Learning to Care for Ourselves

October 21, 2015 • Democratic Republic of the Congo
Learning to Care for Ourselves

A Samaritan’s Purse project taught me to support my family through farming

Esperance Biwaga is a farmer with seven children in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Our lives during the war were difficult. We lost everything we had and fled to a safer village. To find food, we worked as day laborers in our new community. Our situation was further complicated when our cassava fields didn’t produce as many crops as expected.

When we returned home, we still didn’t have any food. We struggled to survive. Eventually, our village chief taught us things about agriculture that he had learned through Samaritan’s Purse. We became beneficiaries of the project.

Learning to Care for OurselvesLearning to Care for Ourselves

Esperance shows off the cabbages she was able to grow with tools provided by Samaritan’s Purse.

During one lesson, we received seeds and learned how to increase our crop yield, thus providing help for our family. This information enabled us to produce more crops in 2014. However, our abundant crop yield was met with decreasing crop prices at the market. It was important for us to find food and learn new farming techniques.

In 2015, we were no longer beneficiaries of the Samaritan’s Purse project. But we took what we had learned and bought cabbage seeds and pesticide to support ourselves.

Now we’re harvesting our cabbage. We thank our God for sending Samaritan’s Purse to teach us agricultural techniques. When we sell our cabbage, we easily make enough money to purchase salt and cooking oil, which allows our family to survive.

Thank you for all that Samaritan’s Purse has done to help us.

More

English
Quantcast