PATRICK PONDERS I "Murage and bio-digesters"

28FEB2007
After telling a local Peace Corps volunteer about my sustainable project interest, he set up a meeting for me with one of his contacts. Borniface Murage turned out to be a philosophical black Kenyan that is very interested in helping rural Kenyans improve their quality of life. He is well educated, with his wife currently studying in the UK, his two eldest kids in university, and his youngest in high school. He and I got along pretty well from the beginning and after a 2hr meeting, decided to get together again the next day when he could get some time away from classes. Murage is the director of the Agricultural Economics Department at the Kenya Agriculture Research Institute here in Kilifi. Several years ago, he traveled to China for training on an integrated bio-energy approach to farming that was very successful in parts of China, Thailand, and Asia. Ever since that visit, he had been formulating an idea in his head to recreate such an integrated bio-energy approach here in Kenya, utilizing the bio-potential of the cassava plant and its long history in the Kilifi area.

He gave me a copy of the $1.5M proposal, which he had already submitted to USAID and FAO a few months earlier. He also showed me the 3 acres of land, cattle, building foundations, and employees that he had funded by himself, to begin his project. His idea, titled IDREAM – Integrated Development in Rural Energy and Agricultural Management, consists of a pilot scale implementation of self-sustaining cassava bio-energy production with a training center for local farmers to learn the application and practices being demonstrated. The approach is highly integrated, with poultry and cattle waste feeding bio-digesters, where the byproduct is a potent fertilizer and the primary product is methane for cooking and/or electricity cogeneration. The fertilizer would be used to grow cassava, a popular tuber that thrives in the dry, salty, coastal climate. The cassava would then be harvested and processed to create ethanol blocks ready to ship to the US and Europe, with a byproduct of cattle/chicken feed.

I appreciated his enthusiasm and envied the fact that he had been trained on and actually seen a sustainable development idea which fit Kenya (and his personal interests). So far, I simply had some ideas, but I had yet to see (or hear about, really, much less get training on) something about which I felt I could be truly passionate. Unfortunately, Murage’s idea also fell into that category for several reasons – it was interesting, but it did not grab my attention the way I was really hoping. Currently, the project was stagnant because it had no funding to continue and Murage did not have a vision that allowed anything but full implementation (meaning there was nothing I could try on a small scale). He also was planning on going back to school for 2 years before he retired from his government appointed job with a good pension. Because of this, he was open about the fact that he would not have much time to invest in the project for the next couple of years until he retired…of course IF funding came through, he would request ‘attachment,’ which basically would let him leave his job, still get paid, and work full time on IDREAM without losing his pension…sounded like kind of a stretch. So, we brainstormed over ways he (and possibly I) could implement his idea with a phased approach, which would allow it to start without full funding and hopefully in a way that would gradually introduce the foreign idea of collecting and storing animal waste to rural Kenyans. We also discussed my ideas about bio-mass charcoal and Murage gave me his input as to its strengths and weaknesses, after which he promptly started waving his hands around and outlining where we would put the charcoaling equipment!

I am not sure really why his ideas did not grab my interest, maybe because bio-digesting waste is not a machine I can build, who knows. I just knew that I would have to be passionate about whatever project I to which decided to commit myself. I left my talk with Murage feeling very torn about how his ideas could fit into something I wanted to do, but also feeling as if I had made a valuable contact whom I would somehow, and somewhere, be working with again.