(Kirua Vunjo, continued from pg. 3)

Cyril Chuwa with Joseph Aweda, and his brother, Peter, who volunteered their land to plant trees, plant an mpingo seedling at Mbulu.

the species into the area. Agriculture-based planting activities that are being used are the intercropping of mpingo with seasonal crops and planting mpingo as fence rows around fields. The trees will give shade to sun-intolerant crops and enrich the soil with nitrogen and nutrients from leaf litter. Through the absorptive capacity of their roots, such agroforestry trees also bring up and distribute through their leaf litter deeply buried trace minerals and nutrients for the use of food crops.

In Mkonga Elizabeth’s mother, Mary Cyril Macha, has offered two acres of farmland for the project. Another friend of the project, Theobald Mallya, has donated two acres of land along Kawawa Road to be designated for mpingo planting.

Maji Ya Chai

The ABCP helps find funding for several affiliated, locally-organized, tree planting groups in the Moshi/Arusha vicinity. One of these is the Environmental Greenishing Group (EGG), which works in Usa River, a community located at the foot of Mt. Meru, Tanzania’s second highest peak (after Mt. Kilimanjaro). Two members of this group, Goodluck Urassa and Gideon Ndukay, have helped in our efforts to find good mpingo planting locations in their area, finding opportunity at Maji la Chai and Kikatiti.

Mr. Paskali Ndekumi owns a 5-acre site at Maji ya Chai, in the foothills of Mt. Meru and has offered the land for mpingo planting. 1700 trees were planted there in a cooperative effort by the community and members of the EGG.

Every oak tree started out as a couple of nuts who decided to stand their ground.
-- Unknown

Kikatiti Secondary School

Kikatiti Secondary School in the Kikatiti Ward of Meru District has cooperated in a project to plant 3,000 trees on school grounds, through arrangements made with teacher Mr. Shadrak Mungure. Sebastian delivered the trees to the school and they were planted with the help of students at the school.

Sebastian and helpers deliver mpingo seedlings to Kikatiti Secondary School, located near Arusha, west of Moshi. Here students line up to convey the seedlings from Sebastian’s truck. 2,500 mpingo and 500 trees of other species were planted this past year.

Boma N’Gombe

The Boma Women’s Group is an organization dedicated to caring for AIDS orphans in the Mt. Meru area. Sebastian had met one of the members, Neema Lema, while visiting a school in the area and told her about his conservation initiatives with the ABCP. The group expressed an interest in mpingo planting and offered some acreage for the project. Over 3,000 mpingo were planted by their group members and they used their wages to further their work with orphans in the Meru area. The women’s conservation groups with whom we have worked have all sponsored schooling for AIDS orphans in the community, and traditionally take on a variety of causes in their work for societal improvement in their communities.

The Chuwas Attend Belfast World Forum Conference

Last year Sebastian and Elizabeth Chuwa traveled to the US to attend a conference on childhood education. The event was sponsored by the World Forum Foundation,
(continued on pg. 5, see World Forum)

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