Graduate helps plant fruit orchard for village in Cameroon

"Oi ban cutlass."

It means "white man with the sword."

That's what the people in the African village called Ben DeMarsh if they didn't already know him as Ben.

DeMarsh earned their respect after being seen regularly walking miles in the summer equatorial heat, dirt-smudged and bearing his machete.

This summer, DeMarsh, a recent UF graduate, spent five weeks in Njinikom, a village in the northwest English-speaking region of Cameroon with two other volunteers. Cameroon is in west central Africa, just south of Nigeria.

The three volunteers are members of Nourish International, a collaboration of university chapters that pairs schools with international developing communities.

In Cameroon, DeMarsh represented UF's chapter. The other volunteers, Emily Salada and Christina Trevino, represented the University of Texas at Austin's chapter.

They started a project called fruit tree cultivation, which was designed to prepare a plot of land where 5,000 fruit trees would be planted. They taught local women how to tend the land and how to sell the produce for profit, creating jobs and a source of income.

It took weeks to clear the field and prepare it for planting, DeMarsh said. Productivity was slow, and work had to be done before 3 p.m., when the torrential rains came in, right on cue.

"You might get one thing done in a day, and that was a big success," DeMarsh said.

Only the men used machetes. Considering he was the only male volunteer, DeMarsh's work was cut out for him. With the field cleared and a greenhouse built for seedlings, supplies would be provided for the women, who otherwise had no access to jobs.

They could then cultivate the land and profit from its yield.

Nourish International's goal is to use university resources, like volunteers and fundraising, to start projects like this one in developing communities abroad.

Projects can range from water treatment facilities to learning centers to land cultivation.

The purpose is to teach community members how to keep the projects running after volunteers leave the site. This not only creates jobs and income, it also creates community empowerment, said Katie Conner, co-director of UF's Nourish International chapter.

"It's a student movement pushing sustainable development," Conner said. "We're not going to be creating more need when we leave."

Conner and DeMarsh founded UF's Nourish International chapter after taking a social entrepreneurship class together.

Despite the organization's status as a newbie on campus, the team still managed to reach across borders right away.

When a project in Swaziland fell through, UF contacted University of Texas at Austin's chapter and hopped onto its project in Cameroon.

As for the chapter at UF's future plans, no international projects are in the works yet. But the group is ready for new opportunities, Conner said.

For now, it is focusing on recruiting new members. It currently has about seven, she said.

DeMarsh is continuing work with his contacts in Cameroon. He's working on getting a grant for water tanks for the same fields he cleared this summer.

Knowing expectations can sometimes exceed results, he's approaching this project differently.

"Solutions to those types of problems are more complicated than they seem," DeMarsh said. "You need to just focus on one thing and do it well."