What a difference a Bóthar Goat makes
Bóthar recently received this story from one of it’s extension workers in Tanzania. This story shows how the simple gift of a dairy goat can change a family’s life.
“Our life has stabilised” said Mrs. Maimu who was telling us of the effects that a Bóthar dairy goat has had on her family’s life. Mrs Maimu, from Kyengia Village in the Kilimanjaro region of Tanzania, lives with her husband, four children and four dependents. Her husband is a polio victim.
They have a two acre farm in which they plant bananas, coffee, beans, maize and yams. They also plant fodder crops such as setaria and lucaena in contours. The fertility of their soil was very poor and so the harvests from the farm were very minimal. The family survived on their crop of maize, beans and bananas.
Mrs Maimu heard about the benefits of joining a Bóthar project group from neighbouring villages. Desperate to improve her family’s situation, she joined the local Bóthar group. Mrs. Maimu attended a training course in dairy goat husbandry in early 1995 and later that year received a dairy goat.
The family nicknamed the goat “Home Care Master”, knowing the important contribution she would eventually make to their family. How right they were.
Mr. Isaack, Mrs Maimu’s husband, commented “we were not drinking milk, but now, we are assured of goats milk, we are drinking the milk, and we are now healthy, even the children. Thank God and Bóthar for such a special gift provided to us”.
Since 1995, the goat has kidded more than ten times, mostly twins.
In keeping with the Bóthar tradition, Mrs. Maimu passed on three goat kids to other needy families in the Bóthar project. Today, the family keeps three milking goats, offsprings of Home Care Master. The family consume at least three litres of the goats milk each day and sell the remaining amount at the market.
When Mrs Maimu was asked how else the goat project helped them she replied that “as well as the milk and good nutrition, the goats helped us to buy pigs to run a pig project, the children are getting their school items and part of the money from the dairy goats was used to buy corrugated iron sheets and sand for the new house we are building.
Not only that but we use the manure from the animals on the farm. This helps us to enrich the soil and improve our crop and pasture yields. Most of the farm activities are shared by me and the children after school hours. Our cooperation in the household has increased a lot; every member of the household helps out”.
They thanked Bóthar for starting such a project and they urged the people from Ireland to continue helping the poverty stricken families in their area.
|
