October 19, 2004

“Mom, are we going to plant the cookie tree today?” Kids have a wonderful way of saying things sometimes and I had to smile when our son Michael said “the cookie tree.” Of course there isn’t a tree that produces cookies, but I knew what he was talking about. Michael’s cookie tree was the Moringa oleifera, an amazing tree. Its leaves are high in protein and vitamin A and are also a good source of calcium and iron, all of which are sorely lacking in the diet of many children and women in Congo.

In an ECHO newsletter I had read about a Church World Service project in Senegal that was promoting the use of moringa leaf powder to combat malnutrition. The leaves of the moringa tree were harvested, dried in the shade to preserve their vitamin A content, and then put through a sieve to make a powder. The powder was then added to the children’s porridge or the family meal. The project had researched the nutritional content of the powder and found that three tablespoons a day of moringa leaf powder would provide a child less than three years of age with 42 percent of the recommended dietary allowance (RDA) of protein, 272 percent of vitamin A, and 71 percent of iron. For women nursing their babies, six rounded tablespoons a day would provide 21 percent of their protein, 84 percent of calcium, and 94 percent of iron.

I sent some moringa seeds to Mbuyi and Kabalosh, the agriculturalist and the nutritionist with whom we work in Congo, and encouraged them to start promoting the tree and the use of moringa leaf powder with the Presbyterian Urban Garden Program.

A couple of months later, when Larry had returned from one of his trips to Congo (we were living in Cameroon at the time), he handed me a bag of cookies and said “Inge, try these.” Mbuyi had been busy coming up with a cookie recipe using Moringa leaf powder and had sent me some cookies to try. (Michael declared them “very good!”) After some tinkering with Mbuyi’s initial cookie recipe, we came up with a high-protein cookie recipe using moringa leaf powder and soy flour. Four cookies a day give a 2-year old child (based on the RDA for that age) 55 percent of protein, 30 percent of calories, 36 percent of calcium, 54 percent of iron, and 240 percent of vitamin A.

We have been selling moringa cookies for two cents a cookie and promoting the use of moringa leaf powder in six of our Presbyterian health centers in Kinshasa that have nutrition rehabilitation programs. The results have been great. Our statistics from these feeding centers caught the attention of the European Union feeding program, and they asked us what we were doing different at our feeding centers. The malnutrition recovery rate was 96 percent, and the number of children having to be readmitted into the program was 0.15%. The answer was that once a week we were incorporating moringa leaf flour into the children’s weaning food at the health centers, demonstrating to the mothers how to use moringa. At the same time, volunteers trained by the Presbyterian Urban Garden Program were teaching mothers how to plant moringa trees and put in gardens at their homes. By doing so, when their children recovered and left the feeding centers, they would continue to have a source of high protein food at home. We also gave mothers the opportunity to buy moringa cookies to give to their children during the course of the day.

Today, the Presbyterian Church in Kinshasa manages 12 nutrition rehabilitation centers and has been feeding approximately 6,800 malnourished children over the past six months. The Presbyterian Urban Garden Program was able to obtain 460 tons of food from World Food Program for these feeding centers thanks to some initial funding from Presbyterian Disaster Assistance that helped us upgrade a warehouse for storing the food. The good management of the program by Mbuyi, Kabalosh, and the Presbyterian Women’s Department in Kinshasa has resulted in another year of funding of food by World Food Program.

Last year, a financial gift from a PC(USA) church enabled us to purchase two hectares of land outside of Kinshasa for planting a grove of 2,000 moringa trees. Within a year and a half, these trees will be a source of seed, cuttings, and leaves and will enable us to promote the moringa tree at other Presbyterian feeding centers.

Contributions to our ministry may be sent to: Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Individual Remittance Processing, PO Box 643700, Pittsburgh, PA 15264-3700. Write the title (Kinshasa Urban Garden Program) and the ECO number on the subject line (ECO # 864826) of the check and put it on your cover letter, too. Send a copy of the cover letter to International Health Ministries Office at 100 Witherspoon St. Louisville, KY 40202-1396. Or click the button below.

Larry and Inge Sthreshley

The 2004 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 40