International tourists keen on cutting their holiday spending but sating their wanderlust and experience of other cultures are now heading for homesteads in Kisumu and other areas of Kenya under an initiative marketing organic farms as tourist destinations in return for help on the farm.

The new working holidays initiative is being run out of the UK as a programme called World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms, and has put together a global network of farmers who offer accommodation and food to travelers in exchange for labour offered by the visitors.

Under the programme the WWOOF has an innovative Web site that connects travelers with a network of organic farms spanning from Africa to South America. An owner of an organic farm who is interested in the organic exchange programme subscribes to put the name of his farm on the website at a fee, listing the location and a brief description of their farming activities. Interested tourists then visit the website and choose from the catalogue of hosting farms then make direct contact to arrange a stay.  The stay can run from two to six weeks depending on the amount of work involved.

To cushion travelers from exploitation by hosts, the programme spells out terms under which the travelers should be treated, which include working for a set number of hours a day, usually between five and six hours, and in exchange, receiving free room and board.

In Kenya the organic farms participating in the WWOOF programme are organised under the banner of the Kenya Organic Agriculture Network (KOAN), which explains the rules of engagement to individual farms.

Already Kenya has 30 registered farms in WWOOF, the majority of which are concentrated in Nyanza and Rift Valley provinces, against worldwide figures standing at an estimated 6,000 hosts in 100 countries. As the agriculture network expands its reach it hopes to get more organic farms into the programme, promoting tourism in the country and also fostering cultural understanding among the host and the travelers.

Achuth Women Group operating around Lake Victoria and running a 3 hectare organic farm growing vegetables, onions, tomatoes, bananas, pigeon peas and herding sheep and cows has enjoyed an influx  of travelers since they enrolled with WWOOF two years ago. According to the chairperson Ms Rispah Okello the climax was in December last year when they got 10 visitors at a go.

“We usually get a maximum of five who stay for about a month. Out of the ten last December, four stayed with us for a whole season of six months,” she said, noting that the travelers reacted with an extraordinary enthusiasm to the activities of the farm expressing the need to monitor how the food exported to them is handled from planting to harvesting and packaging.

Once inside the farm, the travelers go digging, fetching water from the nearby streams ,and preparing the nursery for planting. They also take the sheep and cows to the grazing field before taking a break for lunch with the other members of Achuth family. In the afternoon, it’s back to the farm to harvest ready produce and accompany the Achuth Women Group to the market for two hours.

The surplus is then taken home, where they package it for buyers of horticultural produce. The tourists then join the members of the family in having supper that the host provides free, before being accommodated. The next day, horticultural buyers visit the farm and the tourists help pack their  trucks before going back to the daily routine.

“I have stayed with Achuth farm for six months now, having originally been torn between taking a holiday in Zanzibar and coming here. I have had a huge learning experience and learnt to appreciate the work that goes into some of the produce I receive in the UK imported from Kenya, like pigeon peas.

I also have saved, and would definitely want to come back. I chose to stay for a whole season to familiarise myself with the seasons of planting in Kenya,” said 30-year-old Davis Lance from the UK.

World Wide Opportunities was founded in Britain in 1971, but has lured many more volunteer farmhands in recent years as hard economic times have focused westerners on cheap ways to take a vacation.

Written by Bob Koigi for African Laughter