The day consisted of visit to sisal plantation, Darius’ farm and football match against local youth team. The preparation for the football match started already on the first bus ride of the day. Listening to the plans about who is playing which spot, some of us thought that there is no way this is just an easy peasy lemon squeezy -kind of game.
Our first stop of the day was Sisal Estate, one of the biggest sisal plantations of the world. We got a thorough talk about sisal production and processing by mr. Anthony, the manager of the estate. Sisal estate is roughly 130 km2 and it employs 2000 workers. There is even a village within the estate, where the workers’ families live, including school, health clinic etc. We walked through the factory and saw the whole process from plant leaves to processed and packed product, ready to leave to Mombasa harbor. It was interesting to see the machinery and how much the production demands human power. One
interesting point was that up to 80% of the actual plant goes to waste during processing. We got to see the waste field and we were told about the plans of starting to produce bio-energy from the waste. We hope all the best for this project!
Our next stop was Darius’ farm close to Wundanyi village. He works at the Research station, but he is also an amazing farmer who is not afraid to take advantage of new technology and solves problems with his own inventions. Darius’ family was warmly welcoming, and right at the front yard he could present us his cattle and the whole process of making bio-gas from the waste of the cattle. The yard looked like a scientist’s laboratory. We also had a tour on his fields which consisted of maize, 23 different varieties of bananas, sugar cane, passion fruit and pumpkins. He even gets so much bananas, that he can sell them to others. We got to taste passion fruits and bananas and they were the best.
After the tour we arrived back to the research station quite early at 4 pm. People started to get ready for the football match. Around 5 pm we went to the game field and were a bit shocked how crowdy it was. We didn’t have enough players, so we got two local players in our team. The game was exciting and intense. During the second halftime it started raining, but that did not stop the game. After all the game ended 1 -1.
