Help support a permaculture farm in Tanzania!

Karibu! Welcome :)

My name is Ottoman, and I am passionate about permaculture and living a self-sustaining lifestyle. This passion led me to create a permaculture project with my family in the southern highlands of Tanzania, in a rural village called Ikanga, home to 3,000 people. The project, called Kukua Practical Permaculture Africa (KPPA), spans 33 acres. "Kukua" in Swahili means "growth," which symbolizes our goal not only for this farm but also for our community as a whole. Our mission is to uplift our community by creating jobs, improving nutrition and food supply, and educating people about permaculture to help them better utilize their lands.

But first of all: what is permaculture?

Permaculture, the combination of the words ‘permanent agriculture,’ is a design system for creating sustainable human environments, created by Bill Mollison in 1978. In permaculture, we embrace a threefold ethic: care of the earth, care of people, and dispersal of surplus time, money, and materials towards these ends. It deals with plants, animals, buildings, and infrastructures, and about the relationships we can create between them. The aim is to create systems that are ecologically-sound and economically viable, which provide for their own needs, do not exploit or pollute, and are therefore sustainable in the long term. You can learn more about it here.

Eight years ago, I started this permaculture project by asking my father for his land. I learned about permaculture from a workshop in Zanzibar, taught by professors from the Salt Spring Permaculture Academy in British Columbia, and attended a course at the Practical Permaculture Institute of Kenya. These courses taught me the basic skills and tools to begin a permaculture farm of my own. From there, I continued learning on my own, by reading as many books as I could and visiting other permaculture farms in Africa. My main source of inspiration is the late Bill Mollison, the pioneer of permaculture, and I have read his books countless times.

Initially, I worked alone for four years, cutting through pine monoculture and building infrastructure by hand. I slept in the woods without shelter, eating very little. My wife, Angelica, had to find a job in the nearest town for our family's survival. My family, friends, and the entire village thought I was crazy.

However, little by little, “pole pole” in Swahili, the fruits of my labour started to blossom. With over a hundred volunteers helping from around the world, the project has become not mine, but a project of the world. Today, the farm provides enough food for our small family, our two workers, Madja and Apio, and our volunteers. Instead of seeing me as crazy, the community now shares my vision.

At KPPA, we:

Despite our success, financial challenges remain. Apio’s and Madja’s salaries, along with family expenses like school fees and medical costs, depend on the farm's income. To uplift our community by creating more jobs, educating on permaculture, and improving the village’s food supply, we need to become financially independent with a sustainable income source.

Asante Sana, Thank you <3

With great appreciation,

Ottoman and the entire Kukua family

Thank you to our volunteers Anne Khazzam, João Duarte, and Ania for helping us write this campaign.