What Josh is up to...

I know what I’ll be doing at least for part of my stay here. Lyn got a lot of Moringa seeds from a friend in Rwanda and she wants me to spearhead the Moringa production at Mawe Hai. The Moringa will be grown in pots with soil bought from either the banana plantation or the brewery (because Goma is built entirely on lava rock), and then they will be distributed to five communities. The communities are part of the Nehemiah projects that HEAL does (the Nehemiah projects are their community outreach programs that I don’t fully understand yet, but I’m working on it) and there are 10 core families in each area. The first run of the Moringa will be a trial run of 500 plants, half under shade cover and half not and then we can start planting more on a larger scale as soon as we see which is working best. Then the members of the five communities will be called to Mawe Hai and they will be trained in the uses, production, multiplication, and benefits of Moringa. A week or so after that (when they have had time to prepare for it, but not enough time to loose excitement) we will then take the plants into the communities and distribute them to the 10 families at each place.

And that will be the start of my work. After that, there are two other medicinal plants (Neem and Artemisia) that I’m supposed to look into and I’ll see where it goes from there. Lyn gave me a booklet to read called “Project Cycle Management” and it has to do with project management, starting projects, and planning stages that need to happen before projects are started. It also talks about logical frameworks and project proposals and summaries and so on. So when I get bored because the Moringa is just growing and nothing else is really going on, I can work on proposing another project that will be considered and if it is well thought out, probably approved. It’s pretty exciting to finally be using all the knowledge that I have been gaining for the last 3 years in college and years before that in readings.

So besides figuring out what I’ll be doing, how is life in Goma? Well, I’m staying at a walled compound and it is on a lake. The water is a little cool when you first jump in but you get used to it very quickly and swimming is a major part of the program. I would say at least every other day I jump in. When we eat we eat right next to the water. They have a sort of patio there and some shade and that is where most meals are. If its raining or really windy, then we move inside, but otherwise its outside in the fresh air perfumed by the huge flower garden (either with great smelling flowers, or fermenting crap that is used for fertilizer).

The generator goes off at 10 pm so unless I want to use lots of batteries or are good at doing stuff via candle light, or are blessed with sporadic city power, I pretty much go to bed around 10 every night. This is conducive to waking up early, like at 6 or 6:30am. Breakfast is at 8 which leaves plenty of time for Bible study and general laziness in the morning (they also play tennis at a hotel down the road from 6:30-7:30. I haven’t played yet, but I think my time will come). I usually catch a vehicle around 9 to go wherever I have to go, and then am on my way back around 4:30 or 5 at the latest. It’s not too bad at all.

So far during the day I’ve just been seeing things, but starting on Monday I’ll be working on the Moringa project. And if I never mentioned it before, Mawe Hai is a demonstration farm less than a half hour from the city.