Farewells to Project Rx (hopefully only for now...)

The introduction of Project Rx to community leaders.

It has been a tremendous time working for Project Rx, after over a year of hard work with the strong and capable Mozambican participants, Project Rx can call itself a success.

We have brought our farming education to hundreds, hoping they will, in turn, share their knowledge unto the masses. The words to describe the experience does no justice. The lives we have encountered, the adversity, the successes, the days of rain and days of sun.

Teaching session about how to plan, grow and treat a vegetable garden.

As Project Rx leaves Mozambique (hopefully only to plan another return), we leave behind education for the masses. We have made our information available to all those interested in farming from square one.

Together the community leaders and I remove the weeds and grass from the area in which we would like our farm to be.

We have proven that when everyone gets together and is willing to learn, we can create an entire farm that can feed a small family in just one day. It's not brain surgery, it's not the reinvention of the wheel. It's simply getting the information that has only been available to farmers, to those who want to grow food for their families.

I get everyone started on how to plant the seeds and space between seeds.

Then they take over, each taking a turn to plant seeds. :)

Although the means are humble, the gratefulness of those Project Rx has encountered humble us all the more. Again, there is no way to describe the magic of Mozambique and the unbearable beauty of the people and the culture. There are always ups and downs, but the heart remembers the good.

The community members held a special song and dance session to thank us for our presence.

I'd like to give a huge thanks to Orlando Fumbanhane at Mozal's Community Development sector for philanthropic projects. He helped orchestrate Project Rx's presence with the Association of Community Leaders for Development in Matola.

Thank you all for the continued support. Our impact would have been impossible without you. :)

Advocacy at Work!

"We have our hands, but until we connect our minds to tell our hands what to do, our hands cannot reach their full potential." - Representative of Matola district

Tremendous successes today with the President and representatives of the Association of Community and Social Development of Matola and surrounding districts. Today we connected the 33 represented districts through the Association to Project Rx and our agricultural education. The feedback from these representatives was of overwhelming gratitude and excitement about introducing the Project Rx farming program into the villages they represent.

Several of their comments were of thanks that there is finally a guide that can teach their people how to grow in a more organized manor. They are well aware that Mozambique has the utmost potential for farming due to the vast amounts of water and arable land. They are very eager to learn our permaculture gardening ways and educate their villages.

Next week Tuesday we have an official training together. We will get down and dirty together, planting food for the future. I'm so pleased that we can do this just before I hop a plane back home. :) Wish me luck!

Creating Connections

I'm back in Mozambique and I have six weeks to create as many connections as possible. The objective is to meet with as many organizations and community-based efforts to hand over Project Rx resources. Our hope is to help enable organizations to utilize Project Rx's research to do numerous projects across Mozambique and in surrounding areas.

Our growing guide is now live online for all those that would like to see what we have to provide to equip organizations on how to start a sustainable farm.*

• Part 1 - Gardening Overview
  
• Part 2 - Planning and Maintaining the Garden
  
• Part 3 - Fruit & Vegetable Growing Guide
  
• Part 4 - Pest and Disease Prevention and Treatment
  
• Part 5 - Pest and Disease Prevention and Treatment Cont...

*All materials are also available in Portuguese

Everyday should be go-go-go! Your thoughts and prayers will be crucial in seeing what may come of these next weeks.

Thanks for the continued support.

Preparations for the Return to Mozambique Commence!

Howdy Everyone!

It's been a beautiful couple of months of family and friend visits, several weddings and lots of rest! :) Project Rx is now ready to return to Mozambique! This time, I'll be doing advocacy for Project Rx and looking for the many ways at how we can integrate our work into other organizations and community development efforts. More and more I am encouraged to present our incredible findings and have been asked by many for access to our research.

Just today I was reminded about how important our work truly is. In the recent update of Farm Radio Weekly News, they keyed in on the importance of small-scale farming at the village level. Here is what they reported:

Small-scale agriculture in Africa is very much back on the international development agenda and in the news this week. Farmers in Niger are currently suffering the effects of flooding after months of drought, as you can read in our news brief. Wheat prices are rising, which has caused people to riot in Maputo, Mozambique, as the price of bread rose by 30 per cent. Meanwhile, Kofi Annan received the Borlaug Medallion from the World Food Prize Foundation. This recognizes his commitment to improving food security in Africa. Mr. Annan is chair of the board of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, AGRA, which works to achieve food security in Africa. He said, “The time is right to invest in African agriculture and our smallholder farmers.”

And, so, the preparation begins again for the trek back to Mozambique and for the connection of Project Rx to other organizations to fight the fight for greater farming sustainability and food security. This time, I will only have three months to arrange everything to get around Mozambique and get our information in the hands of as many organizations and efforts that we possibly can!

What a better way to do that than to print out our materials ourselves and distribute them!? I'm now creating versions of our research that can be adapted for any climate, not just the sub-tropical climate of Mozambique. I will be working on these materials up until the date I have to head over. Thankfully, I can cheaply print materials before I leave and ship them to Mozambique.

I hope to be in touch with everyone before the leave and cannot wait to get back into action!

Please contact me if you might be interested in your own sustainable farming guide!: aromero@projectrx.org

Countdown Commences :(:

The Regulars - Boys who hang out with me in the garden and for some of their help and patience, get rewarded with green balloons. I can never resist!

Here, there and everywhere! I've been up to so many different things with this final month of planning out where everything will go from here.

During the day, it's farming (and LOTS of it! The farm's expanded!) and finishing up our Project Rx - Mozambique growing guide. The garden is thriving very well. Now that we can anticipate and prevent certain pests and diseases from entering, and we have planned out the garden for this season by companion planting (plants that grow well with other plants and defend the threats of pests and diseases) and planning for each season, we are seeing where the garden could take us!

Little baby lost his shoes and has been collecting lots of dirt and grime since. Sometimes I play clinician and host some first aid for the kids when they come to me with things like cuts and many skin ailments.

We makeshift a shoe to protect his wounds until parents can come up with some new ones.

The food that we are yielding goes directly to the villagers, first living on the property and then distributed to families that go without or have asked for additions to their eating. We are hoping to use the food to provide an income for several families, (including Papa Sebastião's), once more of the vegetables and fruits are ready to be harvested. It's so exciting to see what the earth is producing and what we can now recognize as success and failure.


...And it's not all just work! With the World Cup madness this month, I have been able to have incredibly satisfying leisure and sport. I never thought I could be a soccer fan, much less a soccer MANIAC!! I'm having a blast keeping up with games, (and even attending the few that are going on just across the border!) My first World Cup game was watching a not-so-devastating draw with Italy losing to the underdog, New Zealand. It was a blast cheering for the underdog with my Kiwi buddys!

Blowing my continent-wide popular tool: A VUVUZELA! (aka horn you can hear like bees on broadcast World Cup games!)

On the weekends, I'm taking the time to see must-see places before I leave and using evenings to spend with the friends, (now family), I've acquired in the past 8 months. It's so strange to think I will have to go. Everyone keeps asking when I'll be back... The truth is, I just don't know! :-/

My very first live World Cup! I can't begin to describe how amazing this experience was!!

Juggling Developments

By morning I'm diggin' up the garden and planting new seeds...

...and by afternoon, I'm negotiating building contracts.

In the past weeks, the search has been on for some direction into the next stages of Project Rx and the life of Andrea Romero, in general.

Sadly, the decisions that one makes, goes with the other...and time is ticking on what is going to come next.

I have had incredible things that have taken me by surprise, helping me to formulate the next stages of Project Rx and my life.

The happenings of what have been going on are as follows:

1) I have acquired a job with JHI Real Estate, where they have promised a flexible schedule for me to work around the Project. It's incredibly interesting working on both sides of international development. I see two tremendously different lenses of servitude and relational interactions. In one instance I am debating the amount of spacing between onions and filling up watering cans via pulling up a bucket of water by a rope. In another instance, I am negotiating million dollar properties with investors who have built up Mozambique to what it is today.

Thus far, I've been working two jobs, by going to the farm in the morning and working on acquiring clients in the real estate field by afternoon and evening. All other time not used to do real estate is dedicated to continuing the translating and research for the Project Rx, Mozambique Gardening Guide.

This experience is leading me further down the path of a sort of business initiative, but only God knows what will come next.

2) I will begin teaching health education classes to groups of children on Sunday afternoons, starting with a lesson in teeth brushing, where every student will get to take home some toothpaste and a toothbrush. :D

3) As time gets closer and closer to come to an end, I'm seeking out more opportunities to spend time with those who have made my Africa experience so incredibly amazing. I will be planning a few more trips and taking more time to see the places that I must before I move onto the next.

4) I've been soul-searching for answers to a new job. I realize that I am suffering working alone on this project and am looking for a place to learn something new and grow with all of the incredible experiences I've gained. Johannesburg has been calling me. I've applied with Google for a Policy Manager position -- I'm leaving it up to the fate of the employment gods to give me a response. (If only life were easy...)


If you have advice for the Project or know someone who does, I'm open to all interpretations of the current state of affairs and hope to hear from all those involved. The continued meditation on the current state of affairs has kept me hopeful, (and yet perplexed). I'm staying afloat on hope. If only Obama could see me in Mozambique...

What else? Well, I miss home, I miss my family and am yet so divinely attached to my current state of affairs. They change by the minute, it seems, only enough to make me laugh and smile about where my life is leading.

[This is the part where I think Project Rx has done more for me than anyone else... sigh.]

Keepin it UP!

This Lenten season has been such an amazing time for reflection and deep breathing. I have been able to focus on the incredible work each of you have made possible. With just a few months of time remaining to keep working, there have been great things to keep the optimism on high.

Papa Sebastiao and I still at it.

This month Project Rx has made some incredible connections with local businesses, (JHI and Mozal, as mentioned in the previous email) who have an overwhelming interest in helping us out! With greater participation with individuals and companies here long term, we can make an lasting connection with locals that want to get involved.

In the conversations I have with so many different people of all walks of life, I realize how difficult it is to see how much need there is here. Even for me, I become detached from the extremities of what I experience each day. Shrugging my shoulders on the days we go without running water, or having to wash with dirty water. I still put my head down when I see babies soaked in their own urine, feces caked to their bottoms, walking around wondering why they are uncomfortable. Just last week when the wiring for the electricity was stolen from the church, we all just shook our heads and wondered what robbers could be so bold.

This brings me to a very important conversation I had this past month. I was speaking to a successful young man who told me what a huge sacrifice it had been having to be relocated to Mozambique, removed from his home and his family. He explained how he couldn't live without his internet, TV, video games, car, clean clothes and clean shower. In frustration he exclaimed, "I know you're trying to help the people here, but they're happy!"

I completely understood his position. I don't know what I would do if I could not find a refuge in these things from time to time. They are the comforts we know so well. However, it was then that I tried to explain to him that poverty does not equal unhappiness. We assume that because people go without, that they are suffering to the point of no return. However, by living here, I have learned that there is so much more to life than the material things we define ourselves by. Even what we deem as essential--clean toilets, indoor plumbing, hot water, three square meals, etc, etc.--it is not the be all, end all of what we are.

There is such a familial and communal richness that we can learn from Mozambicans. The resilience and resourcefulness of the people here is endless. Life goes on where there is no water, no doctor, no food. They will always be searching for a better way of living (as all of us are), but they do it together, with such a great joy and lightness about them. The Mozambican people are happy, but it does not mean that we do not continue to get to work to help them obtain what we deem as the essentials. In fact, their happy position encourages what we are here to do because they are so grateful and loving for what is provided them.

As Easter approaches, I encourage everyone to take as step back and look at all of the wonderful things they have and wonder what it would be like without it. What is most important? What is most meaningful?

Here's a preview of the manual for organic farming preparing to be translated into Portuguese. :)

To recap, here's a few highlights from this month:

* Incredible meeting with Mozal and JHI about their potential involvement in Project Rx and the children's Sunday School program. If you have time, please meditate upon our blossoming friendship and ask what blessings may come our continued interactions.
* I am now looking to stay in Mozambique longer term. I have a flight back home in June and would like to return to continue Project Rx for an extended period of time. I'd like to be back by August to continue work with Project Rx. I just pray that this is God's intention. I will know with more certainty in the coming months if I can balance a new job (with JHI) and Project Rx, and make enough money to return and live here.
* The garden is looking beautiful and the teaching manual is approaching completion. Please meditate over my continued motivation in these endeavors, because working alone is sometimes a challenge.
* As I prepare for what comes next, (ideas, i have many), please pray that blessings be bestowed upon what comes next.
* Please pray for Mozambique in general. Violent and petty crime has been on the rise and many from the ex-patriot community have been affected by criminal events. The police interrogations and road blocks are becoming more and more common. Just last week I was stopped by the police eight times, once three times in one day.

Thank you all for remaining so faithful to Project Rx and for the incredible work you have been a part of. I thank you all and hope you enjoy the video you inspired. :)

New Project Rx Video!

Here's a video we're currently using to do outreach with potential local business partners here in Mozambique.

Feel free to share it!

This Month's Saga

I can hardly begin to write about all of the things that have happened to me this month.

Here's the list of mishaps (I've now accepted and can laugh at):

• Phone and (a lot) of money stolen from my purse whilst at a café.
  
• Car breaks down on the way to Johannesburg. I'm told that I purchased a lemon with a shelf life.*
  
• Pests eat our corn stalks and lots of our tomatoes.
  
• Camera stolen due to my leaving it in a conspicuous place.
  
• My visa expired by 4 days before I left the country and I was almost extradited, but had to pay a hefty fine instead.
• I underwent a minor surgery, removing a mysterious abscess from my arm. The tool of choice to chop me was a box-cutter. ha!
  

*HIGH POINT!: the couple that ran the garage I stumbled upon, gave me a ride to my place to stay while in Joburg.

Here is the list of amazingly incredible things that happened:

• I had a wonderful stay in Johannesburg to pick up Scott, despite the car troubles.
• Got to take a trip to Swaziland! We saw lots of zebra, wildebeest, hippos and such. It was amazing.
• With the help of Scott Keyes, we pulled out the remainder of the last crop and prepared for the garden for the next season of planting.
• While sick, our gardener took it upon himself to carve out completely new garden boxes to prepare for the new season. I thought we'd be a week behind and he made it all happen!
  
• I've seen how amazing people are when you are sick and at your lowest point. I've found such a refuge in friends since I've been here. I couldn't have gotten through all of this without them.
  
• I turned 23!

This time has encompassed so much time for reflection and opportunism to understand how to continue to go forward.

Amidst the questions and confusions, there is always hope!

Project Rx has been blessed with the promise of help from employees from Mozal, a local aluminum smelter, dedicated to local community partnership. A team of 7-10 employees will donate their time to the Project and we will be able to undergo the first digging for our in-house wells for Mozambicans to prepare their home gardens.

This has been one of the best prospects for us, having the human-power to go forward as planned!!


Short garden updates:
Our crop was gorgeous! The entire crop has sold and the money will go to new seeds, and money for the investment of a water-collection well.

We have entered a market within the community that has opened up a huge microfinance opportunity for our farmers. Our okra, melons and eggplant were especially popular within our village. They have increased the diversity of plants available for purchase and are now selling like hotcakes!

We actually in the midst of thinking up ways to keep robbers from taking our veggies while we're not there. What unique problems!

Today we planted carrots and lettuce. Our all-organic garden is flourishing and we can't wait to see what comes for this season. We learned so much from our last crop and are so excited to go forward. :)

On temporary hiatus

So, this past week, I developed what the doctors call an "abscess". It was located in my left upper armpit, where two of my lymph nodes swelled up to the size of large lima beans. After five days of watching them get gradually worse, I decided to see a doctor.

The doctor prescribed an "emergency drainage surgery" where I would have to have my lymph nodes cut into and drained of their infection.

Four hours and 38oo meticais (~$120) later, I was under the knife, (or box-cutter, rather), after a few shots of local anesthetic and some iodine swabs.

No release form. No insurance card. No ID.

I received surgery in one of a state of the art hospitals...ahem...circa 1954.

My surgeon, (dressed in a plastic butcher-like apron with matching plastic mask) sent me on my way just minutes after the surgery, prescription in hand.

Seven or so minutes later, the anesthesia starts wearing off and I feel every cell that was sliced into that had oozed its blood and pus. The kaleidoscope of colors I was seeing went nicely with the rush to find a pharmacy to get the prescribed antibiotics.

Here I sit, three days later, with a new bandage and two new slits in my arm. I'm praying for a quick recovery so I can get back into the garden, where my nemeses are scorpions and millipedes!! ...Wait... that's not what I meant. ;)

It's not exactly what I call a vacation I was looking forward to, but, WOW, what an adventure!!

plant a seed and watch it grow (before and after)

Photos!! FINALLY!

Growing and a-growin'

Our garden is flourishing! I've got the dimensions and price info for some tanks or rainwater-collection wells (water harvesting!). As it turns out, the most acute problem in the rural areas right now is the fact that there is no sustainable water source.

We've had several complaints about women not having water to wash their children, they have heavy dehydration because of the intense heat, and several wells have simply run dry.

How can we help on the health side of things if these people don't have water to drink??

This is where we come in.

We have drawn out some ideas for large wells that will cost around 2500 Meticais ($90 USD). The plan is to see what locals can afford to put forward to invest in these sustainable tanks in order to participate in a year-round growing for their small home farms.

After finding a great website that calculates volume, here's what our tanks would look like:

Width: 80" (203.2cm)
Height: 84" (213.36cm)
Depth: 80" (203.2cm)
Your tank's volume is approximately 537600 cubic inches or 2327.27 U.S. gallons, which is approximately 9053.09 liters.

(When I get my computer back, I'll show you what this looks like in real life :)

I have found that it's incredibly more successful if we work with people who are willing to invest a small amount and we match what they can put forth or figure out how to find small payments for the remainder of the cost. With this small investment from their side, they find a sense of ownership over what happens and do not simply expect us to do everything for them.

With many of the aid programs that I've seen in the area, they do not remain self-sustaining because once funds run out, there's no way of any project continuing. The people that relied on the aid are suddenly frustrated and angry about why the money is gone from whatever it did beforehand. I'd be, too.

With our farm, our big costs are:

1) Water ($45/mo)
2) Labor (1 farmer)
3) Seeds ($1/packet of seeds)
4) Tools ($75 rake, shovel, hoe, etc.)

That aside, we are hoping to sell our vegetables to the local peoples in order to put those funds back into their own start-up farms.

Their home farms will be working on a microfinance basis, where we buy all of the foundational tools and do all of the teaching about how to grow. Afterward, they can sell their produce within the community, or they can simply use it for food. We, however, expect that they pay enough to cover all future seed costs ($1/packet of seed).

I'm hoping to have a "tool lending" program based at our church where people can come and "borrow gardening tools" for their gardening work. Our job is to check on the maintenance of the tools and see that they get returned in a timely fashion. We may have to invest in more tools and perhaps a wheelbarrow for borrow.

These low cost ideas, we hope, will produce results. Our primary endeavor right now is to get the manual of growing written.

I have 4 chapters of text I'm working on about how to plan for an year round garden to Mozambican environmental standards. The caveat to training locals is that they must be able to have a sustainable water source. If they are not interested in finding water that will both water their gardens, and if need be, can be filtered (traditional rock and dirt filtration) for drinking purposes, then we really do not know what more we can do.

When I first arrived, I thought, 'If you hold classes for preventative health education, they will come...' However, what I've found is that they're much too busy with everything else going on in their lives to have a few hours per week to learn things they really have no clue will really pay off.

The poverty and sustainability issues have always been raised, even with low-maintainence, quick-fix health initiatives. I've created little packages of rehydration fluid for when we meet up with families that have kids sick with diarrhea. Unfortunately, when I leave, no one will be here to make up the packets. There are no simple ways to get small baggies, a bag of sugar and salt in the rural areas. It's much to difficult and expensive to have to travel to get all of these ingredients, even if it will aid their child's dehydrated state.

Project Rx is seeking sustainable solutions that can be adopted by all community members, regardless of their socio-economic situation. It's been incredibly difficult to find these solutions, BUT we are really finding that with small home farms we can yield results in sustained nutrition, microfinance opportunities for selling marketable veggies, and we can find a sustainable water source through these water collection tanks!

Oh, the things we have learned and hope to produce in the coming months. Please keep us in your prayers as we get everything written and prepare for our Fall crops in March!! We hope to have families lined up to get tanks ready and have gardens planned for the coming season! ANNND, we get to harvest our first round of veggies then!!

Progressive progress

More changes! So, the job is an indefinite no-go and the project will go full-boar, full-time! We have decided to change our timeline to what was more like what we began with.

The extent of the project will go through June until July and we have set our hopes on our educational front to go door-to-door with our information and kind intentions for better farming and health practices in-house.

We will be working on water collection projects for subsistence farming and the future of the area. After collecting some information on the area with the locals, I have found that it will be relatively cheap ($65-70) to build a small "paço", or water-collection well per family. This one-time investment will allow farmers to use their water to farm in their dry land where water is very difficult to come by. Currently all water sources must be traveled to, often more than one mile, to collect water and it is scarce during the hot summer time, where lots of wells have been reported to run dry.

There is no preparation for the dry season and the plants that had been planted to be watered. The people in the area simply let the plants grow and hope they get sufficient rainfall to water their crops. The problem is, it is not raining enough to see the plants survive, and their return on initial investment collapses completely.

This is where we can come in. We can organize these planting structures and collect water to plan for the dry season and organize crops to see a better yield. :)

Now, it seems we have lost a fair amount of our cucumber crop. Because of my poor farming (rather, my lack of knowledge of cucumber worms), a fair amount of our crop has gone to beetle larvae that wants to eat our corn and okra as well. The growing process is so futile for such plants and we're learning about how to plan for the future of these problems. You can never predict pests when you don't know how things will grow. (What a fantastic life picture!)

We will continue to progress and see what comes. We can now figure how to plan for the future of the area to start with a foundation of a healthy food source and small source of income for those who participate in our program.

Project Rx is full-boar once again! Though the timeline stays short, the work remains the same and we can do what we can in the time being.

Thank you for your prayers and continued support. It's making an incredible difference. :)

O Proyecto Continua. The Project Continues. :)

Project Rx will be continuing with the church community, with the garden and with farming education throughout the village of Machava. After much deliberation with the church leadership, we decided it is best to proceed as planned. The major change, however, is that the Project will not be a full time endeavor.

We found that the planning and implementation of the project is highly dependent upon the time frames of the local people and the local church leadership and they are currently spread too thin to help out with the Project goals on a daily basis. We have decided to make it a part-time course and extend the length of the project in order to be able to achieve our goals.

In order to extend the length of the project, I am in the midst of pursuing a job opportunity offered to me before I left to Cape Town. We have decided I can work throughout the week, take certain days off early to teach and work in the garden, work the Saturdays they have available and reconvene with everyone on Sundays. :) This schedule is much more appropriate for the goals of education and farming, to allow independence of the local people to implement farming practices.

As for the health education goals of Project Rx, we are focusing on the production of a health education manual for teachers and students. I will be designing the materials under a timetable that we will have a better idea of once I do or do not have a job. The implementation of the health courses as originally intended have been deemed inconsistent with the education and interest level of the local people. We have decided we need more time to think about our education materials in order to create courses that children and adults will learn from.

For everyone presently working for the church, it is best that we set a more regular schedule in order to see that everyone is working collectively to accomplish all of our respective goals. We are presently quite content with the way things are going now, given that we had time to reflect on what our goals are and come to a better conclusion about how we can proceed. :)

God is doing such great things! I'm so confident in where things are going. An air of lightness is upon us. We are all continuing in the direction we are all in agreement with. =) Praise be.

Your prayers and thoughts have been everything. Thank you for your dedication. It does not go unappreciated--in fact, it's our backbone.

I've been promised my computer back by mid-January! Finally! I promise to have pictures by then. Promise, promise, promise.