Kenya Diaries: Day 19, Part 2 - Selene's Chicken and Beer Business

Amy brought me to meet a woman named Selene Ogendi Odero. She lives in a rental property near Amy and Malaki's home, and she had quite a story to tell, as you'll see below. I really liked Selene. She laughed a lot as she spoke, which you can't tell just from the transcript. She was very friendly, sweet, and funny. Selene's disabled, and Amy said she got polio from the polio vaccine as a child, although Selene did not confirm that for me. Kenya still has polio and when I got vaccinated before my trip, the doctor explained that they would give me the injection for my vaccine because the oral polio vaccine sometimes actually makes people get polio. Perhaps that's what happened to Selene.


Selene

After Selene told me her name, she said:

Odero is my father. I'm not yet married. Not because I am young, but because they overlooked unto me because of my disability. They thought I'll be nothing to them. I've got a lot of burdens so if I join someone, they'll do me everything. They thought like so. But I can do everything. I can dig. It's only walking a longer distance I cannot do. But other things I can do. Even right now I stay alone. I stay in this small cabin right here. I'm taking care of myself. I have one son, 21 years old. The son is seeking for employment in Nairobi now.

So as for myself, I was trained as a tailor. I'm a tailor by profession. I have a machine inside here. I was trained by the Rehabilitation Center for the Disabled in Kisii.

Amy told me that Selene was the secretary of an organization of people with disabilities. I asked about it. She replied:

My people - we have a number of people. We now operate, we scope the whole Bondo District. It is Bondo District Disabled Group. We cater for all types of disabilities. We have cripples, we have physically challenged, we have deafs, we have blinds, and many others. And even we have the associate members because there are times when we cannot work alone. We need to get some people who can push for us those who cannot drive their own wheelchairs. They are supposed to be supported. So we have the associate members. We also have parents to those with disabilities. We have some children who also have disabilities so we come together with their parents.

We're about 74 people. We registered in the year 2005. We decided to come together, we made the elections, we found our chairperson, secretary, treasurer, and that.

Then I asked what the group actually does. The answer was varied and a bit muddled, but here's what I could make out. She said, "We trained people, we were going around, training people to take care of themselves because of their disabilities." Then she mentioned income generating activities and said "We're going to buy dairy goats." The plan is to distribute them to each member as the goats multiply: "It gives birth, I give my neighbor." Then she said "We bought chairs and tents, we use them for hiring purposes." This made a lot more sense once Amy explained that the chairs and tents are rented out for funerals - and this area, with an AIDS rate of about 20% has a lot of funerals. "Every weekend. Every weekend, like here, we bury people on weekends. There are 100 chairs. We take them out, we are assured of 100 shillings."

Then I asked about her broiler project. She's a project manager for a small group project, and they are keeping the chickens at the headquarters for this small group.

We used to buy them at the Kenchic Kisumu when they are 1 day old. We bring them here, we keep them for 6 six weeks, then we sell them and they are ready for slaughtering. Six weeks only! I know you are - even I have the photograph, I can show you. So I've done that one twice. [I assured her I believed it was true and she went on] This time around, I stopped a bit because of the climate. They are so delicate, you cannot bring them when the weather's like this. They can acquire many diseases.

I started with 150 broilers, so... the mortality rate was a bit high because I was a bit new in the field. I lost about 10. I remained with 140. the 140, I sold them.

Kenyans are masters of the dramatic pause, especially when they are saying anything that has to do with math. Started with 150, lost 10, I remained with [pause] 140.

At this point it becomes a bit hard to hear every single word she says on my recording, but she said when she went to get more chicks, there was a food crisis and the feed for the birds is expensive, so that influenced her decisions about the broiler project. I asked what she feeds them.

For the first week, we give them broiler chick mash plus the crumbs. From 3 to the last week, we give them finisher mash. We give them starter at the beginning and finisher at the end. Starter at the beginning, you mixed with crumbs. And the finisher at the end, you mixed with the - what do you call that one - so one sack 70kg is 4500 [$54]. It's very expensive. And when they are still young, the 150 broilers can consume 2 sacks plus the crumbs. And from three weeks to the last weeks, they eat - they can consume two sacks in a week. Because they eat day and night, day and night.

All in all, by my math, that's 10 sacks of feed, or $540. I asked what the chicks cost.

It is 70 shillings and 50 cents at the Kenchic, and then when they are ready here, I sell them at 400 shillings per chick. And they really grow faster. Six weeks, you can't imagine! They are big and healthy!

So she paid Sh10,575 ($126.90) for the 150 chicks and sold 140 chickens for Sh56,000 ($672). By my math, the chicks plus the feed cost her $666.90. That's not much of a profit margin, unless I misunderstood the number of feed sacks she meant. I might be off by 2 sacks of feed, which would give her an extra $108 in profit.

We asked about the breed. She said:

You can't even know, they are all mixed up. You can't even know this one is a hen or a cock. They are all white. They really don't even have that behavior of chasing each other. They are just like that. You can't even actually see if this one is a cock or a hen! And they are very sweet. Nowadays if you go to conferences, they are the things which are cooked there. They are very nice. They do them the deep fried. They are not cooked with water, they are fried with oil like mandazis.

Mandazis

I asked if she tasted them. She replied: "Yes, yes, even those ones of mine. I'm the first person who got them. I have to buy."

I asked how they tasted. She said, "They taste very nice. I was advised not to cook, I was told just to fry. I fried. Very very very nice. Very sweet. Even my neighbors tasted it. Ask them how delicious they were."

Then Amy asked why they must be fried. She said, "They have a lot of fats. They are very soft. You can overcook them. If you are supposed to cook, then you have to roast fast for the oil to drip out so that they can - so that you can cook for only 30 minutes, not more than 30 minutes. It will be too soft and sweet."

I asked if these were her top two ways to earn a living - tailoring and poultry. She replied, "The tailoring is my own business. I like it because it pays for my son. The poultry I am doing for the benefit of my group members."

So I asked what the money was used for within the group. It's basically micro-lending. "We lend you, you bring back the interest on top."

I asked her what people use loans for. The group got a 400,000 grant and 100,000 loan. They put that together. She told me they offer 3 month loans with 5% interest. People would take as much money as they thought they could pay back. The conversation got interesting here. I asked if people would, for example, take the loan, buy a sewing machine, do tailoring work, and pay back the loan with interest that way. Selene said "We have never thought of it that way" but she liked the idea!

They have disbursed the money to every member. Selene took 10,000. She was able to repay it. "I used it in another project. I had a friend who was brewing the busaa. Busaa is a local beer that is brewed like a porridge." She had someone brewing it for her a ways away from where she lives, because she didn't want her parents to find out. "They are Christians," she explained, "So if they hear of the busaa, they would not accept me. So I decided to go and buy all the ingredients for that person. So the ingredients, I bought, and the business was not bad."

The person who made the beer sold it and they split the money. She made a profit of 5000 shillings ($60). But, she said, "I decided to stop that business because I was afraid. It was a little bit illegal business." She didn't have a license for it. "It was a good business" she said, because they sold all the busaa in two weeks and made all the money back.

At this point, we all ended up laughing as we talked about what a good business this was. There were some drunks in the area that Amy and I had seen over the last few days, so we speculated that Selene would have a loyal customer base.

I asked if she might consider taking the loan money to buy a license so she could keep selling busaa. She hadn't thought of that but loved the idea. At the end of our short chat, she told me I should come back because I had lots of good ideas. I hadn't even intended to give her ideas - I was just trying to probe to find out what they were doing with their money. But I guess I gave her some ideas!


A man carrying ingredients for busaa or changaa (a local distilled spirit) on a bike

Kenya Diaries: Day 16, Part 6 - Care for the Earth

On the afternoon of my first full day in Bondo, we hopped in the back of an old pick up that my hosts borrowed from a friend and drove off to a place called Care for the Earth. It's one of a number of local development efforts here.

As we drove there, Amy and I attracted lots of stares from all those we passed. What are those two wazungu [white people] doing in the back of a pickup??? We could see the signs of life changing in Bondo as we went - the brand new university, multistory buildings going up, and even street lights. Not to mention a nice new agrochemical store!


The new university in Bondo


The new tallest building in Bondo


Brand new street lights


Green World, a store selling agrochemicals from Bayer CropScience

Finally we arrived at Care for the Earth. At first glance I saw some well-manicured landscaping and modern looking buildings. We went into an office with a computer, and were guided into a second room with couches where they offered us sodas. Then we began a tour of the place.





Our guide first brought us to see the poultry - chickens, turkeys, and geese. He said, "Our vision here is basically as a learning resource center. Sometimes we keep birds which we'll use for catering purposes. We also have some which we breed and give to farmers." These animals are all what Kenyans call "grade" (pedigree breeds, not local varieties).

The first ones we looked at appeared to be Cornish crosses. They didn't even act like chickens. They just sat lazily around their enclosure. Our guide told us they were broilers, or "table birds" as he put it. "They are meant for meat. These ones are not laying eggs. We are just breeding them for our catering facilities." I asked him how long it takes to grow a broiler from birth to full-size. He said it takes a month and a half.


Broilers

Then he showed us a second variety called KenPro. These birds acted like chickens, at least. "KenPro is a hybrid and it is a duel purpose, for eggs and meat. And each batch of ten hens is served by one cock. So if there are twenty, two cocks." He said they start laying at four months. I asked how long it takes for the bird to grow big enough to eat. He said, "There is no need for eating it while it is laying." You wait until the bird stops laying after a few years and then eat it. "And it is big," he added. "Up to five kilos. The local ones, the maximum is two kilos. But these ones go up to four and five kilos... People in our society, they like bigger things."

He said that it's important to give these birds "concentrates" (purchased feed). "The local ons are free range and they go for caterpillars. But these ones, you are confining them. So you need to give them vitamins and minerals." He said this breed was introduced to Kenya by the government working together with the Netherlands.


KenPro chickens

He said they are getting one section ready for new 500 new broiler chicks as well as some new Ken Pro birds. They get the chickens from Kenchic.

Next, we saw the goats, which were in a nice, large yard.



The guide said, "Most of them are for milk. We use the hybrid buck to upgrade our local native goats so that we get the goats which produce milk." Goats are usually kept for meat here, and the local varieties are not great milkers. I think by hybrid he means a pedigree breed, not an actual hybrid.

"The goodness of a goat, any goat can eat anything. But mostly we do give them browses, all the leaves from the trees. They prefer the leaves of some trees and we know the types of trees which the goats eat. So we cut for them, we bring them here, they eat, sometimes they are allowed to go out grazing. A goat likes exercising, by maybe standing on two feet and getting browses up. You know, they like eating that manner."

"It is normal, one male goat should serve ten female goats. That is how it is required." He said we could buy the goats here. "A buck can go up to from 10,000 to 15,000. A female goes from 8,000 to 10,000." In dollars, the bucks are $120 to $180, and the females are $96 to $120.

I asked if the goats require purchased food too. He replied, "Sometimes we do give them salt, and we give them dairy meal also. They like it very much. But we don't normally give them the dairy meal all the time because the most preferred food for the goats are the browses."

Amy asked "Are they coping okay with this environment?" He replied, "Yes, because they prefer hot places." The breeds they keep are Toggenburg, Saanen, and German Alpine.

Next, we saw the cows. They are Ayreshires. He said they give 10-20 liters depending on the quality of feed. I don't know if that is per milking or per day. Either way, it's much more than the local breeds produce. "This one is the zero grazing unit. The animals can stay here in their lifetime, but we normally allow them to go do some grazing if there is some grass. But right now is dry." The manure is removed and fed to a biogas digester. They use the biogas for cooking in the kitchen.


Cows


Cows


Yard for the cows.

I would have loved to ask more about the cows, but our guide was very eager to show us the biogas digester, which he explained to us in detail.


Manure and water goes in here


Here is the biogas digster


The gas is piped to the kitchen.


The leftovers from biogas digestion come out here and they are used as fertilizer.

By then, Amy's young daughter and I spotted some papaya and mango trees. Our guide caught up with us and showed us the large passionfruit area that had papaya and Gravillea trees interspersed among the vines.


Passionfruit area in the distance, shaded under trees


I think the large trees in the distance are mango


An area that is plowed to grow maize once the rains begin. He said this was plowed manually, not with a tractor.


Passionfruit


An upside down bottle used to water the plants. They water once a day, but when it is very hot they water twice a day.


A woodlot that is also sometimes used for grazing the cows too.


Young plants growing under shade to protect them from the sun.


Tissue culture bananas


A native vegetable called mitoo (Crotalaria brevidens) that has gone to seed.

They are using this plant to collect seeds right now, but usually people eat the leaves. You can see more info about Crotalaria brevidens at the link.

Then we saw some other trees - mango I think. These are about 8 years old and our guide told us they are planted too close to one another.


Mango trees


Beehives. They have both Langstroth hives and Kenya Top Bar Hives. And these thorns will keep people away from the bees very effectively.

The last area we saw was where they do the catering and workshops. They have a nice training area, little cottages where guests can stay, areas where guests can have breakout sessions during workshops and trainings, and a kitchen. It seems that they make a lot of their money from holding trainings and catering for their trainees these days.

Kenya Diaries: Day 17, Part 5 - BAMA Farmer Field School

On our way home from Dominion Farms, we stopped at a place called BAMA. This is a small community organization in a rural part of Kenya that is working in an area with big HIV/AIDS problems.



When we arrived at BAMA, it looked like nothing. A tiny building - that's it. My hosts, Amy and Malaki, were trying to call to see if anyone was there to show us around, but it seemed like the place was empty. I was ready to throw in the towel and leave.


BAMA

Eventually, an incredibly sweet woman came out to meet us. She brought a few chairs outside and we sat under the tree pictured above and talked. Then she showed us around.

BAMA is a community based organization [CBO] representing four communities. The name BAMA is an acronym made up of the first letter of the names of each of the communities. They do some work with Action Aid.

These communities were always very poor and had a terrible problem with African sleeping sickness and the tsetse fly. Many of the young people in these villages left and went to Lake Victoria since they couldn't make a living at home.

But the lake has a terribly high AIDS rate, and many of the young people who went there became infected with HIV/AIDS. HIV/AIDS takes out people in the prime of life - ages 15-49 - because 80% of transmission in Kenya is from unprotected (mostly heterosexual) sex. Often people already have children by the time they get infected, and when they die, the children are left with elderly grandparents or alone in child-headed households. There are several child-headed households in the communities BAMA serves.

Many diseases take out the very old and the very young. By taking out people in the 15-49 age group, AIDS is unique and causes unique problems. If many babies and toddlers are killed by malaria, the parents are still around, retaining knowledge about farming and having the physical ability to farm. But if the parents die and the children and elderly are left, the children often don't know how to farm yet, and neither the elderly nor the young have the capability to do the most difficult physical labor required in farming. Also, it puts a strain on the child's ability to go to school if that child must also work or grow food in order to eat every day.

So these communities formed BAMA to try to help their people make a living at home, to keep them from going to the lake and getting AIDS. The first thing the woman told us about was a cattle dip that they made. If you remember from my interview with Sidney, the Maasai man, he spoke about cattle dips too. They put pesticides in water and then have the cattle go in it to kill all of the ticks and bugs on them. The pesticide lasts for a week, and the cows must be dipped again seven days later.

Apparently, the exotic breeds are far more susceptible to Kenyan diseases than native Kenyan breeds, but I'm no expert in the tsetse fly and African sleeping sickness, so I don't know how susceptible local breeds are to that vs. exotic breeds. I have heard that the chemicals used in the dips are pretty toxic and that neem can work as an organic alternative. But a lot of development work revolves around cattle dips, and communities like BAMA feel that they need them.

If you recall, Sidney noted that during the 1990s, the government's veterinary services just collapsed. It turns out that was a result of Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) imposed by the World Bank and the IMF. So the government used to offer free cattle dips, at least where Sidney lives, if not here in Bondo, and then the dips became privatized and services were no longer free. Sidney's community handled it by pooling their resources to create their own cooperative dip. That's basically what BAMA has done too.


Cattle dip, I think

BAMA also offers a food bank for locals who are in need. Now they just have some bags of maize, and last year they had sorghum as well. She said last year they had to give the sorghum to neighbors who were starving, and last season, only maize was planted.


Bags of maize in the food bank

They also run a pharmacy. The meds here are ones for immediate emergencies. It's not a full stock of everything under the sun.


Pharmacy

They are also promoting traditional vegetables and herbal medicines. Below, you see Crotalaria brevidens, which the Luo call mitoo. It's dried, and the woman said it tastes even more delicious this way. To cook it you can rehydrate it and cook it with milk. She said you need to cook it with milk, which is what I heard from several sources while in Bondo.


Mitoo

BAMA created a terrific little brochure of traditional vegetables and their medicinal properties. I've typed it out below. One caveat to this is that I've read a study that surveyed healers in this region and there was often little agreement among them about what cures what. So some of these medicinal properties might be true, and some of the plants might just have value as food but nothing more.

The brochure is a "popular version of a research done by Maseno University in collaboration with BAMA CBO and funded by Action Aid." It says "The community is advised to promote the production and consumption of local vegetables which had earlier neglected to get the micro nutrients most needed for boosting the immunity especially in the wake of the HIV/AIDS scourage)" [sic]

• Black nightshade (local name: osuga): treats diarrhea, eye infections, 'orianyancha' yellowing of eyes (jaundice), blood clotting
  
• Cats whiskers (akeyo): Anti HIV/AIDS, through immunity boosting, anti mosquitos, controls epileptic fits, anti fungal, increase libido & induces labour pain.
  
• Rattle pod (Mitoo): Treats boils, improves appetite, 'akuoda' stomach pains and swellings
  
• Amaranth (ododo): Treats anemia, adds strength
  
• Local name: Nyasigumba: Lowers cholesterol levels
  
• Local name: Atipa: Increases weight, skin infection and digestion
  
• Cowpeas (Boo): Leaf-extract treats skin infections, epilepsy, chest pain, and snake bite.
  
• Pumpkin (susa): Anti-malaria, control sugar levels in the body
  
• Milk thistle (Achak achak): Antibacterial, improves appetite, root extracts treats measles symptoms.
  
• Stinging nettle (Dindo): Treats arthritis and controls pests
  
• Water spinach (Obudo nyaduolo): Flower buds treat ring worms and sedative (makes you sleepy)
  
• Black eyed susan (Nyawend agwata): Crushed in fat and used as purgative (yomo ich)
  
• Traditional kale (Kandhira): Seeds used for treating stomach ache
  
• Ethiopian kale (Nyar nar achak achak): Sedative, and weight control
  
• Black jack (Onyiego): Crushed to water and treats malaria, boosts immunity
  
• Jews mallow (Apoth nyar uyotna): Appetite, digestion, and skin infections
  
• Local name: Awayo: Treats eyelids, ringworms, boils, and stomach troubles
  
• Cassava leaves (It marieba): Roots important in starch for gelling purposes
  
• Sweet potatoes (It rabuon): Leaf sap pusedas sedative and treats ringworm
  
• Hyacinth bean/Lablab bean (Okuro): Lowers blood pressure
  
• Malabar spinach (Obwanda, milare): Antifungal
  
• Local name: Nyar bungu odidi: headaches, colds, and anti-fungal
  
• Mung beans (leso riadore): Treat skin infection, epilepsy, chest pain, snake bite
  
• Local name: Bombwe: Treats abscesses and boils
  
• Local name: Oinglatiang: Treat any type of stomach ache and gastric ulcers
  
• Bitter leaves (Rayue): Has anti-tumor activity (anti cancer)
  
• Amaranth (osoyi): Anti-viral compoound has been isolated from the plant [Note: This is a different local name than the other listing of amaranth. There are multiple amaranth species within Kenya, although I don't know if these are two names that are both generic to amaranth, or two names representing two species.]
  
• Horse radish tree (moringa): Controls blood sugar, eases labor pain, antibacterial and immune boosters of sore throats

The other pages of the brochure explain why people should eat each vitamin, mineral, and macronutrient. Then it has a table showing nutrient contents of various local veggies. The woman showing us around said she didn't know about the plant mitoo before this project and now she eats it. She thinks it's delicious. As I asked her about how her work here changed her diet, she added "I'm also a widow." I did not ask because I didn't think it's polite, but if her husband died of AIDS, it's likely enough that she's infected too. She told me she farms and raises a dairy goat. The dairy goats are another BAMA project.


Think there might be a few Obama fans here?

Then we met the goats...

Obama has a dairy goat project. Traditional Kenyan goat breeds are almost entirely used for meat. There's been an effort to bring in German Alpine dairy goats to promote keeping goats for milk. BAMA will not sell anyone a dairy goat without training them first on how to care for the goat, but after training, you can buy a female goat that has one German Alpine parent and one local parent for 5000 shillings ($60). A goat with 75% German Alpine genes goes for 10,000 ($120) and a purebred German Alpine goes for 15,000-18,000 ($180-$216). That's for the females.

BAMA promotes "zero grazing," which basically means confining the animals and bringing the feed to them. It's a novel concept in Kenya. All of the goats they had are purebred German Alpine. The babies in the photos are three days old. The babies will stay here to nurse for two months before they can be sold.














The goats' "zero grazing" housing setup

They told us the amount of milk depends on their feed and management. Right now in the dry season, they are producing 4 liters a day with two milkings per day. These purebred goats must be "supplemented" with purchased feeds.

BAMA keeps a German Alpine buck on hand to mate with people's goats if people want their goats' offspring to have German Alpine genes. I asked whether some of the German Alpine goats died, and she said yes some did. It sounded like they concluded that when people are first starting to raise these dairy goats, they have more success with the 50/50 goats that are mixed with the local breed than with the German Alpines. When you mix the local breed with the German Alpine, you get more adaptation to local conditions, but less milk.

I heard mixed opinions on keeping purebred exotic breeds, or even animals with one local parent and one exotic breed parent while I was in Kenya. Organizations like BAMA and another one we visited called Care for the Earth promoted them. I met a man who worked for the Kenyan Dept of Veterinary Services who keeps all purebred animals, as well as a two others who kept one purebred cow each (a Friesian for milk in one case, and a beef cow in the other). But there's a risk and an expense to keeping such a high maintenance animal like these, even if you are going to get some extra milk from them. If you keep a 50/50 or 75/25 mix, the question is whether the increase in adaptation to local conditions outweighs the resulting decrease in milk you get from having a mixed breed. I don't have the answer to that question, but I am a skeptic of these efforts to push purebred animals, particularly if people are paying so much for one. I don't know what a local breed goat costs, but if a 50/50 Alpine mix costs half the price of a purebred Alpine, then that's already saying something.

Kenya Diaries: Day 17, Part 4 - Dominion Farms, Part 4

On my 17th day in Kenya, I visited Dominion Farms, a U.S.-owned enormous rice farm that sits in between Bondo and Siaya Districts in Nyanza Province. Below is the last part of the transcript and photos from our tour.

The people with me on the tour were my hosts, Amy Lint and Malaki Obado, along with their baby, and our guide. When we left off, we were at the weir, talking about Dominion's use of water from the Yala River. The guide told us about a treatment process they use where they allow the sediment to settle out and then add chlorine to the water. Within Dominion, they have piped water from the river water that they've treated - a huge and rare luxury in this part of Kenya.

Then she mentioned they have some tilapia ponds that hold more than 60,000 fish. She said we couldn't see those ponds, but we could see some other ponds.

Me: Do you know their schedule for land reclamation? What's the total area they plan to reclaim.

Guide: I don't have access to that information.

Me: I am interested in how big this will become and in what year.

Guide: Well, you know Busia? We are going to go up to Busia.

Amy Lint: Whoa!

Guide: So that's like really huge.

You can see how big that would be yourself, but we found out later that she was referring to Busia District, not the town itself, which means it's not as big of an area as Amy first thought:


The marker shows Yala Swamp, where Dominion is now located. It's in between Siaya and Bondo Districts and it includes Lake Kanyaboli, which is home to many very valuable fish species that used to live in Lake Victoria before the introduction of the Nile Perch. Busia is straight north, near the Uganda border.

Guide: Calvin [the owner of Dominion] has a house here, but he comes once every month if he doesn't have any other engagements.

Then the conversation turned to some ponds we were passing.

Guide: So these are some of our green ponds. We have very many ponds, yeah? But we won't visit these ponds, we'll visit the ones in the back.

Malaki Obado: Why do you call it green ponds?

Guide: Because it's on bare land. There is no concrete. The modern ponds, they have concrete down there.

MO: What are you growing in the green ponds?

Guide: We have tilapia and catfish.

MO: OK, together in the same pond?

Guide: No.

MO: If it's a tilapia pond, it's just a tilapia pond?

Guide: Yeah, we actually just have the male fish alone, the female fish alone, unless you want them to brood, then we also have the fingerlings and the mothers. We have separate ponds for every stage and every sex.

Me: What do you feed them?

Guide: OK, for the fish that - OK, normally wild fish would eat, like, insects, little things they find in the water, mud, vegetation but for our fish, we make feeds for them at the fish feed mill. We make it using various material that have high protein, especially.

Me: To make them grow fast?

Guide: Yes.

Me: Do they grow that high protein material here or do they buy it or import it?

Guide: We buy it.

At this point, the conversation turned to the training center. The guide said that they train people on their rice growing techniques. Right now, there was a group of Nigerians being trained and they would go home to start up a Dominion Farm in Nigeria, owned by the same company. But, she said that the Nigerian government was actually paying for the training.

Guide: The people were selected by the government. They are young people. Young people who are selected to learn so they can go and start it themselves.

AL: Are they learning about riding the machinery?

Guide: Yes, and also growing the rice, how to prepare the land, and also many, many - how to mill the rice, package it, and sell it. And how to run the administration, everything.

Me: Do you know how much rice is sold each year?

Guide: Yeah, tons, yes.

Me: How much?

Guide: I don't have the figures off hand, but it's pretty good.

AL: So, do you think they're going to start exporting to India or Dubai as well?

Guide: Not right now. Until when we reach Busia -

AL: You can start going now to the Arab world.

Guide: Yeah.

AL: Because there's a big market for rice.

Guide: Exactly. We were surprised by the demand. Our rice is very nice, tastes good, and it's affordable.

AL: So that'll be all swampland up to Busia?

Guide: I don't know how it looks all the way up to Busia.

AL: I didn't know the swamp went all the way up to Busia.

MO: When she says Busia, she's talking about Busia District. There, the river goes. It kind of touches Bondo, Siaya, and there's Busia kind of at the end.

Guide: So the river is meandering like this, yeah? So in between those meanders, that's the area we are talking about.

AL: So is there a plan to start Dominion Uganda? The Nile and all that?

Guide: I don't know if that was really being thought of.

AL: Who does all the sorting and grading?

Guide: That is at the rice mill, but unfortunately we cannot enter the rice mill. So right now we will go to the rice mill.

[Amy talked her into it later and we did go in]

AL: So this, post-harvest - is it machine too? Or people are doing it?

Guide: What?

AL: Sorting, grading.

Guide: Everything is done by machine, milling, grading, even packaging. The one thing that I see is manpowered is maybe baling. You put the rice in bales, you put it on pallet, then you carry it to the warehouse, but everything else is just machine.

AL: Oh ok. So even sorting rice and such - it's done by machine?

Guide: Yeah.

AL: How do you feel about that? Because there is such a potential to give a lot of jobs to people but it's all done by machine. And at a time when we need jobs. People are ready to work but so many jobs are given to machine.

Guide: OK, um, it's true. Yeah, okay. We really employ very few people.

AL: Like 400 people on all this land? That's really very few people. And even, a quarter, 25 percent of that is security.

Guide: No, the security firm is separate.

Me: A contractor?

AL: Oh, ok.

Guide: Yes. And we work with contractors mainly. Like the cleaners, security.

The cleaners just clean a few white coats they have people wear when working in the mill.

Me: Do you notice many mosquitoes?

Guide: Yeah. Eh, mosquitoes are minimal. I think I am used to it now. Even during the day you can get bitten.

Me: Really. Do they spray for mosquitoes?

Guide: No. But maybe they used to spray at some point. The mosquitoes are really reducing.

Me: After harvest, if you are not going to let the same plants produce a second crop, how long before you plant another crop. Do you leave it to rest?

Guide: Yes. It rests for some time, depending on the nutrients, the analysis.

Me: Like a year, or a month?

Guide: No, it can't be a year. Several months.

Me: So when you say there are four crops a year, it's not four crops in the same field.

Guide: No.

Me: Do you know how many crops you could get in a year in the same field?

Guide: It could be like two, maximum three.

Me: That sounds much more normal. When I heard four I was like 'what?'

At this point, Malaki asked about a machine alongside the harvester. The guide began to explain it and I realized I'd seen the same thing in cornfields in Iowa. You get a machine to take the harvest directly from the harvester and carry it to the mill, and then the harvester can continue working without ever stopping. The guide confirmed that this was the case.

Guide: And also, it minimizes spillages. Human labor, it provides for many people to eat, but mechanization is highly efficient. Like, if we had to hire people to cut the rice, it would be so expensive.

Me: How much would have you have to pay them?

Guide: OK, that is maybe casual labor.

No answer. I wouldn't be surprised if it was something like 200 shillings - $2.40.

AL: At least you harvest the bananas by hand?

Guide: Yes.

AL: There's no banana plucking machines [laughs]

MO: This is jatropha, can you tell me about this?

Guide: It is a project that got started. We were supposed to start producing the fuel, but I don't know. It stalled.

Jatropha, a biofuel crop. They tried it and abandoned it here. They've tried and abandoned many things, including a honey project and a poultry project. They are now working on a soybean project to see if it works as something they might continue in the future.

AL: All this machinery came from the U.S.?

Guide: Yes, by sea.

We finally arrived at the mill, and I took a photo before they told me I wasn't supposed to take pictures.



Ditto on the tilapia ponds. If you look at the corner of the pond, there's an interesting bird sitting there - that's why I took the picture.



The tilapia operation was disgusting. The ponds are made by digging the earth out and then adding a pipe for water to flow in and one to take the water out so that the water flows all the time. Because tilapia are native to this part of the world, I doubt the water needs to be heated like it does in the U.S.

My recording of our visit to the tilapia pond isn't clear. Basically, when the baby tilapia are born, they are transferred into a pond where they are given a hormone that changes all the females to males. They remain there for one month. After that, all of the fish are male. The reason they told us this is because "in fish, we believe that males grow faster." It sounded to me like they make them all male is so that they don't mate. If the females were devoting energy to breeding, then they would grow slower. I've also heard something about how having fertile males and females result in a crowded pond with lots of small fish instead of fewer big ones.

The all male tilapia are fed a feed made in the mill, basically from cheap calories and some vitamin/mineral supplements. This feed is different from the one given to the fish used for breeding, since - if I understand it right - it would make the fish actually too fat to breed.

There are 60 ponds in the part of the farm we visited. They are building more ponds on the other side of the farm. My recording is very hard to hear, and I could not catch how many ponds they plan to build total or how many fish each pond holds, but they plan to make an awful lot of ponds, and each pond holds thousands of fish.

From the fish ponds, we went to the mill. In the mill, the machines do everything. The rice is first sorted to remove large debris and smaller debris. The small debris is sold as animal feed. The husk is removed and used as a mulch. The bran and germ are removed and sold as animal feed. Then the white rice is polished and graded and packaged. Grading is based on the length of the grain.

Finally, as we left, Amy and Malaki bought some fish and rice for dinner and I took a photo of one of the nearby houses. There are communities on either side of the farm, right up to the gates. Since the farm diverted the river, they have made available a few canals of water for locals to use for washing, or drinking, or whatever. You see local people gathering water on either side of the farm. God knows what's in that water.


A house just outside of Dominion on the Siaya side.


A community just outside of Dominion on the Bondo side.

That night, the family ate the tilapia and rice for dinner. I didn't. I'm not eating something that was born female and switched to male with hormones. Nor do I want to eat anything that got sprayed with pesticides from an airplane. Malaki's dad remarked that the locally caught wild tilapia taste sweeter than the fish from Dominion. I held my tongue and didn't tell him how the tilapia at Dominion were produced. I was his guest and did not want to ruin his meal.