This week we are experiencing a small but much needed miracle!
At last we have had a breakthrough. Over the last two weeks we have had four days of light to medium rain across the Valley. The new Global Angels water pans have water in them, our water tanks are full. Excess water collected from gutters on our buildings have been pumped into the pond we plan to use for our new fish farm and hydroponic project. Indigenous trees and plants are already beginning to blossom since it rained. Wild animals will now have a chance again of survival.
We were thrilled and surprised yesterday to see fresh shoots springing up on the 70 passionfruit vines we thought had died in the drought. They have survived and will provide much needed fruit for the children in our school feeding programme in Bondeni Pre-School.Â
Transforming Itinyi Valley - Family by Family
Angelina’s Story
One of the wonderful things about working in the Tsavo Project is being able to support the empowerment of women like Angelina and seeing her and her family begin to thrive.
Already, on our first trips to the Itinyi Valley, Angelina stood out to us as someone special and one of the women with whom we wanted to invest. As a mother, she works on her small farm, or “shamba” as farms are called locally, growing crops and breeding indigenous poultry to feed her family. She is also a grandmother and has one of her daughters and little grandson living with her. Angelina is the main provider of her extended family.
Initially working as a casual labourer, helping us with building work, digging swales and other farm labour, we invited Angelina to join our staff to help with our poultry project. She now cares for anything from 600 – 1,000 birds every day, from one day old chicks to birds ready for market. Â
Angelina continues to receive training on land regeneration, building swales, poultry and organic farming. She has joined several Global Angels Network groups. The groups bring women and their families together to work as teams in small business initiatives such as indigenous poultry production, forest garden and one acre crop farming. We are adding new Network Groups initiatives over the next year as we expand to include bee keeping and honey production, mushroom houses and fish farming. She is very hard working, kind to others in the local community and a wonderful team player. Her smile and joy are infectious even while living in difficult conditions.
Before and after pictures and what you can do 🙂
Angelina has a reliable income now she is earning a salary working as a staff member for the Global Angels poultry business. However, making her small farm acreage profitable is still vital for the whole family to thrive.
Farming is gruelling work and because her shamba is on the hillside just below the forest, she competes with baboons and elephants who also want to eat her crops. The recent droughts have made it even more difficult to get a good harvest. A flash flood from the hills above, destroyed her outdoor kitchen and poultry buildings several years ago. It’s been tough.Â
To support her initiatives, we have built her a small poultry building to protect her chicks from extreme weather and wild animals, and for her adults birds to sleep in at night. Angelina is also part of our new Poultry Group, where together with other women we will be helping her build the numbers of her indigenous poultry flock. When ready for sale, the birds will be marketed as Global Angels branded poultry through the Global Angels Farm Shop at our new Mkulima Centre. Sales will supplement the women’s income.
Without a water pipe attached to her property, she has had little access to water. Her house needs guttering to collect rain water, and her small water tank has holes in it, making storing water nearly impossible. It’s time for us to help her further.
What we will do in 2022
Every family in the Valley needs good guttering on their homes to capture rainwater, and large storage tanks to contain it. When it does rain, tanks are filled very quickly, but without effective collection systems and storage, the benefit of rain is largely lost, as most families don’t have these systems or storage.
We are purchasing a curved brick making machine this week. Jackson, our Coordinator for the Tsavo Project, has trained a team of local young men, all skilled masons. We employ them to do our masonry work and they helped him build all our new buildings and two 50,000 litre masonry storage tanks for our farm. To build large earthen brick tanks they will receive further training. We are currently raising funds to employ these workers to help us build large water tanks for 10 families in our Network Groups. It will be transformational for each family to have guttering on their family homes to collect rain water and tanks to store it. Angelina and her family will be the first to receive theirs.Â
2022 will be an exiting year! We are committed to strengthening this community by providing water solutions and helping build a sustainable life. The task is big but also very exciting. Our project is unique in the Itinyi Valley because of our focus on sustainability and creating a micro economy that can feed the families of this area, whatever the weather, by optimising water consumption, growing produce organically wherever possible and using cutting edge technology to farm fish.Â
What you can do in 2022
It’s interesting isn’t it, that when we care enough about others to help them in their difficult situations, we also receive something back – a feeling of joy, of hope and even a sense of making a difference. During this time of global upheaval, I invite you to join us in helping people like Angelina and her family by giving them easy access to water.