It’s a warm day when I meet a farmer couple at their home. The farmer demonstrates with a lot of pride and energy his testing fields. He tries to find out out which kind of maize grows better with the continuously higher lack of water, how a mixed agriculture helps to avoid acid soil and how he tests new fruits and plants to find a market niche. “Pineapple is a good income source,” he says. “It pays off much better than the maize I have focused on in the past years”. A few months back he has joined a newly founded farmer cooperative and learned a lot. Based on the support of Ampath, a NGO that cares about health and wealth, the farmer group has been able to build a storage hall, too. “This is essential as it helps us to store our products and to avoid selling immediately – especially when the prize at the market is low. It makes a lot of sense to help each other. We need a small administration building. And one of our big challenges ist also the transport of our products to the market. But we have hope now that things become better. ”

When we sit around the table at his home his wife takes a few photos out of a box – photos showing when they got married, the family, and from his husband who has a special role in the surroundings: “Whenever I have time at the weekend I dedicate time to soccer and I’m a referee,” he explains with a big smile on his face.

“He is a really good and known referee here in our areas,” adds his wife.

They have a lot of hope and trust in a better future. And they can definitely be proud of what they have achieved. The willingness and hope, the way on how they collaborate and talk to each other is impressive.

The wife takes me to her kitchen, a separate small building with some small holes in the roof to make enter some light. “Recently we have been able to build a new cooking place. It’s possible because we earn some more money now,” she says. It’s dark and for sure a very basic standard. The waterbottle light effect will help to bring more light herein. When I explain how it works, she listens with a lot of attention. “We will try this out”, she says with enthusiasm. “It would be great to have some more light here”.

I’m curious what will be their next steps. For sure I will come back here in one of the next months to visit them again.