Back to their roots
Navajo Times | Cindy Yurth Victor Clyde (left) and Geoffrey Kamau appraise a perfect pumpkin in Clyde’s demonstration garden in Lukachukai, funded by a grant Kamau obtained through Johns Hopkins.
Project re-introduces Diné family to farming
Navajo Times | Cindy Yurth
Victor Clyde (left) and Geoffrey Kamau appraise a perfect pumpkin in Clyde’s demonstration garden in Lukachukai, funded by a grant Kamau obtained through Johns Hopkins.
LUKACHUKAI, Ariz.
When Geoffrey Kamau first came to the Navajo reservation five years ago, the first thing he noticed was the land.
“It was so beautiful, and there was so much of it,” he recalled. “I thought, ‘What are they doing with all this land?’”
In the Kikuyu region of Kenya, where Kamau was born, there was no question what to do with land. Every square inch of arable land is farmed.
“The farms are small,” he said, “about three-and-a-half acres. People grow coffee, sugar cane, bananas and avocados. If they have a pickup truck, they take it into town to sell.”
Kamau soon learned why most Navajos don’t farm: The soil is poor, there’s no water, and free-roaming livestock trample anything not fenced off.
Still, he reasoned, there must have been a time when Navajos farmed, before the advent of grocery stores and trading posts. There must be a way.
“I think it really hit me while I was working at the dialysis center in Chinle,” said Kamau, a registered nurse who now manages the Johns Hopkins Native American Projects office in Chinle.
“You would see three generations of one family coming in for dialysis. It was shocking. And most of it was secondary to diabetes.”
Navajo Times | Cindy Yurth
Victor Clyde harvests the last of his summer squash crop at his demonstration farm Friday in Lukachukai.
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