Nebeday, or moringa, is famous across Senegal.

Nebeday is a highly nutritious medicinal plant that can grow almost anywhere. It thrives nearly everywhere—from the flat and sandy deserts of the north, to the cool coastal regions, and even to the mangroves and waterfalls of the humid south.

Moringa trees line the classrooms of the Peace Corps training center in Thiès, Senegal.  The seeds, leaves, and pods of these trees are used by volunteers in sectors of agriculture, health, and economic development. Volunteers and trainees pass these trees every day as they attend and lead sessions on cultural integration, Peace Corps policies, and technical field training. 

Volunteers and Senegalese national counterparts work together to incorporate innovative ways to help local communities sell the leaves, either in cooked dishes or as a nutritious powder. Throughout Senegal, moringa is sold in local markets and even exported overseas. 

My Moringa Peace Corps Journey

Peace Corps volunteers help in several ways. One way is to guide communities in planting moringa intensive beds in households and community gardens.  The health benefits of the leaves—which contain essential vitamins, minerals, and proteins—are extremely valuable to communities. This is especially true now that local communities have increasing rates of diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease. These ailments are largely due to the increasing popularity of imports such as refined oil and sugar.  

Moringa Tree with Hanging Leaves.

I arrived in Senegal as a Community Economic Development volunteer. I also arrived as a vegetarian with an active lifestyle and passion for nutrition.I knew that I wanted to incorporate moringa into my work and diet, but I didn’t know what that would mean yet.  

When I arrived at my site—a village of 1000 people in the Kédougou region in the southeast of Senegal—I noticed that moringa trees were already present throughout the community. Many people add the leaves to a thick, nourishing sauce with other seasonal leaves, ground peanuts, onion, and spices. 

This sauce is then poured over cornmeal couscous, made by pounding corn to a meal, steaming it three times over a charcoal or wood fire, and sifting in powdered baobab leaves.  

Nebeday Trainings

Over the course of my service, with the wonderful guidance of my counterpart Adama Sidibe, a community women’s group leader, I offered trainings. These trainings for the community explored  the health benefits of moringa, and how to make moringa into a nutritious powder. We also tried different methods of making moringa into juices and syrups by mixing pounded moringa leaves with ginger and local honey.

I also grew moringa trees in the backyard of my hut, and incorporated the leaves into my daily diet. It amazed me how much more energy and resilience to the heat I felt once I started eating moringa every day.  

A breakfast item that you can find throughout Senegal is baguette with beans, peas, or egg. I would go to sandwich stands and add moringa leaves or powder to my sandwich, usually while explaining the health benefits to amused onlookers and sandwich makers.

I also popularized a (very hip) drink that I called a “moringa latte.” I made this in my hut on a gas canister stove, by mixing a spoonful of moringa powder with milk powder, sugar or honey, and hot water. It might have just been that I wasn’t near any coffee shops, but I truly thought the drink resembled a matcha latte! I also liked to sprinkle moringa on top of rice dishes, and on my oatmeal.  

Abrupt Evacuation: I Had 48 Hours to Leave

When the decision was made to evacuate all Peace Corps Volunteers worldwide due to the COVOID-19 pandemic, I was devastated to leave my community a year earlier than expected.  I had only 48 hours to say goodbye to my new family and friends that I had made during the year. Therefore, it was impossible to explain the evacuation situation adequately to counterparts on my unfinished projects. 

I tried to travel to the US with a bag of moringa powder. I wanted to share it with my friends and family back at home.  Since I always kept a bag of moringa powder in my backpack when I was traveling around Senegal (always prepared to come across a sandwich stand), I decided to put my moringa into my small backpack of carry-on luggage. 

Peace Corps Volunteers Heading Home

Unfortunately, the plastic bag exploded due to cabin pressure. I found myself in the bathroom by the baggage claim at the DC airport at 2am, frantically trying to clean up the mess. The suspicious green powder that now covered my kindle, sweatshirt, journal, pens—and entire interior of my backpack—might not be the most impressive to a customs officer. 

I finished cleaning just in time to take a final (masked) group picture with my stagements. These are the volunteers I’d trained and served with for a year. After this picture, we left to our final destinations throughout the country.

Stumbling Upon Kuli Kuli

Back in California, I found myself missing my nebeday, especially in my oatmeal and smoothies. I was so excited when I saw Kuli Kuli’s powder at Whole Foods! Right away, I bought some and researched the company. I was amazed to see that Kuli Kuli was started by a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer. I also learned that Kuli Kuli supported local communities in African countries that grow moringa, by sourcing moringa from small local collectives.  

As a Peace Corps Volunteer, I had the opportunity to see first-hand the empowerment and sustainable economic benefit this kind of project can have. Especially when done in a way that empowers community members. It’s great to see how a Peace Corps service can be made into a lifelong project that supports health and sustainability across the country and globe.  

Closing Thoughts

Seeing companies like Kuli Kuli doing so well gives me inspiration and hope in these uncertain times.  It is a reminder that sometimes things don’t go the way that you envisioned. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t still aspire to things or create goals.

It’s about adjusting to “what is” and making the most of what you find around you, wherever you are. My Peace Corps service was cut short. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have value to me now that I’m back in the US.  

If we, as individuals, each choose to consciously follow a path guided by love and support for our own health and the health of our global communities, I believe that we, as a human collective, can come out of this time stronger and more together.

And eventually, we will be okay. 

Village Huts in Bandafassi, Senegal.

Many thanks to Emme S. for this personal piece, and for all of her Peace Corps work in Senegal. 

Follow us @kulikulifoods to learn more about moringa can uplift communities and nourish the world.

The post Moringa aka Nebeday: Perspectives from Senegal appeared first on Kuli Kuli Foods.

Rick and Jeri are the founders of Strong Harvest, an organization that works in six countries around the world. Their primary focus is to spread knowledge of moringa’s vast nutritional benefits as a tool for populations vulnerable to malnutrition. They have a very successful training of trainers program that includes Continuing Education Workshops, which is what they were doing on this fateful day in Nicaragua.

Rick and Jeri had planned their visit to this village with the idea of doing an all day moringa training followed by a couple promised home visits. Throughout the day, Isabella, who they trained as a Peer Educator the year prior, would not leave them alone. After following them to both home visits, Rick and Jeri, despite their exhaustion, recognized her eagerness and obliged to also visit her home. They didn’t know it at the time, but they were about to meet a Moringa Miracle Maker.

Behind closed doors, Isabella emotionally confessed the reason she dragged them to her house. She couldn’t tell them in front of the group, but she had been suffering from a chronic illness and had been experimenting with moringa as a supplement to ease the symptoms. Due to the illness, she gets regular testing done with her doctor. Her most recent testing prompted her doctor to ask her what she was doing differently. He was pleasantly surprised by her weight gain and positive blood tests. The only thing she had changed? Eating moringa!

Isabella had received a moringa training from Strong Harvest six months prior to that doctor’s visit and took the information to heart. She had planted moringa trees in her backyard that she said she started to nurture and “love them like they are part of my family”. For Isabella, these tree-children gave her back her health.

After eating the leaves everyday, Isabella started to feel stronger and healthier. She is so convinced by moringa’s nutritional and medicinal value that she has been telling everybody in her community about it. After amazing her doctor by her sudden health improvements, she was able to give an impromptu moringa training, right there in the health center to the ten other patients present. Isabella says “the important thing is not to just learn but to share what we are learning with others. If we just learn and keep it to ourselves it is not good”.

Before her training with Strong Harvest, Isabella had no idea how important moringa is or what moringa looked like. Now, when she sees it in a neighbor’s yard she approaches them and asks it they know about it and if they want to know more. Isabella is confident that little by little the word of moringa will spread and will be able to improve the lives of many.

Isabella is a beautiful example of how one Moringa Miracle Maker spreading the word can reshape a whole community. We are honored to work with people like Isabella and organizations like Strong Harvest.

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Planting moringa trees is good for the world because it promotes nutritional security and provides income generating activities for smallholder farmers around the world. Kuli Kuli is dedicated to building a moringa supply chain that supports regenerative agro-forestry and creates sustainable livelihoods for its supplier partners.

To celebrate Earth Month, Kuli Kuli is fulfilling its mission by both planting trees and supporting access to finance world’s vulnerable populations. This April, 1% of all Kuli Kuli’s sales at Whole Foods will go towards planting 3,000 moringa trees with in Ghana and supporting micro-loans through Whole Planet Foundation.

Planting 3,000 moringa trees in Ghana addresses environmental restoration and drives economic opportunity. Kuli Kuli is thrilled to work closely with its supplier partner, True Moringa, a Ghanaian social enterprise that works with hundreds of farmers. One such farmer is Akosua Krah, whose life has been forever changed after she began working with moringa.

Seeds of Hope

Akosua knows moringa seeds better than most people. Every day, she wakes up, feeds her children, gets them to school and goes to work with on her personal plot on the True Moringa farm. Resilient like the moringa seed, Akosua thrives in conditions that are not always easy. She works the soil even though though it is sandy and depleted from nutrients after generations of farming. Luckily, the moringa tree is still able to thrive in these conditions, providing nitrogen back into the soil and converting carbon dioxide into the very oxygen Akosua and her community breathe. To Akosua, these seeds represent more than just life, they are her ticket to economic freedom.

The Future is in the Strong Hands of Women Farmers

Six months after pinching the earth around the moringa seed, Akosua returns to a meter high moringa tree to harvest the tiny leaves that adorn the branches. She snips the branches, sheds them of their leaves and prepares them for wash and drying. Since moringa processing is culturally seen as woman’s work, she is able to take the opportunity to be financially liberated with little pushback from her village. She is able to use her own funds for food and her kids’ school fees, rather than borrowing from others and going into debt.

Moringa Nourishes the World

When her work day is done, Akosua takes some snips of moringa home to prepare dinner for her children. She believe because of moringa, they do not fall victim to malnourishment, an ailment that impacts one in five children in Ghana (UNICEF). The moringa that is not consumed by her family is processed into a high quality powder that is exported to Kuli Kuli, with a portion of those profits going into Akosua’s pocket. Once in the hands of Kuli Kuli, the powder is packaged and sold across the U.S., reaching the mouths of thousands of Whole Foods shoppers looking for a convenient solution to increase the amount of nutrient-dense greens in their diets.

Akosua is a leader in her community and an example of the opportunities moringa can bring to vulnerable populations. Through partnerships with organizations like Whole Planet Foundation and True Moringa, Kuli Kuli is harnessing the power of moringa to improve nutrition and livelihoods around the world.

The post Meet Moringa: The Miracle Tree Changing the World appeared first on Kuli Kuli Foods.

I wasn’t the only one who felt like I’d stepped back into a different era. As Kuli Kuli’s Moringa Supply Chain Manager Mandy remarked, Niger feels strangely untouched by the outside world. It isn’t just the lack of McDonalds or skyscrapers, it’s the oxcarts driving on Niger’s most highly trafficked highway. It’s the mud homes and woven millet storage huts that line the one main road. You can see it in the wrinkle-lined faces of the thirty-year-old women who have birthed seven children, though statistically only five will make it to adulthood. It’s in the gnarled hands of the men who spend fourteen-hour days cultivating millet and maize, only to have their entire crop wiped out with yet another drought.

Niger is one of the poorest, hottest places on the planet. But I believe it is also one of the most remarkable.

Whether bound together by poverty, Islam or culture, I’m not sure, but I’ve never seen such tight-knit, generous communities as I continually find across Niger. The vibrancy of those communities and the extent to which people help each other leaves me in awe.

Kuli Kuli’s ten day moringa market assessment was a whirlwind trip through multiple communities and countless meetings with inspiring moringa entrepreneurs. It was an incredible reminder of why I started this company.

Kuli Kuli’s namesake is a peanut snack that my Nigerien friends mixed with moringa to nourish me when my Peace Corps diet of millet and rice left me feeling weak. Feeling my strength return, I got hooked on moringa and was just starting a moringa project in my village when the Peace Corps evacuated Niger. One of the things I had noticed while I was in Peace Corps was that moringa had a reputation as a poor persons crop and when people did eat it, they often boiled the moringa leaves multiple times, leaching them of their incredible nutritional powder.

I was excited to see that moringa had become much more popular in Niger since I’d left. There also seemed to be a lot more knowledge about the benefits of powdering moringa, and of drinking the water that its boiled in to recoup the nutrients. We met with over twenty moringa entrepreneurs, from processors to large growers to women’s groups doing both growing and processing. We found that our challenge wasn’t finding moringa entrepreneurs, it was determining which groups would most greatly benefit from scaling up their operation and processing quality in order to be able to sell to Kuli Kuli.

Over the next few months, we plan to work closely with those partners and the Millennium Corporation Challenge in Niger to share our findings and identify how we can best support moringa groups in Niger. I know that sourcing high-quality moringa from Niger will not be easy. But I feel as though I’ve spent the past eight years preparing for this challenge.

As all my Nigerien friends said when I walked into my old village for a meeting with their women’s moringa group, “Kin dawo, kin dawo!” You came back!

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Flight Attendant & Holistic Wellness Coach, Wendra

I’m a board-certified holistic health coach from IIN.  I’ve also been a flight attendant for over 25 years, so my focus is on healthy travel. Spending as much time as I have on planes has allowed me to learn what works for travel and what doesn’t. I know firsthand the challenges of maintaining a healthy lifestyle and immune system when sleep, nutrition, and circadian rhythms are compromised on a monthly or even weekly basis.

 

I’m here to help you incorporate wellness on the road whether you’re a crew member, frequent flier or just travel occasionally for fun! On my website wendraswellness.com I blog about all things health, wellness, and travel.  There can be many problems, challenges, and difficulties when traveling and I provide some easy, healthy solutions.

#MyMoringaRoutine

I need products that travel well and fit into my busy schedule.  I like to add 1/4 tsp of moringa into my coffee and add 2 Tbsp to my smoothie for lunch or use the Moringa Greens & Protein Superfood Smoothie Mix. (I freeze my smoothies to bring through security) The Moringa Superfood Bars are perfect for travel and the Moringa Green Energy drinks are small enough to fit into my 1-quart bag.

 

 

Flying exposes us to solar radiation and free radicals so I am always looking for ways to add antioxidants and greens to my diet.  Kuli Kuli’s Moringa is organic, raw, a complete source of plant protein and is more nutrient dense than kale.  I love that a single serving (2 Tbsp) is equivalent to 2 servings of greens. Kuli Kuli’s travel packets are powdered and portable making it easy to increase my vegetable intake when I’m on the go.

 

 

Summer’s Coming, Get More Travel Tips!

Prepare for any trips you may have coming up, or get more healthy tips for regular business travel. Head to my website, wendraswellness.com for more!

 

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