Stakeholder Forum, Dry Season Farming, Kassem, and a weekend of reunions

This week began with a Stakeholder Form organized by MoFA on behalf of the Root and Tuber Improvement and Marketing Program (RTIMP).  MoFA had invited sweet potato farmers, processors, traders and transporters to come to Paga to hear about the details of the program. 

In principle, the idea to apply a value-chain approach to a particular commodity such as sweet potatoes is not new in the international development industry and several NGOs and Ministries have approached this topic from various angles.  This particular approach involved a cross-value chain dissemination of information with hopefully many synergies being created by the presence of various market actors in the same venue.  A man from RTIMP came from Tamale to talk about the program and many of the AEAs from the area were in attendance as well.   The project focussed mainly around encouraging the production of sweet potato in the area and helping farmers overcome challenges by providing them with financial assistance that was divided between a farmer contribution, an NGO contribution and a loan that the farmer would have to repay. The second aspect of the project was a micro-enterprise fund to enable ice-cream sellers who had access to electricity to learn how to make potogurt (yoghurt made from sweet potato) and to give them assistance in purchasing a deep freezer to store it. 

The other highlight of this week occurred on Wednesday when I joined the Director and an AEA called Wisdom to visit a Dry season farming site very close to the office.  Having seen only the dry and brown fields the view of green, lush vegetation was quite a surprise even though I had been expecting it.  This particular area had been fortunate to receive a dam a few years ago as a result of a communal project.  The dam stored rainwater during the rainy season and enabled farmers to do dry-season farming.  I saw Maize plants, Pepe, many other crops that I could not identify in the distance.  Having had first-hand experience with fetching water from a hand-dug well, seeing the irrigation channels that enabled farmers to irrigate large areas simply by opening and closing channel gates was quite astounding.  This is again contrasted with my experience when I visited Sirigu the past week and when I was told that even dry-season vegetable farming is not possible due to a general absence of water in the ground. These three levels and then obviously the large-scale mechanized irrigation that is prevalent in the developed countries being the spectrum of irrigation techniques it was quite stark to see the difference that this has for farmers. 

This weekend, I concluded my meeting with the Director in Navrongo and then went to visit Rebekah, who is a voluntary teacher at the primary school in Sakaa.  Her story is definitely inspirational as well and so I will just briefly digress from the narrative of the week.  

In a rural setting, there is generally a shortage of teachers.  Sometimes there simply are not enough teachers assigned to a particular school as is the case with Sakaa.  However, even when there are sufficient numbers of teachers hired by the Dep’t of Education, sometimes they do not come to school due to distance, lack of funds to drive, and a disinclination to teach in a rural setting which is more challenging than in more urban centres.  Sometimes in Sakaa, there were simply not enough teachers there and the children would go to school but some of the classes simply could not be taught.  In the case of Rebekah, she has volunteered to teach the kindergarden level of the Sakaa primary school.  Practically, this means that she takes her bicycle and rides it the about 30 km to Sakaa.  The trip takes her just over an hour.  She teaches the children and then returns to Navrongo to resume her job as a hairdresser.  I don’t know how or when she started teaching in Sakaa but regardless, I believe this is such an example of dedication.  Especially when contrasting this to the case of salaried teachers who do not come to the school. 

Returning to the narrative, I coincidentally met Tina when I was visiting Rebekah.  To any new readers, Tina is my host mother from Sakaa.  I had planned on visiting her later that afternoon in any case and so meeting her at exactly this spot in Navrongo was quite good indeed.  We left Navrongo and drove to Sakaa and I spent the afternoon sitting under the sun shade eating, playing with the children and talking to her.  Just spending time with her made me reflect about how almost luxurious my living arrangement in my village Navio is.  I also thought a lot about how to incorporate more of the rural realities that farmers face into the work in the office.  I felt such a disconnection between my days in the office and the challenges of farmers like Tina and even in more remote parts of the district.   I drove home full of energy and motivation to bring field realities back into the MoFA Office with initiatives.