Let it be

By Andrea Brovold, CTI Program Manager, Senegal

When I summitted Kilimanjaro on October 12th, I cried. And last night, as we drove through the fields of West Africa, I cried. I did not cry because of what I saw, but rather, what I had not felt until last night. It's funny how something can trigger your every emotion, and last night the Beatles resonated. "There is still a light that shines...There will be an answer, let it be"

The answer came in the form of a call from our host in Senegal. Because of the visibility that we have gained demonstrating CTI's prototype grain processing tools, we have been asked to double the amount of villages we visit each day that we are here.

Last night, as I gazed out the car window of the passing fields, and saw the women and girls still pounding traditionally in their mortars and pestles to process that evening's meals, I thought, I cannot simply wait, watch and "Let it be."

Compatible Technology International (CTI) creates simple and practical hand-operated post-harvest processing tools for developing countries in Africa, Asia, and the Americas. It is unconscionable to me that women like Coumba and her 14 year old daughter must wake at 4:30am to work in the fields, and still be there at 6:00pm, when we are pulling away at night. After working into the evening, Coumbia and her daughter then have to walk kilometers home to begin cooking the night's meal. This is her life, all day, everyday for the rest of her life.

"There will be an answer..." That answer is CTI, when the large processing machines don't show up in the villages for months, when 80% of those in West Africa will only have enough food for 5 months and then have to resort to purchasing pearl millet at a high cost. With CTI's new grain processing equipment, women like Coumbia and her daughter can significantly reduce their post-harvest waste, and can process their crops in a fraction of the time--putting more food on the table, and giving mothers the opportunity to send their kids and start businesses.

If I can ask you to do one thing this holiday season, it is to help us diffuse these technologies and spread the word of the important work CTI is doing. This Thanksgiving, while you are around the dinner table surrounded by family and friends, with excess and abundance, think about Coumba, about Fatou, about Ramadou; this dawn-til dusk ritual does not have to be, WE don't have to "Let it be." 

Crops of Africa Attracts More Than Just Media Attention

By Tiffanie Stone, CTI Intern

This has been a very exciting week for everyone at CTI. We were on the front page of the Star Tribune which included a picture of Tom and me harvesting tef by hand. We were not sure if the tef was ready to harvest until we got the go ahead from a friend of Paul Porter who has had experience with tef. The one clue we had that it might be ready was the fact that the birds had found it and began pecking away. As soon as we got the go ahead we began to harvest. At first by hand but also with a small machine (a grain binder that cuts plants and ties them into small bundles) that Dr. Vern Cardwell was kind enough to bring and operate for us. However, hand harvesting ended up being the quickest, cleanest and most effective way to harvest. The tef was too lodged and biomass was too wet to make mechanical harvest effective.

Dr. Cardwell brought his honors freshman seminar titled “By the Harvest You Shall Live” in to help harvest tef. Small groups of students harvested 100 square feet putting the plant into bundles. The students then threshed and winnowed about a fourth of the grain in order gain perspective on the amount of seed they truly harvested.

The experience was a great one for everyone involved. It will be a couple weeks before we start harvesting the rest of the crops. I will be sure to let everyone know when we pick the dates because when you’re harvesting by hand, the more the merrier.

Birds and an early frost are the biggest concerns at the moment. All the crops except the Malawian variety of finger millet are filling seeds but we will need a moderate fall in order to insure the plants make it to maturity before the frost. 

Pearl Millet growing at CTI's Lost Crops of Africa Plot

A more immediate pressing issue is that of birds. There are hundreds, and I really mean hundreds of sparrows enjoying our African grains every single day. They especially love the pearl millet and the sorghum but we have seen them in every crop except for the peanuts and the finger millet. We have covered many areas of the plants with netting. Even with the netting the birds can still manage to get under it in order to eat the filling grain. We are trying to let the netting hang quite low in order to keep the birds out. Even so, they can peck through the top of the nets which means a small amount of damage will be done instead of the usual decimation which would occur if the nets were not there. Several weeks ago we set up a noise maker that sounds like a predator and a bird in distress. This kept the birds away for a total of zero days. 

They are fearless and we have begun to call the noise maker their entertainment. I find birds perching on sorghum right above it almost every time I visit the field.

Rescuing the Lost Crops of Africa

For the second time in just three years, we are facing a global food crisis as a result of rapidly rising food prices. In developing countries, where individuals often spend half of their income on food, record high food prices have pushed 44 million people into extreme poverty and hunger since June of 2010. As the world’s population grows, spikes in food prices are expected to continue, and important safety nets such as emergency food aid will not be able to keep up.

CTI is committed to creating inventive, sustainable solutions to address these challenges. Simply growing more food is not enough—not when between 15-50% of crops are lost after harvest, often due to post-harvest spoilage and inefficient processing methods.

In our Saint Paul workshop, CTI’s engineers have developed a prototype grain processing system that significantly reduces post-harvest losses, essentially doubling the amount of pearl millet grain farmers can produce. Though we are thrilled with the results, gaining access to pearl millet grain for testing prototypes has been a challenge. Pearl millet may feed 500 million people in Africa and Asia, but you won’t find freshly harvested pearl millet to test in Minnesota. While some grain stocks have been made available from generous donors such as USDA in Georgia, without ready access to pearl millet and other African crops, CTI’s engineers often have to send even initial prototypes oversees for testing during harvest seasons — a costly, slow process and a barrier to innovation.

The Lost Crops of Africa project is a collaboration between CTI and the University of Minnesota (UMN) to grow seven African crops on one acre of land at UMN’s Saint Paul campus. With assistance from Professor Paul Porter and student assistant Tiffanie Stone, CTI will grow tef, finger millet, sorghum, fonio, pearl millet, grain amaranth, and groundnuts for processing. Although these crops are often unheard of by those living in more developed countries, they are commonly grown in different parts of Africa, where millions of people depend on them for their daily sustenance.

CTI will use the harvested African crops to develop and test post-harvest farming devices and tools for subsistence farmers. Growing the crops so close to home will allow our engineers to more easily refine new equipment to suit a particular crop. This way, when CTI brings new prototypes to Africa, we can minimize last minute “surprises” and reduce the time needed to reach user-acceptable solutions. Ultimately, this means CTI will be able to deliver more appropriate technologies faster and at a lower cost to our donors and our end-users.

In addition to the one acre plot of land, UMN has generously provided a student assistant to help oversee the Lost Crops of Africa program. Tiffanie Stone is studying Applied Plant Science and International Agriculture at UMN. Tiffanie will be contributing to CTI’s blog, where she’ll write updates on the challenges and triumphs that are thrown our way.

An Open Mind and Heart

One month ago, CTI volunteer, Andrea Brovold, and Executive Director, Roger Salway traveled to West Africa to share CTI's new thresher and winnower prototypes with farmers in Mali and Senegal. While most of us were preparing food for our yearly Thanksgiving Day feast, Roger and Andrea were helping women in rural Senegal with their daily six hour ritual of threshing, winnowing, and grinding their family's meal by hand. Here, Andrea shares her impressions from the trip that would test her physical and emotional limits, and leave her with unforgettable memories and lifelong friends. 

Upon arrival to the Kuer Ali Guey village in the Kaolack region of Senegal, we were welcomed with open arms. Awa, President of the Women's Association said "Andrea, you look like you are a peaceful volunteer". It was the warm reception of Kuer Ali Guey and the surrounding villages and organizations from the very inception of this project that the rest of the trip would live up to, even surpass. Come to think of it, while there were parameters in which we were expected to work towards, per NCBA/USAID along with objectives and outcomes to strive towards, my expectations--as per the opening title--were "Going in with an open mind and heart"...and little more. 
Quickly, I found that the universal language of love and compassion transcends any boundary or constraint, personal, professional or otherwise. Put simply, the more you are willing to give of yourself, the more response and progress one will find. Many village visits, meetings and relationships were forged due to our determination to serve. And serve we did. The thoughtful technologies of CTI, coupled with the sensitivity to cultural and individual differences, advanced this month long journey to a caliber of unexpected proportions.

Some dialogue that we observed from various sources were "If you could visualize our interest, it would be as tall as a skyscraper!", Ahmed Dame Cisse from Lat Mingue village; "You have a friend here...in me", Dougal Guey in Kayemon village; and "C'est bon C'est bon C'est bon!", a farmer from CARITAS. Most touching for me was a departure from a life-long friend I made despite the language barriers "I have left my heart with you", said Therese, wife of CARITAS Geo-Scientist Renee with whom we dined at a Thanksgiving Feast to help us feel at "home" in their home. Touching is the fact that each of these people are tickled by what our simple technologies can provide--a way and means for a better life--and touching is the fact that I have been blessed to have had the chance to help secure that opportunity. 

Recently, at our December board meeting, I explained my obsession with taking photographs of doors. Each of us have had doors closed, only for others to be opened, and until CTI and pursuing my Masters in Development Policy with a concentration in Africa, it seems that there was a less definable period in my life. Many "doors" and opportunities have been presented to me within this organization that I think so highly of, and I have been keen to act on those opportunities. Beyond that, I feel that it is my job to continue to open similar doors for the people CTI serves, those who are equally deserving, but without the ways or means. It is unconscionable to me to think that what CTI is able to provide will not be visible to most rural communities. 

So I, like each of the equally passionate and eager volunteers at CTI, happily forge an exodus towards a goal of creating and supporting sustainable environments that will provide future generations with tools, education and kindred roots. I had a lot of reflective moments during this trip, and I also blogged our adventures, seemingly because it would have been impossible to re-create most of these experiences after the fact. But what resonates loudest in my mind are the moments that rendered me speechless (something that rarely happens). It is these silent moments, personal exchanges, accepting smiles, joyous laughter and dancing that are impossible to prepare for, which allowed me to reflect most authentically and honestly that I am truly the most fortunate woman in the world. We are called to do certain things in our lives, and it is what we do with that time that matters most. Cliché perhaps, but I enjoy very much a quote I once heard, "In the end, it is not the amount of breaths you take it's the moments that take your breath away." 


Andrea Brovold 
Africa Co-Chair/Volunteer

As life throws curves your way...make it into a dance

This blog is currently being updated by CTI Volunteer and Africa Committee Vice Chair, Andrea Brovold. Andrea and CTI's Executive Director, Roger Salway, are traveling through Senegal and Mali to demonstrate one of CTI's newest set of devices, the Thresher and Winnower. This new set of equipment can help subsistence farmers increase the quality of their grain and reduce waste--nearly doubling their grain yield.

The first leg of our trip funded by NCBA/USAID proved to be more sweeping than the roads to Tambacouda or the sonsie of Manet's Le dejeuner sur l'herbe.

Emotions and purpose were at a elevated level, due to the nature of this project. Our project objectives that were pre-set for us by NCBA was to increase yields and incomes of the current 30 farmer's whose annual income combined was approximately $40,000. Combined.

The more villages and meetings we tended to, the more apparent the voices became. Meetings with directors of programs such as Action Aid, CARITAS, CLUSA, Counterpart, and the 4 villages we introduced to our technology to, and more importantly, our spirit to, will forever be changed. Through a mutual respect for cultural differences, and also a desire to transfer technology to a sustainable community is the basis of CTIs mission, and one I feel we were able to accomplish in many ways. I will not forget Rokyhah, a 12 year old girl at the Kuer Ali Guey village who needed very little coaxing, and began instructing others how to "tighten the burrs...we need finer flour." I was quick to have Bamba translate for me so I could instruct her how to clean and disassemble/reassemble the grinder. The village will be successful because of the hard working women I have met. Let us all celebrate these women for the intrinsic value they provide their communities.

Without the high level of organization set prior to our departure, as well as the preparedness of our in-country partner's in Yaguemar and Bamba, this project would have not been as successful as it was. Proudly, Roger (Executive Director), myself, and Bamba (our In-country partner) have decided to donate our current prototypes of CTI's thresher and winnower ( also made possible by collaboration with Thom and Reade from Battelle Institute in Columbus, Ohio) to complete the set of the grinder already purchased by USAID.

It was the voices and the faces of the women, men and children that resonate loudly in my thoughts. What we were able to accomplish in 5 minutes, would traditionally take a woman 40 minutes. Awa, who was the village leader at Kayemon, (a highly organized and populated location on the boarder of The Gambia and Senegal) spoke to the Heavens about how beneficial our equipment had proven to be to them-especially the women who, in order to get the children off to school in time, or the home prepared, and dinner served, would normally work from sun-up to sun-down. Another from the same village exclaimed "If you could visualize our interest in CTI's equipment, it would be as tall as a skyscraper!". So as we drudged our way though the trials and tribulations of each village visit, I was pleasantly reminded one morning that it truly is a dance we must create from all life has to offer. For dancing brings smiles to everyone.