Until three weeks ago, Joyce Wambui, 53, spent hundreds of shillings on vegetables every week to feed her family of five. Wambui from Githama village in Kandara realised that the vegetables were taking a huge chunk of her earnings despite living in a rural area.
Her family's farm is small, she explained, and is filled with bananas, a few avocado trees, some food crops and fruits on which they depend on for an income. The high expenditure on vegetables became untenable as the produce became more expensive due to their unavailability in the semi-arid area. Decades ago, the village depended on the coffee sub-sector that was flourishing but when it collapsed, so did the local economy, leaving residents scrambling to eke a living.
"In the market, they sell these small bunches of vegetables and I kept having to pay for more as the days went by and it wasn't sustainable," she said. At some point, the family was forced to make do with meals with high carbohydrates and less proteins and vegetables.
This is despite the fact that her mother who is 79 years old, suffers from chronic illnesses and requires a well-balanced diet. That's when Wambui decided to do something about it. Outside her house, she cleared a spot that was previously used to keep firewood and created a small kitchen garden.
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