk demonstrating transplanting

What we intend for Tundaua is to try direct seeding a range of indigenous Acacia species in the harsh site.  Acacia trees are in the Leguminosae family and are in general adapted to poor soils.  Their ability to fix nitrogen and build soil fertility makes them good companions for higher value timber trees.  With luck the Acacia will act as the pioneers at the Tundaua site, preparing the way for Clove trees and others.

Share this page

Estelle and I are now on Pemba Island and staying with Mbarouk Mussa Omar, the director of CFI’s projects on Pemba.  Mbarouk and his family are very gracious hosts, and we will be staying with them for a short while until our home nearby is ready for us to move in.

We arrived on Pemba at Mkoani via a fast ferry that left most of the passengers sea sick and glad for the end of the journey.  There we were greeted by Mike Tritchler, a CFI member who has been living and teaching on the island for three years now.  We were fortunate to have arrived in time to take in a climate change education session presented by Mike,  of which I believe he will be posting some photos and details here soon.  Since Mike is living on Pemba, and given his background and interests, he will be heavily involved in the development and direction of the Pemba Sustainability Institute that I mentioned in a previous post.

Tomorrow we will be meeting with the Sheha (leader) of Wangani, a Shehia (group of villages) that is interested in developing community tree planting in their region.  After that we will travel to Tundaua, a Shehia with ongoing projects, to assess the progress of their tree-planting efforts and help troubleshoot some the obstacles they have been encountering.  There is a great profile of Tundaua in the Pemba Island Community Forests section of this website for those interested:  

http://forestsinternational.org/projects/pembatrees/tundaua/

Share this page

Assalaama aleykum, peace to you.  We are now in Stone Town, Zanzibar, our last stop on our way to Pemba Island.  Pemba is about 50km north of Zanzibar, across the deep Pemba Channel, and we will be travelling there about a week from now.  For the time being we are studying under Mr. Farouk at the Institute of Swahili & Foreign Languages and are finding him to be a great teacher.  We will also be beginning a home-stay tomorrow, which should help us get to know the culture and language a bit better before moving on to Pemba.

Stone Town shoreline

View over Stone Town

Old castle and alleyway

Zanzibar has been in total blackout since early December, due to an aged underwater line that brings power from the mainland. Only those businesses that run generators have power, and even then it is intermittent as people attempt to conserve fuel. Its amazing how conservative  people can be when there is no other choice.  As our Permaculture instructor Rosemarry Morrow said “People don’t change until the cost of staying the same is greater than the cost of change”.  That sounds about right.
I can imagine an Unguja (Zanzibar Island) self-sufficient in its energy and food needs and I think most people here would find that a desirable notion these days. Islands present great opportunities for resilient self-sufficiency, a good example being Cuba.  And the climate change scenarios presented by the world’s scientists provide compelling support of increased regional solidarity as well, if for no other reason than disaster preparedness. All it takes besides the willingness of the people is a little bit of knowledge, there are no excuses after that really.

Narrow alleys in Stone Town

Estelle exploring streets of Stone Town

Traditional home entrance

On Pemba the need for resilient self-sufficiency is even greater than here given its relative remoteness and higher population density.  A part of the vision that CFI shares with citizens of Pemba is the development of the island’s first post secondary institution, tentatively named the Pemba Sustainability Institute.  This institute would help to develop the knowledge and skills necessary  to create a sustainable culture on Pemba, which could then act as a model for the region.  If you’d like to learn more about the Pemba Sustainability Institute please visit:   http://communityforests.iglooprojects.com/
We are actively seeking volunteers with relevant expertise who would like to contribute to the development of curriculum, in the areas of ecological forestry and advanced agriculture for the tropics in particular.

Boy on school break

Neighbourhood

Share this page

We are now in Nairobi, Kenya, awaiting our flight to Zanzibar on the 3rd. While here we hope to visit Uruhu Park and Freedom Corner, made famous by Kenyan political and environmental activist Wangari Maathi. The first African woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize (2004), one of Wangari’s many achievements was to developed the Pan African Green Belt Network and assist women in planting over 20 million trees on public land and farms. She is a tree planter after our own hearts!

If time allows we will also visit the Nairobi Arboretum, to get familiar first-hand with some of the native and exotic tree species of East Africa. The Arboretum is over 100 years old and in its early years was used for trials of introduced trees. Invasive species are a problem here in East Africa and on Pemba, it would be good to see the long-term impacts of exotics in the Arboretum and learn what techniques, if any, are used to control them there. I am also currently putting the finishing touches on a list of multipurpose indigenous trees that I hope to introduce to CFI’s community nurseries on Pemba, and I might find some useful information from the staff at the Arboretum as at least a few of the tree species there are local to Pemba.

 Now is probably a good time to start describing Pemba’s forests. Starting around the mid-nineteenth century on Pemba native forests were cleared for clove plantation, and so little of the unique primary forest survives. Today the Ngezi Forest Reserve (1440 Hectares) in the Northwest is almost the last stand of indigenous forest. As much of the surrounding forest was cleared and reforested with a mix of native and exotic trees, the exotic species have affected the Ngezi forest area. The most damaging of the exotics is a species known as Msisi (Muesopsis eminii). Msisi is from the African mainland and its aggressive nature suppresses the growth of indigenous trees. Staff at the reserve have had success in ringing and uprooting young Msisi to allow the indigenous trees to regenerate, which is encouraging because the preservation of Ngezi is invaluable for Pembans. I am confident that Ngezi will be a great source of seed and inspiration for CFI’s community tree nurseries, and that countless benefits will be had by imitating its structure and composition in community reforestation efforts.

Share this page

Estelle and I have completed our PDC and we’re now making our way to Tanzania, via Kenya.  Overall the course was quite good.  Though we were familiar with much of the information presented, having already studied Permaculture independently for some time, we learned a lot about communicating the principles cross-culturally and applying them in a tropical climate.  Our group design work in particular  helped us to appreciate the obstacles faced by many East African communities and how intelligent design can address virtually all  major problems.

And now the photos we have promised:

The PDC Class

PDC Class at Sabina

Amaranth beneath Papaya

Swale in Food Forest

Fresh Salad from Sabina Garden

Ssanje Market

Group Design for Ssanje

Closing Ceremonies

Nursery at St. Jude

Share this page

We have just wrapped up a busy week of PC instruction and are now moving from our requisite individual design projects to group design. The area to be improved is in the village of Ssanje and includes some high-density tenant housing as well as a market. In discussions with the local LC1 we have identified the major issues facing this community and are now applying PC site analysis and design techniques to address them.

The issues to be addressed include inadequate food and water, insufficient toilet facilities, and erosion. Contributing factors include poor land tenure and very little land for home-scale food cultivation as well as over-grazing by unfenced livestock and virtually no medium- or large-scale rainwater harvesting. In our design we intend to include a community latrine with a fixed-dome biodigester for methane capture and compost production, rainwater harvesting and storage off all roofs, living fences surrounding community garden space and a central composting facility for all home and market organic waste. It is hoped that the community will get behind some or all of the features in our design and help bring it into reality. As there is little public service of any kind in the area it is up to the community members to address such problems on their own. Hopefully some intelligent design and the inspiring work at the nearby Sabina Home, including trained locals, will help.

Estelle and I have also had time to explore further how PC could inform CFI’s projects in Pemba. One technique that is really intriguing to me is seed-pelleting. Popularized by Masanobu Fukuoka of Japan mainly for grain cultivation, the process involves surrounding seed with a protective coat of clay, manure, and in our case some mature forest soil to create pellets that can be dried and broadcast over an area to be reforested. When rain comes the seeds germinate very well, around 95% with viable seed, and are equipped with everything they need to get a good start in life. The mix includes the very important and specific soil biota which in most cases is absent on site. Seeds of native species intended as the mature canopy can even be blended with seed from support species including nitrogen-fixers that will act as a ‘nurse crop’ for the climax species and speed their establishment and growth.

We apologize for still not being able to upload photos, we will be sure to post several when we return to Kampala in a week or so.

Share this page

Hello everyone, sorry for the delay in our updates. We are a walk and a 25 min. bodaboda (motorcycle) ride from the nearest connection. You can expect our next post around next Sunday, on our day off.

The school and dorm where we are studying is located in the Rakai district of southern Uganda, near a small town named Ssanje and not far from the border with Tanzania. Most of our fellow students are Ugandan and many have given personal testimonials describing the impact that climate change and petroleum scarcity is having on the region. Though we are presently in the ‘dry season’, rain has been frequent and has caused severe flooding in some areas. As well, the price of manioc (cassava), a staple food, has quadrupled in the country recently due in part to a fuel shortage. Our course instructor, Rosemary Morrow, has travelled here from Malawi and Cameroon and reports of food scarcity due to fuel shortages in those countries as well.

It is clear that less wealthy countries such as these are suffering from the effects of a changing climate and overdependence on oil earlier and in more pressing ways than we. It is also evident that it is our highly consumptive lifestyles that contributes most to these problems and that probably the best way that we can help remedy the situation is to live more simply and consume less ourselves.

Share this page

Estelle and I have arrived safe and sound in East Africa. We were kindly informed upon arriving in Nairobi, Kenya that a transit strike was imminent and so had to travel on to Uganda sooner than expected. We are attending a Permaculture Design Course near Kampala, Uganda beginning Wednesday and we did not want to risk being late. We are presently on the northern coast of Lake Victoria in beautiful Jinja, Uganda, where the Nile river begins.

Estelle at the Victoria Nile, Jinja, Uganda

En route to Jinja two types of productive human-made landscapes stood out in contrast. One landscape was that composed of small and diverse family plots all along the roads and in the medians, where a wide variety of plants and livestock are raised together intensively. The other type was that of large monoculture tea plantations. Though picturesque, the tea plantations are heavily dependent on chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and sadly lacking in diversity and resilience when compared to the family farms. I wondered how the two would compare overall if one could calculate the outputs produced by both, on a national scale, relative to the land used and external resources invested. One thing is certain, if it becomes impossible to bring tea to market, or if the environment shifts to one less conducive to its cultivation, there would not be much to eat or trade on the plantations.

Tea plantation near Kericho, Kenya

These contrasting landscapes have drawn our minds to Pemba, where the large scale cultivation of spices such as cloves resembles that of tea. We hope to expand Community Forests International’s silviculture program there, with the knowledge gained in our Permaculture training, to design large ‘spice forests’ composed of multiple species and yielding multiple products over time. In a changing market and climate, a multipurpose ‘spice forest’ would likely prove more resilient than a mono-crop.

Banana and sweet potato, Jinja, Uganda

Permaculture is a design discipline for human habitats based on the science of ecology. The word Permaculture is a portmanteau of ‘Permanent’ and ‘Agriculture’ or ‘Culture’, indicating the study’s attempt at achieving resilient human habitats and food production systems. We will be studying under Rosemarry Morrow of the Blue Mountain Permaculture Institute, at the Sabina Home near Kampala, Uganda. Sabina Home is an orphanage run by Children of Uganda that has recently implemented a full-scale permaculture design to increase the facility’s food, water, and energy security. Our attendance at the course subsidizes the permaculture project there as well as the attendance of local students.

Share this page