Kenya say “ng'ombe” (cow in Swahili)!

 by Molly Park

My first time learning about Farmers Helping Farmers and hearing Dr. John VanLeeuwen talk about working in Kenya was September 2024, at the SJDAWC Symposium at the AVC, when I hadn’t yet sent in my application for veterinary school. I remember being in awe of the great amount of courage and altruism it takes to do such international work. Looking back, I don’t think the eager undergraduate student in me would have ever imagined that almost two years later, I’d be packing my bags to help do the very work Dr. VanLeeuwen described.

An example of the friendly faces we’re greeted with every day

Since the start of the summer break, fellow vet student Marika Wesselius and I have been helping Dr. Essau Serem complete the final step of his zero-grazing trial study for his PhD through UPEI. Our role is to perform physical exams on the dairy cows seen during the initial farm visits last year, do a California mastitis test if they’re lactating and pregnancy checks if they’ve been bred and conduct stall assessments.

Serem, Molly, Marika (the dream team) and their signature pink bucket

Over the past few weeks of visiting smallholder dairy farms, I have grown a deeper appreciation for how important these farms, and dairy cows, are to the wider community of Meru County and to the families who rely on them both financially and nutritionally. At each farm, we’re greeted by not only owners, but parents, grandparents, siblings, children, neighbours, and sometimes other furry friends!

Not only do we deworm cows, but we also give flea/tick medication to dogs and puppies we find on farms

They’ve all welcomed us with open arms and seem eager to hear the recommendations we give to help improve milk production and cow comfort, and prevent common health issues, such as mastitis. Although we may not speak the same language, we all have the same goal of creating community and improving the welfare and production of their dairy cows.

A zero-grazing intervention farm that took on many of the recommendations from last summer

It’s been a privilege being able to learn from Dr. VanLeeuwen, Dr. Essau Serem, and Marika (who grew up on a dairy farm). Although I’ve worked on dairy farms in PEI, there are so many milestones I’ve hit in my short time in Kenya. For instance, here is a list of things I have done for the first time: doing rectal palpation for cow pregnancy, administering a cow magnet, dehorning a mature cow using Gigli wire, and directly assisting with a calving.

One of many rectal palpations

Experiences I wouldn’t have been able to do without the help of the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Scholarship Program, UPEI and Farmers Helping Farmers. Every day, I’m humbled and grateful for the opportunity to grow and learn from everyone I meet during my time in Kenya.

See you next time,

Molly

#QEScholar

Paravet Training Program

 By Marika Wesselius

Beginning May 21st, Dr. Essau Serem, Dr. John VanLeeuwen, Molly Park, and I participated in a four-day paravet practical skills training program that brought together paravets and extension officers from the Meru Central Dairy Cooperative Society, local veterinarians (including two from Meru University of Science and Technology), and Vets Without Borders students and their supervisor. What began as a training initiative quickly became an incredible exchange of knowledge, experience, and community collaboration.

Molly Marika and Serem - the dream team

Day 1 was spent on a dairy farm in the outskirts of Meru, where we focused on the foundations of effective veterinary care: taking a thorough history, performing systematic physical examinations, communicating findings clearly, and problem-solving common causes of milk rejection. Each session was led by a different veterinarian or field expert, giving participants the opportunity to learn a variety of practical approaches, tips, and techniques while gaining hands-on experience under their guidance. One of the most rewarding aspects of the day was the collaborative atmosphere—everyone brought different perspectives and experiences to the table, and we all learned from one another.

On Day 2, we applied the practical skills learned the previous day at a local dairy farm. Together, we performed physical examinations on several sick animals and worked systematically through the diagnostic process to determine treatment plans. For many participants, there was a “light bulb” moment—when concepts that once felt abstract suddenly became clear. We also held sessions on stall design and cow comfort, discussing simple but impactful management changes that could improve animal welfare and productivity for local farmers.

Molly and Marika prepared for vaccine injections

Day 3 focused on refining our pregnancy diagnostic skills at a local slaughterhouse using cattle at various stages of gestation prior to their slaughter. I especially enjoyed the challenge of developing this skill set and witnessing the excitement among participants as their confidence grew with each examination. It was great to see one another strengthen their existing knowledge, knowing these skills would directly support local farmers in improving herd management and reproductive efficiency.

Day 4 was truly one for the books! We hosted a walk-in clinic where farmers from surrounding communities brought their animals for vaccination, deworming and treatment, giving the trainees a variety of opportunities to apply the practical skills they learned during the first three days of the training program. The teamwork throughout the day was incredible. Everyone stepped in wherever help was needed—whether vaccinating cattle in the crush, treating sick or injured cows, organizing the flow of people and animals, or deworming and vaccinating small companion animals. By the end of the clinic, we had cared for more than 370 animals.

The walk-in clinic grounds

More than anything, the clinic highlighted the power of community. People of different backgrounds, ages, education levels, and experiences came together with a shared goal of improving animal health and supporting the livelihoods of local farmers. By the time the final animal had been treated, smiles were wide, hearts were full, and the sense of accomplishment was undeniable.

"It's so great to be in Kenya as a Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Scholar. Thank you to FHF and UPEI for this opportunity of a lifetime.

#QEScholars"

My Experience Visiting Primary Schools in Kenya

 By: Bridget Keedwell

I fondly remember writing letters to students in Kenya when I was in elementary school. I had a teacher, Mme. Lydia, who completed a teacher practicum in Kenya with Farmers Helping Farmers. Fast forward many years, now I have the opportunity to visit primary schools in Kenya as a nutrition student. Truly a full circle moment! 

 

At every school, our nutrition team is greeted with an endless amount of waves, high fives and smiles. Getting to meet the students is the highlight of every school visit! The kindness and generosity of students and staff has been incredible and a gift I will always treasure.

 

 

For children, attending school provides two meals a day, typically uji and githeri. One of the projects our nutrition team is working on is to determine the nutritional value of each meal. Our aim is to share our knowledge on nutrition to help enhance the nutritional value of the uji and githeri. Along with recommendations, we always highlight all the positives that every school is doing, such as adding orange and green vegetables to the githeri. Our goal is to emphasize that every small change makes a difference! Collaboration between the school, parents and Farmers Helping Farmers is a key factor in initiating change.  

 

Working as a team with the other nutrition students, Enya and Miriam, has been such a fun and positive experience. Miriam, a nutrition student at Kenyatta University in Kenya, has been so valuable in sharing her knowledge of Kenyan culture with us. Cultural immersion is essential for gaining a global perspective and fostering personal development.  

 

 As nutrition students, we’ve been extremely fortunate to have had Colleen share her wisdom and expertise with us these past few weeks. It’s been a wonderful experience getting to visit schools with her and witness all the amazing projects she’s contributed to. Thank you, Colleen,  for your dedication and guidance!  

 

Thank you to Queen Elizabeth Scholars, UPEI and Farmers Helping Farmers for providing us students with the opportunity to gain hands-on learning experience and become global citizens. 

 

#QEScholars

 

QES Nutrition Interns in Meru County!

by Colleen Walton

UPEI nutrition interns, Enya Burnett and Bridget Keedwell, and I (Colleen Walton) arrived in Kenya early May along with the veterinary team as part of the Queen Elizabeth II Scholars project.

After our adventures in and around Nairobi and travel to Kiirua we were delighted to meet the fourth member of our team, Miriam Muthama. Miriam is a fourth-year nutrition student at Kenyatta University who is on her 3-month attachment with Farmers Helping Farmers.  The work of the nutrition team is to assess the nutritional quality of the meals served to students at partner schools. Commendations and recommendations will be made individually to each school based on the assessment findings. 

As part of the Gender Responsive One Health Project, the team will conduct school hygiene and food safety follow up assessments. Hand and dishwashing, rodent prevention, kitchen and school environment to keep foods safe are the main areas assessed. It is amazing to me how much students to help out with the school’s operations such as dishwashing and filling handwash stations with water.

Bridget, Enya and Miriam are applying their academic knowledge and learning new skills for these practical assessments as well as cross-cultural learning. Miriam is a great asset to this team and surely helps the Canadians navigate the Kenyan context!

The team is having a lot of fun interacting with the young and older students who are always interested to meet and greet the muzungos.

The student team is working together well to conduct these assessments, analyse the information collected and prepare and present the information to the Head Teachers at the schools.  Each school is very unique and in some cases the feedback is a bit difficult!  

The QES project includes two Master of Science in Nutrition students. Glory Karimi attended UPEI and successfully defended her MSc research in April 2026. Her research evaluated the effect of the FHF Student Nutrition Clubs on students knowledge, attitudes and practices. 

Shahleen Jemesis is an QES MSc student at Kenyatta University. She is completing her first year of courses and successfully defended her research proposal with the KU Department of Health Sciences. Shahleen will evaluate the impact of text-message information boosters on the knowledge, attitudes and self-efficacy of Community Health Promoters. You may meet here in PEI later this year!

The team in Kenya will also support teachers to lead Nutrition Clubs at primary schools, provide nutrition training for a second group of Community Health Promoters, and lead a train-the-trainers with a women’s group and help them to deliver training and prepare “super” githeri. 

Weekends are an opportunity for other adventures, such as walking to the dam and waterfall in Nyambene Hills and a safari to Samburu National Reserve.

Stay tuned for updates from the team!

#qescholars 

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

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.

 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 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