Women in Agriculture

"Hodi!" We called out the customary greeting as we approached Mama Naomi's home. She came to meet us and she and Tim, Mum, Peter and I exchanged greetings. Naomi is one of the many women who has recently joined the agricultural project in Lutale village, on the shores of Lake Victoria. Naomi, like many of the women we are now working with, has a difficult life. She told me that God in heaven needed six of her children. She has birthed eight children, but now has only Winnie and her 14 year old sister. Naomi led us to the small area behind her house that she farms for her family. There is little there; the soil is incredibly dry and very sandy. Our first aim is to improve the quality of soil and so Peter has been working with her, planting nitrogen fixing beans and teaching on the importance of mulch. It has been a struggle for Naomi to get mulch, but soon, once the beans grow and spread, there will be a natural cover to retain the water.

Before we left, we sat awhile on wooden stools outside Naomi's home and then she gave us her sweet potatoes - a taste of Lutale, especially for Mum.


Mama Naomi shows us her small plot of land to farm

Jackbeans starting to shoot up.

A gift of sweet potatoes from Naomi

We went on to visit Bibi's shamba (I don't know her actual name, we just call her "Grandma"). She is elderly and she is poor. Maybe not what you might imagine when we say we are working with "farmers," but she needs this farm. There is not much to look at in this plot. The area is small, full of weeds, with just a small amount of mulch material. But Peter has also been working with her, encouraging her to remove the weeds, to keep mulching and now, even without the much-needed rain, her jackbeans are coming up! We hope that we can help Bibi work this soil to be productive and help her harvest far more from it.


Bibi's small plot of land

We continued on our traipse across the fields, and found this cheerful lady, Adella, also in our conservation agriculture group. She has carried water up from the lake and is watering her seeds. The lack of rain is beginning to be a concern. We had a few days of rain last month, and thought the rainy season was starting early. Many have planted, but then the rains stopped and everything has once again dried up. Where we had good mulch, a lot of water was retained and beans are doing well. But as we go around and pray with each woman, we are really praying hard for rain now!


Adella

The miracle of jackbean and maize coming up through the mulch despite the lack of rain!

This mama was using whatever she could find for mulch material on her small patch of land.
She had grasses, leaves, banana leaves, even old tomato plants spread as a cover for her seeds.

Jackbeans emerging through a variety of mulch

In this village of Lutale, most of our group are women. This wasn't planned, it's just the way it worked out. And it's a good thing. From what we have heard, many of the men in this village are lazy and many drink too much, leaving the women to struggle to provide for their families. While we do want to be sure we teach these conservation agriculture principles to the young people and farmers of influence in the region, to those who will carry farming into the future, we cannot forget these women. Yes, their farms are small, their land is in poor shape and we can't expect great yields. Yes, some of the women are old and it's doubtful many will ever be able to teach these things to the next generation. But as the church, we have a responsibility to help these older women and widows. As I hugged Naomi thanking her for her gift as we said goodbye, it was impossible not to notice the bones sticking out in her thin body. These women really need a harvest. And the younger women we hope will be able to teach their children. We pray that they will move past subsistence farming, developing value-added products that will better support their families and help their communities.

May God bless these Lutale women in agriculture!



This well-mulched farm of another woman in the group is doing well,
again despite the long, dry conditions

Lutale

The Voice for the Voiceless

For the past three weeks, the world has cried out on behalf of #bringbackourgirls; we have mourned and protested the horrible fact that hundreds of girls from Chibok Government Secondary Girls School in Nigeria have been kidnapped and remain held by Nigerian Islamist terrorist group, Boko Haram. This violent group that has massacred Christians for their faith now attacks young girls for their education. They want to eradicate anything “Christian” and anything “Western.”

So many people have run to social media, desperate to be a “voice” for these young girls. For these and so many other girls who are denied the right or access to education, denied the right to their own bodies as they are stolen, sold, abused. These and so many women who have no voice, who feel only shame and hopelessness.

Will our voices be heard?

Here in Tanzania, we have come face to face with the terrible plight of so many women and young girls who have no voice. On one of the islands on Lake Victoria, we know the woman struggling with HIV/AIDS, desperately needing medicine but with a husband that refuses her help. We heard the screaming cries of the woman being beaten by a man, presumably her husband in a drunken rage. But she is in a culture that disempowers her legal rights. We listened on the steps outside a bar to the desperation of two young women working in these lake shore places. They cannot see a way out of this life they despise on an island. We hear the stories of young women, even girls from the age of 14, who roam the islands to sell themselves. Even if they know the risks of contracting HIV, they are often unable to get tested with the limited resources and services on the islands. Wives are left abandoned by fishermen husbands who leave in search of a better catch at an island elsewhere. The women are left to fend for themselves and their children while the fisherman husband takes a new island woman.

The stories are not confined to these islands. Here in town, women are on the streets, without hope, with stories of hurt and pain. But they are women trapped in a lucrative business, one that is very difficult to match in terms of providing a viable livelihood alternative. We listened to the painful story of our friend in the city whose house-girl was brutally raped and murdered. So many vulnerable people taken advantage of, their “rights” denied.

When it comes to education, we know that on these islands, so much stands in the way of any children going to school: parents who would rather their children stay home with other work to do and also a lack of safe access to a school as some must travel by small boats to another island, which can be dangerous. But particularly for girls, with increased pressure to stay at home, sanitary issues preventing them, and schoolgirl abuse and pregnancy, even without Islamic extremists to stop them, it isn’t easy. 

Girls in school (Magozi) collect water

 

Young girls collect firewood

And yet even here, the threat of extremist groups although small in comparison, is real and the ideology of Boko Haram permeates. As Tanzania currently rewrites its constitution, issues political have pulled in Islamic activity. Uamsho (The Association for Islamic Mobilisation and Propagation, an Islamist Separatist Group here in Tanzania) wants the full autonomy of the Zanzibar Islands, making it a centre of Islamic institution under Islamic law. Clashes have led to incidents of religious persecution, particularly in Zanzibar.

This all came rather close to home just this week. A few days ago, just down the road from where we live (on Airport Road), a bomb blasted from an abandoned bag in the Lutheran church guesthouse. The young woman cleaning at the time (a member of the church and a friend of our friends’ house help) who found the bag is now in very critical condition in hospital. There is no evidence of who is to blame (many people had access to the church and guesthouse), or why this large Lutheran church was targeted, but speculation abounds, particularly following recent events in Zanzibar earlier this year.

So what can we say? What voice do we have on behalf of the voiceless? My voice, our voices, although we may clamour to shout, post and tweet, will never be enough. But in our fallen world full of wickedness and injustice, abuse and poverty, just one voice is needed. The Word. The Word that no one can silence. The Word that became flesh in Jesus.

“In faithfulness He will bring forth justice; he will not falter or be discouraged till he establishes justice on earth.  In his teaching the islands will put their hope.” (Isaiah 42:4)

The Word has the power to change lives. Through the Spirit, which breathes things into being, a King’s policy is actioned. His just purpose in the world is implemented. So yes, here in Tanzania, we will go to women to carry out HIV testing in remote places, to educate and inform, to counsel through illness and grief. We will go with Christ’s Daughters (Mwanza International Community Church) to women on the streets to help and encourage them with opportunities for honourable, safe businesses and we will go to young girls on the islands to try and remove hurdles to help and encourage them to get an education. We will encourage upright people of truth to pursue careers as judges and politicians in this nation, to follow in the inspirational footsteps of women like Mama Kileo. We want to see blind eyes opened and those in captive set free. So yes, we will “speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves; ensure justice for those being crushed.  Yes, speak up for the poor and helpless, and see that they get justice.” (Proverbs 31:8-9).

One woman trains as a potter in Ikuka

But most importantly we want to continue to go to these women and girls with the Word. To read with them, where necessary to teach them to read. That they might know the Voice that speaks both to them and for them. The Voice that says they are loved, they are valued, they have worth. The Voice that identifies with them when no one else can. The Voice that tells their story and puts it in a bigger, better one. The Voice that speaks life.

Women given the Word in Kimande

 

Women given the Word in Magozi