Ishahayi farm

I tell you the teachers out at ishahayi never cease to amaze me. I was out there to give all the teachers their bi-monthly "donation" (as teachers they don't get paid, so the School Foundation there gives them a stipend to help out - $100AUD a month mind you, but no-one complains)

Anyway, when I was paying the teachers, Aki, the grade 6 teacher comes in all sweaty and smiling telling me he's just started a "farm". This I had to see. As the the kids were about to go on holidays for a couple of months, the kids were clearing around the school building to get rid of snakes - and lo and behold they ended up with a nice little patch of land along the side of the school next to the new well. Why not start a farm? So aki got the older boys planting cassava, which they can grow from cuttings. Cassava normally takes about a year to get big enough for the root (the big starchy bit you eat) to be a decent meal.

When I asked him what his plans were, he smiled confidently and said that they would sell the cassava and buy school books or press it and grind it to a powder to make garri (a local starchy staple) for the children to eat. Great work. Like I said, those guys always impress me... amazing

One of the standard teachers implements around
here is a good stick, Aki is no exception


After dividing up old cassava plants by "cutlass"
(machete) you can just plant the cuttings




The younger kids got to sit around and watch as the older kids
did all the work, just in case there were any snakes in the bush.