World Vegetable Center

Friday, February 15, 2019

The day started early for me, as I had signed up to accompany John on a field trip to the World Vegetable Center this morning. We needed to be at the Naura Springs Hotel by 8:15 to accompany others from the ECHO conference who were also going to the same site. When we arrived, via Ray, there was a crowd of people waiting to board buses for four different trips, but John’s new friend, George Mkanza, was also going to the WVC and asked if we’d like to ride along with him in his car, and so we did. George is a retired former bigwig with the Lutheran church here in Tanzania and drives a nice car with air conditioning. The AC was irresistible.

A fourth person, a woman from Sweden, but now residing in southern France, also rode with us. I never could find out why she—“I am Karen” (pronounced Car-wren)— was in this group, but she spoke a lot about how she had lived in Denmark, Italy, and now resides in France, and was often in Nairobi in the 1970s and 80s, when according to her it was truly beautiful. At WVC, she was quite forward in asking questions as setups for her opinions on a variety of topics. At one point, she announced that she has swum in all the oceans and seas in the world and thus is an expert on plastic pollution. She rode back to Arusha with us later, and I still did not find out why she is here. However, she did disclose that her tourist visa is expiring soon, so she is not working with any organization here.

The World Vegetable Center is a large plant research facility out toward Usa River. (https://avrdc.org/about-avrdc/new-locations/eastern-southern-africa/) This Tanzanian center is part of a worldwide network of centers which focus on breeding traditional vegetables to be disease and pest resistant and grow better in regional climates. On our tour, we saw laboratories where research was being done on combatting white flies, which have recently become a scourge in Tanzania. We learned  how indigenous plants, such as African eggplants (We called them “bitterballs” in Liberia.), nightshade, and amaranth, are being improved and reintroduced to the local farmers. Now 84% of the vegetable seeds planted in Tanzania come from the WVC. One of the buildings I liked best was the big seed bank, in which all the many seed varieties are  being safely kept for decades.

Workers in the extensive vegetable plots.

Conducting research on how to combat the white fly and other vegetable pests and diseases.

Raising amaranth, my new favorite vegetable.

At the seed bank. (The Swedish woman is behind me)

Seed packets which are supplied to farmers.

I managed to keep up with the group until the last part, a tour of the extensive crop fields and huge greenhouses. I could see much of this, but walking in the fields would have been too difficult for me. Instead, I sat in a covered shelter and read until it was time for lunch. Staff had prepared a very generous buffet of rice, African eggplant stew, red beans, fried chicken, chipsies, amaranth greens, bananas, and watermelon. It was all delicious, even the African eggplant, which, given my memories of eating it in Liberia, I hadn’t expected to like. The amaranth greens had a slightly different taste than the common plants used here, but the flavor was very pleasing, too.

I thought this was a large plot of tomatoes, but Dr. Dinssa told me these fruits are really African eggplants.

We know this as choroko, but they say they are mung beans.

Alt our table for lunch was Dr. Fekadu Dinssa, a seed breeder at WVC.  In conversing with him, we discovered that his oldest son recently graduated from Stanford and is now in Seattle working for Microsoft. Once again I was struck by how many of the people we meet in Africa have family scattered all over the globe.

Discussing amaranth with Dr. Fekadu Dinssa.

Lunch: the greens are amaranth and there is a small African eggplant in the stew.

By 1:30, George was ready to leave, so we loaded up and headed back to Arusha. Karen, who again chose the front seat, chatted all the way and had a way of touching George on his arm when she would lean over to make a point. Hum. We remained virtually invisible in the back seat all the way back to town.

Once back at Kundayo, we realized that John’s camera was missing. I remembered that he had picked it up from the table after lunch instead of letting me put it back in my purse. Obviously, he had left it on the back seat of George’s car. Thus began some frantic emailing to friends to get George’s email and so on. We didn’t get an answer from George by bedtime, so stay tuned.

I gave Mazo some of the literature I had picked up at WVC, and we had a good discussion about plants and gardening. He would have loved the tour we had, but the center isn’t open to the general public. They not only could not handle very many guests but also wouldn’t want the risk of people trampling around their experimental plots and maybe carrying in other insects or plant seeds. It’s a research center, not a demonstration farm, so I feel very fortunate that I was able to see this unique place.