The Slow and Steady Progress of One Small Project

Oyaya has years of experience and training to share with the KWGP women.

Here in Canada I can only stir up images of Tanzania, half a world away. But this is not difficult for me to do. I need only close my eyes and so many people flood through my mind. Today it is the women in the KWGP (Kimokouwa Women’s Goat Project.)  I am sure I am thinking goats because it is spring, or spring-like, in this part of the world where I live. It’s the time for renewal and rebirth and for new life bursting forth from the dark and cold of winter, and in very unexpected places.

I am transported back to Kimokouwa by looking at a photo I took of Oyaya, one of the coordinators of the KWGP, in early August 2011, during a seminar for the women in the goat project.  He is sitting in the soft late-afternoon light holding a baby goat on his lap as he smiles reflectively. Oyaya was unaware I was taking this photo from inside a nearby hut so he did not have time to be shy, as he might have been. Inside a small room in the Montessori School in Kimokouwa, women have been meeting all week to share ideas about goat care and where they might find food during the ongoing and worsening drought they have been experiencing for over six years. One of the women nursing a two month old child tells the others she planted some maize (corn) outside her boma and this helped her a great deal. First the maize and then the stalks provided sustenance. Others talked about places they had found food in the parched countryside and around the foot of Mt Longido. This kind of sharing provides hope for the women.

One of the young boys who takes care of the goats during the day.

The KWGP is one of the newer TEMBO initiatives and it forms an integral part of the Micro-Business arm of TEMBO (Tanzania Education and Micro-Business Opportunity.) The project was tailor made to suit the needs of the women in Kimokouwa where micro-business loans proved to be unsuccessful due to a lack of commerce in this very traditional Maasai village. The goat project enjoys widespread support from the women, their husbands, the village leaders, TEMBO Trust in Tanzania, and Project TEMBO donors in Canada.

The KWGP began in September 2010 with the first 15 women each receiving two pregnant female goats to raise. The ‘Isiolo’goats are a particularly hardy breed known for being drought tolerant, a very important consideration since Kimokouwa spends a good part of the year in severe drought. Each woman gives her first born female goat to another woman so the project will eventually be sustained from within. Male goats will be sold once they are a year old with the women keeping 90% of the money and the other 10% put in a bank account to help with expenses.

Oyaya is one of two TEMBO staff dividing his time between providing security at the TEMBO Guesthouse as an askari or watchman, and using husbandry skills to help the goat project succeed. Oyaya has some veterinary training which comes in very handy. Sanjoy, also a TEMBO security staff and a traditional Maasai herder, shares the task of visiting the groups weekly to provide assistance to the women, and to track the growth of the project.

Medicine is carried in a plastic pouch and dosages are recorded.

Sanjoy goes up the hill to give a dose of medicine to a goat.

Talk about new life springing from dark places! Not much can survive in Kimokouwa but these goats are proving to be the exception.  The KWGP is now entering the second tier or program level. The first 30 goats have now grown into close to 60 making it possible for new women to join the project. Females are being passed on to new members and the males are ready to be sold at the weekly market with most of the income going to the women.

I have travelled with Oyaya and Sanjoy by motor bike around the foot of Mt. Longido to Kimokouwa early in the morning, as day is breaking, to visit some of the women. We need to get there before the goats are led out to graze for the day by the young boys. It is a chance for me to get first hand accounts from the women about how the goats are making a difference in their lives. On the visits Oyaya and Sanjoy often dispense medicine to sick goats. They are in close contact by cell phone with the women between visits so they are kept up to date on not only sicknesses and other challenges, but also good news stories and pregnancies. I was with Sanjoy one day when he received a call from a very distraught woman saying a cheetah had taken one of her goats. In fact, it was a goat that had regularly provided so much milk for her family. Times like this serve as a constant reminder that the women share life and space with wild animals always on the lookout for food, especially during times of drought. In cases like this, or when a goat dies due to unavoidable sickness, TEMBO will replace a goat during the first year.

More than 40 women, many with babies, attended a 4 day workshop
 on goat care in August 2011.

The women talk of having milk for their children and this is one of the immediate benefits, and a plus. Having a couple of litres of milk to mix with maize flour to make porridge in the morning can feed many. This may be the only food some have until nightfall. We did not calculate this into the possible gains a woman would receive when we began the project. We focused on the income she would receive once or twice a year when the goats were sold for food. The women are also proud to be able to “own” something in a culture where it is the men who typically have this right. The men promised they would allow the women to use the proceeds from the sale of the goats to feed their families and they are doing this.

The KWGP is enjoying success and this is due, in large part, to the hard work and dedication of Oyaya and Sanjoy. The women aren’t the only ones who take pride in this project. You can see it in the eyes of these two men and hear it in story after story they tell about their interactions with the women and their goats. You can see it, too, when Oyaya proudly shows us a certificate he received when he attended a course to further his knowledge of veterinary medicine - his initiative and his expense - at an agricultural college during his annual leave. All of the women of TEMBO, including me, are deeply greatful to Oyaya and Sonjoy for their commitment to making the KWGP a project that is improving life for so many women and their families in northern Tanzania.