Ending July with a bang: A busy week in the Meru Region!

by Harrison Blizzard and Amy Rawlinson

As we come to the end of our experience of a lifetime we have been busy in keeping up with our work and wrapping up many of our projects. Amy had two infant feeding sessions with the women out at Muchui and Ruuju. The women were very receptive to the new feeding recommendations and the turnout was great with fifty parents at Ruuju and eighty at Muchui! Harrison finished up his report on food service at the St. Theresa’s Hospital and will present next week to the staff. Hopefully the hospital can take this information to increase the nutritional wellness of the community and hospital patients and become a health care leader in the region. We both worked with biology student Hannah to wrap up our interviews with the women of Muchui on food security and food diversity. The cooperation of these women has been so amazing and it is their willingness to help answer our questions that Farmers Helping Farmers will be able to work to increase the wellness of these great women. It was somewhat sad that we had to finish this work though as we really enjoyed meeting these women. We were also able to witness the building of one of the new cookhouses at Kieni-kia-Ndege school (picture above). What a project they were working on and the teamwork from the parents was amazing. With such hard work, the cook house will be ready just in time for the children when they come back to school. You could see the joy in the faces of the parents, children, and staff at the school which was refreshing to see in a community who has had to deal with so much with the current dry spell they are experiencing. We also got to meet the newest member of the Farmers Helping Farmers team, Edwin, who is the new horticulturist. He had the pleasure of giving the Muchui Women’s Group their new shipment of 2500 tissue banana plants that were planted and will provide delicious bananas for the community very soon. Between all the work we have been doing out in the community, we have also been busy preparing reports to bring back home to record what we have witnessed here during our stay. These are equally as important for Farmers Helping Farmers and UPEI to continue their work in the future. Overall the week was bittersweet as we know our time is coming to an end but also knowing that we have enjoyed every minute of our work here in Kenya.