On a trip of a lifetime, Rotarian Andrew Lee of the Rotary Club of Longmont visited Botswana. While he was there he discovered the small village of Khwai which was struggling to feed nutritious foods to its people. It was in this moment that an idea to teach the village farming techniques was born.
Khwai is a small village of around 400 people. Prior to its establishment, the people there were hunters and gatherers. However, they were pushed out of their native homes when the federal government established nearby Moremi Game Reserve along the Okavango Delta.
The removal from their homes had a bigger impact on the village than simply moving locations, it took away the people’s cultural way of obtaining food. Today, the people of Khwai send a truck on a four-hour trip to the nearest city of Maun once a week. The supplies are loaded onto the truck to make the return visit.
The produce that arrives on the truck is not only limited, it is expensive and sometimes inedible, said Amy McBride who is the local Rotarian sponsor.
The Longmont Rotary donated funds to help the village establish a teaching garden. The garden will be placed at the village’s preschool and the skills will be taught to the children with the hopes that their parents will get involved.
The Khwai Village does not currently grow any crops due a lack of knowledge, no experience with the process and the chance that wild animals will plunder the crops. The area is a known migration route for elephants and other African animals.
The project has just begun. A well was recently drilled which is a big change for the village which had to walk to the nearby river and carry water back. Those working on the site are in the process of installing a solar panel and pump to draw the water for the garden’s irrigation.
The next steps in the project are to build a greenhouse enclosure to keep the beating sun off the crops and to begin building raised beds and the garden area.
The local Rotarians are also in the process of finding a way to teach the villagers all they need to know in order to maintain sustainable crops into the future, McBride said.
“The village leaders are concerned about the lack of nutrition and lack of healthy choices for the community and feel that this program will have a positive impact on the health and well-being of Khwai village,” Lee said in an online post about the project.
