In the Mngeta sub-catchment, the tradition of agriculture has long been one of subtraction—removing the forest to make room for the seed. But Sister Eusebia, working through the African Wildlife Foundation’s SUSTAIN Eco initiative, has spent years proving that the tree is not the enemy of the crop. On land held by the local diocese, she has planted mahogany and indigenous hardwoods directly among the rows of maize and rice, creating a living classroom for a valley under pressure.
The Kilombero Valley is a place defined by the movement of water. As a seasonal floodplain, it acts as a great earthen sponge, eventually releasing its contents to provide the majority of the flow for the Rufiji River. When the forests on the escarpment are thinned, the sponge begins to fail, and the delicate balance for the endemic puku antelope and the farming families who live alongside them is disrupted.
The transformation is most visible in the posture of the farmers who visit the plots. They no longer look only at the ground at their feet, but upward at the growing canopies that protect their soil from erosion and their crops from the drying winds. Sister Eusebia and Sister Narisisa Kilenga have become the stewards of this shift, translating the abstract language of conservation into the concrete reality of better yields and cooler fields.
Their work acknowledges a simple truth of the valley: the forest and the farm must exist in the same space if either is to survive. As these trees mature, their roots anchor the soil of the Mngeta basin, ensuring that the water which feeds the valley today will still be there for the generations that follow.