Rwanda, as many other African countries, relies mainly on agriculture. The orphanage owns a 9 Hectare property and we are trying to use the resourceful land as best as we can. Therefore we decided to utilize five of those Hectares in fruit production. The goal is to generate income through the exportation of organically certified dried fruit.
The orchard project started two years ago. With the kind and precious financial support of many friends around the world we were able to plant a considerable amount of fruit trees.
Now, the orphanage has already planted 1000 Papaya trees, 500 mango trees, 500 avocado trees, 6000 pineapple plants, 100 banana trees and 80 guava trees.
Through the generosity of some friends in Europe we will be able to expand during this year, 2008, the size of the orchard. We will add 1000 more papaya trees and 500 more mango trees.
The bananas, guavas, and most probably also the avocados will be mainly for our own consumption. We want to make sure that the children have a healthy diet with enough fresh fruits. We are planning to dry mangos, papayas, pineapples and export them to Europe, USA and Canada.
Engineers Without Borders – Johnson Space Center in Texas USA will start helping us this year, 2008, developing the solar driers; and in the near future with the necessary food processing technology to accomplish our goals. It is for sure a very exciting and challenging project.
To get into the export business we will need to offer quality and quantity. Even though the orphanage is relatively small with limited resources it has now the privilege to have the biggest orchard of the entire country.
We do not know exactly how big the fruit harvest will be but we have done some estimation. From the 6,000 pineapples plants we are planning to get 12,000 pineapples fruits per year (that would mean about 1,000 pineapples per month). From the 1,000 mango trees we are planning to get 50,000 fruits per year (that would mean about 4,000 mangoes per month). From the 2,000 papaya trees we are planning to get 20,000 fruits per year (that would mean about 1,600 papaya fruits per month). That is a huge amount of fruit!!
To make sure that we will have excellent quality we are applying appropriated agricultural technology and we were very selective with the fruit varieties. We imported the papaya seeds from Guatemala (the variety is very resistant to diseases, is high productive, and has an excellent taste). The seeds from the mangoes came from Burundi. Just some weeks ago we bought over 2,000 mangoes and ate them… a real Mango party!! (the size of the fruits is very big, have an attractive color, do not have fiber, and the taste is delicious). The variety of the pineapples is a local one (the fruits are incredibly sweet…just delicious).
The fruit harvest has increased constantly since the orchard project started; since over a year we are producing about 250 pineapples per month. Now the amount increased to almost 400 pineapples per month. A small portion of the papaya trees already started bearing fruit and since two months we have harvested around 150 papayas per month. For the mango, avocado, and guava harvests we will need to wait at least two more years. That means that in probably three years we will have reached the maximal fruit productivity.
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Family Poschenrieder ( Germany )
Siobhan Tapia ( Australia )
Family Herrig ( Germany )
Erna Kraft ( Germany )
David Begg ( USA )
Family Sanchez ( USA )
Family Nicolay (USA)
Family Smits ( Germany )
Pavel Goia (USA)
Family Maguire (USA ).