Atula O., 1st of His Name

I have been mulling over starting this blog for the better part of the past two years. Lord knows I love writing and the joy of playing around with words. I also fancy agriculture, particularly the arable kind. I have therefore sought ways of marrying the two through a blog but have always found myself reciprocating. Just a week, that’s what I said. Before I realized, two years had gone by. And I am not getting any younger.

I had to start, so here I am.

But first, I needed the right amount of external motivation. So I went back to my village in Migori County to understand more about one Atula O., 1st of his name. As you may have figured out by now, we share a name. He is my paternal grandfather and according to legend, was one of the most prominent farmers in the area. That was waaay back in the 40s and 50s. what prompted me to do so was the message that I got from a mentorship session I had recently attended. The mentor had challenged us on the importance of knowing our history, for there’s nothing new under the sun. Your history has already been written and it is only by going back to the past that you can learn about your future.

So I went back, to learn more about Atula O., 1st of his name.

Atula’s Mango Tree by Owade, 2018 (acrylic on paper).

I am told that he was a giant of a man. According to his last surviving wife, the man could cross the entire width of a river with a single step. There we are, Nyagunja and I, sitting in the shade of a giant mango tree planted by Atula. She smokes her pipe sentimentally, and looks at me with those smoky, ancient eyes. I continue drawing random lines on the ground, like the child I am before her.  “Atula ne nyalo nyono aora ka gima nono!”She declares again, then she whispers it, reinforcing just how good my grandfather was at crossing rivers with a single step. I suspect that her memory is playing tricks on her.  Although I think that she just exaggerated his majesty, I do know for a fact that Atula crossed one significant river in his lifetime.

The year is 1957 and the then colonial government in Kenya is in in the process of implementing the Swynnerton Plan. This was one of the most comprehensive plans established by the government to increase agricultural productivity through a network of smallholder farmers across the country. It was implemented and managed by the Provincial Administration through its Agricultural Department. The Colonial Office had committed up to 100 million 1954 shillings to the project. Though sold as a way of alleviating poverty among Africans, the plan was in truth a way for the Britain to boost its struggling economy. The British Empire hoped that through agricultural exports from her colonies, it could somewhat recover from the economic consequences of  World War Two. Part of the strategy included training farmers on modern farming techniques. In Nyanza, it was done at the Nyanza Jeanes School, the precursor to Maseno University.

Questions and Answers on the Swynnerton Plan, 1957.

Atula crossed River Kuja.

Nyagunja, in her croacky voice, says that her husband did not want to be left behind. He crossed the River Kuja into Kisiiland, and trekked all the way to Kisumu. He got enrolled into the school and according to family archives, graduated a few months later. Like many farmers of his time, he got training on growing of various kinds of cash crops, including sugarcane, millet and sorghum. It is around this time that Nyanza and Western Provinces got established as sugarcane-producing zones. I can just imagine how hopeful Atula was while learning new ways of reaping from the land.

That was never the case, the program did not yield much in terms of economic returns for the populace. In the 1980s, Eric Gordon, a former colonial field officer observed that its failure particularly in Nyanza was due to the farmers’ lack of the desire or momentum to work. By the time I was born, here was barely anything to show that Atula had accumulated agricultural knowledge other than the yellowing documents.  However, times have changed and now many more people not only in Nyanza but throughout Kenya have the desire and momentum to work.

What is lacking is knowledge.

This is the reason why I set up this blog. Four years ago I crossed the Nairobi river into Kiambu County. I unintentionally enrolled at JKUAT for degree program in Agricultural Engineering. Though done naively at the time, looking back I realize it was just history repeating itself. As they say, there is nothing new under the sun. JKUAT was my Jeanes School and over the years I have accumulated a wealth of knowledge that I intend to share with you. This is in the hope that this knowledge will help you and I build up this country’s agricultural capacity. And even better, we will achieve what many of our forefathers did not: Reap the economic rewards.

As the late, great Joseph Hill would say, “Come with I, let’s cross the river together”. I am Atula O., 2nd of my name, what’s yours? Feel free to share it with me in the comments section.

Atula’s Jeanes School Certificate.