Moshi, TZ – Ginja Primary students celebrate saving banana seedlings from flood – Dec 2023

The impact of flooding was overcome in Kahe School District by quickly saving and building a seedbank stock of banana seedlings in the area’s Primary schools.

During a few weeks in December some of our primary schools in Kahe were experiencing bad floods from long rains in November, and very poor drainage infrastructure systems. The floods stayed for weeks and started to affect the survival of the school Grow-own-Breakfast (GoB) program’s banana and vegetable gardens.

The roads were impossible to drive on because of the same poor drainage infrastructure, so the Tupendane team literally went the extra mile and hired the local 4WD transport, known as Masai landrovers (donkeys), to rescue some banana seedlings from the most flooded school farms by transporting them accross wet land to the safe unflooded school farms.

The receiving schools like Ginja Primary, which had no banana farm previously, benefited by receiving the rescued seedlings that they immediately planted. The school now hopes for banana production in on year.

The Ginja Primary and Tupendane team are now looking for how best to solve the school’s other GoB needs, like how to assure water and compost supplies. This is needed to enhance the sustainability of the new banana farm, which in future will produce bananas for the GoB and seedlings for the flooded schools like Mwangaria Primary and other schools that need a regular breakfast.