By Dan Heyman
A Kenyan college student is getting ready to take home lessons he learned over five months working in West Virginia’s spruce reforestation.
University of Nairobi political science major Mart Kabochi, 22, has been in the state since the beginning of the year and has worked as an intern with the Central Appalachian Spruce Restoration Initiative (CASRI). It’s been a lot to take in, Kabochi said, but he wants to use what he’s learned to help ramp up reforestation back home.
“Everything is just overwhelming,” he said. “I have learned so much I can’t even believe it myself – easier ways of planting the trees, how to take care of them. When I go back, I’m going to be a resource.”
Kabochi said his time here has been “more than fantastic.” Spruce restoration goes much faster than similar efforts at home, he said.
From the way Kabochi described it, it’s hard to imagine more different forests than West Virginia’s and those in Kenya. Kabochi said that where he comes from on the western side of Mount Kenya, it’s flat, a little drier and a little hotter – an arid plain full of acacia trees.
“All the roads are straight. Like, everything is flat,” he said. “My mom’s house is just about five minutes’ walk from the Equator. The trees in Kenya are way different. We don’t have cherry, we don’t have dogwood, we don’t have spruce.”
Kabochi said he was moved to work on reforestation by Kenyan national hero and Nobel Prize winner Wangari Maathai.
“We bought a book called ‘Unbowed,’ which Wangari Maathai wrote,” he said, “and that did give me a lot of spirit. She’s the one who inspired me.”
Kabochi was in the Canaan Valley thanks to CASRI, the Forest Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy. When he goes back, he said, he will be working on reforestation in the Serengeti and in a huge urban forest in Nairobi.