Southern and Eastern Africa
Bringing Hope to the Makindu Orphans
You could call it an irony of fate. Pigeonpea was once called an ‘orphan crop’, neglected by commercial interests because it was a just a food of the poor. This changed when ICRISAT adopted it as one of its focus crops for improvement. Now, the orphan crop has itself become a symbol of hope for real orphans of the Children’s Center at Makindu, a village in Kenya.
The Makindu Center was established to assist the local community in caring for orphans, some of whom have lost their parents to AIDS. Its founder, Diana Nzomo, is a born leader and a farmer-entrepreneur. She is no stranger to ICRISAT. Since 1992, she has been a regular visitor to the nearby Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI) Station at Kiboko, where ICRISAT scientists have been improving pigeonpea varieties through support from the African Development Bank.
Searching for new ways to help the orphans, in 1998 Diana took up a suggestion to grow short-duration pigeonpeas on a piece of land that the Center had rented from a local farmer. The suggestion was made by Omari Karuru, Head of the ICRISAT team at KARI. “The peas will be useful for both food and sale,” Karuru told Diana. “You can also plant two crops a year, and harvest fresh pigeonpeas just 3 months after planting.”
Green pigeonpea is highly sought-after in the region, because it is tasty and nutritious and is available when other green vegetables are in short supply. It also holds export potential to the UK where it is in demand from people of Asian and Caribbean origin – a chance for poor Kenyan cultivators to earn hard cash.
So sound was Karuru’s advice to Diana that even before her first crop had flowered, Everest Enterprises, a horticultural export company, showed keen interest to buy her pigeonpeas for export to the UK. ICRISAT scientist Richard Jones reports that Everest was especially interested in peas from the recently-released, ICRISAT-derived variety ‘KARI Mbaazi 1’ (ICPL 87091).
The fresh peas also became a great hit with the Center’s children. Because pigeonpea is high in protein, it improved the children’s health. Diana was so pleased with the result that she wanted to give them a diet of pigeonpeas year-round. This required storing the dried harvest of mature pigeonpea seeds. However, unlike the fresh green pigeonpeas, dried pigeonpeas have a bitter taste if the seed coat is not removed.
In India, where the crop originated, the seed coat is
traditionally removed with a simple household grinding stone known as a chakki
which also splits the grains, making them easier to boil. ICRISAT researchers decided to
import chakkis from India to test in Kenya. A collaborative project was funded by
USAID to train artisans to manufacture chakkis, and to train rural Kenyan women to
prepare dhal, an appetizing, nutritious, and easily-digestible thick soup.
The experiment was a big success. Under Diana’s leadership, the Makindu Center is now manufacturing and selling cement chakkis, in addition to earning income through the sale of green pigeonpeas. They are also feeding the children dhal year-round.
An orphan crop helping real orphans. The case of the Makindu Center is a living example of how crops are intertwined with the lives of the poor and disposessed – and how agricultural innovation can help them gain the health and security they need for a brighter future.
