Case study Joyce & Emmanuel Munyendo
Kenya, Bungoma North District, Central Division, Naitiri Location, Sango Village
”In the future we wish our farm to be a forest”
Even though Joyce and Emmanuel Munyendo are young (22 respectively 26 years), they have big plans for the future. Thanks to SCC-Vi Agroforestry (SCC-Vi), Kitale, they have now several plans on how to manage to send their two children to school. There is no lack of inspiration on how to generate income so that they can pay the acquired fees for school. Through a poultry (which they run together with family members) they can sell eggs to close-by neighbours, and with both a tree nursery and some fruit trees they can, together with farmers from their selfhelp group, sell seedlings and fruits to people who needs it.
Everything began in 2008 when SCC-Vi visited the selfhelp group, a so called Village Savings and Loan group, which Joyce and Emmanuel were taking part in. The organisation, who work with agroforestry, inspired the couple to continue on the two acres of land, with the late father of Emmanuel’s work of planting trees. SCC-Vi taught them there is a good way of generating income through growing trees good for timber such as Warburgia. But these species are not only good for timber, they also aggregate rainwater through their rootsystem and tree crown. Even if the trees give a lot of benefits, Emmanuel points out the problem with people cutting the trees down before they even mature; This is because people are so eager to get the wood so that they forget the fact they will gain more from it if they just let them mature. Joyce and Emmanuel says that they are willing to wait even thirty years before they use the tree and its products. The environment is so important for me and the future health of my children. People just don’t tend to think in long-term ways and how one actually can benefit economically and physically from ex. growing a tree. If people just had the patience to wait, Emmanuel adds.
The last year SCC-Vi advised the couple to start a poultry. It’s still under construction and it still has temporary plastic wrappers to cover the chickens houses. But in a near future, Joyce and Emmanuel say they will be able to build more resistant cages, since they by then would have gained more money from their poultry enterprise. Together with Joyces brother and his family they run the poultry, from where they can sell the proteine-rich eggs and also improve the health of their children. For the moment it is hard to know wheather they gain anything from the enterprise, but they are willing to give it a try. They even have plans on building a brooder where they can keep the chickens away from the cold.
Previously, this farm was very short of trees, which made it hard to find firewood and give shade to the crops. There was also a lot of wind in the homestead, but since SCC-Vi started to work with and capacity build the farmers group, they have now learned to grow windbreaks, Sesbania for firewood and other trees which give shade to crops who are exposed from strong sunlight. The group they are members of even changed their name from ”Shangalamwe” (The place without trees) into ”Tembelesha” (Green environment), after they managed to make a very poor land into a very fertile place. The farmers realized if they were a group they could expand the tree nursery and through that generate more money. They are eighteen members in the group and they take turns in taking care of the seedlings in the tree nursery.
Even though Joyce and Emmanuel like their, nowadays, green farm, they find it hard to live far away from town and with poor infrastructure. Especially when it is rainperiod the red roads turn into slippery and pothole-full paths where it is almost impossible to travel and carry products to the market. But Joyce and Emmanuel believe this is going to change since they already established a demand for their seedlings. People come to buy their seedlings, despite the bad roads. In the future Joyce and Emmanuel wish to move closer to a mainroad so that they can easier sell seedlings, fruits, timber and other agricultural products. But of course we will continue to do agroforestry, Joyce says.
The treenursery is very well-planned and one can see that Joyce, Emmanuel and the rest of the group are taking the enterprise serious with lines of different indigenious trees. Each second week the farmer group meets to analyze their income gained from selling seedlings and how they will save the additional money in the Village Savings and Loan group.
Most of the members in ”Tembelesha” self help group wish to buy a highbreed cow. So do Joyce and Emmanuel, so that they can give nutritious food to Lucy and Neville, their two children. A cow is expensive, around 20.000-30.000KES, but through SCC-Vi and their Farmer Enterprise Development-training, Joyce and Emmanuel now know how to keep records of their household and they predict that within a short future they can afford it. Through the exchange of agroforestry-knowledge between their friends, family and neighbours they can enable the necessary support for each other so that the future can be even more productive and income generating. In the future we wish our farm to be a forest, Emmanuel adds concludingly.
Maja Söderblom, Interview made 5.02.2010
