Schooltrip

This week we had the so called 'country team' visiting us. The countryteam is not some country and western band, but are some people from The Hague that look at Rwanda from there.

A colleague arrange a field visit, what we used to call school outing (schoolreisje). We went with our partner organisation IFDC to the North. There they showed us some fields that have been improved by using fertilizer. The farmers get the first year some fertilizer and training, the second year they have to pay half and the third they are on their own. The programme is called 'CATALIST' a long abbreviation for something but at the same time the word signifies what they want. The idea is to train some farmers and let them 'spread the news' as it were. It seems to work. The first farmers were very sceptical, they were promised a much higher yield without investment, they thought maybe they would lose their land. The farmers that use fertilizer see the benefit and will continue doing so, however to convince farmers they have to invest to get return remains difficult, so I wonder how it will go after the programme is finished. I sincerely hope more farmers will see the results and decide the benefits outweigh the risk.

Some farmers were asked to say something, the general message was clear, they increased production about 5 fold; even taking away the extra costs this means at least triple the income. We are not thinking big numbers though, the everage farmer still has an income of less then a dollar a day. However this means they might now for example be able to sent a kid to school. Also a farmer from the neighbourhood told he saw the benefits and wants to join now.



We drew a big crowd, mostly farmers from the area, some involved in the project, others not.

The fact that we had such a big crowd meant we didn't have the sceduled drink break. Which meant we didn't have anything to drink the whole morning, resulting in several people having headaches, I don't know why the organisation didn't drive a couple of km's to stop at the side of the road.

We had the traditional buffet lunch and split up in three groups. I opted for the ISAR lab. A research lab set up with Dutch support a while ago. The lab was clean and all machines seem to be in a good condition. However, we did wonder where the people were using these machines. Obviously they were not there today when we asked about this. The fact that the fridge was empty and some machines didn't have the right plugs did suggest it wasn't just that day.

Luckily the other part of the institute was working well. They 'clone' potatoes by testing a lot of potatoes until they have a nice disease free one, then they put some very small cuttings on jelly to grow. After some days they go outside in clean soil and two weeks later they are strong enough to be transported and multiplied by farmers.

Essential lab-kit especially the button.

Labman looks important, in fact he is making cuttings, precise but boring work.

I like the fact they needed white coats and the window was wide open. Hopefully the machine works, it is some sort of ventilator that runs clean air over the surface.

After the visit we stopped at another cornfield to see the difference between 'normal' corn and a hybrid race. The hybrid was much taller, but clearly the problem is that hybrids don't reproduce, so all the seedlings need to be created in a lab. Another unforseen problem is that the wind was more of a problem, strangely enough this could be solved by changing the space in between plants, something to do with the amount of soil and/or the amount of sunlight.

Here we could have a drink and hand some out to local kids. Bart Simpson here got my waterbottle. I liked the 'no problem', (hard to spot on the photo).

Stairway to heaven? Not for the people who have to carry there water up this hill!

Back in Kigali at six for a beer and some dinner. Tired and slightly more brown (red according to Hazel) then before. It was a sunny, interesting, tiring day.

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But that was not all for this week. Thursday we visited IFC (International Finance Cooperation, part of the Worldbank) and the Banque Populair, which is being restructured by Rabobank. The Bank was interesting for me, but probably not for most of the readers of this blog.

To close the visit we had a lunch at the ambasadors on Friday. On top of this I was invited for a dinner of IFDC (see above) which I shouldn't refuse. Because IFDC had the american board visiting they invited all the partners and the obligitory dancing group. The buffet was good though and the company was not bad and I did need to show my face.

The weekend for ourselves !!!