Disappointment

Disapppointment is a pretty powerful emotion that can even render you immobile and make you quit. Disappointment comes when we don't get the results that we expected and thus frustration rides in as if on cue. Its been a dry season and the short rains didn't come as I had expected. This in turn has denied my crop of Green Grams (Dengu) the much needed water at this half-way point in their growth. The crop has thus been stunted and unless it rains well in Kitengela soon, I am afraid I won't have enough harvest to cover my costs. The Green Grams had been advertised as drought tolerant but it seems that this drought has outrun them.

This however being only my first crop, I can't afford to be discouraged. I have known from the start that I could get burnt and the best thing to do from here is to learn from this occurrence. The major lesson here is that rain-fed agriculture is the reason we are perenially hungry and for any serious farmer, irrigation has to be the ultimate option. I will thus have to set up a proper irrigation system before the next crop. The good thing about our farm is that there is a borehole on the farm adjacent and the owner is a family friend and has given us the go ahead to tap water from his borehole. I was thinking of planting water melons for the next season but I was advised that if the melons -which mature in three months- are harvested during the april long rains, they will run the risk of getting damaged by the wet weather. I am weighing my options and one of them is Dania (not sure of their English name but they are used as food seasoning along with onions).

Like I was saying earlier, this disappointment is a mere speed bump on the road that doesn't give me the luxury to sit around and mope. From here on, I'm rolling up my sleeves again and its the pedal to the metal. Im going hard!  And on that rejuvenated note, I send you seasons greetings, Happy Holidays.

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Youthful Ambition

I have decided to title this blog post after my article in the November issue of Hortfresh Journal, a horticultural Magazine (pictured).

I am really excited about this accomplishment because I was invited to write the Editorial opinion on page 1 of the magazine. This is such an honour because other than exercising my journalism muscle, I am also flexing my farming muscles. Farming is a very new venture for me and I have made it my personal mission to attract a million young people into farming. Through a platform like Hortfresh Journal, I see my goal beginning to become visible in the distance. A big thank you to the editorial team led by Joseph Karanja. To get yourself a copy of Hortfresh Journal for 250bob, talk to Carol on 0752-007253 or 0723-308725 or go to www.hortfreshjournal.com for leads in Horticulture. 

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I see Dengu People (Dead People), #Mulla

Last week on Friday, I embarked on the highly tideous and back-breaking affair of planting the dengu (Green Grams) that I got from USAID through their agricultural contractor Fintrac. Fintrac is in charge of the Kenya Horticultural Competitiveness project which aims to increase food production in Kenya. @USAIDKenya sort of wanted to tackle food shortage not by giving food aid but by ensuring that there is enough food being grown locally. It's kind of treating the root causes of famine rather than bandaging the symptoms every year.

I travelled to Machakos Town to the Dryland Seed Company which is one of the outlets that have KEPHIS approved seeds. I picked 15Kgs of the N26 variety which is drought tolerant. I have been planting it since then with the help of local mamas (women) here in Olturuto, Kitengela. Its from these ladies that I learnt that the art of planting was traditionally designated as a woman's job. Good thing gender roles are getting kinda blurred so I can plant in my own farm. There is something Spiritual about putting seeds in the soil, I feel it everyday as I plant. I guess its because as a farmer, you are trusting the soil and the rain to make something out of a tiny seed. Its that tiny seed that holds the blueprint to an entire foliage that will produce flowers and eventually seeds that will be the harvest. That's creation at it's most basic.

This dengu variety takes 65 days to mature, that's just 2 months and five days. Right now we're almost done planting two out of the three acres. I can only say that farming is turning out to be an awesome experience. Today on Twitter, I saw the hashtag #IAmKenyanBecause, started by @Uongozi254 and they wanted to know why we think we are Kenyan and my response was; " #IamKenyanBecause I'm doing what 80% of Kenyans do, #Farming, so that we don't do a #Kenyans4Kenya again."
 

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Kenya Power denies farmers power

The Kenya Power, Nairobi South zone, Kitengela Office has since May 2011 denied farmers electricity despite having paid for connection fees. Having applied for electricity under the Ref. No. E21432011040161, over 15 farmers are yet to be connected to the main grid up to date. This is in Olturuto shopping center which is 4Km off the main Kitengela-Namanga Road from the Kenchic Breeding Farm, and about 500 meters from Kuresoi M.P. Zakayo Cheruiyot’s farm. The way leave officer at the Kitengela office Mr. Osman uses the excuse that there is no way leave for the electricity poles to be erected but a new 3-phase line was identified from which to tap power. Before this excuse, the office had earlier claimed that we are over the minimum distance of 900 meters (OD) but that is also not true. This delay has angered residents so much that there are plans to do a public demonstration in Olturuto. The KBC T.V. Kitengela field journalist as well as NTV and Citizen T.V. Journalists have been informed of this protest against Kenya Power and will be coming to cover it. Some headway has been made though through the identification of an alternate route to use to bring power, being spearheaded by Eng. Joshua Mwangi but that is taking too long to be effected angering residents even more. Numerous complaints have already been lodged with Kenya Power by the residents including the most recent one under ref. no. 504936. We have already paid over KShs. 65,000 and we want electricity to pump water for irrigation, farm and build this nation. These connections will actually help Kenya Power achieve its annual target of 300,000 new connections. Its already been a year and a half, how much longer should we have to wait for electricity?

Prezzo rocking the One 'Swagger Farmers' Tees

Prezzo joined the One Campaign and designed T-shirts for the campaign which he is doing free of charge as part of his philanthropic drive to use his African stardom to bring attention to hunger, malnutrition and poverty. I am glad to also state my ambition to entice One Million young people like myself into farming. I am doing this using my skills as a journalist to write about my experiences as a young new famer through lifestyle articles that seek to romanticize the concept of farming. Farming is being taken up by youth as a wealth creation tool as well as for ensuring food security. To read more about Prezzo's Swagger Farmer campaign and Tees, go to the African Blog on http://one.org

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We are all winners

I've just passed by a group of sheep and I noticed that the offspring -five kids, were trying to conquer a small molehill. Each one wanted to be on top by trying to push the others off the molehill with its head.

We live in a world where winner takes all and this necessitates a cut-throat competitive culture that I consider unhealthy. Ever since primary school, I have not been a big fan of competition. I don't watch the English Premier league or follow the Kenyan League either, I don't see the sense really. I never did participate in sports much in high school either. I believe that we can all win.

Now I know that sounds lofty and some might even say wussy, but unlike in war, I believe that in life there can be win-win scenarios. All it takes is bigger men and women coming together and realizing that there is more than enough. There are more than enough resources for us all. Rich people dont have to hoard everything, live and let live. Now I'm not advocating for the rich to give away their money, although that would be good, neither am I preaching communism. I just think that the world needs a little bit more spiritualism.

Now, this is different from religionism in that spiritualism says that we are all connected, all small pieces of one big jigsaw puzzle, and that my part is connected to other people's parts, and their parts connected to mine. And so their fate is my fate and my fate is their fate. None of us can do this alone. Some will be buyers and others sellers, some will be employers and others employees, we all need each other and hence each person is valuable in that way. So let's recognize this truth that we are one and there really is no need to put others down for you to win, for we can all win. The podium is big enough for us all. Heck it's so big that even our latest scientific telescopes cannot see the end of it. Thats our podium, the entire universe.         

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A Million New Young Farmers

I will start this post with Busta Rhymes and T-pain on their Hustlers' Anthem track where T-pain sings the hook like "I keep hustling dough, yea, yea, yea". This is what I have set out to do. And its not just about hustling dough, but I also want to start a campaign to get a million new young people interested in and involved in farming as their main-stay or side-hustle.

Farming has mostly been viewed as a retirees' pass time activity or a rich ranchers' sport. My plan is to make it an initiative for young people just like me. I want to get young people excited about the prospect of farming, because it is. I am writing about my awesome and sometimes not so awesome experiences as a young new farmer in Kitengela and I am pushing to have these lifestyle feature articles published in weekend editions of newspapers or magazines and in my blog, FB and Twitter pages. I am also talking to companies involved in agribusiness to bankroll a guerilla persuasion campaign that will get the youth into farming. I am even willing to sacrifice my image and privacy to this campaign (hehe). I have done some mock-up ads of how the campaign visuals will look like. I also want to promote the concept of Agritourism through farm-stays. I have an image of a two bedroom house on one corner of the farm, a seperate kitchen, washrooms with the flushing feature, two or four round huts for guests with two beds each. The huts will be used to house farming enthusiasts and people interested in farming. I can just see the homestead from where I am seated on an old beehive at the corner of the farm.

The other attractions will be the four zebras and two gazelles with their young ones that roam near the farm. I always see young boys chasing those gazelles but can never get close to them. The mzee caretaker at the farm also tells me that within a half day's walk south of here, there are wildbeasts and ostriches. I didn't know that!

Our grandparents used to farm, now its our time to farm - its a case of 'same hustle, different age'. I'm looking at the west side of the farm and noticing the acacia trees near the seasonal river 500 meters from the edge of the farm, I realize that we can have camping gear set up under those trees. The fifty acres that belong to the mzee who sold us the three acres can also be used for paintball games. All in all, the list of what can be done here is endless. By the way, today is the start of the ASK Nairobi trade fair- the Holy Grail of farming, I hope to attend before the last day on Sunday, see you there. I am now focussed on farming as my main-hustle and I want to entice you to be a part-time/ full-time farmer or as Friends of Farmers, will you join me as a brand ambassador, follow this blog through the button on the right and share this page as a Friend of Farmers.

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The Dead Dove

I woke up this morning to find a dead dove near my door and I couldn’t help but feel sad about it. I picked it up with a polythene paper bag and threw it into the fields. Immediately, some blue and yellow birds began circling over it. They would fly over it, pause in mid-flight and then proceed on. It’s like they were mourning for it, paying their respects. Either that or they were realizing that it’s a dead bird and they don’t eat those. These are the cycles we go through in life; birth, death and everything in between. These cycles remind me of a conversation I had with my brother yesterday and he was pointing out that he has noticed that people go through cycles of depression. These cyclical bouts of depression are like a hereditary curse that gets passed on from parents to their children. They (the cycles) in a way become trans-generational. Yes, there are times when we are up and other times when we are down, but could this be true? Just like the dove that was up in the air one minute and down on the ground the next. And if these cycles affect us, how can we avoid them, and if that’s not possible, how can we survive through them without succumbing to their numbing powers?

Life is Good

My good friends over at LG say that Life is good and I couldn’t agree with them more. As I seat here in a plastic chair at my door, reading a book by Kathryn Kuhlman, I can’t help but feel the serenity and appreciate the awareness, something within me, it knows me, and it knows the Universe. Looking out to my right, I see vast flat land dotted with green trees and brown savannah grass with hills in the distance. I appreciate the fact that we own three acres of this vast untapped land in Kitengela and I’m getting ready to tap it. As I type this out, I am literally waiting for a neighbour’s tractor to come over and start to plough up the three acres, picking up from where I left off. Life is interesting in many ways. To think that I was that little kid who had been screwed over by life when my folks decided to quit their marriage, and to now see how far I have come that it doesn’t define me anymore. I had a candid one with the caretaker Mzee (my elder) here at the farm and I found out that he had the same background. The difference is that I don’t think he’s even processed it much or even talked about it. I could see his eyes water as he narrated to me his story. It’s then that I realized that poetry might have just saved me. At the beginning, my poetry was an outlet for all those bottled up emotions from childhood. I let them breathe, I let them free through poetry and it really loosened me up. On the outside, I may seem like the same guy but deep within, there is a lot that I let go, a lot that I forgave, and a lot that I processed. Now I am whole, and despite the fact that I don’t want kids of my own, I think I turned out okay. I am at peace with myself, with my life and things are really opening up for me in a big way. The rain clouds in the horizon are giving birth to showers of wealth. I am deeply spiritual and in-tune with myself. I feel successful, I feel connected, I feel independent, and I feel that freedom. There are many things that I haven’t done, but I am glad that I have loved, loved myself. I appreciate this far that life has brought me and I recognize that life is yet to take me to the Heavens. Life is good, and it will continue to be so. That much I know.

Adaptive Advantage

Yesterday morning I photographed a slightly strange use of what is around you to accomplish at task. The farm caretaker here in Kitengela wanted to wash one of his heavier blankets but the small bucket and basin available to him were insufficient to achieve this goal. So he resourcefully looked around and the first thing he found that he could use was a wheelbarrow. That’s right, you did not misread it, and neither did I use the wrong noun. He used a wheelbarrow! Looking at it critically, the wheelbarrow has a large surface area and the depth needed to fully submerge the heavy blanket. It is also well fabricated in that it doesn’t have any leaking points. So he pulled up the hose pipe and filled it up with water and detergent. The trait of being able to think on the spot and creatively use whatever resources are around you to accomplish a stated goal is to me a component of Adaptive Advantage. In the business world, it also encompasses being able to observe market trends, predict changes in consumer behaviour and technological advancements and change early enough to take advantage of them. The example of Sony and Samsung is a perfect depiction of adaptive advantage. For the longest time, Sony was a world leader in consumer electronics like T.V. sets, gaming stations and various other electrical appliances. At the time, Samsung was dragging behind in the shadows. But over the last few years, Samsung has been able to predict that the Smartphone and Tablet markets would be huge growth areas and it invested heavily in these nifty new devices. It also utilized the Open Source Android Operating system as a platform for its devices. Right now, Samsung is the world leader in the Smartphone market edging out even Apple Inc. Last I heard, Apple was trying to get certain Samsung phones banned from sale in the US. Talk about scaring the competition stiff! This ability to think in new directions and adapt easily to new environments is actually what has brought me into farming. I had been writing research papers online and doing poetry, but now that I am farming, I am writing lifestyle articles about my experiences as a new young farmer and hopefully this will help me reach young non-farmers and entice them to join me in soiling their hands. The Ministry of Agriculture is also working towards getting young people into farming as a wealth creation tool for themselves and to enhance food security. Farming magazines are also trying to gain that new young farmer as part of their readership because these are the future. And so, by using my journalism training to write about my experiences as a new young farmer, I am connecting the dots between fellow youth, the Ministry of Agriculture and the farming magazine industry. Talk about being at the right place at the right time. My brother calls it Adaptive Advantage. I think it’s a Miracle!

Tomboys

We have around 60 goats and sheep here on the farm in Kitengela and that’s pretty wealthy by local Maasai standards. I say this because one of the locals exchanged his car for 30 goats. Well, there were extenuating circumstances because he had sold part of his shamba (land) and bought the car and then went on to squander the rest of the money. When there was nothing left and he couldn’t even fuel the car, he decided to ‘trade it in’ for 30 goats. There needs to be a lot of financial education to Maasai’s who are selling their land in Kitengela like its Christmas. Sorry, I digress. Anyway, every morning we open the shed door and let out the sheep and the goats. They sleep together in one big shed but once they get out in the morning, the sheep go their own way and the goats go their own way to graze in the 40 acres that have grass. It’s not so different with people; girls usually hang out in groups of other girls and the guys hang out with other guys. But there is always that one girl who likes to hang out with the boys. If you’re her, you’re probably running in your mind all the reasons why you don’t like hanging out with girly girls, and why you don’t watch Alejandro or wouldn’t cry just because he kissed Camilla. Most tomboys grow up in family settings where there are all boys and she’s the only girl in the family and so she tends to behave like her brothers. However, she will usually outgrow the tomboy status when her body begins to change and she can no longer hide her new features even when she wears baggy clothes. And in any case, skinny jeans are making it hard for her to dress like that and hang out with the boys who themselves aren’t wearing baggy clothes anymore. So she is slowly being forced into accepting her femininity as she matures and therein lies the struggle with a mini-identity crisis on whether to wear minis or not. There are also those awkward moments when the tomboy likes one of the boys or one of the boys likes her and neither may act on that longing because it will mess with the group dynamics, and it still does even when both or either denies existence of such feelings. The bottom line is that as much as the sheep wants to hang out with the goats, it will still be looked on as a sheep. But she is always welcome to graze with the goats as long as she is ready for when the awkward shows up, because it always does.

Tackling Rejection

Right from when we are younglings, we crave attention and acceptance, something that doesn’t change as we grow older. Well, the attention part may vary from one person to the next but we all have a need for acceptance. I am witnessing here on the farm in Kitengela, a sheep that gave birth to twins but is rejecting one of them. It pushes it away when the kid tries to suckle while fondling the other one. I am not sure why it’s behaving so but my guess is that it thinks there isn’t enough milk for both twins and is thus giving one a full-blown chance for survival while rejecting the other. My struggle with finding harmony between success and spirituality has over the years produced feelings of both acceptance and rejection. Acceptance is in the sense that I feel camaraderie with the masses when for example I am walking on the street or while traveling in a Matatu (Public Service Vehicle). On the other hand, the rejection is in the sense that I feel (whether rightly or not) feelings of rejection from the masses when I’m driving. There is that feeling of disconnect and the ‘Oh ye holier than thou’ looks from matatu passengers and pedestrians when you are driving. So, in my efforts to find harmony between success and spirituality, I have to tackle this real or perceived rejection since both spirituality and success form part of my hierarchy of values. My ideal situation is where I use my wealth to create connections with humanity through simple interactions like buying mboga (vegetables) from the corner shop to interactions with greater implications like philanthropy. So now I begin to see my wealth as a tool to explore and experience my spirituality. My desire henceforth is that my hierarchy of values reflects this new dispensation and my habits and behaviours around these two values change to reflect this new understanding both on the conscious and subconscious levels of my being. I am now using farming as a wealth creation tool and the fact that I am doing it in Kitengela strokes my spirituality in that I have always wanted to live in a simple semi-arid area. I do want to create harmony between spirituality and success and live a successful and spiritual life. So this calls on me to realize that the two can co-exist just like the twins can survive on the sheep’s milk because it’s the nutrients in the milk that are important, not the quantity. Raise your milk glasses for a toast to both spirituality and success. Cheers.

Shoe prints in the sand; City life meets country

With my former life behind me, I can now concentrate on building my new identity as a farmer, blogger, poet-at-large and philanthropist. There are many people who are finding it hard to make ends meet. They prefer to shed their over-the-top lifestyles for simpler more economic ones by moving into smaller homes in less loftier suburbs. This represents a new shift because rather than get deeper into debt, they are opting to put a stop-loss cap in their financial lives. Shoe prints in the sand is me trying to assimilate city life with upcountry life a I embark on this farming venture.

A Million Bees

Today, Monday 3rd September 2012 is day 4 at the farm in Kitengela. The farm is a 60 acre piece of land in Olturuto – about 4Km from the Kenchic breeding farm on the Kitengela-Namanga Road. Our farm is however only 3 acres out of the 60 which then belong to a family friend who sold us the three. The shopping center is about 2Km away and has a Division Officer (D.O.) stationed there. The center is also about 15-20Km from the proposed Konza ICT City although there is no direct road to it- you have to go back to Kitengela and join Mombasa Road which is farther. The homestead where I am residing belongs to the Mzee who sold us the 3 acres, and I’m housed in one of the eight SQs. There is also the main house, store, kitchen and water pump. There are two boreholes on the farm which were used to irrigate passion fruit on fifty acres up to the year 2000. That’s the last time this farm was operational. The Mzee has since quit farming and subdivided the farm for sale, that’s how we got ours. He has however been keeping livestock, mostly cows, goats and sheep. He had sold about 20 cows in April of this year which fetched him a cool KShs. 500,000. In terms of electricity, the Kenya Power grid is at a neighbour’s farm which is about 1Km away and is soon going to be connected. The farm caretaker pumps water to a neighbour about 1Km away and uses the industrial water pump on the farm to do it. The perks of this is that the generator produces so much power that all the rooms on the farm have a bulb and a socket all connected to it and thus the lights come on when the generator is on. So, he pumps water every two days (like today, that’s how I’m on my laptop) from 10am-2pm. The neighbour has a huge water tank and uses the water domestically as well as for open irrigation. He does not use drip irrigation which costs him a lot of water although we do not charge him for the water, he just buys the diesel for the generator. Once the Kenya Power grid gets here, it will be so much cheaper to pump water because the neighbour whose farm the main grid has reached had been using about KShs. 40,000 per week on diesel to irrigate his 70acre farm. Now he’s only using KShs. 17,000 a month on electricity usage for pumping water and domestic appliances. This is one of the things that convinced me to move out here; the fact that Kenya Power are at our doorstep literally. I can do my commercial writing online from here as well as farm. I woke up this morning at 6am and headed to the farm, tilled up to when the sun got hot at 10am, now I’m in “the office”. Last week, we came with an agricultural extension officer from a project funded by USAID called Feeding the Future. The project is a Barrack Obama Initiative for Kenya- proudly. He is in charge of Eastern Province and from a quick visual survey, he advised us to plant Green Grams (Dengu) as a beginner crop since the land hasn’t been tilled in 12 years. After that, he said we can plant chilies and he will link us up with the local and export markets. He will be giving me the Green Grams seeds which just so happen to be free since it is a test project for seeds and so too is the technical support. They only need you to have land and capital to work on it. I am excited about this venture and I look forward to being ‘Benna Ma-probox’ or if I work hard enough, unlock the Range Rover Sport. Like Stella Mwangi aka STL said in her Kikuyu song ‘Biashara ni Biashara.