Community Successes
“The Sukuma wiki is sweet, soft and takes short time to cook”
Human waste handling in Kenya is associated with many taboos and cultures among many communities. Some communities refer human waste as a bad omen. Children within the households grow up while knowing that human waste is a bad thing to get associated with. The perception is so rooted that talking about human waste being a fertilizer to grow food is initially frowned at. Some would sarcastically ask, "how?"
The questioning and wanting to know how it can be done were the driving forces and motivation that led to Bountiful Gardeners for Africa focus on the training of how human waste can be safely and legally taken back to the soil to grow food sustainably. It is true that human waste derived fertilizers have been in use for many centuries to improve soils. It is also true that human waste human derived fertilizer (HDF) contain most of the nutrients that plants require to thrive. But resistance to the use of HDF has been there, with many retrogressive cultures and beliefs attributed to the use.
But can vegetables or food grown with human waste be eaten? This was one of the many questions that BGA staff came across during the start of the project training on use of HDF to grow health and nutritious food.
At one time during the training, the staff would hear the training attendees murmuring in low tones saying “how do you eat food grown using feces? And how do you literally touch feces and come to shake hands with us?" At BGA, families that used to buy vegetables from the demonstration garden stopped buying. The news spread around the community and no one wanted to eat any food from BGA garden. "They are using feces to grow vegetables!! One would say to incite others!!"
After a series of training and demonstration for almost two years now, the perception and the negative attitude on food grown using HDF has changed. The community now understands how the purification process of composting kills disease-causing pathogens and how plants take in nutrients from the soil. With their participation in the trainings, the community members have come back with a new message of how delcious and productive crops are from the research plots. Bridgit Nekesa is one such member of the community who happily expressed to the BGA staff: ”Your Sukuma wiki is so sweet and it takes very short time to cook”.