Author Archives: Austin Bailey

About Austin Bailey

Austin Bailey is a writer and editor for Heifer's World Ark magazine.

World’s Tiniest Heifer Project

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A miniature model of a portable clay stove demonstrates how improved stoves preserve wood by using significantly less fuel.

Photos by Russ Powell

In Chiponde Village, in the brushy savannah of western Malawi, 38-year-old Nashoni Zimba is celebrating the success of a local Heifer project in his own small way. The father of five is delighted by the improvements that reforestation efforts and improved cook stoves brought since Heifer started the Kasungu Sustainable Agriculture and Natural Resource Management Project here last year.

Zimba spent roughly a week crafting two miniature versions of his village out of mud.He said he hoped the model would show that someone who cares for trees and forests is better off than someone who doesn’t take care of natural resources.

The first version of the village, the “before” model, includes a barren stand of stumps to depict deforestation resulting from the constant need for firewood. Without enough trees to serve as wind breaks, the grass roof on the miniature house in this version is blowing away. An open fire is stacked tall with kindling, and a truck hauls away more wood to produce charcoal.

Nashoni Zimba holds a model of a logging truck filled with wood slated to be made into charcoal in Chiponde Village, Malawi.

The “after” model features improved stoves, both the fixed version made of bricks and the portable clay stove. Both use only about a third as much fuel. A larger house features a metal roof, and a raised corral keeps goats from roaming free. Animals drink water beneath a healthy stand of trees.

Although the project is only a year old, participants say the benefits are already easy to see. Women report the amount of time they spend hunting firewood is significantly cut thanks to their new, more efficient stoves, which not only use less fuel but also cook more quickly. Many of the participants who received meat goats already have kids to pass on and plans to sell future offspring. These sales will produce much-needed income in a tobacco-growing region where farmers are finding the market for their crops is quickly drying up.

Zimba's model depicts metal roofs, efficient stoves and other improvements that come along with Heifer's sustainability measures.

 

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Just Add Water

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What’s an anti-hunger organization doing celebrating World Water Day? Simple: Without water, there’s no food.

We all need to drink at least half a gallon of water each day, but it takes more than 500 gallons of water to produce enough daily food for one person. Water shortages hit agriculture-based organizations like Heifer right in the stomach for that very reason. As the tagline for this year’s United Nations World Water Day says, “The world is thirsty because we are hungry.”

“For me, hunger and thirst are two sides of the same coin,” explained Elizabeth Bintliff, Heifer’s executive vice president for Africa. “We can’t not pay attention to it.”

In Heifer’s early days, groups hoping to take on a Heifer project had to have easy access to clean water. The thinking was that a reliable water source is non-negotiable to ensure healthy livestock and productive fields, so starting a project where water isn’t readily available creates a burden for the community members—most likely women and children—charged with fetching and hauling water.

In some cases, that line of thinking kept Heifer from working with the people who needed help most, so a new plan took shape.

“More people in the world have cell phones than have access to clean water. How can we not pay attention?” Bintliff said. So Heifer added water to its repertoire. Today, it’s not unusual for Heifer’s work to include drilling boreholes, digging wells or helping to set up filtration systems where water is available but the quality is poor.

“Adding water to our list of things we can do changed where we can work,” Bintliff said. “We’re a little bit more intentionally part of the solution. We’re not excluding target groups because of something they don’t have. Instead, we’re helping them get it.”

 

 

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Women Taking the Floor

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Editor’s Note: A commitment to empower women is embedded in Heifer International’s core values for sustainable development. In honor of International Women’s Day on Thursday, March 8, this week we’re sharing the stories of Heifer participants who take the gifts of animals and training and run with them to extraordinary results for themselves and their communities. Through hard work and innovations, each woman secures her rightful place in the family, the marketplace and the world.

The seating arrangement at a Heifer training session in Fandene on a hot May day in 2010 was fairly typical for this rural region of a strongly Muslim country: men in the front, women in the back. Mame Penda Ndong, though, scooted her chair forward and sat boldly in the front row, keeping her eyes straight ahead so she doesn’t catch any of the disapproving glances cast her way.

“In Senegal, we don’t like women sitting in the front row, displaying themselves,” a male translator explained.

There were other things about Ndong that set her apart, too. Unlike the other women, Ndong left her head uncovered, and she embellished her short hair with shiny synthetic coils. In her lap she clutched a hot-pink leather purse, and a sassy purple bra strap peeked out from the neck of her anango, a traditional dress.

Ndong grew up in Fandene, and was lucky to get a much better education than most of her peers. She nearly finished high school, and her schooling earned her a job in the nearby city of Tataguine, away from the hot and sandy days of sun-up to sundown manual work, which the women who stayed in Fandene take on.

But Ndong clearly didn’t flee to the city, never to return. She comes home almost every weekend to help monitor the Heifer project she helped start. She brings along her two sons and one daughter, but her husband is far away, working in the United States. She’d like to bring the entire family home to Diarrere to stay if the Heifer sheep thrive, the improved seeds produce healthier yields and the project becomes successful enough to support more people.

After living in a city for years, miles away from the rigid gender roles that dominate village life, Ndong doesn’t hesitate to speak up or claim a chair for herself while the other women sit on the ground to leave the better seats for the men. Do the men deserve such respect and special treatment? It’s part of the Senegalese culture, but it’s a part that might be changing, she said. Encouraging other women to sit in the front row and take on leadership positions is taking some time, but Ndong said she’ll press on.

“Men speak a lot, but they don’t act much,” she said, nodding toward a cluster of men smoking and drinking tea nearby. Women are different. “You don’t see them speaking a lot, but you see them working a lot. If you look at the project here, you’ll see the women do more. If they don’t take the floor, they’ll be working on things they don’t decide.”

Link: http://www.heifer.org/media/world-ark/archives/2011/summer/women-taking-the-floor

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Brains and Brawn

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Editor’s Note: A commitment to empower women is embedded in Heifer International’s core values for sustainable development. In honor of International Women’s Day on Thursday, March 8, this week we’re sharing the stories of Heifer participants who take the gifts of animals and training and run with them to extraordinary results for themselves and their communities. Through hard work and innovations, each woman secures her rightful place in the family, the marketplace and the world.

Photo by Geoff Oliver Bugbee


Thirty-year-old Clarice Tine has biceps Madonna would die for, plus she’s got her hands on the money.

Tine is the treasurer for the Fandene community group near Thies in Senegal. Her group is working with Heifer to bring brawnier breeds of sheep and pigs to their village, where need grows each year as the weather turns drier and less hospitable to traditional crops.

Women’s lib is slow to catch on in rural Senegal, but Fandene embraced Tine as the obvious choice to be the money man.

“What they are looking for is someone who is fair and honest. If you give the responsibility to a woman, you will have that,” our translator Mbouille Diallo explained.

The vice chairman of the group in Fandene is also a woman, although the leadership in most neighboring villages is solely male. A junior high graduate and trained seamstress who earns extra money doing intricate embroidery work, Tine had the education credentials and work ethic to take on a leadership role. And she lived for a few years on her own in the raucous capital city of Dakar, proving she had savvy.

Tine’s awesome arms come from toting around her sons, ages 5 and 2, and fetching water at the well each day. Both of these jobs are considered women’s work in Senegal.

But here’s the thing. Schlepping toddlers and hauling dozens of buckets of water up from a well 40 feet deep apparently result in gorgeous arms and shoulders unmatched by any of the men we spied nearby. Madge, take note.

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Each Year, The Harvest Grows

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A commitment to empower women is embedded in Heifer International’s core values for sustainable development. In honor of International Women’s Day on March 8, this week we’re sharing the stories of Heifer participants who take the gifts of animals and training and run with them to extraordinary results for themselves and their communities. Through hard work and innovations, each woman secures her rightful place in the family, the marketplace and the world.

Photo by William Russell Powell

Esperanza Caal, 22, lives on her family’s farm outside Sayaxche, Guatemala, where oranges, mangoes, sweet potatoes, nutmeg, bananas and corn grow in tidy patches and rows. Crops thrive in the steamy heat, and the Esperanza proudly offers a bowl of fresh pineapple slices to visitors, a tasty welcome that highlights the bounty of the land.

But the abundance the Caals enjoy today was hard-won. Like many indigenous Guatemalans, their ancestors spent decades laboring on huge European-owned coffee farms that swallowed the plots they once tended for themselves and their families. And during the devastating 36-year-long civil war that was especially punishing to indigenous people, opportunities for families like the Caals to escape their servitude and strike out on their own were virtually nonexistent.

Twenty years ago, though, Esperanza’s father and grandfather decided to change their family’s future by laying claim to the land the family now lives on. Miles from any passable roads and churning with mosquitoes that thrive in the wet lowlands, the Caals’ farm wasn’t considered much of a prize. It took 14 years of work to make it habitable, but now, the family is healthy and proud to be independent. Each year, their harvest grows.

As participants in a Heifer project promoting sustainable agriculture and fair trade, the Caal family sows Heifer-provided seeds that yield high-quality fruits and vegetables that fetch good prices. In Heifer trainings, they learn how to market their crops to make fair profits. And the Heifer group members encourage each other to hold on to their farms, which are so productive now that outsiders frequently show up with offers to buy the land.

Esperanza has listened to the stories about her father and grandfather working on the coffee farms and struggling to survive during the war, and she has no plans to leave the family farm that took so long to build. “There’s plenty of room, I’m happy here. I want to stay,” she said. “I’m always thinking about how to improve the land.”

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Who’s Hungry?

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As if the estimate that 1 billion people in the world are hungry wasn’t hard enough to fathom, a new survey developed by researchers in the United States, Colombia and Brazil suggests the number could actually be twice that.

The new survey, which requires people to report on their food consumption over a period of three months, is a departure from the facts and figures-based method the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization used to come up with the 1 billion figure. The FAO made their estimate by comparing how much food is available, divided by the population. If the number of calories available for each person is too low, those numbers were used to estimate how many people are food insecure.

The new survey, called ELCSA (for Escala Latinoamericana y Caribena de Seguridad Alimentaria), takes a more personal approach. Based on the U.S. Household Food Security Survey Module used by the Department of Agriculture, ELCSA yields more nuanced information. Results show where in a country hunger is most pernicious, which groups are hungry at greater rates and whose diets are adequate in calories but not nutrients.

Initial results from surveys conducted in Brazil and Colombia suggest hunger is a much larger issue than we knew. The survey is already being adopted in other Central and South American countries.

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ZOMBEES!

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Here’s some real-life sci-fi for you: A parasite that lays eggs in honey bees’ abdomens and causes them to stumble around in a zombie-like death march is the latest suspect in the colony collapse disorder that’s killing hives around the world. The horror continues about a week after the bees die and the larvae wriggle out like miniature aliens.
San Francisco State University biologist John Hafernik happened upon the ghoulish parasites after collecting bees to feed a praying mantis. First, fly pupae emerged in the vial where he was keeping the bees, then the bees started lurching around, falling over and dying. Hafernik’s research revealed that the same parasites, identified as Apocephalus borealis, are killing bumblebees, too.
The discovery likely won’t solve the disastrous decline in the pollinator populations we rely on for crop production. Experts think the zombie parasites are just one of many things killing bees. Other culprits include different parasites, infections, pesticides and habitat loss.

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Poor=Lazy?

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Greeks and Italians have been taking some blows lately as their economies crumble. Why can’t they be more like their wealthy, tidy northern neighbors in Germany and Holland, critics want to know. Fellow European states are putting pressure on the Mediterranean governments, suggesting that they can borrow money as long as their citizens work harder and save more.

But is laziness really to blame? Turns out the stereotype of the lazy Latins vs. the enterprising northern Europeans doesn’t hold up. Slate writer Matthew Yglesias pulled the numbers and found that Greek, Spanish and Italian workers all put in significantly more hours than the Germans and Dutch. “The truth is that countries aren’t rich because their people work hard. When people are poor, that’s when they work hard,” Yglesias wrote.

This simple truth extends beyond Europe’s borders, and it brought to mind how I feel every time I visit Heifer project sites and meet the people there. In Senegal last year I met a mother of four named Fatou Dione who wakes up before 6 a.m. every day to pound and cook millet for breakfast, fetch water, hunt for firewood, care for the family’s sheep and send the children off to school. She also works in the fields and cares for aging family members, responsibilities that keep her moving until after the sun sets. Fatou lives in a hut made of sticks and relies on her brother-in-law to send money when the family’s stores of millet run low.

I often think of Fatou when my morning routine goes awry and I’m late getting myself and my two boys out the door. Dirty diapers and temper tantrums are a hassle, but hot water pours automatically from my faucets, my refrigerator is stocked with food and the only animals I have to care for are a dog and a cat. Pretty easy stuff, really. I’m certain Fatou works harder and is more tired at the end of the day than I am, and still I have so much more. It’s humbling and eye-opening and it certainly confirms what my mother always told me, “Life isn’t fair.”

My mother also told me that we all get what we deserve in the end. I wish that was true, but after meeting Fatou and so many other clever and hard-working Heifer project participants around the world, I know for a fact it’s not. What you start with usually dictates what you’ll end up with, so let’s all count our blessings. At the same time, let’s work together to make sure brilliant, driven, loving people in places Heifer works have a decent shot at getting what they deserve.

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Meat Me in St. Louis?

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With so many urban gardens blooming these days, is a big push for urban livestock far behind? It’s certainly been done before: Sacred cows roam the streets of Delhi, goats loiter along the trash heaps in Khartoum, guinea pigs hop around their pens in downtown Lima.
And we know the movement has strong supporters in the United States, with chickens in plenty of backyards and advocacy groups calling for the loosening of ordinances to allow miniature goats within the city limits. It’s a swell hobby with loads of entertainment value, but some people think it could be more.
Barring disaster of World War II proportions, it’s not likely that city dwellers with backyard menageries will displace feedlots as our main source of animal protein. But raising animals for meat in the city could well continue becoming more popular as people learn more about the perks. Urban livestock earn their keep by eating food scraps, weeds and other waste that would otherwise be trucked off to a landfill. They provide fertilizer for gardens, and since they’re raised within the community, these animals lack the mystery meat mystique of cellophane-wrapped packages from the grocery store.
It’s hard to imagine pygmy goats ambling down the Magnificent Mile in Chicago or tilapia swimming around in city fountains. But perhaps sharing our living spaces with our food sources would make the lives of our livestock a bit more comfortable. June Komisar, an advocate of urban agriculture, said animal welfare supporters are likely to advocate raising and processing livestock close to home, since shortening the distance between where animals are raised and where they’re slaughtered is an important element in improving those animals’ quality of life.
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Turkey Time

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Happy Thanksgiving! Sure, it’s the most American of holidays, but the United States doesn’t have the corner on turkeys. In fact, Israelis eat the most turkey per person, usually spit-roasted from a shawarma stand or in schnitzel form. The United States comes in second, followed by Canada. Turkey consumption is ramping up in Brazil and Mexico, and it’s a traditional Christmas dish in El Salvador and other Central American countries.

Turkeys are native to North America, but Heifer International provides these plucky birds to families throughout Eastern Europe and Central America. Heifer turkeys are currently scratching around family farms in Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia and Mexico. And turkeys are incorporated into a large project in the Cahabon River Basin in Guatemala, where indigenous Q’eqchi families living in the cloud forest are raising turkeys, rabbits, worms and fruit trees.

One more fun thing about turkeys: If you see a pack of them, you could be boring and call it a “flock,” but we prefer the more colorful “gobble.”

Have a great holiday!

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