Planting Seeds of Abundance in Kenya’s Rift Valley

This month, I was invited to advise on agricultural and food sovereignty projects being considered by the newly forming Foundation to Be Good and Do Good. One of the first projects brought into the conversation was in Baringo County, Kenya, where the nonprofit So They Can works with dozens of government schools and surrounding communities across Kenya and Tanzania. For more than a decade So They Can has done an incredible job creating bright futures for school children throughout Kenya and Tanzania.

The invitation to help make a difference in the lives of people in another part of the world was an honor for me, and something that is not only deeply aligned with the mission of Terra Advocati, but also, on a personal level, with my life's passion. I have spent much of my life trying to connect people, knowledge, resources, and ideas across communities and cultures, something I often describe as mycelial weaving.

I believe deeply that what we learn and the relationships we build have their greatest value when we share them with one another, in reciprocity, and use them to support life and create greater abundance together.

Some of these schools face extraordinary challenges when it comes to water and food.

Baringo County is hot and dry, and drought is a persistent reality. In some areas, soils and surrounding landscapes have become severely degraded, making agricultural production increasingly difficult. Water can be extremely limited. When very little food can be produced locally, feeding children at school becomes an ongoing challenge shared between families, schools, government, and organizations like So They Can.

The question I was asked to help explore was whether we could begin approaching some of these challenges differently.

Of course, when children are hungry, food needs to reach them. But what if we could also work alongside communities to rebuild the conditions that allow them to produce more food themselves?

What would it take to start with water, restore soil, grow culturally and regionally appropriate foods, and build the knowledge and infrastructure necessary for that system to become increasingly resilient over time?

And what if a school could become the hub where that process begins?

Finding the Right Place to Start

Before we could answer any of those questions, we needed someone on the ground who understood these landscapes.

I reached out to Jane Wagesa Fraser, a Kenyan agroforestry and dryland restoration specialist who I knew through the Vetiver Network International. Jane has decades of experience working with agroforestry and regenerative land management systems in Kenya and across East Africa, with experience and professional networks extending through Uganda, Tanzania, Ethiopia, and other parts of the region.

Jane and her team also have extensive experience working with vetiver systems in dry landscapes.

That immediately gave us some common ground.

Much of Terra Advocati's work has involved vetiver as part of larger regenerative systems designed around water, soil, agriculture, and landscape restoration. Vetiver can slow runoff, trap sediment and organic material, stabilize damaged soils, and help water soak into the ground rather than simply running off the landscape. Its enormous root system can reach several meters into the soil.

It also produces a tremendous amount of biomass. That material can be cut and returned to the soil as mulch and organic matter, while dried material can have practical uses including fuel and fire-starting material for cooking.

None of these things work in isolation. That is the important part.

A vetiver hedge is not going to solve food insecurity. Neither is a rainwater tank, a garden, a swale, a bag of seed, or a new irrigation system. But when water harvesting, soil restoration, appropriate crops, agroforestry, biomass production, and community knowledge begin working together, something much more interesting becomes possible.

Two Schools and a Bigger Question

Working with Cassandra and Rita from So They Can, we began looking at two potential schools in Baringo County.

Jane traveled to assess both Katikit Primary School in the East Pokot region of Baringo County and Lemuyek Primary School in Tiaty East, also in Baringo County.

The purpose of those first visits was not to arrive with a predetermined design. It was to look at the realities on the ground and understand what the communities, schools, and people who live there actually needed, and sometimes, more importantly, what they didn't need from us.

That distinction matters.

There is a long history of well-intentioned development work arriving in communities with solutions already designed. A project may make perfect sense to someone sitting thousands of miles away and still make very little sense to the people expected to live with it. Sometimes the infrastructure does not fit the landscape. Sometimes the crops do not fit the culture. Sometimes something gets built that cannot realistically be maintained once the outside organization leaves.

We did not want to do that.

We wanted to listen first, understand what was already there, and be realistic about what could actually work.

That was especially important because these are not easy places to work. Parts of Baringo County are extremely isolated. Moving people, equipment, construction materials, water infrastructure, plants, and supplies into remote areas can quickly become difficult and expensive. Something that looks simple on paper can become a very different proposition on the ground.

So the questions had to be practical.

What water was actually available? What condition were the soils in? What infrastructure already existed? What was happening with livestock? What could realistically be grown in these conditions? How much land was available? What could be maintained locally? What were the challenges unique to each community? And perhaps most importantly, where could a relatively small pilot have the greatest chance of becoming something larger?

After Jane's initial assessments and conversations among the group, and many discussions with Rita, we decided to concentrate the pilot at Katikit.

Katikit is intended to function as a boarding school, but reliable access to food and water has made that difficult. That makes the challenge immediate, but it also creates an opportunity.

If we can begin producing food at the school, improve how water is captured and used, rebuild soil, and create systems that work within the realities of this dry landscape, the school could eventually become much more than the beneficiary of a project.

It could become a place where knowledge is generated and shared. This could be the spark and anchor that helps empower the community to create greater abundance in their homes and villages.

Mycelial Weaving Across Continents

This is also where Terra Advocati's role becomes particularly interesting.

For years, I have described a large part of what we do as mycelial weaving. We connect people, organizations, knowledge, resources, and ideas that might otherwise never find one another, and then see what can grow from those relationships.

There is no reason that lessons learned through our regenerative agriculture work in Latin America and Texas need to remain in those places.

Some of the techniques will obviously be different in Kenya. The plants will be different. The culture is different. The rainfall patterns, soils, economics, and local knowledge are different. Those differences matter, and they are precisely why working with someone like Jane is so important.

But the underlying principles travel remarkably well.

Start with water and community needs.

Keep water on the landscape for as long as possible.

Protect and rebuild the soil.

Grow plants adapted to the place.

Turn biological material back into fertility.

Produce food that people actually want to eat.

And make sure the knowledge stays with the community.

We are already beginning to look at ways that knowledge from some of our partners in Latin America and Texas might add value to the work in Kenya. At the same time, Jane and the communities she works with possess decades of experience adapting agriculture to some extremely difficult conditions. That knowledge has enormous value for our work elsewhere as well.

For us, that exchange should be rooted in reciprocity. Knowledge should not simply move from one place to another in a single direction. We all have something to teach, something to learn, and something to bring back home.

That is mycelial weaving.

Listening Before Designing

Choosing Katikit gave us a place to begin, but it did not give us the answers.

We could study rainfall. We could calculate roof catchment. We could look at soils, topography, crop varieties, vetiver systems, irrigation, and agroforestry. We could begin imagining what a regenerative food production system might look like on paper.

But we do not live at Katikit.

The families do.

That sounds simple, but it is one of the most important principles behind this work. People living in a place understand realities that cannot be captured on a satellite image, spreadsheet, or site plan. If the goal is to build something that lasts, their knowledge cannot be an afterthought.

So before moving much further into designing what this pilot could become, the next step needed to be sitting down with the community itself.

What do they grow? What do they eat? What has worked before? What has failed? What are they willing to participate in? What knowledge already exists within the community? What are the barriers that we cannot see from the outside? And what would they actually like to see happen at their school?

That conversation would ultimately bring dozens of parents and community members together at Katikit to begin answering those questions.

Stay tuned for more updates!