Growing vegetables - the start of a better life

Posted by Sadie - Thursday, January 15, 2009

Kuleytu Girmay is 38, has 5 children and has lived here all her life. She has a kitchen garden and grows food - mostly for her own family, but she also sells any extra that she grows. She is the guard for a water point further down the hill from May Ayni , and her salary is the excess water. She showed us her garden and how she had collected the excess run-off water to form a reservoir to permanently water her garden. “Before I started this garden I was one of the poorest. I had taken a loan from the local bank. I am in a position to return this loan now, so I am free.”

Prior to the water being available she had to wait for rain to water her crops. She grows Swiss chard, papaya, radish, tomato, onions, pepper and guava. “Now I have some extra, because I am using the water to irrigate and I have more crops.” Productivity has now increased by 3 times and so instead of farming for daily survival she now has excess vegetables which she takes to the market to sell. Using the money generated from this, she has been able to pay off the loans that she had taken out from the bank and send her children to school.

Her children go to school in Hiwane and it takes them 1 hr to walk there. Now, they fetch water early in the morning and can go to school, before, they could not help because the river was too far. “I want my children to be educated and self reliant. I feel discomfort because I did not get a chance to be educated. I want to send them to school because I know what my life is now.”

We asked Kuleytu about how she managed the garden, and she said that “mainly I perform this activity, but my family, my husband and children help me. My husband helps me by taking stuff to market sometimes, but mostly I manage it myself.

All of my children are used to eating vegetables and it has helped their health. Also, with the excess, I can share with my neighbours.

The main difference is that we are drinking clean water, even the cattle can tell, when we were using the river they were attacked by leeches, but now they are drinking clean water. Healthy cows are important.”

Kuleytu doesn’t own any cattle herself, but she told us that she wants to buy some with the income from her garden.