Kilimanjaro, TZ – RTA Family Garden – 9 Dec 2013

RTA continues to be one of the hardest working gardeners in Mkyashi. At 64 years old she makes at least twelve trips every day up and down a steep path to carry water for her garden and home use. She also employs a number of best practices and provides an example for other gardeners to follow. For example, in the past week Mama Rita has applied additional layers of manure to some of her beds that needed extra nutrients.

So far, water shortages have prevented RTA from producing a lot of excess vegetables to sell, but the Lishe Bora team is working together with Better Lives to identify community-based water solutions that can ease those troubles. If and when that solution is implemented, RTA should be in a great position to produce a lot of vegetables with much less work than she is putting in now.

In the past week RTA pulled up her cucumber plants – which had finished their productive period – and is preparing to plant carrots in their place. She is still enjoying the rewards from her last carrot crop, which continues to provide regular servings of carrots for her family. She hopes that this new crop will come in just a month or so after the current crop finishes. She is also very excited to have finally planted cabbages. She has been looking forward to planting cabbages for a long time and was finally able to get the seedlings and prepare a bed.