Crossing the poverty line by making pawpaw jam
By Arthur Okwemba
Uder the swaying pawpaw trees, delighted children play excitedly as their mother, standing on a stool, reaches for some fruits.
Harvesting pawpaw is serious business in Maseno Village, Vihiga District. A few metres from the pawpaw trees, two women � one of whom has a baby strapped on her back � are getting a fire going and putting together cups and cooking pans.
They size one of three pawpaws collected in a pile and seem unhappy with the harvest this far. Not ripe enough, but it will do.
They have just begun the long exciting process of making pawpaw jam at home.
Using a simple technology, women of modest education are revolutionising their lives. In many rural homes, pawpaw, guava and avocado are so common that they are left to children and birds, but the ability to make jam has made the women see the fruits from a different perceptive.
They are guarding against the environment and conserving the indigenous genes pool of certain tree species. While at the same time
By using the jam-making technology, they can generate income to improve their lives and those of their families, while appreciating what the environment can do for them if it is conserved.
At the household level, families unable to afford margarine or factory-processed jam can now prepare their own right in their backyard.
"For the past three years, since we knew of this technology and that one of making scones, our families have witnessed a great difference in their standard of living," says Christine Ochienge, as she peels one of the pawpaw fruits.
The pawpaw is peeled as a first step in processing jam. These fruits are then pounded into a paste. A measure of the paste is taken, and this helps them decide how much sugar is to be added to it.
If the paste is one glass, for instance, then an equal amount of sugar is required. The two ingredients are then poured into a pan and heated for some time.
While it is heating, someone has to constantly stir the mixture to ensure it does not stick to the sides of the pan.
For the women, the time taken to heat and turn the ingredients into jam is not important. Instead, they only take a small portion of the mixture and drop it into a glass of cold water.
If the jam sinks to the bottom of the glass and solidifies, then it is ready for use. But if it does not, the jam is heated further, and process repeated until the desired result is achieved.
Once the women are satisfied the jam has been formed, they then add lemon water. This is used as a preservative. The quantity of lemon added ranges from one tablespoon to two or three, depending on the amount of jam being prepared.
"In most cases," says Ochienge, "the lemon preserves the jam for between two to three weeks."
One glass of pawpaw juice would need between one and two tablespoons of lemon to be added.
The jam is sold for between Sh5 and Sh15, to the residents of the area. A pawpaw, which costs Sh 20, can fetch a profit of about Sh10 if jam is made from it.
For now, the preparation of the jam depends heavily on demand. But the three women, who are members of the 20-strong Samaria Women's Group, say they are still assessing how to cost and package it.
The group consists of widows and women whose husbands are unemployed.
When they started making jam, they realised that many people were not asking for their jam because they could not afford bread.
The group invited a baker who was working in bread factory in Kisumu town to help them construct a kiln that could bake about 300 scones. Scones are a community because they are considered affordable.
The scones go for five shillings a piece, with the total consignment of 300 fetching a profit of Sh 400.
There are two types of scones: those with bananas as an ingredient and the rest having sweet potatoes as their constituent.
The use of banana and sweet potatoes for scones has created a demand for the raw materials. And the residents are responding well to it.
Each of the women and other residents of the area are planting more bananas and sweet potatoes. "They know there is a ready market that gives better prices. In each of the homes, you are likely to see an increase in the number of banana stems or area cultivated with sweet potatoes," says the group's chairlady.
The knowledge of making jam, which resulted in the idea of scones and set in motion other chain reactions, started in a very humble way.
In 2000, a student from a local university visited the Samaria group to see how rural women were struggling to make ends met.
In one of the homesteads, the student was perturbed by a woman who was throwing away pawpaw fruits badly devoured by birds.
"What you are throwing can make you jump the poverty line, and never look back. You can make jam out of a paw paw both for commercial and domestic purposes," Wendwa rembers the student telling her.
"At first, I dismissed it as joke, until the young woman decided to teach us how to make pawpaw jam," she says.
The student, a representation of how knowledge developed at the universities can trickle down and help communities to improve lives, also taught the women how to make avocado juice.
Says Melissa Anindo, a mother of five: "These days, I do not have to worry about lunch for my children. When there are enough avocadoes, I just make the juice and store it."
Use of simple technologies by Samaria women and the knowledge of how valuable pawpaw and avocado fruits can be, are some of the activities under focus as entry point in poverty reduction.
The ability of communities and individuals to manipulate their environment in a sustainable way, are being touted as the only hope for the poor to achieve the millennium development goals.
The goals stipulate that countries should ensure that they reduce by half the number of their citizens living below the poverty line by the year 2015.
� An AWC-features
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