Food For Work around Dodoma

The landscape around Dodoma during these months is an unbelievable barren one. The colors brown, red and grey have taken over during the dry season, leaving nothing else then dry scrub wood and dust as far as the eye can see. The landscape sleeps, waiting for the rain that’s long to come and which is already for weeks said to be on its way.In the past years, the rains have been delayed time after time, extending the period of draught during which it is hardly possible to grow crops the traditional way. A negative spiral down follows, in which the harvest is far from enough to feed the family of the farmer, leaving practically nothing to replant for the new season.

The project we visited in the village of Gawaye aims at stimulating the villagers to cultivate the scrubland around the village to generate alternative income. Through the farming of cash-crops they can generate a steady income flow for themselves and their families. The Food for Work project gives the villagers the chance to feed themselves and their families for the work they do while they turn the scrubland into farmland. A cumbersome project, since this land is densely covered in men-sized thorn-spiked bushes, which will all have to be cut down and the roots dug out.

We meet Hawa M’Yanga, a mother of three school-going kids who is working on the field. She is burning the wood after it has dried for a couple of weeks and, now her plot, an acre big, is almost free of bushes. The heat of the burning piles of scrub wood drastically increases the temperature of the already blazing sun, and the red soil under our feet seems to burn.

She is determined and works hard, as her husband got injured at work and is home now for some time to recover, leaving her the only person to do the job. With the support of the food she receives, she can actually manage to invest her time and effort into developing this piece of land, which will in the future give her the opportunity to grow cash crops which will enable her to provide a stable income for her family. As we walk away, I admire her determination and strong will and I am happy to see that this woman will be able to develop more certain future for herself and her family through the support of WFP.