One Parent’s Passion for Growing and Cooking Healthy Food

Rosa Mukamasaba, a mother of six children, is one of the parents in Gashari Sector, Karongi District that has benefited from the partnership at schools across Rwanda between Gardens for Health International and the UN World Food Programme. She is now the happy owner of a vegetable garden.

To Rosa and her children, gardening is a favorite activity. Her passion to grow food for the family has inspired her children to learn to enjoy it too. Rosa used to sell vegetables in the local market near her home but her yield was low because she was growing them the only way she knew how. Once she attended the training, her vegetable garden became the first demonstration garden for others to learn how best to grow vegetables at home. 

“This training has helped me a lot. I used to cook any food I could think of and it was mostly without sauce. But I am now able to cook vegetables from my own garden for my family every day.”

Rosa never used to pay much attention to what foods she prepared for her family to eat. The family’s daily meals mostly consisted of potatoes or cassava. But all that has changed. She now never fails to serve her family nutritious vegetables from her own garden.

In fact, since attending the training, she now applies the signature GHI cooking method: One Pot, One Hour. This method allows families to cook a nutritious meal in an hour using limited resources.

With a smile, she narrates a story about the first time she applied the cooking technique introduced to her by GHI to prepare a healthy meal at her home.

“I prepared my first meal before sharing with my husband about what we learnt at the training. When he saw the food, he couldn’t believe I had prepared it in such a short time until I told him about our lesson that day,” Rosa narrates.

Rosa’s favorite vegetable is amaranth because it’s easy to plant and prepare, and her children love it too.

She finds it exciting that she doesn’t have to buy all the vegetables, since her own garden produces enough for the family to eat with a surplus to take to the market.

“We learned different techniques of growing vegetables; if one fails, we can always try the other. We also know how to preserve seeds from some of these vegetables. If I need to buy any other seeds, my garden itself is a source of income. I can sell some of the vegetables and buy the seeds I need.”