Fruit trees for Uganda

Cashew nuts are both delicious and fascinating. The fruit of the cashew nut tree is actually not a fruit in itself- it is a sweet swollen stem and the cashew nut is safe inside a shell surrounded by a caustic liquid ready to give a chemical burn to anything naive enough to try and open it without precautions.

The ‘fruit’ is known as a cashew apple and its entire purpose is to attract fruit bats. The bats latch onto the fruit and fly away with it as they drink the sweet nectar. When satiated, the bats drop the apple with the seed on the bottom and whallah, seeds are spread and cashew trees pop up in new territory.

When you taste the fruit it is very sweet, and it also makes your mouth furry- like your tongue and throat are covered in velvet. It is an awkward feeling, but it did not stop me from eating more. Fortunately, the feeling goes away in a few minutes.

The cashew nuts are encased in a shell with a nasty liquid inside that can cause chemical burns, so the two easiest ways to retrieve the nut is to either freeze it, then whack it with a hammer and pick out the seed, or if you’re in the village with no refrigeration- throw them into a fire, wait for the nuts to pop and retrieve the ‘roasted’ seed with a wire mesh scooper.

Harvesting cashews is a bit labor intensive, and their price point reflects that. One kilo of cashew nuts fetches about 23,000ush ($7.50) on a local market, as opposed to other nuts such as peanuts, which fetch about 5,000ush ($1.56) per kilo.

The cashew nut trees are one of the many trees that we are promoting, and distributing to our communities.

Links:

• Facebook page

There are common misconceptions in the village which are fed by a lack of practical education.  For example- adults tell children that raw tomatoes are poisonous to prevent the kids from eating them. Then as the children grow up no one corrects this misconception, so they continue to believe raw tomatoes are poisonous and the ‘knowledge’ is passed down through generations. Ditto that are snakes are poisonous and will kill you- and lizards are basically snakes with legs so they should be killed too.

NO!!! I have had SO many instances in the village where I find a lizard and people all freak out about how it will poison me and I will die and how they have to kill it. Every time I protect the lizard, and if at all possible I physically handle the lizard bare handed to show people that the critter is actually harmless! Women and children scream, men are often afraid to come near, and some people have even mentioned that I must have whichcraft . BUT the upside? The misconception is proven to be bogus.

This is one of many issues we address with our agriculture program, and with giving out free fruit trees it is also important to educate people about the tree’s natural inhabitans. Why is it beneficial to have chameleons and other lizards in your garden? They eat bugs that harm you, your family, and your crops! They’ll chow down on grasshoppers, earwigs, soft bodied caterpillars, even termites and ants. Geckos on the ceiling in your house and on the veranda eat mosquitos that transmit malaria, house flies that spread disease, and cockroaches. Lizards are our FRIENDS and they should be treated as such. Or in the very least they should be left alone to live their lives symbiotically with ours.

Links:

• Grassroots Uganda Facebook page