Moringa Madness!

This last week the volunteers in my area made an enormous effort to visit about 20 villages in a week and educate them on the uses of moringa powder. Moringa olifera is a tree which has highly nutrtious leaves. It is very hardy and grows fast. We often eat the leaves in a peanut sauce over millet for dinner. This method decreases the aount of vitamins in the leaves as they are cooked. Moringa has an unimaginable amount of vitamins. For example in one kilo of powder that has been dried and crushed there is more vitamin C than  7 kilos of oranges. We began by visiting the villages and planting intensive beds. These small beds have about 100 trees in each dependig on the size of course. After a month the trees can be cut and the leaves harvested. The tress then grow back more bushlike. We taught them to plant and harvest the beds. They can also use individual trees that grow in the village. After this portion of the program we waited a month before returing to do the second part. This involved going village to village teaching them to make the powder without reducing the vitamin content. Then we showed them how they can add it to certain foods to increase the nutritional value of their diets. We specifically made a type of porridge which is easy to feed to children who are malnourished. There was a range of interest from village to village. Some people were very interested and I feel they are likely to utilize the technique. Others became aware of the importance of nutrition. I had a few people asking me about the nutritional value of certain vegetables in my village. There are always those who miss the point and wer asking me to make them more porridge. Sigh. Overall I think the program was very successful!