growing trees

29January2021

Naromoru Primary School

One’s poison is another’s food, as it’s said. Even to be more appropriate, ‘one’s waste is another’s resource.’ If you ever were an active member in school clubs and activities like inning and outings for whatever event, be it sports day, science congress, drama, and so on, lunch was a loaf of bread and either a 300ml bottle of soda or a packet of milk. Or was it just my school?! no?! okay! This simple meal would make an ‘A’ student cry if they missed. This meal, among other reasons, would make a form 4 student deny a form 1 their rightful and lawful chance to participate. Reason, well, age and how many trips they both have left. Age wasn’t just a number.

Well, the good old days. The question is, how did your school manage the waste produced from the fun and/or educational trip. Was it like this?

In a town called Kiserian, deep in the heart of Kajiado county, where a good number of Nairobians get their weekend delicacy, Ugali Nyama choma, lies Naromoru Primary School. The school administration in collaboration with the students, kept their milk packets from their trips and school use. They managed an over 2,000 milk packets of waste well.

This school has made sure that their school environment is clean since their waste is well managed. Also, since where they are located some people have cattle, this school has made sure that their cattle has 2000 milk packets less risk of constipation

We, on the other hand, were in need of packets for potting tree seedlings for our tree nursery. They heard of our need for packets and contacted us. Thanks to Naromoru Primary School, we are sure of increasing our tree nursery by at least 2000 trees. With them managing their waste well, we have over 2000 milk packets of resource for our tree planting project.

We have a quest to plant even more trees at our sanctuary in Karen, Hardy area. These trees are for education, giraffe feeding, and distribution to schools across the country. We need, as a country to increase the forest cover to 10% and over for our benefit and the benefit of the future generations.

So, contact us if and when you have milk packet waste.

11May2020

Everything goes

in: Activities by: Giraffe Centre

One’s poison is another’s food. That thing that seems small, useless to you means the world to another. The psalmist in one of his psalms would note this as he explains how everything means something to someone. He’d give an example with the water streams and towers, how from the rocks to the leaves need water.

I experienced this phenomenon with a cypress tree. Before you get up in arms with a claim on deforestation, it fell on its own on my neighbor’s vegetation and the tree was his. It was interesting how each person who saw the tree would envision it.

A carpenter saw frames for their creative ideas, a brick entrepreneur saw firewood for drying bricks, so on and forth.

There is a group, however, that interested me. They were keen to check for the hollow part of the stem. Why? If you ask me, it seems like they are missing a full part of the donut. Who in their right mind would go for the space between a donut. These guys would and they did.

One of the guys, just by knocking on one side of the cut trunk and knew it had honey in plenty. Apparently, in the olden days, that honey was the medicine for cold and flu. These guys didn’t just come here to look for materials for income, also for health from the cypress tree.

The only way these guys would have known this secret is if they were taught by their society members. By this simple secret, they have made a habit of growing trees with a sole purpose of honey where they’ll let them grow old, then fall on their own volition and hope for a bumper harvest of wood, sawdust, firewood and most important, honey.