Author Archives: Annie Bergman

About Annie Bergman

As Senior Writer for Heifer International, Annie Bergman is the primary travel writer for the nonprofit organization’s World Ark magazine. Bergman has interviewed survivors of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, beekeepers in Honduras, women’s groups in India and war widows in Kosovo in her four years at Heifer. Bergman received her bachelor’s degree in English Language and Literature from the University of Tulsa in Oklahoma and a master’s degree in Australian Aboriginal Studies from the University of Melbourne in Australia. Her hobbies include hiking, golfing, cooking, reading and walking her dogs.

iPoultry

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We’ve told you time and again the benefits that chickens bring to our beneficiaries around the world. But you might be surprised to learn that there are a few employees here at Heifer headquarters who raise chickens in their backyards. It’s a growing trend for city dwellers in the U.S., especially with the rise of the local food movement. Besides, who wouldn’t want fresh eggs any time they wanted them?

A screen shot of the Pickin’ Chicken app from Mother Earth News article.

If you’re interested in finding out how to set up your own coop, yep, there’s an app for that. From Mother Earth News, the Pickin’ Chicken Breed Selector helps you find the perfect bird based on your climate, how much space you have and whether you want eggs, meat or both. It’s available on iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch.

The app features 82 breeds and 100 varieties of the fowl, so you’ll have plenty to choose from. You can even look into raising Heritage or endangered breeds.

If chickens aren’t your thing, but plants are, there are a number of apps for gardening available out there too. iTunes has a variety of apps that range in price from 99 cents to $9.99.

So if you’ve wanted to get in to growing or raising your own food, but didn’t know where to start, now you’ve got no excuse. But I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to wait until Spring.

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A New Way to Learn About Heifer Gifts

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Yes, Christmas and Hanukkah are just past us, but it’s not too late to give a gift for Kwanzaa or to relatives who you may be visiting later during the holiday break. 
Great news! You can still give to Heifer. 
Just part of what you’ll see when you use Heifer’s new app.
Even if your shopping is done, keep Heifer in mind for any other special occasions coming up in the new year. And if you’re ever unsure of how explain how meaningful a gift of a goat, chicks or bees can be, we can help you with that, too. 
This year Heifer has launched a new interactive experience for anyone who’s considering giving a Heifer gift, or who may not know what the benefits a Heifer gift can bring to struggling families. With just a few clicks, Sarah “the professional goat”, will tell you all about how Heifer animals transform the lives of our beneficiaries. It’s a fun way to learn about serious global issues like hunger and poverty. 
Sarah will even help you discover which animal gift you want to give. So, the next time you want to give to Heifer, but aren’t exactly sure which animal you want, try using our new app. 
It’s available at www.heifer.org/sarah or just click here.
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Ghana’s Young Entrepreneur

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Alexander Appiah, 32, joined a farmers group in the village of Nkwabeng, Ghana, four years ago. He was among the youngest of those Heifer Ghana staff had seen apply to Heifer for assistance. Most young men his age were abandoning their villages in favor of nearby cities of Techiman or Kumasi and the promise of more work and better wages.

But Alexander didn’t want to give up on his village. When he began trainings he said he learned that Heifer “brings a lot of unity and togetherness to a community.” An important trait to him because one often needs the help of neighbors.

When he joined the group, Alexander farmed a quarter-acre of cassava and yams. It was subsistence-level farming. He also worked as a farm laborer during the regular farming season, which left Alexander and his wife scraping by during the off season. 

From his initial gift of five beehives and 20 laying hens, Alexander is now one of the villages more successful poultry farmers. He has signed a contract with Heifer to brood and provide pullets to the organization for placement with other families in need. He’s also been elected the Vice Secretary of the farmers group, and is in charge of mobilization—or helping spread the word—about the groups activities and services.

He is also a role model in his small village. Young men look to him and see that a life can be made in agriculture. Alexander trains these men and others in what he learned from Heifer, he said. As one Heifer staffer said, “Alexander is a good teacher because he started from nothing. He can relate to them.”

Where he and his wife once shared a mud-walled and roofed home with their two daughters, Alexander has now built them a concrete home with iron roofing. He’s also in the process of building a new home for his parents to improve their standard of living. And that’s not all.

Alexander now makes nearly $200 a month from just his chickens alone. He has put his two daughters into private schools and is saving for their college educations. And he still dreams of owning his own agricultural general store, as well.

If I learned one thing about the Ghanaian farmers I spoke with, it’s that they possess an amazing work ethic. Alexander’s whole village considers him a success; his parents are proud of him. Yet, he’s not done. While he’s helping others fulfill their dreams, he knows there’s more out there for him. 

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What a Gift of Chickens Really Does

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Over the past few weeks Brooke has been posting about what gifts to Heifer can do for struggling families around the world, the benefits in nutrition and the goods they can use for increased income. Her post about chickens touched on a number of things I saw benefitting the lives of the farmers in the Akumsa-Dumase village in Ghana.

The group of 20 farmers received 20 birds each in a Pass on the Gift ceremony just last year. In that small amount of time, the income for each farmer has at least doubled and their children are healthier—all thanks to the eggs they get from their flocks.

Janet Amoah, 46, runs the egg collection point for her group. She has 40 chickens now, as the sale of eggs brought in enough income for her to double the size of her flock. She gets 30 eggs per day and keeps enough for her family and sells the others. The eggs bring in an extra $60 a month for Janet, and she has plans to expand her poultry operation.

In just one year, Janet says her life has changed completely. For the first time, she says, she doesn’t have to worry about her children’s health or fear that she won’t be able to afford to send them to school.

Chickens are just $20. Would you spend $20 to help change someone’s life? To help send a child in Africa to school? I would.

 

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A Taste of Ghana

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Fresh coconut water…
…from a really fresh coconut.

One of the most fun parts of traveling for Heifer is trying all the new cuisines. I’ve tried some pretty weird stuff in my travels—goat brains just to name one—but for the most part I’ve loved getting to taste the foods of the world.

Yams with stewed yam leaves in spices (in the pots) laid
out for lunch. 
red red

Ghanaian food hasn’t disappointed, either. As you would expect, rice is a staple and available almost anywhere. Jollof rice is good if you like to spice things up a bit. A couple of my favorites have also been red red, a bean stew made with red pepper and red palm oil, and kele wele (pronounced “killy willy.”), which are fried plantains on the not-too-sweet side.

Grasscutter soup.

But I also really wanted to try grasscutter. It’s a local delicacy and, not to sound cliché, but, When in Rome, right?

As I took my first bite Roland waited for my reaction. “Any meat to compare it to?” he asked.  “Not really” was my answer. It truly has a flavor of it’s own. No “it tastes like chicken” from me. Also, if someone tells you it tastes like chicken? They’re lying.
It wasn’t bad, though. Kind of like goat, and my apologies to the goat lovers out there, but goat just is not my favorite. It was served in a tomato soup, which actually enhanced the flavor.
So, will I be asking for it again? Probably not, but I had to try.
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Rodents of Unusual Size Really Do Exist

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And not just in the fairy tale The Princess Bride. (If you haven’t seen it, go watch it now. You’ll understand.)

Photo by James Grooves















Actually grasscutters really aren’t all THAT big, but they are big in relative terms. And they are rodents. And though they wouldn’t attack a human, they do have very sharp teeth they use to munch down on grass, hence the name.


Jonathan Mensah, Heifer participant, feeds
his grasscutters.

In Ghana, they’re highly desired bush meat. Some even consider it a delicacy. That’s why, in 1999 when Heifer Ghana was just getting started, Roland Kanlisi the deputy country director, began looking into whether the grasscutter could be domesticated and used in Heifer projects.


And they could. A German NGO had actually begun doing just that in neighboring Burkina Faso just a few years prior.

Today, the grasscutter projects are some of the most successful in Ghana. And it really is fascinating to hear how Heifer helped pioneered the process, which has resulted in both successful farmers and a renewed environment.

Before Heifer helped domesticate the animals for farming, hunters used to either set poisonous traps for the animals or set bush fires to, quite literally, smoke the creatures out. Eating the poisonous meat would harm the humans, and bush fires often got out of control, burning nearby farmland and leaving the earth scorched.

Now, farmers in Ghana are raising them in tiered cages. Farmers like Jonathan Mensah keep upwards of 30 of the animals at a time and say the demand is very high for the animals. The grasscutter projects have been so successful, there are now 105 grasscutter farmers in just one area outside Accra, and it’s not enough.

It’s also rare to find people hunting them in the wild anymore. The environment is saved and the farmers are making a pretty penny, too. Not a bad deal if you ask me.


Read more about why Heifer is working to help other communities move away from bushmeat.
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Mama Yogurt

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 Prior to 2007 dairy products made with actual milk were hard to come by in Ghana. I know that sounds strange, but even the most popular dairy product on the market—yogurt—was mostly made with powdered milk. These powder-based products are still very popular, but a few dairy farmers are making a case for real milk and milk-based products.
Mama Yogurt serves up samples.

One such person is Joyce Ayiku, or “Mama Yogurt” as she was nicknamed by Heifer staff during our visit there Tuesday. Ayiku, 49, received a dairy cow from Heifer International four years ago. She is one of the few dairy farmers in Nsawam, not far from the capital of Accra.

What she and others soon discovered was that there was little to no market for the excess milk the cows were providing. So they took their problem to Heifer, who encouraged them to process the milk into yogurt. Heifer also connected them with marketing professionals who advised them on how to sell their product, which was unfamiliar to most in the area.
Photos by Jane Hahn

To say that Joyce was a quick learner is an understatement. When she first began processing her milk into yogurt, she basically went door to door telling people about Heifer and why yogurt from fresh milk was better.

She now can’t make enough yogurt to keep up with the demand. The 34 other dairy farmers in her group sell their excess milk more often to Joyce than to anyone else. She makes yogurt from all that milk and stores it in her home’s four freezers.
Joy Natural Yogurt in banana, pineapple and strawberry flavors, is also on the shelves of two supermarkets, and she also sells to schools and churches in her area (in either cups, bottles, one liter, 5 liters or 10 liters). She makes her own labels with the help of her son who is in college thanks to the money she’s made, and she is in the process of building a new processing facility on her property.
And she’s not done. She envisions her own Joy Natural Yogurt plant with a cooking room, a freezing room and a packing room, as well as a stand-alone yogurt shop, too.
Oh, and the strawberry yogurt? It’s real good. I can vouch for that.
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Heifer is Improving the State of the World

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We’ve been hearing a lot lately about the state of the planet. The seven billionth child was born in October placing a further strain on the Earth’s resources. The percent of green house gases hit a record high in 2010, contributing to warming and other strange weather events. The news hasn’t exactly been good.
Yesterday, the United Nations put out their first ever “State of the World’s Land and Water Resources” report. The news in it isn’t much better either. The report indicates that 25 percent of the planet’s land is “highly degraded” while 36 percent is stable or “slightly degraded”.  The Food and Agriculture Organization warned that farmers must produce 70 percent more food by 2050 to feed the world’s ever-growing population.
In an Associated Press story from Monday, the FAO director-general Jacques Diouf said farming practices that degrade the soil, competition over land for growing biofuels and climate change are to blame. “The consequences in terms of hunger and poverty are unacceptable. Remedial actions need to be taken now. We simply cannot continue on a course of business as usual,” he said.

Areas at risk include the highlands of the Himalayas, the Andes, the Ethiopian plateau, southern Africa and southeast Asia. Soil erosion and decreasing cultural value in the land are a few of the reasons.

But for those of us at Heifer, there is room to hope, too. Heifer works in almost all of those areas. Llamas and alpacas are helping improve the soil high in the Andes with their droppings. We’re bringing in irrigation systems in areas of Africa affected by drought, too. 

But everywhere, we are aiming to reach an increased number of smallholder farmers in each project, and we will continue to teach them to use the best seeds, plants, fertilizers and animal husbandry practices that can triple or quadruple yields. Increased yields means more people fed. 
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Building Peace in Cambodia

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One of the aspects of Heifer’s work around the world that doesn’t always get mentioned is peace building. Heifer was there after World War II delivering heifers to Japan and Germany. We even took chicks to Korea during their war in the 1950s. More recently we’ve helped war widows in Kosovo, and mended relations between Hutus and Tutsis in Rwanda.
We’ve also helped bring peace to Cambodia. I was there last year and nearly everyone I spoke to had an amazing story about how they survived the bloody regime of the Khmer Rouge. I say nearly everyone because I spoke with a few former Khmer Rouge soldiers, too.
Ly Ty and Seng Sam fought on opposite sides of the war. They now work together as part of a Heifer self-help group in Chrey Krem, a tiny village in western Cambodia. Sitting with these two men and former enemies was one experience I will never forget.
Listen to their story below or read the entire story here.
The two men really do love each other like brothers. And that’s the thing about Cambodia that has stayed with me in the year since I left: the feeling of peace and of a collective acceptance with the past was overwhelming. Never did I think that a country could forgive and forget such horrible wrongs. But, at least in Chrey Krem village, they have.

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Read All About It

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The story of Dan West is a special one to all of us at Heifer headquarters. Without him, we wouldn’t be here. But West’s vision and his original gift cows mean more to many of our beneficiaries—often more than we comprehend. One example is Humphrey and Mercy Mwananyanda who were so inspired that they named their daughter Hope after one of the first heifers shipped overseas to help struggling families.
The Mwananyandas are just one of the many families Heifer is helping in Zambia, through a partnership with Elanco. That story is the main feature in the Holiday edition of World Ark magazine, coming soon to a mailbox near you.
You can also read about coffee’s long journey farms in Mexico to your morning mug, or the article about two young Heifer donors on a quest to raise enough money to buy a camel this year. 
The story of Ryan Bell and his younger sister Meghan is one that I find particularly inspring, and I hope you take a minute to read about the siblings from Connecticut on a quest to raise $5,000 for Heifer no matter how long it takes.
You’ll also find TheMost Important Gift Catalog in the World in this edition, too! Once you’ve picked out the Heifer gifts you’ll be giving this year, please pass it on to friends and neighbors so they can do the same. 
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