How villagers in Singida tackle malnutrition with home-based solutions

Singida. The residents of Unyangwe village – like many other villagers in Ikungi District, Singida Region – are the living proof that cooperatives, coupled with the appropriate education, can go a long way in providing communities with reliable solutions to their pressing social and economic issues.

The villagers here, both male and female, chose to take the issue of reducing malnutrition among their children under two years of age – then the prevalent condition – into their own hands. Most of them regret thinking, in the past, that other people “would descend from the sky and solve our problems,” as Mr Madai Njou, a villager who works as a promoter of home-based initiatives to curb malnutrition told The Citizen.

From vegetable gardening and small-scale poultry farming to the formation of small Village Community Banks (Vicobas), these traditional, home-based and communal initiatives have proven not only effective in curbing the condition of malnutrition, but are also affordable to many low-income households in Unyangwe.

“Something as simple as growing spinach in one’s backyard was uncommon among many villagers here,” the 42-year-old Njou says, himself a vegetable grower and poultry farmer. “Today, that is no longer the case. Rarely do you find a household without a vegetable patch nowadays.”

A cross-visit among various households in the village confirms Mr Njou’s statement as villagers leave no area around their homes unused. If it’s not used for gardening, then it’s for poultry-farming. Varieties of veggies - from spinach, salad and onions to tomatoes, kale and courgettes - are grown in by households.

“With these [initiatives], the lives of many villagers are steadily improving as some of them borrow money from their Vicobas to finance their needs,” the father of five says. “But they are also using these groups as platforms for education on how they can prepare nutritious food for their families.”

The 'Boresha Lishe' project

Unyangwe village is one of the three villages in the Iseke Ward, Ihanja Division in Ikungu District, Singida Region. It is among the forty-three villages in Ikungu where the European Union-funded Boresha Lishe project is being rolled out.

Located on the westside of the Ikungi District Council, Unyangwe borders Khoiree village in the South, Ihanja village in the West, Kuntuntu village in the North and Musambu village in the East. The village is dominantly Turu, an ethnic and linguistic group dominant in the Singida Region who speak the Bantu Kinyaturu.

A total of 2,379 villagers live here, according to the village government data: 1,249 males, 1,130 females. The villagers’ love for singing and dancing is astonishing.

Their commitment to improving their children’s nutrition was evident in their reception song to the World Food Programme Tanzania team and the press which arrived at the village to observe the progress of the 2017-launched Boresha Lishe project. WFP Tanzania leads the project, partnering with Save the Children and other grassroots organisations.

The project seeks to improve access to, and use of, nutritious foods by women and children through behavioural change, as well as diversification of food production. The project targets Bahi and Chamwino Districts in Dodoma Region, and Ikungi and Singida Rural District in Singida Region.

As per the WFP Tanzania, about 34 per cent of children in Tanzania is stunted. Deficiencies of iron, vitamin-A and iodine each roughly affect around a third of women and children, the UN agency says.

The experts stress that chronic malnutrition in young children can have a life-long effect on individual health, development and cognition, as well as national economic growth. It was against this backdrop that the government in 2016 rolled out its National Multi-sectoral Nutrition Action Plan (NMNAP) 2016-2021.

Complementing the 2016 Food and Nutrition Policy, the NMNAP is based on long-term change where children, adolescents, women and men in Tanzania are better-nourished - leading to healthier and more productive lives that contribute to economic growth and sustainable development.

'Amazingly paid off'

A nutrition coordinator with the Ikungu Municipal Council, Ms Agnes Lucas John, says the type of malnutrition that was prevalent in Ikungi is stunting for most children in the 1,000 days – from the onset of pregnancy to when a newborn is two years old. Given the child’s lack of essential nutrients for its growth during this time, many of them end up stunted.

“Education and sensitization on home-based nutrition initiatives have amazingly paid off,” Ms John says. “We no longer spend much time telling villagers the importance of vegetables to their children’s health.”

In addition to the training that parents receive on how to prepare nutritious food for infants to ensure their good health, Ms John offers that households also receive, occasionally, specialized nutritious food to supplement their efforts.

Neema Shosho, a nutrition specialist from WFP Tanzania told The Citizen that the cooperatives play a crucial role in disseminating nutritious information. By giving the villagers platforms to meet regularly, the co-ops allow them to exchange experiences on the importance of better nutrition for their children.

“They are more of information hubs than mere savings and credits groups,” says Ms Shosho. Villagers get the information on how they can make the best use of the credit in ensuring a balanced diet at homes, she adds. “The co-ops act both as back-up for villagers as well as financial advisors.”

A long-serving gynaecologist at the Makiungu Council Designated Hospital, Dr Maria Borda, says there have been notable improvements in not only the health of mothers but also the children born.

Dr Borda recalls that previously most children born at the hospital weighed at 2kgs or 2.5kgs but now the average weight stands at 3kgs to 3.5kgs. She explains: “Many pregnant mothers were very thin as they were not used to get enough nutritious food themselves because many of them had no idea how to prepare one or even to find them. But now I can notice some changes.”

She associates the transformation to education, saying that the best way to change people’s behaviour is through knowledge dissemination. 

“Ikungi offers a good case study to that proposition,” says Dr Borda who has been working at the hospital since 1995. “Even if we agree that Singida is a semi-arid region, there are still some crops that can be cultivated and given their proper preparation for consumption they can go a long way in fighting off malnutrition among many children.”

What Dr Borda says can be confirmed by Ms Regina Ernest from Iseke village, one of the villages that Dr Borda’s hospital serves. The 38-year old mother of three offers that they didn’t think it was necessary to use what they grow for the better nutrition of their children.

“Most of us never used to cultivate any vegetable gardens before,” says Ms Ernest as she holds her daughter, Catherine, in her hands. “Then, through regular meetings at our Vicobas, we slowly started learning that there was a lot we can do on our own.”

Ms Ernest’s views echo the views of many other parents across many villages in Ikungi as well as Singida Rural districts. From Unyamhumpi and Iseke to Nduu and Unyangwe, the story is the same: people rising from listlessness and organising to transform their lives.

'Organised people in the move'

About three to four kilometres down the village of Unyangwe is one and a half hectares of land where various types of veggies have been grown. It is a collective farm where the co-op members in Unyangwe contributes farming and what is produced is divided to all.

Mr Ramadhan Mungudu, 58, gave this land freely to his fellow villagers as they team up to eradicate any form of malnutrition among their children. He says that he thought that giving out the land for communal use was a good thing, considering that not all people may have enough space to grow vegetables at their own homes.

“Community gardening, apart from meeting its purpose of providing us with necessary produces we want for survival, also improves the unity among people as well as mutual love,” says the father of three Mungudu.

“If it were me alone, I couldn’t do all the work done here by the cooperative members. So what the community garden is doing is to bring people together and maximize their ability to meet their daily diet as well as a small income to enable them to live a respectable life.”

As we leave the garden for other activities, I ask Mr Njou and Mr Mungudu what have they learnt from this trial of coming together to solve their common problems and the former quickly responds: “the central lesson so far has been the fact that when people are organised around something as commonly agreed upon as malnutrition, then an organised people is on the move,” he says.  

“And the people of Unyangwe are on the move,” chips in Mr Mungundu, looking at me with a broad smile worn on his wrinkled face. “From here, it’s a short and natural step towards accomplishing what we want for ourselves.”