Mlonge

 Mlonge

It doesn’t matter what it is, there are trends. Fashion’s a good example, kid’s toys are another, furniture, motor cars, and even Dr Seuss highlighted one in his story The Sneeches. Even in my work relating to trees I’ve seen many a trend. The Eucalyptus, Silver Dollar Gum comes to mind. The juvenile leaves are disc-shaped, so look like a dollar coin, and people thought it would be good in their garden to be used in flower arrangements. The thing is though it is the juvenile foliage people were attracted to. Four or five years later the adult form emerges and the foliage elongates. The tree grows way too big for gardens and not very attractive. And large trees are expensive to remove.

In my role of encouraging people to plant trees, I had to look at trends and make judgements – and I had my pluses and minuses. In our Tanzanian project it was the same, local farmers preferred species were the indigenous species, yet they were the very trees I wanted to promote. So I had to negotiate a little. We grew about sixty varieties, most of which I hadn’t known before, included in the sixty-odd, there were bougainvillea, papaya and passionfruit. all of which could hardly rate as trees but they were among the favoured. I was happy with sixty-odd as far as diversity was concerned for our tree planting programme.  Out of the blue, there was a sudden, widespread interest when a ‘new’ species that was introduced.  This tree was touted to be a money maker.

Wired into my brain is a tiny cynic button and that button self-activated. We’ve all seen new, profitable enterprises crop up in agriculture and horticulture over past years which invariably flop. This one has the botanical name, Moringa oleifera, which has a proliferation of common names, among them: drumstick tree, horseradish tree, ben-oil tree and the Swahili, Mlonge. I came to use Mlonge because the name was understood by the people I worked with. I was first introduced to the tree and offered some seed by the National Treeseed Project up in Lushoto so I bought some to try. The oily seed goes off quickly and if the seed doesn’t germinate soon after sowing it will rot away. We were successful in raising some seedlings but my research revealed that climatically, we were just out of its range.

At least one person climbed on the bandwagon, and was extoling the profits to be made from the species, and of course any alternative source of income interests subsistence farmers. There was also an Indian fellow roaming around telling farmers that he would buy all the Mlonge seeds they produced. This was encouraging for me too, because greening the area was my goal, so I didn’t want to dampen any spirits, but I was still dubious. We continued to tend our seedlings, which was easy because the weather was warm and we kept the water up to them. Meantime the bandwagon-person, brought in some seedlings from Dar es Salaam and sold them off to farmers where we were running our environment programme, which gave me the opportunity to observe.

I began distributing a few seedlings to areas where I thought they had a chance, to people I was sure would give them their best care. I was surprised when, at our seminar in Valeska village, when an Indian woman told me she had a Mlonge tree in her garden and used the foliage, flowers and roots on a daily basis. She showed me and we supposed she lived in a small microclimate, and she didn’t think the tree would do well elsewhere in the village. It’s usual to find an Indian person living rurally, a long way off the beaten track, so I asked her how she came to be living there. With a shy smile, she told me it was a love story.

During the warmer months, the Mlonge seedlings on the whole grew very well, but when the early mornings dipped to 14°C they were no longer happy. By the time the warmer mornings returned, most of the trees were misshapen and I noticed that a few farmers had turned their goats into their trees. However as always, there were exceptions and some trees survived and a few people began to use the foliage, seedpods (drumsticks) and roots. The Indian man and his promise to buy seed had disappeared, and so had the bandwagon-person. Enthusiasm quickly slipped from the farmers because Tanzanians aren’t quick to change from their traditional diet. I recall a time of food shortage when instead of maize flour being given out, sweet corn flour was supplied and the yellow colour simply put the people off.

All of which is a pity. There’s potential for a long term project trialling Mlonge. The tree growing at Valeska was worth breeding from because although the woman and I thought it was growing in a micro-climate, it may not necessarily have been. Perhaps it was of a provenience that could withstand cooler climes. By careful selection we could have been able to breed a provenience suitable for the Meru region, which would have been very worthwhile. Because the tree is no dud! Most parts of the tree are edible but importantly, the tree produces weight for weight; twenty five times more iron than spinach, nearly twice as much vitamin C as oranges, fifteen times more potassium than bananas, four times more protein than eggs, ten times more vitamin A than carrots, and seventeen times more calcium than milk. Although Tanzanians might be slow to accept Mlonge into their diet, they would quickly the nutritional value of it and eventually accept it. The oil from the seed is useful for lubricating fine machinery, and probably cooking, but more important for a third world nation, the seedcake, left over from the oil extraction process, when sprinkled on top of muddy water will actually clear it by forcing the impurities to the bottom. But it does not sterilize the water, it simply makes the water more suitable for boiling!   

Nowadays, you can find Mlonge in heath shops under its botanical name, Moringa. Usually in powdered form or in capsules. I’ve never tried it or even seen it but its there, on line. You might be tempted to try it, you never know, it might fix what’s wrong with you!