‹Living farms› in Kenia
On its biodynamic school/farm, the Mbagathi Rudolf Steiner School (KE) combines education with basic food provision for its students.
The Rudolf Steiner School in Mbagathi has 350 students. An eleven-minute documentary by Lin Bautze (project manager) and Philipp Wilson (camera), which is part of the Living Farms series, focuses on the school's agricultural orientation. Food crops are part of the syllabus, for instance the plants that form part of the children's breakfast. There is a good reason for this: some of the students attending this school come from very poor backgrounds and are undernourished when they first arrive.
The school started in 1989 with a small vegetable plot that has now grown into a large area with fruit trees and fields where vegetables such as cabbage, spinach and carrots are grown. Francis Kilonzo, who is responsible for the farm and the garden, points out the soil's specific properties, "It is difficult to grow anything in black earth. It retains a lot of water in the raining season and dries out quickly when the rain stops. Plants struggle to survive in such conditions." Red earth, compost, manure from the school's own cows, weeds from the garden, kitchen scraps and the five biodynamic compost preparations are mixed in to improve the soil's basic structure.
In the gardening lessons the students learn how the food is produced – with long-term effects: some have gone on to become farmers after leaving school. «They really know how important the soil is," says gardening teacher Rose M. Ingala. A practical solution has been found for the school holidays, when the land is used for students of biodynamic farming and Waldorf education from all over Africa.
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