Tag Archives: Heifer Tanzania

Aquaculture: The Gift of Fish for Life!

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Tanzania aquaculture

Nicholas Mwakabelele took the spirit of Passing on the Gift to the extreme by giving tens of thousands of fish fingerlings away to his neighbors, including a blind man who once asked for a handout. Photo by Dave Anderson, courtesy of Heifer International.

Aquaculture, or the raising of fish under controlled conditions, accounts for half of the world’s food fish. In Heifer’s aquaculture projects, participants receive the gift of fish fingerlings and training in farming techniques specific to their area of the world. Such a gift very quickly improves family nutrition with the lean healthy protein of fish such as tilapia.

Plus, it’s easy to sell fish for income so families can achieve financial independence and Pass on the Gift of fingerlings to empower entire communities. One of Heifer’s most inspiring stories of Passing on the Gift comes from a fish-farming project in Mambi village, Tanzania, where Heifer participant Nicholas Mwakabelele (above), was the first in the area to become successful at fish farming. He often got requests from neighbors who wanted to buy a few fish for dinner, but when he met neighbor Wailos Nzalayaluma (below), both of their lives would forever change.

Tanzania aquaculture

Disease blinded Wailos Nzalayaluma before he could finish school. He is now able to provide income for himself and his mother through fish farming. Photo by Dave Anderson, courtesy of Heifer International.

Wailos is blind, and he asked Nicholas to give him a few fish for his family’s dinner. But Nicholas had a better idea. Instead, he helped Wailos build his own fish pond and then donated fish fingerlings to him so he could grow his own and never be hungry again. The two continue to work side by side as fish farmers in the community. Read their full story here in Heifer’s World Ark magazine.

Heifer currently supports 63 aquaculture projects in 10 countries including Brazil, Ecuador, Honduras, Haiti, Estonia, Thailand, China, Philippines, Cambodia and Tanzania.

Give now to help families like these in Tanzania start their own aquaculture projects.

This post is part of our What to Give series, where we’re helping you choose the best Heifer gift for your loved ones. Read previous What to Give posts here, and subscribe to the What to Give series here.

Still don’t know what to give? Visit our full catalog page here.

Camels: An Extreme Animal Makes an Extreme Gift

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The land where Heifer International works in northern Tanzania is so parched in the dry season that dust devils assault the landscape. This is where camels can become lifesavers, as one man discovered.Dusty dry season in northern Tanzania

Elijah Lemayan Sokino joined a Heifer International camel project ten years ago designed to deal with the effects of periodic drought in the area. His family, like other Masai, depended on goats and cattle for their livelihood, but in years when the rains didn’t come, the cattle died. For the semi-nomadic people, this was distressing and perilous.

Mr. Camel

 

Even though the new camels were big and unfamiliar, Elijah stuck with them. He learned to love them. When drought struck again a few years later, families who had dismissed the animals returned to him, seeing that the camels survived when their own cattle did not. Worried they would starve, Elijah redistributed his camels to them.

Now, the family’s camels produce milk that sells for a good price in nearby towns, and people in the area call Elijah “Mr. Camel.”

You can help other families get this kind of independence with the gift of a camel.

Some things you may not know about these amazing creatures:

Camel in Tanzania
Camels can eat almost anything
  • Camels can survive in environments with very little water and can eat vegetation other animals can’t.
  • Camels can drink up to 25 gallons of water at a time.
  • Camel’s milk has three times as much Vitamin C as cow’s milk, and is rich in iron, unsaturated fatty acids and B vitamins.
  • Camel hair can be woven into rugs and tents, and their manure can be burned for fuel.
  • There are about ten times as many Dromedary camels (the ones with one hump) as Bactrian (with two humps), and most of them live in the Horn of Africa or Middle East.
  • Camels have been called the “ships of the desert” for their ability to carry large loads across the sand.

You can give a gift unlike any other this holiday with a Heifer International camel.

This post is part of our What to Give series, where we’re helping you choose the best Heifer gift for your loved ones. Read previous What to Give posts here, and subscribe to the What to Give series here.

Still don’t know what to give? Check out our entire online Gift Catalog.

7 Things About Mt. Kilimanjaro

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Recently I accompanied several employees of corporate supporter Elanco as they climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro and raised money for Heifer International. The trek was challenging and magnificent. Here are a few things that other sources may not tell you about climbing Kilimanjaro.

1. It’s not the climbing, it’s the altitude. So walk verrry sloooowly.climbing Kilimanjaro w Heifer

When someone asks if Kilimanjaro was hard, I don’t know what to say. Because, while walking up a rocky path for hours each day isn’t easy, the routes were not very difficult and the segments not long – until the summit day. My lungs complained much sooner than my legs did. No, the tough part was re-learning my body’s capabilities at altitude.

Normally, when I hike, I move at a good clip. So I was startled, within the first few minutes of the trek, to be told to follow behind the guide at a pace that I wouldn’t use for window-shopping at the mall. But as the days go on and I heard my breathing deepening, I became comfortable with going slowly. By the day of the summit attempt, I was grateful to climb at a speed that could be surpassed by my 85-year-old grandmother pulling a sledge of iron ore.

Heifer Kilimanjaro climb camp

Marta and Gail bundled up at campsite

2. You’re cold.

Many nights on the mountain, I slept in a sleeping bag with liner, and long underwear, pants, fleeces, a jacket, and ski socks. And a stocking cap. And foot warmers. I lost all memory of what it might mean to be warm. On the morning of the summit, the water in our Camelbak tubes froze during the walk, and my toes went bitingly numb. Cameras often freeze up at the top. Afterward, the skin on my hands and windburned face became dry and tough.

 

3. And dirty.

dirty hands on Kilimanjaro Heifer climb

A typical state of affairs

In this weather, I didn’t mind not bathing for seven days. But I would’ve liked to get the grit out of my teeth. At the end of the dry season, when we climbed, the dust from the trail and campsites creeped into everything. Washing our hands twice a day was a lovely experience – until we grasped the zipper to enter a tent, and they were filthy once again. Applying sunscreen became, at some point, just an exercise in smearing dirt over your face.

4. You have to pee a lot.

To fight altitude sickness, it’s necessary to drink about three liters of water while climbing, in addition to plenty of hot teas and soups at every meal. This means that nearly every hour, like an anxious spaniel, I needed to rush behind a bush or rock to answer nature’s call. I thought a person would only experience this sort of inconvenience in pregnancy, but I was wrong. Continue reading →

Sustainability at Heifer International: Part 1

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At Heifer International, “sustainability” is much more than a buzzword. It’s at the core of everything we do. If you’re not setting out to do work that lasts, why bother at all? As I mentioned in my blog post yesterday, Heifer’s work can be viewed through three lenses of sustainability. This post is the first in a three-part series to examine what genuine sustainability looks like at Heifer International.

Sustainability: Able to be maintained at a certain level

One of the defining factors of our work is that, when our projects are over, and direct involvement with participating families is finished, the improvements they have made in their own lives through our gifts of livestock and training are maintainable. Small farming families have the physical resources, knowledge and motivation to not only stay at their current level of improved livelihoods, but also to continue making improvements.

Sustainability in Tanzania: Kitomary Family

The Kitomarys on their 1.5 acre organic farm, nine years after receiving assistance from Heifer. Photo by Kelly MacNeil, courtesy of Heifer International.

This form of sustainability is so important, and it’s how we know our efforts truly work. Take  for example the Kitomary family of Tanzania, about whom Kelly MacNeil wrote on the Heifer Blog. They received their gifts of animals and training nine years ago, and they continue thriving on their one-and-a-half-acre farm after all these years. They are educating all six of their children, which would not be possible had they not continued applying what they learned in the Heifer trainings to make the most out of their very small plot of land. The Kitomarys are the living definition of sustainability.

Check back on the Heifer Blog tomorrow for Part 2 of this Sustainability at Heifer series. Better yet, subscribe to the blog by email or RSS feed and keep up with Heifer every day.

Heifer’s Trainings Continue to Serve Nine Years Later

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After our descent from Kilimanjaro with the group of Elanco employees who are Heifer International supporters, I had the opportunity to visit the Kitomary family in Tanzania.

The Kitomary family farm is a miraculous oasis of organic farming outside the city of Arusha in Tanzania. It wasn’t always that way, though.

Kitomarys on their farm

Photo courtesy of Heifer International

Zodiac Kitomary used to drink away the meager earnings of his family’s simple plantings. He had nothing better to do, he says, no hopeful prospects. Then in 2003, the family received fish fingerlings from Heifer, and later, dairy goats. More importantly, Zodiac says, they received trainings on how to maximize the output of their tiny property and on how to work together.

Tanzania small farm

Photo courtesy of Heifer International

His wife, Ndetaniawa, says Heifer trainings taught a different attitude, calling for husband and wife to work together and value each other. She confronted her husband and asked him to stop drinking. “Now,” she says, “everything that comes from the farm, everything we make, we share together equally.”

And they manage to squeeze a lot out of the farm. One and a half acres, they observe, is not a lot to raise six children on. They’ve enthusiastically adopted all kinds of organic techniques so that every inch of the farm serves more than one purpose.

Goat on Tanzania farm

Photo courtesy of Heifer International

The fish fingerlings the Kitomarys raise are sold all over the region. They have a biogas system run with the dung of their dairy goats, which they continue to breed. And they’re raising specialty crops like herbs, greens, yams and fruit trees.

With their earnings, the family is sending all six children to good schools. One is even at university now.

“Many people are amazed,” Zodiac Kitomary says. “They think I must still be getting financial assistance. But really I just keep applying the training, and that’s what makes it possible.”