Farming · Since 2014

Balandize Kimeze

Supporting the seed once it comes up. A group of smallholder women who farm together – from the new enclosure to the garden behind the house.

The name means: while the seed rests in the ground, there is little to do. Only once it comes up can the growth be supported. The photos are from a visit in February 2024 and from the meeting in April 2025.

01 — The group

Mostly women, since 2014

Balandize Kimeze is a group of mostly women who want to improve the yields of their small farms through cooperation and sharing what they know. Members keep chickens and pigs and grow staples such as maize, beans, potatoes and cassava – mostly for their families.

Members of Balandize Kimeze sit in a circle on blue chairs under banana plants and talk.
Group meeting in the shade, February 2024
The group sits with papers under trees, a brick wall behind them.
Notes and exchange
Participants sit on plastic chairs among banana plants.
In the circle
Women in the group read papers while sitting together outdoors.
Papers
The group sits side by side, with bricks on the ground in front of them.
Next to the building site
One participant speaks and holds papers while the others listen.
In conversation

02 — The enclosure

Rebuilding after the restart

From the end of 2021 the group reared chickens together. One participant provided a piece of land. With support from SOLI, a provisional roofed enclosure was built for 120 chicks. After 8 to 10 weeks, selling the birds ready for slaughter was meant to pay for a new flock, feed, medicine and a small surplus.

The first two flocks more or less reached that aim. The third coincided, in the summer of 2022, with rising prices for feed. Feed was no longer affordable and the chickens had to be sold in a hurry. The restart has been underway since the beginning of February 2024 – with a new flock of chicks, feed, and a larger enclosure in a place the participants can reach more easily.

Two men lay bricks on a low building, a wheelbarrow of mortar in front and banana plants behind.
The new enclosure under construction, 20 February 2024
A bricklayer stands on a wooden scaffold and sets bricks on the enclosure wall.
Brick by brick
A man stands on the freshly laid brick wall, his shadow falling on the façade.
The wall is up
A hen with chicks crosses the yard between brick houses and banana plants.
The yard between the pens
A colourful flock of chickens pecks feed from the ground.
Feeding
White, black and brown chickens gather around a feeding spot.
The flock
Chickens spread out across the sandy yard.
In the yard

03 — Inside

A charcoal brazier and a new room

Inside the brick building a wooden platform holds a charcoal brazier – the room the group showed during the visit.

Two women stand in an unplastered brick room beside a wooden platform.
Looking at the interior
Two women look at a charcoal brazier standing on a wooden platform covered with paper.
The charcoal brazier
A clay pot of charcoal stands on stones in the middle of a wooden platform.
Ready to light

04 — Yard and garden

What grows alongside the chickens

A permaculture workshop for the group is planned. All members are smallholders and would benefit from advice of their own. The aim is that those who complete the course pass on what they have learned. Bananas, vegetable beds, pigs and rabbits are already in the yard.

Banana plants with young shoots at their base, the ground covered in dry leaves.
A banana grove behind the house
Rows of vegetables grow between banana stems on mulched ground.
Vegetables among the bananas
Two pigs look through a mesh of reinforcing steel in their pen.
Pig rearing
White rabbits eat greens in a wooden hutch.
The rabbit hutch