How a Kitchen is Transforming a Community

Diane Priestley shares her inspiring journey of empowering the people of Chogoria in rural Kenya

Millicent and me at the Tostan training in Senegal 2016

The story starts with an unlikely friendship. I met beautiful Millicent in July 2016. We instantly recognised each other as ‘soul sisters’.

Millicent from Kenya, a former nurse, midwife, hospital matron and courageous field health worker and me, an Australian living in the UK, a seasoned journalist and counsellor and aspiring community worker, shared common ground and core values.

The intersection of our dreams happened in Senegal at a dynamic training in grassroots community development run by the legendary Molly Melching, founder of Tostan, a charity leading a movement of social change to empower women and communities across West Africa.

Millicent and I planted the seeds of an ambitious dream: to take the empowerment movement to Kenya and East Africa.

As we brainstormed over several days, Millicent told me she ran a community centre for feeding and caring for vulnerable children in her hometown, Chogoria, set in the lush tropical farmlands on the slopes of magnificent Mount Kenya.

In 2003 Millicent personally funded the centre called Faraja – a Swahili word meaning ‘comfort’ – out of a deep sense of gratitude for being sponsored by the Chogoria Hospital to study her Masters Degree in Public Health in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Since then she has worked tirelessly caring for children and their families in the humble centre as well as travelling far and wide on rough terrain to reach remote villages with vital health education throughout the Tharaka Nithi county.

Later that year, I kept my promise to visit Millicent and her devoted husband, Pastor Garama, travelling by matatu – a crowded public mini-van - four hours north of Nairobi to the a vibrant market town in the heart of Kenya.

Millicent and Garama and children at the Faraja Community Centre in Chogoria, Kenya 

Loving couple Millicent and Garama are devoted to their community  

Millicent providing lunch to the needy children 

An exciting vision

When I set eyes on the Faraja centre - a sturdy brick building with a huge open room, with several small rooms for offices at the back - the exciting vision for adding a kitchen, electricity and clean drinking water came into focus.

A Leap of Faith

After two more planning trips to Chogoria in 2017 and 2018, in January 2019, with a massive leap of faith, I invested £7000 of my own money to install a modern galley kitchen in the empty corner of the Faraja main hall.

The Project Gets Underway

I hired the Streamline Designs kitchen company in Nairobi to make all the cabinetry, a local plumber to install a chlorinator, filter system and new water tank to provide clean, safe water and local electrician to bring power and lights. Local painters did a beautiful makeover, painting the walls and floor, and a sewing lady made stunning new curtains.

Supervising the installation of the modern kitchen in the rustic building was the biggest challenge of my life! I was propelled out of my comfort zone into hard physical work, tricky problem solving and daily decision-making over two solid months until finally, miraculously, we launched the kitchen with a joyful celebration party. 

The empty corner where the kitchen would be installed

Elias, the electrician, prepares the wall for the electricity 

James the plumber and his sons install a clean water system for the centre

The painters, Collins and Kevin transform the walls

Streamline kitchen expert, Fred with assistant Silas install the kitchen units

The kitchen is starting to take shape 

Diane in the half finished Faraja kitchen 

The tilers add their beautiful work over the benches and the appliances are added 

Making muffins in the new kitchen 

Celebration day! The Opening of the Faraja Kitchen 

Local personality Kuka entertains the children at the Opening Day 

The Vision

The dazzling new kitchen will be the catalyst for expanding the food choices for the children and teaching kids nutrition and cooking, a Mums and Babies Group, a Women’s Health Group, a Men’s Health Group and a Youth Social Group serving up pizza and music.

                                         

We plan to run a daily café, creating a vibrant meeting place for the whole community and international medical workers and visitors who come to climb Mount Kenya.

The Faraja Kitchen will be self-sustaining, making money from the sale of food to cover running costs, pay workers and fund further improvements to centre.

Robert, Peter and brothers, Peter and Eliud cooking together in the new kitchen

Making Mexican food 

Peter learning the art of pizza making for youth nights 

And we have many exciting ideas for income-generating small businesses including a Sewing Group making African fabric bags; the Malaria-prevention Soap-making Group and a Coconut initiative to transport coconuts from coastal Mombasa to Chogoria to produce nutritious coconut oil, milk, cream and cheese.

Garama, an agricultural expert, is in charge of the flourishing Faraja Vegetable Garden growing tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, green beans, spinach, lettuce, cauliflower, broccoli and herbs to supply the kitchen.

And in the future the Faraja Community Centre will provide training for local facilitators in health, human rights and stopping harmful practices such as female genital cutting and child marriage in villages all over Kenya.

All this transformation is flowing from the everyday miracle of a kitchen.

My soul sister, Millicent and I have realised our beautiful dream in the heartland of Kenya that started three years ago in Senegal!

Anything is possible when caring people join together to make a difference.

'Ubuntu' means I am human because I belong

  

Helping the Batwa Find a Home

Setting out on a nine-hour, 326 miles, road trip from the bustling, traffic-jammed Ugandan capital of Kampala heading south to the spectacular, volcanic mountains of Kisoro, we were on a mission.

Our unlikely little group comprised Obed, the Head of a major NGO called ACODEV, with skilful driver, Edson at the wheel, and me in the back seat mesmerised by the fast-moving, colourful scenery.

I was chuffed to have persuaded Mr Kabanda Obed, a dynamic grassroots community development expert, jetlagged from a high powered international conference with Bill Gates in Washington DC, to join me in this challenging venture.

This epic trip, nine months in the planning, was finally happening! The brainwave took hold last October when I visited Kisoro for a gruelling gorilla trek while on safari with Absolute Africa. I met dedicated tour guide Ndabahariye Joseph, who took my Mexican friend, Julio and me to meet the Batwa tribespeople.

Displaced Outcasts

Back then, we discovered a dishevelled group of adults and children living in a few tiny huts perched on a craggy hilltop, on a scrap of unusable land owned by the neighbouring farmers. We were gobsmacked by their heart-wrenching story of being evicted from their hunting grounds when massive tracts of forests were gazetted as a national park to protect the endangered mountain gorillas. These displaced tribes people now lived in extreme poverty without the basics of survival – without proper homes, food security, water and sanitation and with very little access to a sustainable livelihood, medical care and education for their children, who suffered malnutrition and eye and skin infections.

Joseph was their champion. He yearned for a breakthrough that would transform the quality of life for the Batwa people. He worked closely with the devoted team at the Mgahinga Community Development Organization (MCDO) funded by a Swedish charity. However the Ugandan government appeared to completely overlook the desperate plight of this victimised community.

“My grandparents were evicted from the forests and suffered hardship ever since so I feel strongly for all the people who were displaced,” says Joseph.

And so I made a promise to Joseph that I would do whatever I could to help the Batwa. I don’t know where that outlandish promise came from! It welled up from somewhere in the depths of my being that responded to their helpless and hopeless predicament. I believed there had to be a solution to meeting basic survival needs in the advanced 21^st century. I was fired by my passionate belief in human rights and social justice that people should not be condemned to live in abject poverty and misery, shame and humiliation.

I had met Obed at a Tostan training course in Senegal last July and was impressed by his outstanding achievements over 14 years of empowering rural communities throughout Uganda. Obed had perfected a five-step process of research, awareness-raising, capacity building, activism and collaboration that took communities rife with overwhelming problems such as post-war trauma, orphans, HIV/AIDS, horrendous health problems, domestic violence and abject poverty into flourishing, sustainable, safe and healthy communities.    

Obed's Expertise 

I knew Obed was THE MAN to take on the challenge of the Batwa. So it was a joyful moment of sublime networking when Obed and Joseph, two compassionate and strong crusaders, finally embraced in a bearhug at the Rafiki guesthouse in Kisoro, run by the charming and capable Gloria.

We walked to the MCDO office and met Godfrey, Jackson and Abel and learned about their projects and initiatives such as enrolling some of the Batwa children into schools.

And they told us the backstory. As many as 25,000 tribespeople were evicted from the Mgahinga and Bwindi Gorilla National Parks in 1991. The small Batwa community that live on the Kisoro hilltop number around 58 adults with dozens of children. They have survived for 26 years, marginalised and shunned as outcasts, scavenging food from the farmers that work the fertile slopes, growing Irish potatoes, maize, corn and vegetables.

The next day, Obed and Joseph and me, joined by International Co-ordinator, Kamanzi Festo and young Batwa leader, James, trekked through the idyllic green hills, waving and calling to the children and men and women swinging their hoes in the fields, side-stepping goats and cattle, awe-struck by the heavenly views of the surrounding volcanoes and misty expanse of Lake Mutanda.

Celebration amidst Desperation  

The tribespeople greeted us with songs, dancing and drama that told their story of eviction to protect the mountain gorillas they revered. They are proud of their heritage, remembering how they once lived wild and free in the beautiful forests, hunting buffalo and antelope and foraging for honey and living safe and warm in caves.

Obed listened carefully to the community leaders’ passionate pleas as they outlined their daily challenges and desperate needs.

Land is the Start

Having heard similar stories of struggling communities, Obed identifies immediately that owning land is the first priority for these people. He said: “You can’t build proper housing, you can’t build toilets, if you don’t first own the land. Everything else follows from there; growing food and finding sustainable work and accessing medical and education services.”

And he lays the responsibility clearly with the government that failed 26 years ago to humanely relocate the tribes people on their own land with decent housing. 

He points out that funding exists. In a cynical political move, the Ugandan government is currently giving around $8500USD to every MP to campaign in a referendum to increase the presidential retirement age limit so the aging President Museveni can stay in power.

Obed says it would cost the government very little to purchase a plot of land for the Batwa people. And land would not just provide a place to live; land would restore their dignity, hope and respect in the wider community.

Healing the Pain

During our visit, one woman lay on the ground nursing painful bruises from being beaten by a man when she ventured into town the previous day. We sat and soothed her but the problem runs much deeper than words of sympathy and Joseph’s efforts to take a doctor to the remote patient. The community’s hostility to the Batwa is increasing. Everyone wants a solution to this chronic problem of social outcasts.

After our hilltop visit, during lunch in the rustic Amajyambere camp relentless torrential rain thundered down on the tin roof and flooded the surrounding bush. While a welcome blessing for the growing crops, I could only picture, with a shudder, the Batwa people and their children huddling together in their tiny damp straw huts. Everyone deserves shelter from the storm.

So our exuberant road trip from Kampala to Kisoro is just the beginning. Obed and Joseph and the MCDO team will continue working together to ensure the forgotten Batwa people, after 26 years of exile, will finally find a place to call home.