Today I saw the farm. A tribal chief gave the land to the Diocese of Moshi
many years ago. Until recently, local villagers used it to grow beans
and maize without paying rent. For the past 6 years, Brother Charles
has been turning it into a school by designing and overseeing
its development. It is roughly 200 acres of flat farmland in the
northern part of Tanzania and within sight of Mt. Kilimanjaro. I
do not know where he learned his skill in design but he has put a lot
of thought and work into the farm. St. Amadeus Secondary School is in
the middle of the farm. The school houses, feeds, and educates 700 boys
between the ages of 12 and 18. In order to graduate, they must
complete each of 6 ‘grades’
or forms. Students are asked to leave if they do not pass examinations
or for disciplinary reasons. I’m told this rarely occurs.
If this happens, they could enter a trade school or look for another
opportunity. In Tanzania, education is the way to find employment and
escape poverty. Without education ones choices and opportunities are
very limited.
The day begins with Mass at 6:15. Many of the boys are not Catholic but they all participate in Mass. Classes
begin after breakfast and continue until 4 PM. They have tea at
morning break and a fairly long lunch hour. I think that recreation is
from 4-6. They have several soccer fields a basketball court and some
of the boys run. I was out today at 4 pm and it was at least 90
degrees. I’m not sure about their evening schedule but I know that they
have prayers. Don’t know about homework. I imagine that most of them
are eager to get to sleep since they are up at 5:30!
When
I first thought about 700 boys in one school, I had a hard time
imagining how it could work. They have one building for classrooms, and
one building for sleeping and eating. Other than the 40 or so teachers
who come during the day, they only have one or two adults with them at
night. In the United States, this would be trouble but it works in
Tanzania. Why? I think that I have to be very careful in attempting to answer the ‘why’ questions. They are questions to consider slowly.
Since
it is a private school, it is expensive for the students to attend.
Their parents make great sacrifices in order to send a child to school.
Brother Alphonso
was telling me today about how this might work in Tanzania. He is one
of 8 children. If a family has many children, the father will select
some children to stay at home and work and some children to attend
school. The children at home will care for the animals, grow crops, and
live at home. The family will continue to provide for them. Other
children will have the chance to attend school. Brother said that it is
almost like some of the children have to sacrifice so that others get
opportunities. Maybe that helps us understand why the boys have so much
incentive to do well in school.
Unlike the government schools, this school must provide teacher salaries, food, and housing for all of the students. Most
of the food needed for the students is grown on site. My project will
help them produce more. At this location, they have roughly 60 pigs, 30
goats, 30 cattle, and 100 chickens. Four
cows are milked twice each day. The milk is heated and often served
warm. They butcher one pig per week and never freeze anything. Chicken
and pig feed is purchased. They
grow a lot of bananas, tomatoes, watermelon, and kale. They have grown
cucumbers and yams and cabbages in the past and would like to grow more
in the future. I’m not sure how they decide what to grow. Brother
Charles seems
to make all of the decisions. They also grow beans and maize. The
farm is subdivided into sections by hedgerows. These hedgerows made of
trees and thornbushes
create 3-5 acre plots and create paths throughout the farm. There are
also several houses on the outskirts of the farm and teachers live
here. Thousands
of trees and bushes have been planted here. I attempted to learn some
of them but I asked the wrong person. There are a lot of neem trees and mahogany. Other trees are planted for firewood or for animal forage.
During
the day, a young man cares for the goats and cows as they graze. I
haven’t discovered how much he earns. He takes the animals to various
areas searching for food. They plant grass forages in some fields but
the lack of fall rains means that there isn’t much forage to find. I
saw him climbing some trees today and hacking off branches for the
animals. They came running when they saw him in the tree! I don’t know
how he keeps 60 animals together without having them wander in
different directions. When I show them pictures of my cow they are
amazed when I tell them that I get 4 gallons of milk a day from only one
milking. I guess that they get ½ that amount from two milkings.
Since I do not know that much about cattle feed, I don’t want to offer
any advice. I also don’t have the heart to tell people that my cow
produces about ½ the amount of a cow in a commercial dairy in the U.S.
Around
the school, the animals, and the vegetable gardens workers are building
a masonry fence. This is done by digging the foundation, manually
placing boulders in the trench, mixing and pouring a concrete shelf on
top of the boulders, and building a brick wall on top of the concrete.
Many of the boulders are dug by hand out of the fields. The gravel is
created by hand with sledgehammers. The only mechanical aid that I have
seen is a dump truck bringing the boulders needed for the foundation. The wall is about 8 feet high and encloses at least 15 acres. It must be a mile long. There were 15 men working on it today.
The
farm does not have a tractor but I will help them think through the
process of getting one. If they had a tractor it could be rented out to
the neighbors. Sometimes they pay someone to dig the fields to prepare
for planting. They don’t plow so it must be some kind of subsoiler.
The maize and beans are planted by hand. They plant three seeds to a
hill and scatter a small handful of fertilizer around each hill. It
takes six people one day to plant an acre. Planting is done near the
end of February in order to be ready for the rains that come in March.
My rough estimate is that some years they have planted 30 acres of beans
and maize using this method. On the best yielding year, this has given
them 300 large bags of corn which was still not enough for this
facility. The maize harvest includes harvesting the stalks and leaves
which are stored for cattle feed during the dry season. The dry plants
are chopped with a small machine. I’m not sure how they harvest the dry
beans or how they store them. I know how long that takes!
Getting enough water is always a concern. Their
well must supply drinking water for the animals and over 700 people.
It must allow these people to wash. It must also irrigate the trees and
vegetables. There is a river a short distance away. When the rains
come, someone collects the river water and releases it through a series
of canals. I have no idea how this works but I did find out that the
school is not required to pay for the water. It must travel through ¼
mile of canals before the water gets to the fields for irrigation. In
the process a lot of water is lost to absorption in the ground. Once it
gets to the vegetable field someone must open and close the waterway to bring water to each bed. They plant vegetables in 4x8 foot beds. Channels
surround each bed and the perimeters have hills. Once the water floods
a bed, someone must open another channel and close the opening. If you
are going to do this to one acre, someone will be doing the irrigation
all morning while the water continuously runs. They had a 4 inch hose
coming from the well open all morning. I didn’t check to see if he was
still doing it after lunch. They have a lot of kale growing right
now. The beds are planted under banana trees so it makes very efficient
use of space. I haven’t thought enough about it yet, but it might be a
more efficient way to grow kale than using drip lines and planting in
rows.
They
are very interested in drip irrigation. I have set it up on my farm
and know a little about it but it is another thing to source equipment
in another country and make recommendations for them. I think there is a drip irrigation supplier in Arusha
that I will try and visit. In order to put another 4 acres into
vegetable production, they are going to have to get drip irrigation.
This will also allow them to grow vegetables throughout the year instead
of just during the rainy season. I think there is some hope that they
will produce an excess so that some can be sold and help to pay for some
expenses.
This
brings me to the business end of things. This is a very complicated
system and I doubt that accurate records are kept for the many
enterprises here. Even if there were records, I would be surprised if I
would be allowed to see them. I know that 700 students pay to study
here. This money must pay 40 teachers and at least that many staff
members. I
have no way of knowing if it makes financial sense for them to purchase
feed for 60 pigs, pay someone to take care of them and slaughter them
each week for food. In the United States the answer is a definite ‘no’
but here it probably is ‘yes’. There may not be pigs for purchase in
the area and there is a lot of expense involved in transport. It
doesn’t seem like there is a well developed food transportation system
so I’m guessing that it must make the most sense to produce the food
here. This also employs a lot of people from the surrounding area and
creates a local economy.
I
think that there is a hope that some of the farm enterprises could
become a net gain for the school. If they paid for the seeds,
fertilizer, drip system, and labor would it be possible to sell the
excess vegetables? Most of the vegetables will go to the school and it
seems difficult to quantify the value of those vegetables. Maybe they
will be happy if some vegetables get sold and there is some return on
the investment. For these things, I’m not sure which are acceptable to
ask and if I am being understood when I ask them. It will be interested
to see how this unfolds.
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