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With commitment, she has proved them wrong
Ms Thereza Najjemba harvests a bunch of matooke. Every week, she harvests at least 40 bunches of bananas which she sells between Shs6,000 and Shs8,000. PHOTO BY FRED MUZAALE
Thereza Najjemba has dispelled claims that bananas can no longer grow in Kayunga District. She has been baptised “Maama Matooke” because she is the only one in her sub-county who still has a lot of matooke for sale and home consumption, writes Fred Muzaale
Small patches of unattended to banana plants are now common sight in Kayunga District which was once one of the leading banana growing areas in the country.
In Nazigo Sub-county in particular, which was the main banana growing sub-county in the district, you come across tiny banana bunches dangling on shrivelling congested banana plants.
But it’s a different story when one visits Ms Thereza Najjemba’s garden in Kasega village in the same Nazigo Sub-county.
A spacious and well-attended to four-acre banana plantation welcomes you as you enter a village evident of subsistence farming.
“Who owns that banana plantation?” I ask a passerby.
“It belongs to Maama Matooke,” he tells me, and volunteers to take me to her garden where we found her digging. He adds that, “She is now popularly known as Maama Matooke (literally meaning mother of matooke) in the entire district because she is the only one in the entire sub-county who still has a lot of matooke for sale and home consumption.”
Ms Najjemba’s long journey from a subsistence farmer to a now prominent model farmer in Kayunga District started two years ago when she joined the National Agricultural Advisory Services ( Naads) programme.
The aging but still energetic Najjemba says; “I used to own a small banana plantation from which I could sometimes harvest tiny matooke bunches for home consumption. Because I lacked enough food for my family, I could sometimes go to Nazigo town to buy matooke,” Ms Najjemba recalls. “But today, all this is history,” she recollects with a broad smile.
In 2008, Ms Najjemba says she joined the Naads programe and was given 600 banana tissue plantlets to plant and farm tools that included a spade and a wheelbarrow to use in carrying farm-yard manure to the garden. She was later trained on how to plant the tissues and how to look after them.
“With the 600 suckers of the kisansa variety I was given, I planted a model four-acre banana plantation,” she says.
She dug holes which were three by three feet wide and two feet deep and then got loam soil and mixed it with farm yard manure and cow dung, a mixture she used to refill the holes.
“After filling the holes with manure, I waited for a month before I planted the banana tissue plantlets. You have to wait for a month before you plant so that you allow the manure-mixture to lose heat and decompose completely,” she says.
After six months, an agricultural extension worker helped her dig water trenches that carry and also hold water in the banana plantation.
“These water trenches must be technically dug so that water is held in a particular area while at the same time, some of it moves to other parts of the garden,” Najjemba, a mother of 10 explains.
She says that during the same period, she mulched her plantation with dry grass and old maize stems to reduce soil erosion and preserve water in the soil.
To kill banana weevils, Najjemba uses a mixture of urine, red pepper, lantana camara (kayukiyuki) and ash which she pounds and applies on the banana plants. “
We don’t waste our urine. We collect all of it and put it to use. This saves me the cost of buying pesticides,” she says.
Najjemba also says regular thinning of her banana plants to live only three plants in each hole is very important as it decreases the competition among the plants for soil nutrients. This enables her get big bunches. Every week, Ms Najjemba says she harvests at least 40 bunches of bananas which she sells between Shs6,000 and Shs8,000.
“Unlike in the past, money finds me at my home because it’s the buyers who come looking for matooke,” she says with a smile.
However, transport costs for the materials she uses in mulching her garden are draining her pocket as she says she gets most of the materials from the neighbouring village. Ms Najjemba dispels claims by most residents in Kayunga District that matooke can no longer grow in the district.
“It’s laziness and ignorance on how to practice modern farming that has resulted into scarcity of matooke in this disrict. With commitment and modern farming practices, one can harvest lorries of matooke,” she says She has used some of her proceeds from matooke to start a poultry unit of 200 birds. “My life has changed. I now have enough food to eat and to sell,” Najjemba concludes, and says that with dedication, all is possible.
