So our farmers association (FBO) gets the go ahead with a new name chosen by our members – Hope Sakama. So why Hope Sakuma? It’s our local stream, a very pretty red rock bed feeding into the Mabanta and then Gbanka Soka (Little Scarcies) leading to the Great Scarcies river giving our gender-balanced co-op a sense of place and identity and opening potential eco-trade routes by boat down into Freetown and perhaps to Guinea to the west and as far as Liberia to the east.
You can hear the boys sound their horn of plenty as they learn that they get to do what they love best - work the land. Hope Sakuma plans to be a diversified eco-based food producer – boosting rice production, growing groundnut, pepper, tomato and squash, diversifying into drought resistant cassava and cashew – working towards becoming a producer marketing co-op. And we know the community have lots of ideas and are keen to add value and reduce transport costs by processing cassava into gari, ground nut into peanut butter creating local markets for goods largely imported from Guinea.
