Please read this blog in conjunction with the photographs of the farms we visited, and the life-changing organic research station on Lake Victoria
If you like this you might also like these travel other stories including from Vietnam, Kyrgyzstan and Ethiopia
I met Mooti outside Yaya Centre in Nairobi, a shopping mall where taxi drivers hang out. Working for the international umbrella organisation representing organic farmers, I was in Nairobi for 2 weeks for the annual UN environment conference. I was representing the farmers constituency in the discussions and negotiations at the conference and I wanted to take the opportunity to visit smallholder farms in Kenya.
Now there is something you should know about taxi drivers in Nairobi. They stick to you like glue! They insist on waiting for you, which is nice don't get me wrong, as you always have a familiar face waiting for you. On the other hand you feel the weight of responsibility hanging over you like a ton of bricks knowing there is a guy, not earning any cash, out there waiting for you.
This is not a big problem until you find out that you're not going back to the hotel on the other side of town after all, but to a function just down the road. That's when the guilt sets in, and it has been the case that I have just taken a ride solely for the purpose, of not incurring the wrath of the driver and leaving him empty-handed, and with my conscience intact!
Anyway, Mooti was telling me about the small scale sugar cane farmers over in west Kenya, where he was from, and how they are under tough contracts with the companies that own the sugar cane processing mills. I asked him if we could plan a road trip and go take a look at farms in the 'real' Kenya.
With his local knowledge, and my contacts in the Kenyan organic farming community, we came up with a 3 day trans Kenya farm tour itinerary. We were about to embark on perhaps the worlds first national tour of organic farms and research centres, in a taxi, and with all due respect to Mooti, the condition of the taxi was just going to add to the adventure! A tour so ambitious and unrealistic in its scope that I am sure it hasn't been repeated till this day!
My life was in Mooti's capable hands so I was a bit surprised when Victor his son turned up instead! Even Mooti didn't trust his own car! It turns out that Mooti had taken the bus to the other side of Kenya and was waiting for us there! This wasn't part of the plan!
Victor wasn't without his problems either. He is a Manchester United fan, which I don't have a problem with, but you see football fans in Kenya and Africa in general are, well lets just go ahead and say it, a bit crazy. They are fanatical and every young taxi driver in Nairobi asks you, as soon as they know that you are English, which team you support - Man Utd, Chelsea, Arsenal or Liverpool - the last time I looked there were more than four teams in the English Premier League! And by the way, back then, in case you're wondering, during the long dark pre Pep Guardiola days, Man City weren't a thing.
I had passed many a bar on a Sunday afternoon in Nairobi teeming with men hanging out of windows, shouting and screaming at a TV screen showing the Premier League. If you think I am exaggerating then please take a look at the Facebook page of the Nairobi Matatu (public minibus) Owners Appreciation Society, and you will get a sense of the lengths their 'passion' for the beautiful game goes to!
Victor was well prepared though, not so much for the rigours of the journey or carrying a map, but for any opportunity to grab a match that might just spontaneously occur on our road trip. He didn't just have the red shirt of the Man Utd home kit, he had also packed various other Man Utd shirts, including the black away kit. I like his preparedness and sense of priorities.
By this point my colleagues, who I had roped-in to join me on this 'chance of a lifetime' to see the 'real Kenya', were starting to look like they were regretting their life choices. But I reassured them that we were putting our cash directly into the grass-root Kenyan economy and not lining the pockets of some big safari tour company, and with that we were on our way.
To be honest I quite enjoy embarking on trips where you're not sure if your actually going to make it all the way, where the journey is as important as its purpose. I wasn't to be disappointed.
With an hour or two, we somehow found ourselves driving around the shores, literally, of Lake Navasha in the Rift Valley. I didn't know we had signed up for a safari in a car with a dodgy clutch, and windows that didn't wind-up, but hey lets just roll with it, you only live once!
I thought we would get bogged and marauded by lions or crocodiles or charged by rhinos but it turns out the waters were too cold for crocs and while we did spot some suspicious looking footprints in the sandy fringes of the lake Victor assured us it was safe. For any passengers happening to to pass in a genuine safari tour bus we must have looked like a bunch of guys that had stolen a car in Nairobi and were about to dump in the lake.
Where did we go, well its a bit of blur now really. We visited numerous amazing organic farming communities that were receiving support in the form of advice from the Swiss funded Biovsion Trust in Nairobi. These farms in general were highly diverse with some growing up to 50 different species of crops and animals - including aquaculture. One community of about 60 people even had their own school, Destiny Academy.
It was an honour to meet such people and see their farms and their incredibly joyful, healthy and free life, that was far removed from the repressive stories that Mooti had told me of the sugar cane farmers under the yoke of the big sugar corporations.
We did meet up with Mooti eventually. He joined us on one of the most memorable stages of the journey, the early morning journey just after sunrise down to Lake Victoria, to take the ferry across to Mbita Point, to visit the incredible research station belonging to the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (icipe).
The guys at ICIPE, together with researchers at Rothamsted Research in the UK, have pioneered one of the most important ecological based organic farming systems in the world which is dramatically improving the lives of hundreds of thousands of African families.
The system empowers them with a farming systems that relies on zero, costly and toxic, external inputs to successfully produce staple crops, while controlling pests and weeds, such as maize, but in doing so also produces milk and meat, as well as organic fertiliser for the crops. Its an incredibly robust system which is being rolled-out, and adapted further, throughout Africa, including in Ethiopia which I was lucky to see first hand a few years later.
An independent impact assessment found that their 'push and pull' system, which is a turbo-charged version of companion planting, increased yields of maize by three to four times for 75% of the farmers assessed. Some of the farmers were producing more than five tonnes per hectare compared to below one tonne before adopting the new system. This is clearly life changing.
For me at IFABW, I want to get back into promoting and hopefully facilitating the further development and adoption of such amazing ecological based farming systems not just in Africa but beyond. Having been one of the lucky ones to have seen the impacts of these systems first hand, I feel it's my duty to spread the good news.
And, if you're wondering, Mooti and Victor are doing well. Victor is now a proud Dad of three boys, and the Father & Son taxi business continues to grow. I am grateful for the days we spent together hurtling through the Kenya hinterland. Hopefully I will see them outside the Yaya centre someday soon, and if you ever find yourself in Nairobi and in need of a very capable driver you can contact Victor and Mooti and tell them I sent you!
Victor: +254720346084 | Mooti: +254721574693
