Called to Serve | Travel Stories From Kiu, Kenya

Foundations of Farming and Field Fun

This Travel Story was written by my fellow traveler, Stephen Sullivan

We began day 2 in country, weary as we met as a team for morning devotion and breakfast, after a night of still trying to adjust sleeping patterns with various level of success.?Nothing like a cold shower to wake you up though as unfortunately the guest rooms didn’t include instructions for turning on the hot water and not everyone figured that out on their own, assuming it wasn’t available.?

We then headed to a 410 Bridge Demo Farm where local aspiring farmers are trained. Students do hands-on planting and cultivating so they get the experience and confidence to measure and rotate crops of their own.?

We learned, among other things that by law, 10 percent of farming space needs to be covered in trees.?This is a measure by the Kenyan government to reforest in support of creating a more sustainable environment.?Beans and corn are the most popular crop as they are staples and most widely consumed, but tomatoes, cabbage, egg plant, and peas are other common crops.?Sunflower is also fairly common as it distracts insects from other plants and is regularly used for animal feed.

After our tour we met and had tea with the African Brotherhood Church Pastor Jen, host of the farming training class for the local community.?We enjoyed delicious sweet potatoes and Mandazi (best described healthier-seeming version of a donut) before attending the class.?

This blog can’t do justice to how impressed we were with the Farming class.?They call the class Foundation 4 Farming, in part to attract students that are not otherwise drawn to the church or a relationship with God.?But it is very clear that the class starts and ends with God, the “first farmer” as they call him.?Everything is rooted in the foundation of God.?They connect good farming practice to bible teachings such as Leviticus 19:19 which provides instructions to rotate crops. We found this training program a phenomenal strategy for evangelization, as it so effectively connects God and God’s word to the daily lives of the individuals, while providing true and tested strategy for successful farming.?

Some insight from the class:

Poverty is defined as a broken relationship:

1.?With God

2. With others (love neighbor as yourself).

3. With Self- (Know your worth.?Family becomes part of self)

4. With Creation- (How have we maintained our Garden of Eden? How are we protecting our environment?)

This is certainly not how we generally think of poverty.?410 Bridge teaches that when we restore these relationships we will become rich.?And we could tell that despite their economic conditions, the people that spoke up in that class were truly rich.?

They also taught farming lessons on what they call Salvation Agriculture:

1. Don’t plow.?It destroys the structure of the soil.?Just scratch and plant and fertilize with minimal soil disturbance.

2. Crop rotation to recoup soil

3. No burning of soil

4. High Management - With these Profit-making principles:

a. There is a Time to plant and a time to harvest.?(And “not just in planting.”?Arrive for devotion late sets everyone back.?They compared this to the timing of those that sold masks at the start of COVID to those that waited and try to sell them now?Those who sold early made the most profit.)

b. Standard - (If you are selling a product that is substandard you will lose customers.)

c. Do whatever you do with joy. (Crops have ears. Complaining does not make them productive. Always be happy with what you do.)

D. Without waste - (Conserve resources. Use just what is needed to help preserve. This Includes time.)

Farming is like “how you eat an elephant”, that is “a bite at a time.“ Big farms starts small.?Start small and increase year by year. Similarity in business, start with what you have and grow from there.?

They also taught proper spacing, explaining measurement and yield and mapping?of plots.?

We were struck by the importance placed in community.?It was clear that the students of the Foundation 4 Farming class, want to encourage neighbors to be better farmers too.?That seems much more important to them than self enrichment.?Also, the sense of pride in paying off debt was something that stood out as students spoke of their successes.?

At the end of the training our team communicated our appreciation for the warm welcome we have received from everyone in the community.?We also expressed our admiration for the program’s effective engagement with the community, so adeptly relating the Word of God to the real world of the participants.?It was truly inspiring listening to the testimonials and experiencing the incredible training for ourselves.?

We can’t communicate strongly enough how impressed we were with the program and it’s impact on the people in the class.

We went straight from that class to visit a graduate of the class who had himself become a successful farmer.?This provided an opportunity to see the beautiful off-road countryside as we had to walk the last stretch, in past a watering hole for local livestock?We toured Christopher’s beautiful farm and helped with the harvesting of ripe tomatoes.?He told us that it wasn’t until he started putting God first in his farming that he began to have success and grow.?

We broke for lunch and our first village bathroom break of the week at the house of a local business owner, Francis, who also teaches business for the community.?It was a lovely house that he built for himself after building his own business up.

As our final village activity we Introduced ourselves to students at Kiu Primary School, a high performing school of more than 500 students.?With houses so scattered around Kiu it’s hard to believe there are that many kids to educate.?The school we visited yesterday in Upper Kiu had another 256.

We were there mainly to play with the kids as part of their recreation activity.?What better way to be present for them than in joyful play.?We showed up with a checked bag full of sports equipment, parachutes and assorted kids‘ stuff.?It was pure chaos at first but we managed to all get something semi organized.

After handing out play items, Shadrack and Karen showed a group of students how to play Toss-n-Catch.?Karen then spent time with a group of eager students sharing names and then details about herself….while having her hair continuously touched during this time.?She then spent time with another group playing music while they danced. They also discovered her Apple watch and were fascinated with it so she showed them how it worked.

Amy spent time with a group of grade 6 girls who wanted to learn everything they could about Amy and living in America. Amy jumped rope with them, and danced with them and talked about the city she is from. When it was time to go they asked her if they could remain best friends. One girl asked if Amy would sponsor her through 410 Bridge.

Rita broke out a parachute for the little kids and sang and danced with the children surrounding her, entertaining them as much as they did her.?

Steve brought whiffle ball bats and balls to one corner of the big field and taught a large, excited group how to swing and hit.?A game wasn’t possible with those numbers of kids but Steve started giving kids 5 swings each, sending any kid who cleanly fielded a ball up next.?(Thank God for watching that nobody caught one in the face as the fielders were not giving the hitter nearly enough room despite constant reminders.)

Surely a joyful time had by all, a nice end to a spectacular day of witnessing God’s love through the members of this community.?

We regrouped once back at the guest house to plan for tomorrow and recap the day, thankful for the blessing of bearing witness to such beautiful faith and community, and contemplating taking up farming ourselves.?