From: norsgerm@a...........
Gunilla
Thanks for sharing your expierience. I lived next door to an elderly lady
when I was living in south Florida and she shared her expierience of living
on the east coast of Africa before they went communist (Somolia at the time
I think?)
I understand your commpassion for people and would you believe that even in
the middle of this huge (rich) North American continent there are hungry
people? Much smaller scale, but corruption and 'oversight' occur everywhere.
I will give away things from our gardens, and often do. Dissapointing though
when some able bodied person who may be out of work, and enjoys fresh
vegetables, won't come to help tend the garden. Then it's time to read them
the story of THE LITTLE RED HEN.
I think your kindness and knowlege is the best thing you left in Africa. Are
you familiar with the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein? His quote about
saving the world was 'Don't try to shit above your arse'
Please don't take that wrong, but even at our southern border with Mexico
people suffer because of corruuption (govenment) and religion
(overpopulation), and how do you change that.
Envy your adventures and admire steps you take to do what you can.
Kurt
"Gunilla Fagerholm" wrote in message
news:44bde18c.3887480@news1.telia.com...
> Hi!
> If anybody is interested here is the story of how our interest in
> growing mushrooms started.
>
> "Mushrooms only grow where snakes have been breathing"
> That was what the locals told us when we started talking about
> mushroom growing in Shinuyalu, Kakamega District, in late 1999. When
> we left Kenya in mid 2001 they all knew the truth. Many of them by
> that time had been growing mushrooms themselves or seen other people
> growing them.
>
> We lived in Shiasava, a small village within Shinuyalu.There we had
> built a small hotel, with local materials, for tourists wanting to
> visit the Kakamega Rainforest. For the hotel restaurant we used a lot
> of mushrooms in the cooking. When the Eldoret factory closed down it
> was impossible to buy any mushrooms (the chinese canned mushrooms had
> not yet appeared on the market). The only solution then was to grow
> them ourselves in order to satisfy our own needs.
>
> We managed to buy a kilogram of oyster mushroom mycelium and started a
> trial-and-error experiment together with our staff. One day, quite
> some time aftwerwards, one of our staff members suddenly discovered a
> small oyster mushroom on the ground and we realized that we were on
> the right track. We ordered a couple of mushroom growing books from
> the USA and started reading while continuing experimenting with
> humidity, light, growing materials, etc. After some time the yield
> increased and the mushrooms were better-looking. By the time the
> mycelium we had bought was finishing we had built a glove-box and
> started producing our own mycelium.
>
> At that time we had found that the cultivating in itself was very easy
> and inexpensive and, since we lived among the poor people we knew how
> they suffered. Therefore we decided that we should teach them how to
> grow mushrooms. Our staff brought material for growing mushrooms
> outside their homes in order to show their neighbours that it was
> possible to grow them. One of our friends put a big bag with substrate
> outside his shop in Shinuyalu and people started asking questions.
> (Initially many thought there was some witchcraft involved.)
>
> Rumour spread and groups of visitors came to our Rivendell Gardens
> (named after the book "The Hobbit" by J.R.Tolkien) in order to see for
> themselves that it was true - that no magic was involved.
>
> Oyster mushrooms spoil easily and since we were living without
> electricity we constructed a solar dryer in order to dry the mushrooms
> in a hygenic and cheap way. We produced a lot of spawn (mycelium). We
> went to a sugar company and loaded big sacks of sugar bagasse in our
> car and we started chopping banana fibres. And we trained our local
> staff hard, both in the process of spawn making and in preparing the
> growing bags.
>
> The free full-day seminars for the rural people could begin. We
> selected, to start with, individuals, men and women, from different
> parts of our own village. Many of them could only speak luhya and were
> illiterate. Our own staff were the teachers. It was a big success. The
> participants were trained in the actual bag-making and were sent home
> with enough material, including spawn, so that they could continue
> training at home. When showing us their first harvest and getting it
> approved by us they were told to teach their own neighbours. They were
> not allowed to ask for any fees, since they had gotten all material
> free from us.
>
> After that we called people from other villages and areas and there
> was an enormous interest. People came from far, even from Butere,
> Mumias, Malava etc. And we ourselves drove around in the countryside
> showing our growing bags in small villages, inviting people to come to
> our seminars. We also went to some of the participant villages on
> follow-ups in order to help the people with any problems.
>
> We issued IDīs which were needed when people wanted to buy mycelium
> from us (which we sold at a low cost to everybody with an ID - the ID
> was a proof that the buyer had been trained either by us or by one of
> the village instructors) or delivering mushrooms to us. For each
> ID-number a delivery list was started.
>
> The fresh mushrooms were delivered to us, classified in different
> classes depending on how good they were (different payment for
> different classes) and the weight noted on the list. When the grower
> wanted he/she would come to us and ask for payment for the deliveries
> made.
>
> The payment was out of our own private money. It was fantastic to see
> all the old 'mamas' and 'babas' coming to get money. It was a help
> with school fees, food etc. One grower even bought a bicycle. Those
> were happy days for all of us!
>
> We told the growers that they should also eat the mushrooms
> themselves. It is good protein-rich food which is also
> cholesterol-reducing.
>
> We were now starting packing the dried mushrooms in nice small bags
> which we sold in Kisumu and Kakamega. But the problem was that we did
> not have a big enough market for all the mushrooms. If we could find a
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