{"id":7668,"date":"2018-07-19T12:37:59","date_gmt":"2018-07-19T11:37:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/selfhelpafrica.org\/uk\/?p=7668"},"modified":"2018-07-19T12:54:28","modified_gmt":"2018-07-19T11:54:28","slug":"damaris-succeeds-with-cassava","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/selfhelpafrica.org\/uk\/damaris-succeeds-with-cassava\/","title":{"rendered":"Damaris Succeeds with Cassava"},"content":{"rendered":"

Damaris Oloo says her daughters\u2019 early marriages were a consequence of a life of poverty.<\/span><\/p>\n

Had her small farm in Homa Bay in Western Kenya been as productive then as it is now, their futures could have been different.<\/span><\/p>\n

A successful cassava producer who now sells the tubers that she grows on a nine acres holding for milling at a local cooperative, Damaris recalls the heartbreak that she felt when the girls first moved away.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMy daughters married early because of poverty. At the time we had nothing \u2013 we had very little to eat, no beds to sleep on\u2026 I used to farm less than an acre of land. We harvested little. I couldn\u2019t afford to send my children to school and they suffered from anemia and other malnutrition-related diseases,\u201d she remembers.<\/span><\/p>\n

Upon joining a local Self Help Africa project in 2016, Damaris became a cassava farmer and seed entrepreneur. She was trained in how to farm cassava, how to recognize pests, analyse the weather, and transform her family farm into a viable business.<\/span><\/p>\n

Damaris now has crops growing on nine acres. With her additional income she has been able to move her family out of an old thatched house into a brand new home that has electricity and a toilet. Her youngest children are attending boarding school.<\/span><\/p>\n