Queen Elizabeth Scholars in Kenya

 by John VanLeeuwen

Our first week is over and we have had quite a week. After our endurance test flights from Canada to Nairobi, our group of 4 QEScholars from Canada, and Colleen Walton and I (QEScholar supervisors) arrived safely with all our bags on May 4. The group took the next day to recover from the travel by going to Kasuri Beads and Rimpa Estates in and around Nairobi. We then made it to Meru on May 6th, with stops on the way for some food and supplies and got settled into our new home at the Muruguma house near Naari. 

On the first morning of our first full day in Meru County, we met with FHF staff over breakfast at the Tosha Hotel, where we shared introductions, greetings and plans for the coming weeks. It was great to be back in Kiirua. After the meeting, we split up. Colleen and the QEScholars explored different parts of what FHF does in Kenya for orientation purposes, while I met with Salome Ntinyari, Erastus Kangethe, and Bernard Ndegwa to discuss the sheep and goat brucellosis seroprevalence and risk factor project that is part of the Gender-Responsive One Health project that FHF, UPEI and Alinea International are implementing in Meru County. We got supplies ready for our next days of activities in the field. 

In this blog, I will describe the veterinary projects that we (QEScholars Marika Wesselius and Molly Park and I) will implement during the next couple of months. They include:

1) Completing Dr. Essau Serem’s zero-grazing trial study, where we go back to the farms where we provided recommendations on how to convert to zero-grazing in 2025 to determine their compliance with the recommendations and determine the impacts of the implemented recommendations (and give recommendations to the control farms in the trial);

A zero grazing farm

2) Conducting Dr. Mercy Njoroge’s sheep and goat brucellosis seroprevalence and risk factor project, where we will go to 120 randomly selected sheep and goat farms to collect blood from 5 sheep or goats (to be tested for brucellosis exposure) and ask questions about the animals and management on the farm, and the impact that brucellosis might be having on the farmers and their animal handlers; and 

3) Initiating a new cohort of paravets affiliated with the Meru Central Dairy Cooperative Union into a paravet training program, where we will spend three days on farms enhancing their practical knowledge and skills on disease diagnosis, treatment and prevention, particularly for zoonotic diseases that require One Health approaches for good control, and then one day at a walk-in clinic where they can work on utilizing the new practical knowledge and skills to give vaccines and dewormer to all cattle showing up to the clinic, and check those animals needing individual attention.

On May 8, the vet group started working in the field on Dr. Serem’s project. We also went to two farms with 15 and 6 milking cows where milk was being rejected. 

A second zero grazing farm

We found 10 and 5 cows, respectively, with mastitis in at least one quarter, which largely explains their milk rejection. We gave advice on how to treat the cows and change their management to prevent further outbreaks of mastitis on these farms.

Farm 3: a farm with a mastitis problem: Marika, Molly and Serem discussing options for recommendations, and Naomi, an extension officer at Naari Dairy, is in the photo.

 The owners were very appreciative of our visit, considering the substantial revenue they were losing with the rejected milk. Hopefully they can turn things around quickly.

The Dishwashing Blog

 By Emily Wells 

This year I worked with FHF Kenya nutritionist, James Mutahi, on developing a school dishwashing program for the 23 schools that we work with in Meru County, Kenya.  The children wash their own school meal dishes- until now by simply rinsing them with water from the rainwater tank.  Virtually none of the schools have piped water.

Working with a limited budget, we’ve collaborated with a local hardware store and a welder to modify the traditional aluminum cooking pots ‘Sufurias’, adding a drain to transform them into improvised sinks. These new sinks will be filled with rainwater and then positioned so the grey water can drain into the school garden, which is of course particularly important during the dry seasons.  

The process, supervised by a teacher, has four steps. The first three are the aluminum sinks and the fourth uses a plastic basin:

1) rinsing and removing residual food.

2) washing in detergent

3) rinsing off soap

4) sanitizing with bleach water so the final basin is plastic since bleach corrodes aluminum.

We’ve found a local supplier in Meru Market… Milka Chemicals for the concentrated cleaning products - detergent and sanitizer.  She sells all her products in reclaimed plastic bottles.  Great price and easy to transport!

The schools that we work with range in size from 100 to 1000 pupils.  The majority have a population of about 400 students.  Most of these schools have 2 cooks to prepare the meals, which consist of a breakfast porridge called “Uji’ and a lunch of ‘Githeri’, made from maize and beans, with green and orange vegetables when available. For many of the children, these may be the only meals they have in a day.

We are piloting this dishwashing program in six schools.  We’ve conducted a training session with all the students in those schools and have asked the schools to keep us informed on the success or challenges with the improvised sinks.

Greetings from Pre-Service Teachers in Meru!

Farmers Helping Farmers (FHF) has been working in the Meru area of Kenya since the early 1980’s. Their work has been monumental in connecting and working alongside the locals. 

In writing our blog, my fellow classmate and I took the opportunity to speak with some of the staff tat the school where we are teaching. We asked multiple staff members how FHF has helped. They shared:

FHF has helped to improve the nutrition in the food we provide to our students. For instance, the organization helped to build a vegetable garden with netting to protect what we grow from the birds. This also helps to employ the gardener. Two years ago FHF also helped build our school kitchen, which has three cook stoves with proper ventilation making it easier and safer for the school cook. We now have proper stainless steel drying racks, dishes and utensils, as well as food storage which has helped improve food safety and sanitation.

Considering that approximately 90% of our students go to bed without food, our kitchen has improved the livelihood of our students while increasing school attendance. 

Teacher workshops has also helped to educate Kenyan teachers regarding food safety and sanitation which transfer to students having a deeper understanding of the importance of washing their hands for example both at school and at home. Furthermore, teachers learn about various teaching strategies that when implemented in their classrooms make a difference and have challenged Kenyan teachers to teach more to differentiated learning. 

Kenyan teachers shared that having teachers visit from Canada helps to teach our learners to have more open minds in terms of diversity. Interactions between visiting teachers and student increase our learners capacity to listen better too.

As pre-service teachers completing 5 weeks of a 10 week teaching practicum we have had the privilege to observe first hand the amazing work FHF does here in Kenya.

Blessings from Kenya.

Nicole & Alauryn 

The Last Moo-rah

 As we wrap up our final week in the field, we thought we’d take a moment to highlight a few of our favourite memories from the past three weeks: the moments that made us laugh, challenged us, reminded us why we chose this profession, and showed us the power of farmers and veterinary teams learning from one another.

After our Sweetwaters Game Park weekend (see photo), we started the week with our final walk-in clinic in Nkando (see photo), seeing roughly 400 cattle for vaccinations, treatments, and deworming. We had the opportunity to work alongside Animal Health students from Meru University, collaborating through cases and sharing approaches (see photo). This was a great reminder of how much we can learn from working together across programs and regions. We also joined Team Punda(donkey) in Jeruta for their pack donkey clinic, where we vaccinated and treated 175 donkeys, an FHF record. Naturally, we’re choosing to believe we’re here to keep breaking records and setting new personal bests.

The vet team straddling the equator at Sweetwaters Game Park

The Dairy Girls at the Nkando Walk-in Clinic

Later in the week, we attended a farmer training seminar on the essentials of good milk production led by Dr. Keefe (former AVC Dean and clinician). This was a group of young farmers all under 30 who brought incredible energy and engagement. Honestly, they were so sharp and motivated they could have run the session themselves, and they asked us many good questions. Between the laughter, learning, and plenty of live demonstrations, it was one of our highlights of the rotation. We are so excited to see how much this young group accomplishes over the next year and beyond (see photo)!

The vet team with the young farmers cohort

We spent our final full field day working alongside a local paravet, Raphael, collaboratively managing a variety of cases. The day included treating a suspected anaplasmosis case, routine herd health checks, pregnancy diagnoses (see photo), chronic mastitis workups, and dehorning calves the Kenyan way (rest assured lidocaine blocks were on board). We even saw a few goats which Dr. Glenna would undoubtedly appreciate.

Hannah and Dr. Raphael checking a cow for pregnancy

Our last work day ended with an evening of great company. The Farmers Helping Farmers and GROH volunteers and staff gathered together for a final farewell dinner, where many laughs, stories, and tears were shared. We’ve met so many new friends and colleagues here, it’s hard to believe everything happened in just three short weeks. The days have flown by in a blur of learning, teaching, innovating, and many electrolyte packets to make it through long days under the Kenyan sun. The people here have been so welcoming, and the Kenyan FHF team have treated us like family, for which we are so incredibly grateful. Our travels across the countryside of MeruCounty, visiting different Dairy Clubs and farms, have shown us the vast and stunning landscapes of Kenya. The last few hours here have been both exciting and bittersweet, as bags are packed and (teary) goodbyes are said. It’s hard to believe we’re leaving so soon, but our imminent departure has us ready to start planning our return!

Thanks for following our African adventures with the ngombe(cows)! Tatuonane Kenya, Asante Sana.

Love,

The Dairy Girls

(Vet Student Team)

This important work of Farmers Helping Farmers is made possible with funding from Global Affairs Canada through the Gender Responsive One Health Project with Alinea International

The New Farmers Helping Farmers Goat Team

 By Glenna McGregor

Goats navigating the aggressive thorns of the acacia bushes to eat the highly nutritious green leaves.

    This year Farmers Helping Farmers is adding small ruminants, in particular dairy goats, to its Gender Responsive One Health program. Goats are an important livestock species in Meru, Kenya, particularly in the semi-arid areas where the goats are one of the only livestock species that thrive in the dry conditions. Most of the goats here are raised in pastoral systems and are taken out to graze by their owners for many hours every day. Goats are browsers, using their highly mobile upper lip to pick the best of all the food available, this makes them highly  effective at eking good nutrition even amongst the sparse and generally very prickly plants. In Meru goats are milked, primarily for home consumption, as well as sold for meat and their manure used or sold for fertilizer. 

 

Thus far during our time on the goat project we’ve done many farm visits to try to get a better understanding of how goats are raised in Meru, the challenges that Farmers Helping Farmers could help with, common disease challenges, and areas where increased training would be helpful. While on farm we treat animals that are ill, discuss problems the farmers are facing, do health assessments on several animals in the herd and discuss any herd health problems we discover. Common issues we have come across include goitre from iodine deficiency, and abscesses, likely due to caseous lymphadenitis.

Goitre, an enlarged thyroid gland due to an iodine deficiency is common finding on many of our farm visits. The swelling in the neck just below the jaw is the large thyroid gland. 

On farm we often deworm the goats, which is a good opportunity to demonstrate how to estimate animal weight and discuss proper medication dosing and administration.

Bernard demonstrating appropriate medication drenching technique

We’ve done multiple seminars discussing zoonotic diseases, in particular brucellosis, anthrax and more general disease.

One of many seminars for a women's group. Bernard the Farmers Helping Farmer’s small ruminant paravet always leads an engaging seminar with lots of laughter and learning.

The longer term plan is to create a dairy goat manual and for Bernard, Farmer’s Helping Farmer’s goat paravetextraordinaire, to do frequent training on various goat production topics to the women’s groups.

A post-mortem examination on a goat that died the day before our farm visit. Cause of death was Haemonchosis (infection with large numbers of blood-sucking intestinal worms resulting in death due to blood 

This important work of Farmers Helping Farmers is made possible with funding from Global Affairs Canada through the Gender Responsive One Health Project with Alinea International

 

One Health in Action: Caring Across Species

 By: Emma Adams, Carissa Grove, and Hannah Quilty

    Week 2 of the Dairy Health rotation started at full speed. The three of us took a “divide and conquer" approach, each heading out with a different team into the field, one with kuku (poultry), one with ng’ombe (dairy), and one with punda (donkeys). The plan for the week was to gain more exposure to the different projects happening with FHF, before coming back together on Wednesday for our first ever FHF One Health clinic.

 

    With the poultry team, we each spent some time learning from Dr. Bowes about reportable avian diseases, the common conditions being seen in Kenya, and how to carry out thorough coop evaluations in the field (see photo), including the key parameters assessed during these visits (nesting box side, material, hanging enrichment, water and feed access). Most of the coop evaluations were done in Nkando on some of the rockiest roads imaginable; at times, it felt less like fieldwork and more like we were test-driving a rover on Mars. All in all, we had a clucking good time!

A typical chicken coop

     Wednesday this week was a whirlwind day of education, nutrition, cows, and some singing at the first-ever Farmers Helping Farmers One Health Clinic. Held in Muruguma, the clinic housed tented displays for education on poultry and small ruminant husbandry, nutrition, first-aid, and a station providing blood pressure monitoring. Along the roadside was a vaccination station where dog-owners could bring their dogs for rabies vaccination and farmers could have their cattle dewormed, vaccinated for Anthrax, Blackquarter (AKA Blackleg), Lumpy Skin Disease, and BVD, as well as seen and treated by veterinary volunteers (see photo of cow and photo of calf). We even had one of AVC’s alumni, Dr. Daniel Muasyawho is now a professor at the University of Nairobi, join us for the fun. Visited by women’s groups, farmers, and their families, the clinic provided a one-of-a-kind opportunity to focus on the health of people, animals, and the environment through a single lens. Over 40 dogs and 300 head of cattle passed through, bringing with them many curious visitors from the community, and a chance to share the One Health message across the Naari Dairy area.  

Carissa with Daniel pregnancy checking a cow

    It was a busy clinic week as we also had a donkey health clinic in Machaka on Thursday(see photo). The donkeys here are used for work and are seen hauling carts to and from the forest. They stopped by throughout the day, often on their way home from a hard-day's work to receive rabies and tetanus vaccinations, and dewormer. If owners had other concerns, we would assess them at this time and provide any additional care that we could. In addition to this, welfare assessments were performed as part of an ongoing project, and we got to see the newest version of the cart and harnesses in action. What shocked us the most about the clinic was that we had just as many dogs show-up to get rabies vaccines as we did donkeys. All-in-all a very successful day with over 120 animals vaccinated!

Donkeys waiting for their turn at the donkey clinic

    Having spent the past few days focused on our work throughout Meru, it’s hard to believe that two weeks have gone by already! We’re learning so much, both through our professors and Kenyan mentors, and from the locals we’ve met along the way. They’re teaching us new Swahili phrases every day, and our vocabulary has improved greatly since just last week! With only one week to go until our departure, we’ve been savouring the Kenyan sun (and lathering on as much sunscreen as humanly possible). There’s still more work to be done, more farms to be seen, and many more mangoes to be eaten. Until next week, Tatuonane (see you later)!

The three dairy girls with an adorable calf
 

Xoxo, 

The Dairy Girls 

Vet Student Team

This important work of Farmers Helping Farmers is made possible with funding from Global Affairs Canada through the Gender Responsive One Health Project with Alinea International

Protect Your Donkey and Your Donkey Will Protect You

 By Emily Czerwinski

Time sure does fly when you are busy! It has been an action packed week here in Kenya with walk in clinics being hosted daily in various areas for the ntigiri (donkeys in Kimiru). Mondays clinic was a memorable one in Muruguma market, where along with the usual rabies and tetanus vaccines, deworming, teeth floating and hoof trimming drive through, we were able to identify and begin treating some sick donkeys in the area. One in particular who appears to be suffering from aspiration pneumonia secondary to dysphagia has been on our treatment list all week - visiting each morning before continuing on with our day. His owner is known throughout the community for caring for his donkeys diligently.

On Tuesday we headed to Miugune where Dr. Anya and I treated 50 donkeys and vaccinated 15 dogs for rabies over the course of the day. Dr. Martha continued to workshop the donkey cart and harness project while completing welfare assessments with Dr. Josephat. The phrase of the day was pole-pole (slowly in Swahili) as we worked to educate donkey owners on “less is more” when it comes to donkey and dog handling.

clinic day in Miugune

Back to donkeys on Thursday, we headed to Machaka a little forestry village where the donkeys are primarily used for hauling wood from the forest into town. Our clinic was set up in the shade on the forest edge which provided a wonderful breeze most of the day. 

clinic day in Machaka

With the help of the whole student team we were able to vaccinate and treat 65 donkeys and vaccinate 67 dogs, our biggest clinic day yet! One of the biggest successes from the day was getting to see the new and improved donkey cart and harnessing trucking around for most of the day. With new breeching added and a different attachment across the chest and shoulders, our demo donkeys drew lots of interest from the donkey owners in the area. It has been so cool to see the huge improvements in harnessing here over the last week.

a young puppy we vaccinated

    This weekend was our recharge weekend but before leaving on Friday, the donkey team spent a hot morning working on our sewing skills to build more harnessing and breeching. Our goal for the upcoming week is to have three new sets of harnesses attached to the carts in different villages with the hopes of setting up harnessing workshop days to follow.

new harness with breeching out for a spin 

Asante sana for your continued support of FHF so we can continue our projects here in Kenya,

Emily

This important work of Farmers Helping Farmers is partially funded by Global Affairs Canada through the Gender Responsive One Health Project with Alinea International and partially through the Sir James Dunn Animal Welfare Centre of the Atlantic Veterinary College at the University of Prince Edward Island.