Mfangano Island

I was lucky enough to spend some time on Mfangano Island in Lake Victoria the past couple weeks and it was an incredible experience. I was able to see what Anni has been up to the past 5 months, and share in her excitement of the development of the Organic Health Response's new building - the Ekialo Kiona Center - a VCT Clinic / Community Center that a friend of mine, Mookie Tierney helped design. The story of Organic Health Response is fit for a fairy tale - hence why I'm going to tell it to you. This comes straight off of their website. www.OrganicHealthResponse.org Check em out!

When he was thirteen years old, Richard Magerenge’s mother died on Mfangano of a mysterious wasting illness. Some said she was bewitched, others said she was afflicted with a condition known for generations among the Suba as chira.

When Richard’s father died two years later, whispers in the village included new Swahili terms: UKIMWI (“AIDS”) or virusi (“the virus”). Richard managed to find his way through high school, and later jumped at the chance to complete a training workshop in Voluntary HIV Counseling and Testing (VCT). With his new VCT certificate, Richard was able to “sneak” onto the computers of an international development organization on the mainland. He started “surfing the net.”

Navigating the web, Richard was attracted to a series of websites regarding the Organic Agriculture movement in the US. He was excited to realize that the cultivation techniques these websites described were not radically different from the techniques his family had been using for generations, long before the introduction of industrial chemical pesticides and fertilizers. Richard began talking to his uncle, a farmer named Joel Oguta, and convinced him to fully convert their farm. On Mfangano, Joel’s grandfather had been respected as the first farmer to plant mango trees; Joel agreed with Richard to try and plant a new kind of seed. After three hard years of work, they registered their organic farm at Kitawi beach on the World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms website (www.wwoof.org).

In 2006, Adam Sewall and Lauren Friedman, two students at Evergreen College in Washington, came across Richard’s online post. They were impressed by Richard and Joel’s passion, and decided that Mfangano Island was the right place to realize a long-held vision for a “sustainable life.” They emptied their bank accounts, dropped out of school, filled two backpacks, and joined Richard and Joel on Mfangano Island to start an experimental farm.

Six months later, while working in Kenya, an Oxford medical anthropology student named Chas Salmen crossed paths with Adam and Lauren at a bus stop in Homa Bay. After visiting their farm on Mfangano, Chas decided to make the Suba the focus of his ethnographic fieldwork on the roots of HIV/AIDS in Western Kenya.

Like Lauren and Adam, Chas was hooked on Mfangano. He returned with an Oxford colleague named Malini Daniel, president of a student-run non-profit called STRIDE, to conduct a community health needs assessment. This time, Richard and Joel approached them with an interesting idea. Joel wanted to donate a piece of his land to build a solar-powered Internet library to coordinate HIV testing services and teach about sustainable agriculture.

The Organic Health Response was born…


Amazing, right?

So for the few weeks that I was there, I worked on Joel's farm. We harvested, weeded, transplanted, weeded, watered, and did some more weeding. I like to call the Island "A paradise short of a refrigerator," because as great as it was, wow did it get hot. A few days it was 104... in the shade! Sorry I guess I shouldn't complain to those experiencing winter huh? Anyways, It was a great break from my Nairobi city life and I really took to gardening. So dad, Lori, whomever, look out when I get back because you'll be getting calls from me for assistance! Mom would have really loved the Island too... except for the no running water/flushing toilet thing, she would have been in her own little paradise. I guess maybe she's there now... I thought of her a lot there as there are so many exotic birds, butterflies, and wildlife all over.

In another update, because of Kenyan immigration policy, Anni and I must leave East Africa (Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania) after 6 months if we wish to stay because we are not technically with a job or organization that can sponsor us. So, we are using that as an excuse to travel! We found some cheap tickets to Ethiopia and are leaving Thursday morning until the 22nd of March. We're flying into Addis and will stay there for a few days, then we are off to the Simien Mountains for some trekking. I still can't believe that it's been 6 months already... I'll be seeing you all soon!

with love and blessings,

-Ryan