What’s better than sharing your knowledge and experience with an enthusiastic and inquisitive group of people from different corners of the country? Two weeks ago we held such an event in Kongwa, one of our districts. Farmers, Maasai, village leaders and ecovillage project employees came to visit  LEAD Foundation from different parts of Tanzania.

This resulted in 15 participants from centre-east Tanzania (Igunga) and a number from north Tanzania (Mbaash). After they had seen the Kisik Hai documentary, they were eager to learn the FMNR technique. The participants were accompanied by 10 farmers from central Tanzania (Kongwa) who were already trained by LEAD Foundation facilitators and could exchange their experiences.

In the evening the participants from Igunga and Mbaash arrived after a bus journey of 10-12 hours. You couldn’t tell they were tired, because they started sharing their excitement and seemed full of energy. The technique was explained by our trainers, we went into the field to prune and in the evening songs and plays about Kisiki Hai were prepared for the final day. Before the people returned to their own regions, there was room for additional advice from the trainers and the Kongwa farmers about how they can best promote and apply the technology in their own villages.

You could tell by the look of the smiling faces and farmers interaction, these were definitely valuable days. At the end of the event a Maasai even said:

The evening before the long journey back, a meeting was even planned under the Igunga group. The main question was:

How will we implement the FMNR method in our ecovillages?

Now that they have learned everything about preserving trees, they are determined to apply the technique themselves and spread the knowledge. The ‘first seeds have been sowed’ outside the Dodoma region for a greener Tanzania!