Meet our Restoration Champion Mary Shibumba

"PLANTING SEASON STORY"

To everyone of our restoration communities all over the world, it is our great pleasure to let you know that we have officially launched The planting season's story updates.

This will be a kind of stories from our restoration project activities which will be reaching out to everyone throughout the ARTICLE BOX of this Platform.

Today we would like to start with a short story about a child called Mary, a girl of four years old who became our champion at Mwienzi Forest Reserve Planting site during our tree-planting event days.

Illustration No.1. Which show a young girl called Mary when she was carrying tree saplings for transplantation.

This is the true story of a young girl who lives in a small village near Mwienzi Forest Reserve called Bujula Mienze village. One day when we were planting our trees in this forest when she was with her mother, she discovered that there are some people who are planting trees around her home as their home is bordered by this forest.

According to her mother, Mary loves trees since she was very little and she continued to say that "Over the last few years, my daughter has developed a fascination for trees and birds. She’ll hear them chirp, gasp, and say, “bird?” Her pronunciation was sounding a lot more like “bird” but she had the same reaction every single time when she heard one. She’ll prop herself up on a chair and look out the front window, searching the tree where birds are resting. She has always believed that their home depends on those trees so I think due to fact that, it was the point when she started loving those trees"

She added, "To be sincere, since that day, my daughter loves trees and she had her favorite tree near our home that she named (Ngika wane in Sukuma language which means My real friend) where some birds built their nest, but unfortunately her tree got dried due to the dry season faced by our village last year and she was so disappointed as she never saw any birds nearby by our home since their life base was gone. So I think when Mary saw (you) some people carrying trees in the buckets she remembered her birds on the tree and she started crying while shouting my birds on the tree! my birds on the tree! In Sukuma language "

Mary's mother continued to say that, "Once I realized that my baby loves trees because of birds as when she was young I found and I used to call some bird on the trees to calm her down if I couldn’t figure out why she was crying. Any bird on the tree would do whether it is in the farm, in the forest or out the window as long as it seems like her favourite birds on the tree, if I could find a bird on the tree for her to look at she would instantly calm down". 

Finally, her mother found the solution on how she would make Mary calm down and instantly told her that since her tree got dried last year now these people have come out to replace her tree and finally she will now meet her birds on that trees at her home and fortunately enough they now have many trees.

Afterwards, the girl decides to take action by forcing her mother to bring her where we were planting our trees and her mother had no other option. Instead she brought Mary to engage with us, which was a very lucky day to participate in our tree planting event with our champion of all the time at this planting site. And it was a good time for her as she returned to her home with some tree saplings to be planted by herself at home.

Illustration No.2. Which show a young girl called Mary when she was crossing their farm after being gifted some tree saplings to plant at her home place.

As she soon learns, however, that getting trees to grow in the forest is much more difficult than she thought. Because, you will need first to clear some weeds, digging a hole, carrying a tree in the buckets and now to insert a tree in the ground but she does not give up as she managed to participate for some few hours. And with the encouragement of her mother, her own determination and the help of our planting community, she eventually makes her dream.

Illustration No.3. Which show Mary's mother when she was planting some trees after being handed with her daughter.

The lesson and the vision of this story is that, we are so happy when we see our restoration mission touching the heart of the communities we serve and throughout this we firmly believing that, for a vibrant and healthy world where our trees planted now can one day become ancient forests where the children of all species can flourish. And this is a movement to support children and their communities to reconnect with nature and plant forests for the future generations. As we connect Landowners, Children and Nature Educators to plant and tend to trees to support biodiversity and healthy cultural regeneration.

And now we wish all the best to Mary's restoration journey as we believe that she will enjoy her life in the future. After her trees matured she will see many birds around her home and we promised her to help in any assistance she may require.

We will keep updating about her journey. Then we encourage you as environmental practitioners to support this vision so we can support biodiversity and healthy cultural regeneration.

Illustration No.4. Which show a young girl called Mary when she was with our planting communities during the plantation activities.