Not a nine to five job

Friday, August 13, 2010

In 2005, the Kenya National Federation of Agricultural Producers (Kenfap) established a Women Council whose main pre-occupation is to deliver requisite services that are specific to women members and to strengthen women farmers' participation in the federation. Through this initiative, the Women Centre for Enterprise Development was procured as a key element in driving the process forward. To further advance the women farmers' initiative, Kenfap has developed a plan in which it intends to enhance the skills of women farmers in entrepreneurship and thereby increase the cohort of women actively engaged in business in the country.

Marianne Eringa and Marja Hartman, representatives of 'LTO Vrouw & Bedrijf' lately went to Kenya to advice the Kenfap in their intentions and to share training modules with Kenfap. They also analysed how the women program is already integrated in the overall organisational and operational structure of Kenfap and what are possibilities for optimization and improvement. During their visit they met
several women farmers entrepreneurs, saw how they are doing, what kind of problems they encounter and what kind of services/support they would need. One of the farmers they spook to is Esther Sing'oei, a married woman of 37 years old with three children who lives in a small village in the Koibatek district.

Esther is member of Kenfap since 2007. She was already member of a local women group and joined the Kenfap because they arranged a training especially for women and the women of her group were also invited. This was the first time she heard about Kenfap, before she did not know the organisation. Since her membership of Kenfap she joined several trainings in which she learned a lot, for example how to run a group business and a personal business, how to run a business and a house at the same time.

The farm of Esters' husband is  20 acres,  they have 10  dairy cows and 10 blackhead sheep for the meat.  She delivers her milk to a small factory. She brings  two times a day 5 till 10 liter milk, this is collected from the road. She gets 25 Kenyan shilling per liter (roughly 0,25 eurocent). Milking is a job for women, men don't milk. Actually, Ester is running the complete farm by herself, her husband is working at a civil office.

Her women's group runs a greenhouse with tomatoes.  The biggest problem for this group is the lack of finance for training. She likes to be trained for  time management and planning. And they also need money for better transport, this is important so they waste less time with transporting their produce and have more time for improving their business.

The daily schedule from Esther for one day is as follows: at 5 o'clock she wakes up and starts with housekeeping and then she milks the cows. At 7 she has breakfast with the children. At 7.30 she leaves the house with the children for a 6 km walk. She walks her children to the school and then goes to the market, for selling the tomatoes of the women group. At 17.30 she is back home, goes milking again, housekeeping and at 20 hour she cooks the dinner. In the weekends she does even more: besides milking the cows, cooking dinner, selling produce at the market, so also washes the clothes, cleans the house and goes to church.

There is a big difference in the size of the farms between the families in her town. Some women don't have a piece of land. Esther works on the land of her husband, but she cannot buy it, because she comes from a different community and community rules dictate that land needs to stay property of community members. 
Esther dreams that there will be less poverty in her area. For herself, she hopes to modernise and improve her farm. She thinks she can fulfil this dream by getting more knowledge which she  hopes  to get from Kenfap in the coming years.