At Nariokotome Mission and at all the other MCSPA missions, cultivation of vegetables and fruit, livestock and poultry farming is one of the five main elements that we focus on.
We try and produce food for the mission personnel and also to feed the children at our nutritional units. This year we have been blessed with a good harvest and yield of milk and eggs. Many years ago when I first came to Turkana, I could not believe that agriculture would be possible.
Thanks to our founder, the late Fr. Paco Andreo, who insisted always on planting and transforming this dry and apparently barren place to be a “garden”, where people are able to eat and be lifted from a permanent situation of hunger.
We have been able to harvest plenty of tomatoes and Lucia, the mother of one of our missionaries from Italy, Patrizia Aniballi, taught us to make tomato preserve.
Just as we made tomato preserve, this time round we have also been able to produce and conserve mangoes, and vegetables of different sorts. The women around are eagerly learning this skill.
Thus, the words of Genesis 1:11 may come to pass: “And God said,
‘Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, on the earth.’ And it was so.”
Thanks to all for supporting our agricultural programmes!!!
Lillian Omari
MCSPA
