eg November General Report, 2021

By: Mahawa Komala and Boakai M. Kromah ( Voinjama Team)

Introduction

The team has been busy and engaged with several activities in the past two months in alignment with our goal, mission, and objectives as an institution. We have made enormous progress in all areas especially in the Culture troupe, the environmental restoration and protection, permaculture, and traditional ceremonies and dream circles. We started new tree nurseries in the new fence, Foya, Koindu, and Barkedu, and we have been collaborating closely with the community in collecting seedlings for these nurseries while preparing for our upcoming reforestation and environmental awareness programs. The culture troupe had another community training session in Johnny’s Town with 20 children and young adults in addition to Larwalazu, the first town. Morris and the team made additional four beehives in addition to the eight we have installed in the forest. Bees have colonized six of the eight hives. The hives are suitably position, some at the entrance of the forest. As we wait, we are exploring other methods of attracting bees to colonize the new hives.

The traditional team has done a lot of work in recent times with the community informing them about the dream cycle. They have been gathering information and finding ways to protect and preserve several key traditional historic sites that kept the forefathers of Lofa County, Voinjama District together as one.

Last month, we made 10 banana cycles as a routine training for new eg team members and a selected town, this is to ensure fast spread of the permaculture (PC), a nonrotational (shifting cultivation) farming system that eg believe it can help buttress our environmental restoration and protection goal, to decrease the earth hot temperature and make it a favorable place for all living things.

Nursery

Planting trees is a key component of our work considering the roles and importance of trees in our environment and our commitment to safeguarding our natural environment through community participation, awareness and education, and reforestation. To achieve this goal, we started nurseries in eg new fence, Barkedu, Koindu, and Foya in preparation for our upcoming tree-planting project. We have a thousand (1,000) polythene bags filled with kola nuts, oranges, avocados, forest trees, and mangoes but we are targeting to propagate about 3,500 trees for the upcoming planting season, the rainy season. We have two hundred trees on nursery in Barkedu; one hundred trees were given to us by the township of Barkedu as their contribution and efforts to the fight back of global warming; in Foya, we have 400 trees on nursery, they include 150 oranges, 50 guavas, 50 avocadoes, and 5 cotton trees, the team in Foya is still collecting seedlings to fill in the remaining polythene bags; in Koindu Sierra Leone, we have 100 oranges on nursery and the team in Nongorwa Guinea will start their nursery next week; so, for now, we have a total of 1,700 trees on nursery in Voinjama, Koindu, Barkedu, and Foya.

Traditional team

On October 27, everyday gandhis traditional team met in eg compound to discuss upcoming activities and strategies on how to achieve them. in the meeting, they arrived at a decision to peacefully reawaking key traditional and historic sites for future perpetuation. Western culture may swallow up our culture as fast as possible if no action is taken. To ensure this, they have started meeting elders in various community, starting in Bitijama to discuss ways forward, some of which include how to select and when to visit the first site and materials needed for the reawaking. The elders agree and embrace the idea; in fact, their leader pledge to fully participate in the enter process. To head Zoe of the county lives in Bitijama and they need his permission before executing this plan. The chief Zoe gave permission and agreed to join them in the process. The elders of Bitijama and eg team has reach an agreed to meet every Friday for a dream circle, regular updates will be available on eg website for our readers to avail themselves to be aware of ongoing activities.

Culture Troupe

eg culture troupe has a total of 34 members headed by Olando. Weekly practices are conducted which include training of the selected two towns, Lawalazu and Johnny’s Town. eg culture troupe caved several drums through Cynthia Travis cupidity desire for culture preservation and its ways of resolving conflict. The team bought a costume attire as a sign of unity which is displaced during practices and live performants, the rational behind the recruit of towns to have their own culture troupe and others traditional activities is to ensure them realize the importance and how unique it is to their values.

Poultry

The poultry is gradually increasing as expected. We have 38 chickens with two Guinea Fowls. There are 19 hens and 19 roosters, two of the hens have laid 25 eggs, the number is expected to increase after hatching.

Permaculture

The team has stepped up their production and is expected to see increasement in productivity in the coming months. Hopefully, by the end of this month, we are expected to harvest the cassava and share with the community as usual. Again, the banana cycle will continue until we exhaust the site selected for the cycle, as well as new members and invited towns comprehend get the concepts. As our PC program aim to aid our environmental restorative and protection activities, we are encouraging communities to move away from upland farming to lowland farming, thereby increasing abandon farmland which quickly grow into forests. To lead by example, eg has a lowland farm which is growing very well, communities are invited at the site to take a look and discuss the important of selecting a single farm land that can support all of their farming activities and strategies on how to grow more food in a year. We have also completed laying out and mulching twenty-seven big beds to plant cassava and 42 smaller beds for yams and eddoes. The team has decided to focus on these food crops due to their high consumption level in the community and drought resistance.

Conclusion

During the previous two months, the team has been sharing ideas and learning new ones, as well as ways forwards to improving our various sectors. We are trying to build a robust and resilience team that will achieve our goals with ease and overcome challenges that may arise.