Tending farms in a work of art

Growing vegetables supplants 20 years of working in hollywood films

On a small farm in Kiambu county, less than an hour's drive from the Kenyan capital Nairobi, stand three greenhouses. Inside one, Chinese long beans have made their way along the strings set for them up to almost the ceiling. They stand there line by line, like soldiers on parade. Beans hang down everywhere, suggesting a good harvest.

This visual tour de force is a fitting tribute to Mungai Nguku, who worked as an art director and set designer in the film industry in Los Angeles for more than 20 years and returned to Kenya 18 months ago. Four months later he decided to branch out into a completely new field, and now the Tinseltown art director is a man of the land, a farmer no less.

Nguku, 44, is a pioneer in Kenya in foreseeing the potential for Chinese vegetable markets in his country.

This leap of faith has not been that difficult, he says, even though he has had to transform himself from someone creating "something that's not real" into someone who is "creating something that actually helps a lot of people".

In fact, Nguku does not consider that he has abandoned the world of creativity with his new undertaking, seeing it as another kind of art.

With the number of Chinese now living in Kenya, he says, there is huge potential in the Chinese vegetable markets. Not only that but Chinese vegetables will almost certainly become very popular among Kenyans, he says. His ultimate aim now is to feed as many as 1 million people.

"The film industry was very challenging, and I could not make enough money to support my family. I became a little depressed, so I decided to come home."

After returning he tried unsuccessfully to keep on working in films.

"But talking to people, I realized I couldn't be happy in the industry."

He also looked at opening a nightclub but eventually abandoned that idea, too.

"I thought for a while about what I could do to make a living. I have this land here, and I love being my own boss."

He finally decided what he wanted to do after visiting one of his friends' greenhouses, he says.

Last November he erected a greenhouse on his farm, on which he used to grow corn, and planted other vegetables. Before long he found that these crops were so prolific that he needed more greenhouses.

"I thought I would need only one, but once that was up, I built another."

Trees on his land of a little more than 1 hectare needed to be felled to make way for his farming, he says.

"The way I now look at it is I am an artist. The soil is my canvas for painting, and the seeds and other things I use are brushes and paint. I am using the soil to paint; I am creating food by doing that."

Nguku had worked on the farm when he was young, so he is no stranger to this kind of life, and he has the backing of his father, a retired engineer, who sees great prospects for the farming business.

"I am supporting him in everything," Samuel Kariuki, 70, says.

"Many people think farming is for poor people, but that's not true." As luck would have it, Nguku got to know a Chinese man who was looking at setting up a Chinese vegetable market in Kenya and set up a farm. The Chinese man visited Nguku's farm, and the two decided to help one another.

He offered Nguku seeds and advised him on how to plant Chinese vegetables. The Chinese farmer also buys all the Chinese vegetables Nguku grows.

"I gave him a very good price, because I plan to expand. The bigger my farm is, the more produce I sell him, the more money I can make. I am selling a lot of it. I am not losing, I am still making money.

"When crops are ready, depending on what the market is, we get 150,000 Kenyan shillings ($1,420) a day. That's high, once a week. On other days we can do 20,000 shilling a day, depending on what has matured."

Now he is extending the planting of Chinese vegetables to other, unused, parts of his land, and he recently spent about 2.5 million Kenyan shillings to have a 200-meter well drilled to guarantee water.

He also plans to build pipes to take water to two parts of his land nearby, covering about 0.8 hectares in total.

Few Kenyans grow Chinese produce, and there is definitely a market for it, he says, and he already has ambitions to buy more land.

Nguku's farm, probably the only one in the area that grows Chinese vegetables, has aroused great interest among neighbors.

"A lot of people come and ask me to teach them how to utilize their farm. I am still not more than a year old (in farming), and I am concentrating on doing this. I have no time to show someone else how to do it.

"Once I do, I want to do seminars. Instead of me going to their farm, they can come in here and they can study from me here what I am doing. I would like to help them in that way."

Nguku also plans to introduce Chinese vegetables into the local market.

"Human beings are always curious. If they see you growing something they've never seen, they want to try it and see how it tastes. I hope the Chinese vegetables bring many more Kenyans to the market."

houliqiang@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily Africa Weekly 10/16/2015 page8)