Arsenal Forest: Busy in Bore

There’s lots going on in Bore, the area of coastal Kenya where we are growing the Arsenal Forest – which now totals more than 28,000 trees. 

The nursery where the saplings are being nurtured has been extremely busy recently as the funding from Arsenal and other projects – allied to perfect growing conditions – has seen the propagation capacity go up from one million seedlings to 1.25 million. Preparations look extremely positive for the upcoming planting season. 

Meanwhile the new project to support the Bore Lionesses football team – who have been fully kitted out by Arsenal – in setting up a small co-operative trading business in the local village of Bore Singwaya is now well underway and it’s already becoming a nice sideline earner for the whole team. 

They take it in turns to staff the business and pictured above is Alice Khadija Hare, who has learned to operate the newly purchased scales that are used for weighing out the maize meal and other groceries in the shop. Alice is an athletic right winger for the Lionesses.

Finally, because it has been so consistently wet over in Bore, the nursery has been able to continue distributing trees to schools and farmers on an almost ongoing basis, rather than in the normal two seasonal tranches. As we’ve mentioned before, the schools are all very keen to have neem trees because it’s the variety we grow in the Arsenal Forest – so much so that it has now become known as “the Arsenal tree” in the region and its popularity has rocketed.