It was nearly 37 °C as I ate my breakfast in the morning. The prospect of a scorching hot day out in the bush on bumpy tracks, communicating in a language that still doesn’t come easily, did not really excite me.

We spent the morning teaching groups of men and greeting various families. Village women are too busy in the mornings to come to meetings. They have farm work to do—grain to pound, food to cook, water to fetch, children to organize and firewood to gather. So we agreed to come back to Danya in the early afternoon to meet with the women. We also checked on the progress of several small tree nurseries. Each one is located close to the village wells. In the heat, the young seedlings need watering two or three times a day. Water is pulled from 40—60 meters down, so the fact that the seedlings have survived this first 6 weeks is evidence that these men and women are hopeful about the transformation that tree farming will bring.

	Sally with some of the Danya women.

When we returned to Danya following teaching in another village, there was a small group of women under a tree, eager to greet us. They talked of the need for rain as daily they were watching the emerging millet crop wilt for the lack of water. There were signs that food was in short supply in many households, and the cattle, camels and donkeys at the nearby well all looked thin and listless. But as always there was a warm welcome.

I invited the women to climb on the back of our pickup to see some farms with Aussie acacias just 10 minutes down the track. As the women and their babies piled into the truck there was the same excitement as a bunch of western teenage girls going on a school camp—shrills of joy, as we bounced off to the Fulani village.

The Hausa proverb, “seeing chases away hearing” was very applicable during our visit. As we inspected a successful tree nursery run by Fulani farmers and then a one-hectare demonstration farm that has healthy two-year old trees, they looked at me with delight and said, “So this is what you were telling us about! Now we understand what you want us to do. Maybe this new work will be worth it.”

In a society where women are not seen as very intelligent or innovative, where life is hard and women’s horizons are so limited, it is hard for them to think with confidence about different ways of farming their worn out plots of land. But my fortnightly visits over the last few months have instilled new possibilities and new hope in them. Hope that their land might yield more than just a meager millet crop and a few beans. Hope that the sand won’t just blow away. Hope that they will have wood to cook with and high protein seeds to feed their children. Hope that they can do something to improve their harsh lives.

We returned to Danya, where we were joined by another dozen women under the tree in an open field. We talked at length about how the trees needed looking after and how to prepare their farms for planting the trees the next month. There was much laughter and lots of good questions. Then came the surprise ...

Each woman had provided one or two guinea fowl eggs, to make a bowl of 30 or so, which they presented to me. How could I accept such a high protein gift from people whose families were hungry and struggling? But how could I refuse it either?

I accepted their gift with tears of joy. They had given me more than a simple gift. They were saying, “Thank you for coming to teach us, thank you for believing in us, thank you for giving us hope for the future.”

Learn more about this project.