Tasting foods prepared to enhance family nutrition

We have successfully completed nutrition seminars with selectedWakulima Dairy members. Include in the seminar was tasting githeri prepared by pre-soaking beans to reduce anti-nutrients, tasting chapatis prepared with added mashed pumpkin to enhance Vitamin A and other nutrients, and a taste of 'spinach' prepared using a mixture of drought tolerant Traditional Leafy Green vegetables. Everyone was delighted and suprised by the good flavours of the food. I am looking forward to the follow-up survey in January to see if this knowledge is in practice. More story to follow when I deal with some minor computer challenges!

Survey work is off to a great start!

In fact, we have administered almost 80 surveys! We are interviewing dairy farmers from all over the Mukerwe-ini district, and the scenery is just amazing.


Colleen and I arrived in Kenya, only a few hours late, and a few bags short. We spent only a day in Nairobi before heading out to Nyeri area where we would set up home for the next 4 weeks. After a minor collision with a matatu on the road out of Nairobi, we arrived in Mukerwe-ini a mere 5 hours behind schedule, but have had a pretty good run of luck since our arrival.

Our daily schedule has mainly consisted of interviewing between six and eight farmers, in two teams. The roads and terrain have made logistics a challenge, but the local research assistant here has an uncanny knack of knowing where every farmer lives, and about how long they have been members of the Wakulima Dairy Ltd. We end the interview with a deworming of their cows, and head off to the next farm. Since there is a 24 hour recall as part of this survey, there is usually a bunch of laughter when we ask them to get out their pots and pans so we can measure them (to determine recipe yields). It will be interesting to see how correlations work out – to see if high milk production and long term membership is able to penetrate to the level of the families own nutrition.

More to come!

~Lisa

Wukerwe-ini, Kenya
2009

August 19th, 2009

Interviews underway

Lisa and I have now been in Kenya for over a week and with the skilled assistance of Samwel Mbugua and Regina Gachuru, have interviewed almost 30 farmers regarding their socioeconomic position, food security, and dietary intake. As a thankyou for their time we have dewormed an equal number of dairy cows using a pour-on anthelminthic. We are well supported by the Wakulima Dairy Ltd. Getting the cooperation of over 100 farmers having zero to over 10 years as members of the dairy group to cooperate with the research.

To gain the detailed understanding of the diet we have had to become familiar with many previously unfamiliar foods such as roasted maize and 'githeri'. In this picture we are conducting an interview meanwhile being treated to Kenyan style tea, chapatis and roasted maize. We computed the edible portion of the maize in from this activity.

Florence Hombera and Lisa with Molly after a successful Dawa ya minyoo (deworming) treatment. In behind are two pumpkins that the family graciously gave us following the meeting. The people we have met have greeted our many questions with a gracious openness and their kindness and sharing is something that always leaves me in awe.