Shield of Faith builds a new kitchen garden for Emma, a new member

Emma joined the project in March 2024, making her the newest member of Shield of Faith. She is also the latest to benefit from one of Stella’s patented kitchen gardens – assembled from recycled plastic. We visited her to find out how it’s going.

Emma lives in Kibera with her three children, ages 14, 10, and 5, and her husband. During the day she does household tasks and tends to her new garden, which is built against a wall and space that she shares with two other families. At night Emma works at an eatery.

Emma’s garden faces two problems – chickens and sun. Emma’s neighbors share the same gardening space and let the chickens in before they close the gate which means that some of Emma’s vegetables get eaten. Emma has put a cover over her garden, but she also has to shoo the chickens away.

As for the sun, Emma’s garden is more exposed to sunshine than the other kitchen gardens, which means that her soil dries out at a faster rate. When we visited, Stella suggested that Emma increase the frequency of watering and add some Lishe Grow twice a week. Lishe-Grow (the Swahili for “Grow Nutrition”) is an organic liquid fertilizer produced during composting by worms – the process known as vermiculture. The Lishe-Grow liquid is collected by placing a bucket under a household’s compost bin. Once diluted in water it acts as a very effective fertilizer.

Emma’s garden allows her to “dry compost” paper and other compostibles

Emma is a composting “ambassador” which means she is tasked with persuading her neighbors to compost and produce a community composting “hub.” Hubs are central to Stella’s vision because they will start to clean up the community as opposed to individual homes. Local vendors produce masses of organic waste in the form of fruit, vegetables and food scraps. If they were to compost it would be a big step forward, but will require a major change of attitude from the vendors. At present, they leave their waste lying around in the road.

Emma’s is the first composting hub we have visited, and we’ll be watching her progress carefully over the weeks to come. However, like her garden her compost is also dry from the sun, so Emma has covered it with black plastic to keep the compost moist. This is essential because moisture helps to break down the organic matter.

Emma’s bin is a beautiful hodge-podge! Along with food scraps it also contains “dry compost” in the form of paper and cardboard. We’ll visit her again soon and hope for progress.