“Mama Neem”

"UNEP’s Global 500 Award is about two things: people and courage. Each of the past laureates and the 1992 recipients are people who have shown courage to fight for a better future. What the Global 500 Awards demonstrate in a tangible way is that each of our own individual actions can make a difference.”

Thus Dr Mostafa Tolba, executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), had begun the induction ceremony at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 where Perin Savakshaw Fitter had won international recognition for her dedication to the cause of a sustainable world environment. Founder and project director of the Kenya Neem Foundation, Fitter received the Bharat Gaurav Award of the India International Friendship Society at the hands of Andhra Pradesh governor Sushil Kumar Shinde at Hyderabad in January 2006.

"I am sure I must have owed service to God in the field of neem,” notes Fitter in a letter to Parsiana. The gutsy lady has been traveling the length and breadth of Kenya to promulgate the use of the neem tree — its leaves, fruit, seeds, roots and oil — for poverty alleviation. Her three-hour talks in Kiswahili together with a series of demonstrations are aimed at teaching the villagers the use of neem as a pesticide and fertilizer, as mosquito and cockroach repellent, as medicine for an array of ailments including malaria and digestive disorders, as a contraceptive as well as a tonic to boost the body’s natural immunity system, for tick control and body hygiene. At the end of the session she provides the poor among the audience with samples of oil and seeds to grow their own neem tree.

All her functions are carried out in close consultation with Dr Ramesh Saxena, the neem awareness coordinator of the Kenya based International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE). Her voluntary services for the past 14 years for the promotion of neem had been sponsored by Kenya Agriculture Ministry’s National Agriculture and Livestock Extension Programme (NALEP). This contract ended in 2003 and Fitter’s letter of February 2, 2006 states that during the past two years she has not been able to hold her programs for lack of funds. While she was under contract to NALEP, the Swedish embassy had met her travel expenses.

"My programs in 2006/2007 will be with the backing of Parsis in Australia, Canada, UK, India and Kenya. At every function Parsis will be acknowledged for their support and contribution based on the golden words, ‘Good thoughts, good words, good deeds,’” writes Fitter acknowledging the help she has received from Nadir Godrej and Dr B. N. Vyas of Godrej Agrovet Ltd who have supported her project by buying neem T-shirts. She has also been purveying the use of the Godrej neem soap in Kenya. She hopes the community will help her with some finance to continue with her work in Kenya.

Fitter notes that her programs are very economical as she travels by bus and matatus (public transport in Kenya) and avails of overnight accommodation in temples and guest houses, arranging 80 programs a year on a budget of Rs 200,000. She is currently employed in ground work for her functions scheduled in India from February 2007 — the venues are said to be Poona, Delhi, Bombay, Aurangabad, Hyderabad and Bangalore.

A biology and chemistry teacher who has promoted Kenya’s Environment Conservation Education Programme over a lifetime, the Kisumu based Fitter was born and brought up in Eldoret where her father worked as an official of the law court. She notes in her letter that she had earned her bachelor of science degree from Wadia College in Poona and is happy that one of her programs there next year will coincide with the institution’s platinum jubilee.

Her fight against soil erosion and wildlife preservation in Kenya led her into exhibiting mobile films in rural schools, carrying the message to 600 students per day, until an unfortunate accident in 1991 — a head-on collision in which the drivers of both vehicles died on the spot — left Fitter in coma for six weeks in a Nairobi hospital. When she came to, she found that she had lost the use of one ear and one eye and permanent double vision in the other. But her effort to preserve the environment was acknowledged internationally, netting her the UNEP award for which British Airways donated the ticket, enabling her to receive the award in person.

Out of employment due to her disability, Fitter voluntarily undertook the propagation of the knowledge of neem to help poor farmers earn a living from this prolific gift from nature. She invited expert representatives from India with support from Air India and Kenya Airways to provide demonstrations in the cultivation and use of neem, including the harvesting of neem seeds, extraction of oil from the seeds using mortar and pestle, treating gunny bags for weevil free grain storage, etc.

Her immersion in the program led her to participate in the International Neem Conference in Australia in 1996 where she met and learnt some more about neem from Prof H. Schmutter. She attended the 1999 Neem Conference at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada at her own expense but after her talk there "the World Neem Conference secretariat reimbursed my ticket,” she notes. The same year she organized the Neem Festival in East Africa covering Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya.

By the year 2000 Fitter had earned the nickname "Mama Neem” after an extensive program covering six major districts in the country where the audience comprised famers, women’s groups, youth groups, NGOs, primary and secondary school students. By 2002 she was ready to participate in the World Neem Conference in Bombay, being invited to present a paper on "poverty alleviation.”

The 59-year-old Fitter is happily married to her work and ever escorted by reformed street children and inmates from local orphanages who help spread her "neem gospel,” as Franklin Awori had noted in East African Standard (August 29, 2001).