By Paulomi Bhattacharyya | CREATE! Development Associate & Project Leader
Friends,
With heartfelt gratitude from the CREATE! team, I would like to share with you the story of Maimouna from the community of Ndiagne Kahone and how her life has changed through your generous support. Ndiagne Kahone is situated in the Kaolack region of Senegal and has a population of approximately 1300 people. Temperatures in the region regularly hover in the 100-110 F range. In that sweltering heat, Maimouna strives to provide for her family a decent and healthy life. Her community’s partnership with CREATE! in 2020 has allowed her to do so.
Before Ndiagne Kahone partnered with CREATE!, Maimouna and many other women like her in her community could only practice subsistence agriculture during the short rainy season. For the rest of the year they would have to buy expensive vegetables from markets far away from her village. For community members of Ndiagne Kahone, the available markets were either Mboss situated nearly 4 miles away or Guinguineo, situated 12miles away. Traveling regularly to these markets to buy vegetables was difficult, which meant Maimouna and her family including her three children would rarely be able to consume nutritious and fresh vegetables. Their access to drinking water was also limited either to the state provided water tower, which many times turned out to be too salty to drink, or neighboring villages. The one well they had in their community had been abandoned years ago. All of this affected the health and wellbeing of them all.
After the partnership between the community and CREATE! was finalized in 2020, Maimouna and her fellow community members now have a rehabilitated well with sweet, clean and fresh water in their village, a well that has a capacity to produce more than 20,000 liters of water every day. Using this water, Maimouna is now producing a variety of vegetables and fruits in the community garden year round, including bell peppers, okra, tomatoes, eggplants, mint, water melon and chili peppers. Her family now has fresh vegetables that she can harvest and bring home regularly from the garden and cook family favorite dishes like ceebu jen, a dish made with rice, vegetables and fish. Her children find these farm-fresh vegetables sweet to taste, probably because they are produced organically without any chemical fertilizers or pesticides. This also gives the vegetables a longer shelf life. During the months of July to October, the community of Ndiagne Kahone produced nearly 11,000 pounds of vegetables and fruits in total. The community consumed these vegetables and sold the excess in those same markets of Mboss and Guinguineo where they would previously go to buy. They also have buyers coming straight to their garden to buy fresh from the community. All of this has improved the income generation capacity of women like Maimouna who earned more than $22 on an average every month during the same period.
Continuation of these project activities in the community of Ndiagne Kahone has helped Maimouna and the other women in her village nurture their families and provide them with healthy and nutritious food and a chance for better health care and education choices with their improved income. This would not have been possible without the generous support of donors like you. The community members of Ndiagne Kahone and all of us at CREATE! are grateful for this support.
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