The "desert orchard" and water from Kilimanjaro

How I managed to make it happen I dunno but I did!

Without water, there is no life. With little water, there is life, but it is only alive. With abundant water, life thrives.

When I bought this land, there was no water. It is Mateves, a traditional Massai land, and the hill was known thirty years ago as Goat Hill because they ate everything alive. Sometimes, its so dry the Massai live by drinking the blood of cows. 

Then, ex-pats and conservationists started buying parts of the hill from the Massai. They put in massive capturing tanks of the rainfall. November to May is the rainy season, and from June to October, there is no rain. They got enough to live and plant acacia trees. And thats how it went for twenty years. 

When I bought land here, I had a different vision. I wanted an orchard here and knew I could do it, as they had just put a brand new water tank up at the top of Ngorobob Hill. Just before I bought the property, the old caretaker got a connection to the water pipe along the dirt road. However, it took me a while to figure out that this water was not coming from the new tank but from an old one. It was scarce and contaminated by natural excess salt and fluoride in the main Arusha River, too.

The solution? I had Godfrey, our caretaker, bring out the AWUSA engineers to find a way to connect to the new water tank line. But it was 600 meters away. I had to organize it all myself, the authorities told me. They would supervise but not pay for anything. OK. That was around October 20th.

I had to get approval from five different landowners to have the pipe go through their property; organize with five other neighbors who would help pay in return for them also to get the water; figure out where to buy everything at the lowest price; organize the digging of a 600-meter trench; and do it all before the rainy season started. 

I meant to bring along my phone to capture a photo of them when they connected our new pipe to the new tank water line, but I didn’t and instead just enjoyed the moment. As the connection was made, the first sprinkles of water came out of the sky. 

“Nzuri, a good omen,” the engineer remarked.

The next day, we finished, and here is the final connection being done.

I finished on October 31st, and the rains started on November 1st.

This makes me very happy, not just for the orchard. My neighbors have young children, and you can already see they are getting fluoride stains on their teeth from the old water. This new water comes from Mount Kilimanjaro, a spring near Moshi. Tanzania has plenty of water; it needs to be allocated better. There is also talk of a $1B loan from India to have a water line go from Lake Victoria to Arusha and Dodoma. With water, everything grows here.

It's not during the rainy season that matters, but the six months of dry. And even then, there’s too much sun, being on the equator. So I have planted evergreens (we are about a mile high here, so it's cool enough for juniper, firs, pines… but hot enough for tropical fruit trees). I planted the evergreens on the west side of the orchard. This will eventually knock off about 3 hours of sunlight to the fruit and nut trees. My neighbors have walls along the orchard’s east side, which takes several hours of direct sunlight away.

I was surprised at how everything was kept alive for the past two years—enough water for them to live. But now, the rain has started. It's rained for the past six days. I would not be able to lead up the new water line project at this time. 

The water is so good. I can’t taste any contaminants in it. And the expat neighbors say it's suitable for drinking. I will have it tested to see. 

One thing I enjoyed during those two weeks was plotting out the new trench line up on the mountain. I didn’t know these neighbors before, so it was awkward meeting them for the first time and asking them a favor. But they were all accommodating and had small requests I managed to fulfill. 

For the last 25 years, they have not impacted this area of the hill. It's about 40 acres that is untouched by goats and cows, too, with a wet season river gorge. Along it, I saw many different birds, bush babies, dik-diks, rabbits and jack hares, jackals, raccoons, and there are monkeys now, too. Someone dropped off three vervet monkeys!

Most of the expats thought I was crazy for trying to start an orchard in a desert. But it is not a desert! The soil here is deep red and grows everything. The orchard is located where a lot of the run-off soil has accumulated. The only thing growing there were acacia trees, which I had to remove. Nothing can survive alongside acacia trees. Their roots strangle everything else. But they are excellent nitrogen fixers, especially after living for twenty years. I have lots of other acacia on other parts of the property already, too, so I didn’t mind removing them. Some of those conservative neighbors did, though, and I got an earful!

But it's a trade-off. They can drive to the organic shop and buy all their fruits and vegetables, which are trucked in using fuel, and let acacia trees rule the place. That's our global food market, and it's terrific, but I want to have food from our land and share it with others. Godfrey already brings many of them groceries from Glenn’s organic shop. Glenn has also offered to take anything I buy and sell at the shop. Many of the trees I planted come from his farm. But I imagine Godfrey and his three sons will wind up with a small delivery service from the orchard someday soon.

I also got electricity set up. My Zanzibar neighbor across the dirt road had paid for the poles to come to his place, and one was right on my property when I arrived, so I set it up in a few days with Tenesco. It's unreliable, but solar and wind here are plenty year-round, so that is my long-term energy solution. 

And I have been very focused on planting more native bush trees and succulents. It's all a matter of discovering what grows great and where. I have rocky land, for example, and so far, it's only the baobobs that survive there. Six of them have survived, with one having a double tree. They are now two.

I am planting 48 dragon cactus plants in a week. These came from Karatu. I got all four varieties and will plant them with poles, among the rocks where it drains, on a grass slope, and will see where they do the best. I also have about 40 succulents to plant.

Now that I look back on the events of the past month, I don’t see it as that difficult. But in the moment, especially taking the first steps, it was daunting, as my Swahili is still very limited. But now, wow, I feel good. And I know how I made it happen— with a vision and persistence to make the dream happen.

Now that I have water, I dream of an Infiniti pool to watch the sunsets over the mountains of Serengeti and Ngorongoro.

I included a couple of videos in this post. I want to compile a 1st and 2nd year video of the orchard soon.