I am on practicum if you are curious on why I have not been on the Internet. Practicum is like an internship except you are graded. I am very interested in agricultural development and I was given the opportunity to work with Procom. One of my teacher’s Dwight Jackson heard that I was interested in agriculture so he had me work for his organization. Dwight is the leader of PROCOM his vision for Rwanda is to increase the farming production for low-income farmers. Rwandan’s economy is subsistent agriculture. Most people farm by hand which makes their yields small. Plus you have the problem of competition because most people sell the same crops. What Procom is doing is they are leasing the land from people in Muhazi. PROCOM goes in with tractors and machines and plants a butt-load of corn. Then the corn is sold to the government and the profits are split between the organization and the people. The main purpose however is education, PROCOM’s goal is to teach Rwandans more productive farming techniques. Through using tractors and modern farming techniques the livelihood of the community can be impacted. This is their goal in development, through teaching and showing the community how to achieve a bountiful harvest. This is my practicum!
Last week was my first week on the job. My job was mapping out the crop areas in Muhazi. I have been working with Felician a Rwandan farmer that works for PROCOM. We have been traveling around Muhazi with a GPS. We have been making maps of what land we can use for planting. It has been fun hiking around and meeting the people in the community. My Kinya-rwandan is very bad but I am slowly learning more.
Let me just say that Rwanda is called the land of a thousand hills for a reason….. Most of the land that we have been scoping out is on a slope. This is bad because it is very difficult to drive a tractor up a slope. Also there is a big problem with the soil and weeds. The land has not be taken care of so the soil and the weeds could take awhile to become productive. After about a week of hiking we have laid out about 300 hectares (that is about 740 acres). Now all that we need to get the farming started is tractors. Our original lease with three tractors fell through so now we are desperately trying to find some. By the end of the week if we have no equipment we will have to call the project off, because we will miss the next season. Overall Felicain is a fun guy and I have been so far enjoying the practicum.
I am living in Rwamagana it is a medium sized town about an hour outside Kigali. I am staying at a guesthouse with seven other of my classmates. Four of them are working at Center for Champions a school for street kids. Three others are working at the hospital. We are all having a great time and getting to know each other more. Even though we had to learn how to adjust to different foods and shower temperatures we are all having a good time. I feel very blessed to be having this experience and learning more about agriculture. I will have weekly updates because the Internet is unreliable. I am doing this practicum until March 20 then I will be in Kigali for the rest of the semester. So please keep praying that farming in Muhazi will start soon.
