FARMER JOHN AND PASTOR PETER (Day 6)

On my early morning walkabout, I had occasion to meet two local farmers tending their fields. Most farmers are in their fields by 7 am and work until about 10:30 or so to avoid the mid-day heat. They then return to their fields in the evening to finish their work.

I met Farmer John Ogengo as he was carrying three jugs of water to his fields just south of the Kayando homestead. He greeted me with a big smile and explained he was watering his newly planted cabbage, as he does every morning.

John was proud to show me his many plantings, including maize (corn), peppers, bananas, beans, potatoes and tomatoes. He practices composting (with manure from his cows and goats) and crop rotation, and has just started experimenting growing sugar cane.

John primarily uses his crops to feed his family, but also uses them to pay the school fees for his children (he has 4 boys and 3 girls). It takes him ten wheelbarrow loads of 3 jugs each day just to water his cabbage, and he says he would benefit greatly from a better constructed water catchment pond, a MoneyMaker Pump and more fertilizer.

Not far down the path, Pastor Peter invited me into his fields to see the crops he was farming. Peter is a part-time farmer (4 days a week) and then goes away for 3 days a week to the nearby town of Ryondi, where he serves as the pastor of a small church. He showed me how he uses the native hand hoe to work in the field, to create planting rows and to dig out weeds. He primarily farms maize and pili pili (also known as a birdseye pepper).

Pili pili is incredibly time intensive to farm, as they are only about 1 inch long and have to be picked individually. I learned a real productive plant can produce 300 or so peppers. After they are picked, they are dried in the sun, packaged in large bags and sold to middlemen that then sell them to food processors in the cities. Peter shared with me they had started a pili pili farmers co-op in Kager and they were aggregating their production and selling their crops together to attain better pricing.

The pili pili is small, but POWERFUL. I accidentally crushed one of the peppers and wiped it on my cheek – it burned pretty good. Despite my best efforts of wiping it off, it kept burning for about an hour (I later learned they are rated at about 175,000 Scoville Heat Units). The pili pili is so hot, they don’t allow children to pick them.

What I learned through my discussions with farmers like John and Peter is the local farmers are willing and wanting to learn best farming practices and are interested in forming other farmer’s co-op groups. Their greatest needs as farmers are: 1) irrigation and the ability to water their plants 2) high-yielding seeds 3) equipment to reduce the time it take to develop and turn over fields 4) farming and crop education, and 5) transportation to faraway markets where they can obtain better pricing, and 6) marketing and distribution methods to obtain better pricing for their crops.

Thank God for farmers like Farmer John and Pastor Peter who help feed their villages and the lifeblood to the African economy.

(Trip Prologue: Every day I was in Kager, Farmer John was always the first farmer I would see in the morning. He would greet me with hands raised in the air, a great big smile and welcome me to join him in his fields and talk. David K. shared with me that John is not a believer, but both nights we had church service, he came and participated. Before I left, he asked that I correspond with him and told me he looked forward to our next visit. My prayer is as we advance the Jubilee Village Project, I will continue to have opportunities to share the good news of Jesus in both words and deeds with men like Farmer John in the Kager community. Praise God!)


Ned