YALI RLC: My Experience (Day 20)

October 13 was the 20th day of YALI RLC NC3, and was wonderful but a little tiring. Waking up as early as 4:30am wasn't an easy task. Eating breakfast as early as 5am, too, was alien. But all these had to be done at those times because of the trip. It was a wonderful morning.

At Seme border, we had a lot of barriers; from being obstructed from continuing our journey for reasons best known to the immigration officials, to some cables that served as deterrence for our biggest bus, not to talk of how messy the border was. But thankfully, we sailed through those difficult hurdles. The first thing I observed in Benin Republic is, the country has just a few petrol filling stations, but the black-marketers sell the Nigerian petrol which is considered to be cheaper and more effective than any other kind of petrol. After some time, we got to Songhai Centre.

Songhai is indeed more than just a farm, it's a tourist center. Songhai Farm Center was founded in 1985 by Father Godfrey Nzamujo, one of those remarkable people who make amazing things happen. He has created a powerful vision of what is possible with grassroots agricultural development and inspired the best and the brightest to join him. He has created a center of excellence by finding the best people, the best technology and the right markets for local agricultural products. The name Songhai is borrowed from the prosperous and prestigious empire of Western Africa in the 15th century. Songhai Farm is an integrated farm that converts waste to wealth, biogas to produce electricity and cooking gas, production of maggot to feed fish, fertilizers very rich, fertilizers that reduce weed. Songhai has so much commitment to excellence, zero emission research initiative (ZERO).

The Songhai Centre is a showcase. It is a totally integrated system, combining crop production, aquaculture and raising of livestock. The “output” of each section (e. g. chicken manure), becomes the input for another section. Maximum recycling of water and waste into biogas, fertilizer, etc. creates a system with minimum environment impact and almost Zero waste. This requires substantial upfront investment but lowers operating costs (fertilizer, fee and energy) and labour (e.g. waste water flows from where it is produced to where it is processed to where it is needed, all by gravity). Low input production means higher profit, and low environmental impact means the place is pristine. Songhai Centre raises thousands of animals (chickens, turkeys, quail, ducks, guinea fowl, pigs, rabbits and enormous guinea pigs called “grass cutters”) and yet there isn’t a tint of the smell of manure.

We got back to ASCON on the same day, and rested until the following day (after we had had dinner, of course).

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