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BY STEPHEN CANDIA
ARUA: SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2025
There is a sense of wonder that has gripped the friends and neighbors of Charity Kayomirwoth, 31 and her colleagues Margaret Atimango and Gladys Piyic after they successfully turned a bushy and grove inhabited area along the banks of River Enyau in Arua City into a money-making space.
In January 2003 the three women conceived the idea of starting a vegetable growing garden in this area following an increased demand for green vegetables in Arua town since it was a dry season.
Of the three women, Kayomirwoth is married while the other two are single mothers. Kayomirwoth’s husband worked together with the women to identify the land which the women cultivated and started utilising for farming along the banks of River Enyau in the neighborhood of Zobele Technical institute.
The women were able to clear an acre of the land, till it and plant their first set of green vegetables.
From their initial harvest, they were able to realize over UGX.300,000 from ‘Dodo’ (Amaranthus) and ‘Gobe’ or Osobi (Cow Peas) as they are locally known.
Kayomirwoth, the leader of the three women, explains that their first income boosted their morale to prepare the land for the second season from April to July and then December to February.
Speaking in an interview at their vegetable garden, she says after realizing that life was becoming harder without money, she decided with her colleagues to pick their homes and go to the valley since there is a ready market in Arua City for the greens.
“We started to plant these vegetables to support ourselves, pay our children’s school fees and also supplement our diet at home. In each of the seasons we get between UGX.300,000 and UGX.600,000 shillings, especially when it’s the dry season,” the married of the three women, the rest of whom are single mothers.
“Sometimes women and even men come to buy the green vegetables from the garden here and sometimes we take them and sell in Arua main market,” Kayomirwoth adds
Meanwhile speaking in Alur dialect, Margaret Atimango a colleague of Charity Kayomirwoth says after realizing good returns from the sale of the vegetables in their first year 2023, they decided to join a local savings group ‘Prosper’ where they started saving half of their income while the other percentage is spread on purchasing other household necessities and more vegetable seeds for the following season.
“During the dry season where the demand for green vegetables goes up, we use jugs and saucepans to fetch water from River Enyau and sprinkle on the vegetables on daily basis and this river has helped us to sustain this activity throughout the dry season from December to April,” explained Atimango.
Achievements so far
The three women’s story is an example of how women in the suburbs of Arua city have taken their own initiatives to overcome the challenges of lack of access to land in order to turn around their lives through irrigated agriculture.
From busing vegetables as middle businesswomen and selling to earn small profits, the three women now produce their own vegetables and earn bigger money.
As members of Prosper Women group in Abirici cell, Onzivu ward Arua City, they have realized improved incomes, which they testified has been able to help them clothe, pay school fees, cater for the health needs of their families and join a savings group.
Estimated Earning by the three women
| Season (Months) | Average Estimated Income (UGX) |
| First (January-March) | 650,000 |
| Second (June-August) | 450,000 |
| Third (October-December) | 550,000 |
Challenges
According to Kayomirwoth, their biggest challenge is pests and diseases, which tend to affect vegetables like cabbages, tomatoes, carrots and ‘Gobe’ and since these require chemicals that are relatively expensive for them to buy, their harvests are greatly reduced.
“We try to spray the crops, but this is not enough and sometimes we leave it to survive like that,” says Kayomirwoth.
Other challenges include prolonged dry season making some of the crops to wither, though they try to reduce this by watering the crops manually from river Enyau, and sometimes people steal some of their crops like cabbages, carrots, tomatoes and even maize from the garden at night hours.
Future Prospects
“Our plan is to cultivate more land and plant more types of green vegetable and other cereals like maize which have good market during the dry season says Gladys Piyic another colleague of Kayomirwoth
According to the women, they are already preparing to plant more vegetables as soon as the first rains start in March this year so that they are among the first to deliver fresh greens to Arua main market.
Meanwhile during the peak of the rain season, when River Enyau floods, most of the crops and the topsoil are washed away by flash floods since the gardens are close to the banks of River Enyau.
As a way of sensitization, Charity and her colleagues have started a ‘pick the hoes and go to the valley’ campaign to enable other women to mint money from vegetable growing, which has become lucrative in both urban and rural areas throughout the year.
The women’s efforts have not gone unnoticed as Patrick Asia, the Local Council chairman for Abirici cell in Oluko commended them for their hands-on initiative.
He further pointed out that about 40 more women were doing exemplary farming under the government program, the Parish Development model where each of them received UGX.1,000,000 interest free credit.
