Every evening after work, Antonio Garrido takes care of the kids. His goats, that is. Two of them just gave birth and Barrido is busy bottle-feeding. “Animals are beautiful,” he says.

It’s work that represents the start of a new life for Garrido, who is from central Mexico. For years he and his wife lived in California, where he worked at a restaurant. Then, a decade ago, the couple visited Missouri and never turned back. Garrido says that his wife embraced life here. It was calm, no traffic, no street gangs. Garrido started a Tex-Mex restaurant, but then sold it to pursue what he did in his youth: farming.

Today, Garrido is a budding cattle and goat farmer with more than 100 acres of land, and he represents an increasing number of immigrant farmers taking root in the Midwest.

Latino farm owners are not new in places like California and Texas. But not so in Missouri, where immigrant-led farms represent just a tiny slice of farms overall. The operations are mostly small, with many immigrant farmers still working a second job to get by.

But a pilot project launched in January, and funded by the US Department of Agriculture, aims to support aspiring immigrant farmers in Nebraska and Missouri.

“You’re seeing an aging population and a lot of the younger folks in the labor market who are interested in farming tend to be folks from Latin America,” says Stephen Jeanetta, an assistant professor of rural sociology at the University of Missouri Extension and one of the project’s organizers.

The project consists of Saturday workshops at a southern Missouri library, with trainers coaching farmers on making business plans, networking and applying for loans. Hopes are that some farmers will become leaders and pass along what they learn.

Farmer Cirilo Salas is one of the trainees. On a recent morning he delivers breakfast to his flock of sheep. He is a natural at it, having worked farms all his life, from childhood in Mexico. But keeping livestock in the US does differ from Mexico, he says.

In Mexico, Salas was accustomed to letting animals graze freely. There was more land. But in the US, animals are fenced in and Salas must buy feed. It’s pricey.

Two years ago, when a major drought hit the Midwest, Salas lost nearly everything and had to sell most of his flock. To get by, he started working full-time at a feed company. And while Salas is in the US legally, the idea of seeking out government help intimidated him.

Russ Neill hopes to close the gap. He is a USDA loan agent who helps farmers recover from bad weather and get loans for land and equipment. He is also part of the immigrant-training project, which points farmers to USDA loan applications and other material available in Spanish. Neill says too often the language barrier creates a distance between himself and Latino farmers. “It is certainly a little frustrating,” Neill said.

Immigrant farmers can also face discrimination. The USDA is now compensating women and Latino farmers across the country who can claim that they were unfairly denied loans at some point from the 1980s up until 2000.

For farmer Antonio Garrido, operating a farm is more than a business venture, it is a source of pride. He once picked fruit as a teenager in California. Now, middle-aged, he just bought a new tractor. He remembers when the tractor was delivered to his day job, at an autobody shop. When Garrido went out to sign for the vehicle, his boss looked shocked. “You’re the one who bought the tractor?” he asked Barrido.

As for farmer Cirilo Salas, he soon hopes to become his own boss and farm full-time. When that moment comes, he vows to throw away his watch and work according to the sun.

At Chong’s Oriental Market, in downtown Columbia, Missouri, food shipments arrive from Chicago, about a seven-hour drive away.

The store’s owner is Daewun Sin, whose parents migrated from Korea to Chicago, and finally to Columbia in 1990. Sin’s parents spotted the chance to take over a small grocery store and run the city’s only Asian market at the time, specializing in Korean and Japanese food.

Daewun Sin, who owns Chong’s Oriental Market in Columbia, Missouri, shows a worker how to identify moldy cassava. (Photo: Anna Boiko-Weyrauch)

But today, many of Chong’s shoppers are not Asian. In the span of an hour, customers from Ghana, Kenya and the Congo buy groceries here. Over the past decade, the number of Africans in the small city of Columbia has grown to around 1,000 people, according to surveys. Some are professionals who’ve moved here for jobs; others are resettled refugees from war-torn areas. The newer population represented an untapped market.

Sin decided it was time to break out and cater to new customers.

“We have other cultures that come to our store just to buy, like, produce and things, they’re like, ‘Hey you should start carrying this’, and I’m like, ‘Maybe I should,’” Sin said.

Sin revamped the store. Now, one section is entirely dedicated to African food, like yam and cassava flour. And Chong’s market is now the go-to for African ingredients in Columbia, with some customers trekking in from miles away.

Sin says his parents would never have thought to overhaul their market like this. But Sin studied culinary arts and thought he could make it work. So he scouted out products that customers mentioned, look up African staple foods on Google, and watched cooking videos.

“First generation they come here, they’re just here to make it work,” Sin said. “Second generation, we always think about different things like, ‘Hey, how can we make this better? How can we do things differently?”

William Kwaku Ntow is from Ghana and now works as an agricultural scientist. He’s a regular Chong’s customer.

“I’m going to have a great meal this evening,” he declared recently. Indeed, his basket brimmed with plantains, yam and palm oil, and sardine tins, the Titus brand from Morocco. Rare finds in Columbia.

Ntow likes Columbia, but adds that if he couldn’t find what he likes to eat, that’d be a deal-breaker.

At Chong’s Oriental Market in downtown Columbia, Missouri, Daewun Sin attends to customers William Kwaku Ntow, an agricultural scientist from Ghana. (Photo: Anna Boiko-Weyrauch)

“I’m so used to the stuff that I used to enjoy back in Ghana that if I don’t find those things wherever I am living, I would find it very, very uncomfortable to continue to live there,” he said.

Chong’s market has become a regular part of the growing African community.

On Sunday nights, Violette Ndayisenga sings at church. She stands with the choir in a shiny orange outfit she made herself. Her sister sits in front, playing the drum. The church is where the town’s refugees from East Africa gather to pray in their native languages. Five years ago, Ndayisenga and her family were resettled in Columbia, Missouri, from a refugee camp in Tanzania.

“When we come to America, God say, ‘Go to Columbia, you will live there,’” Ndayisenga said. “So God choose us Columbia, say, ‘Columbia will be your home.”

Back home after church, Ndayisenga puts a pot of water to boil on the stove for dinner. One of the family’s favorite dishes is fufu made from rice powder. “When the water boils, she puts in the fufu, which comes in 50-pound bags from Chong’s Oriental Market. Once cooked, it looks like mashed potatoes. Ndayisenga serves it with fish and tomato sauce.

Back at the market, Chong’s owner, Sin, practices cross-cultural communication on a small scale. His father taught him good manners in Korean. Sin says it turns out those actions translate into other cultures.

“Even our African customers, when I hand them the receipt or the change or the card, I had them with two hands, or with my right hand under my left hand, and they see that, ‘Hey, we do that too.’ So they’re saying, ‘Oh, you’re very well mannered,” said Sin.

Sin wants to make the store even more international. Indian food is next. The only problem: finding enough space on the shelf.

Meanwhile in Columbia, Missouri, Lamya Najem and her husband, Shakir Hamoodi, had migrated to the U.S. They heard Bush on TV—and thought they understood what he said. Today, Najem looks back, resigned. She said, “I was never imagine that helping others is breaking the law.”

In 1990, U.S. sanctions prohibited money transfers to Iraq. Earlier this year, Najem’s husband, Hamoodi, began serving three years in prison for violating those rules by sending money to his relatives in Iraq—and helping other Iraqis in Missouri do the same. Over nine years, the transfers added up, to nearly $300,000.

Najem said the idea came in 1992, when her brother-in-law called from Iraq. They expected news about a new baby. “And then they said no, the baby, we lost the baby,” she said. They asked why. What happened? “They did not want to tell us first,” Najem said. “And then when we kept asking they told us that, ‘Yeah, because she had infection and we could not find the medicine for her.’”

Hamoodi’s sister-in-law couldn’t afford $10 antibiotics to treat an infection and prevent a miscarriage. Najem said she and her husband had to help. “You can never enjoy the life and sit and be happy, and you know that your family they are suffering.”

When Hamoodi started sending money in 1994, he knew it was illegal. Hamoodi couldn’t speak from prison for this story. But Inside Columbia Magazine interviewed him this summer. In that interview, Hamoodi said, “I felt obligated and responsible to extend a hand of compassionate and mercy to my family in Iraq. So I was sending them some relief funds so as they could buy food and medicine locally there.”

No one has ever proved that Hamoodi’s money supported Saddam Hussein’s government. But U.S. officials argue that Hamoodi chose to skirt the rules instead of sending aid legally.

Don Ledford is a spokesman for the Department of Justice, which prosecuted the case. He read an excerpt from an official statement. “When cash is transferred across international borders, it’s difficult, if not impossible, to trace its destination,” he read. “There is no way to know whether those funds wind up in the hands of terrorists or innocent family members. For that reason, the very act of smuggling funds in violation of U.S. sanctions is necessarily a crime.” Hamoodi, Ledford said, chose to commit a federal crime and the court justly sentenced him.

With Hamoodi now in prison, his family is stumbling through life without him. Najem, Hamoodi’s wife, teaches Arabic to second-graders. She has never been apart from her husband for so long. “We were always together,” she said. “He’s always there to help me, support me. So, he’s a big part of my life.”

Hamoodi’s oldest son, Owais Abdul-Kafi, is in medical school and now also runs the gourmet grocery store his father started. He thinks his father’s case is ridiculous. “Makes no sense,” he said. “You’re taking a very productive citizen, a very highly educated person, who did a noble and humanitarian deed, you’re imprisoning him.”

Hamoodi’s 15-year-old son, Abdul-Rahman Abdul-Kafi, also feels his father’s absence. “Usually we would sit as a family after prayer and talk, just say what happened that day and stuff like that,” he said. It made the day “finish at a good rate.”

Craig Van Matre is a pro-bono lawyer in Columbia working for Hamoodi. He flipped through a petition that asks Obama to shorten the sentence. It has thousands of signatures and letters from people Hamoodi has helped. But Van Matre said his petition is a long shot. Obama has only commuted one sentence in his term.

“There are literally thousands of people clamoring for the president’s attention,” Van Matre said. “And penetrating that noise to single out this one case is going to be a very, very difficult task.”

Hamoodi’s son, Abdul-Kafi, said, “We believe that God kind of tests us. It’s kind of a test of how faithful and resilient we are.”

In an email, a Justice Department official said Hamoodi’s petition application is being considered, but could not estimate when there would be a decision.

Owais Abdul-Kafi and Abdul-Rahman Abdul-Kafi help run a gourmet food store in Columbia, Missouri, that their father Shakir Hamoodi started. (Photo: Anna Boiko-Weyrauch)

Lake Kivu’s fish are a crucial source of food and income for local residents. But there’s something else below the surface beside fish, something fraught with both peril and, locals hope, promise. Deep at the bottom of the lake, almost a thousand feet down, Kivu’s water is rich with naturally-occurring gas – including high levels of carbon dioxide and methane.

The gas is produced by unusual geological and biological processes. It’s a natural oddity, and it could be very dangerous, says Charles Nyirahuku, who manages energy projects for the Rwandan government.

“It builds up in the water,” Nyirahuku says, “and it can cause a sudden outburst or release of methane into the atmosphere.”

Lake Kivu seen from the town of Gisenyi. (Photo: Anna Boiko-Weyrauch)

“We are told that this is one of the major environmental risks which we can face,” Nyirahuku says. And the only way to avert this kind of risk is to extract the methane.”

And that’s what his role in energy projects comes in. Nyirahuku is helping develop a project to capture the lake’s dissolved methane and use it to generate energy.

The beginnings of the project are rising on the edge of the lake, where workers chant in unison as they move metal beams next to a big blue barge, and welders fix rails that will guide the barge into the lake.

The barge will eventually float to a spot about eight miles away and become part of what’s known as the KivuWatt project. Equipment on the barge will suck the gas-rich water from the deepest part of the lake through what are called risers—“basically big straws” — stuck more than a thousand feet into the lake, says Bill Barry, a vice president at the New York-based company ContourGlobal, which is developing the unusual power plant.

Barry says the gasses will be separated from the water, and then from each other. The less-volatile CO2 will be pumped back below the surface, and the methane will be piped to shore, where it will be used to fuel a power plant.

If all goes according to plan, the process will help solve two big problems: the threat of an explosion, and Rwanda’s chronic energy shortage. Rwanda has very few energy resources of its own, which has helped make it one of the most expensive places in East Africa to power a home or business. Almost half of the electricity here is generated using diesel fuel, which has to be trucked into the landlocked country.

Backers hope the KivuWatt project will eventually double the amount of electricity generated in Rwanda and help wean the country off diesel energy.

But, there are risks.

For one thing, different layers of the lake have different concentrations of gas, and disturbing them too much could itself cause the very kind of explosion the project is meant to prevent. Experts have come up with guidelines for what they say will be safe gas extraction, and the Rwandan government has created a team to monitor the KivuWatt project.

Engineer Augusta Umutoni, who’s is in charge of the team, says she’s confident that there is no risk that the project might cause an explosion. But she says that isn’t the only risk.

A welder repairs the rails guiding the methane extraction barge into Lake Kivu at night. (Photo: Anna Boiko-Weyrauch)

That’s why the methane project will start small, with just a pilot phase expected to start producing energy later this year.

Back on the lake, the fishermen know that the power plant will change their lives, one way or another. Issa Ndungutse says he hopes it will be for the better. He says he hopes the methane project will reduce the risk of a gas explosion, and expects it to bring jobs and electricity to the area. Right now, he says, he doesn’t have power in his house.

Meanwhile the Rwandan government has much greater hopes for the unconventional project. If all the risks can be avoided, capturing Lake Kivu’s methane could be a big step in the country’s economic development.

Gahire explains that his uncle cut down the forest here to grow crops on the steep hills. But without the trees, the soil on the hills began to erode. So his uncle planted grass instead, and turned the hill into pastureland for cattle.

It’s a common story here.

This farm used to be part of the vast Gishwati forest, home to creatures like chimpanzees and golden monkeys. But now it’s just hill after hill of green grass, with only an occasional tree. Almost 95 percent of the forest is gone.

“If you look at the forest you can see how it has been degraded,” said Madeline Nyiratuza, a coordinator with the Gishwati Area Conservation Program of The Great Ape Trust.

Legacy of Genocide

Nyiratuza stands on a hill overlooking a small patch of remaining forest. She says the deforestation in this part of Rwanda is a legacy of the genocide in the 1990s.

“These farms, which are surrounding the forest, have been created after 1994 genocide, when people who came back to Rwanda from DRC cut down the forest to plant crops and raise their animals,” Nyiratuza said.

After the genocide, the government allowed refugees to come back to Rwanda and settle in the country’s natural reserves, like the Gishwati forest.

But Rwanda’s deforestation problem didn’t start then. The country’s natural resources have been ravaged for decades. Starting in the 1970’s, much of the Gishwati was cleared for tea and timber plantations, and commercial cattle ranches.

Then in the 1980’s and 1990’s, the country’s population grew faster than food production. That led to destructive farming practices that exhausted soil and local ecosystems all over Rwanda.

All of this deforestation has had a big human cost. In northwest Rwanda alone, heavy rainfall in deforested areas has caused floods that have killed close to 100 people in recent years. Erosion from the floods has also destroyed crops and brought famine to tens of thousands of people.

Economic Threat

But the government is finally starting to reckon with the problem.

“Our country is very vulnerable with regard to land erosion, with regard to land degradation. So the very source that people have to depend on is at risk,” said Stanislas Kamanzi, Rwanda’s Minister of Natural Resources.

Kamanzi says the government recognizes that a weak environment is a serious economic threat. So earlier this year, the government announced a new plan to restore the country’s landscape.

It’s called the Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative, and the ambitious goal is to reverse the degradation of Rwanda’s soil, and restore watersheds and forests from one border of the country to another by the year 2035.

Kamanzi says the plan is aimed at making sure Rwandans can continue to support themselves by farming.

“For those farming activities to be sustainable, you need productive land. And our land can be productive if only it’s protected, it’s conserved,” Kamanzi said.

The Rwandan government is working with the International Union for Conservation of Nature and the UN Forum on Forests to figure out the details and implement the massive restoration plan.

But it’s based on the understanding that trees and forests not only provide habitat for animals, they also help build and retain soil, and hold and filter water.

Kamanzi says the ultimate vision is to restore working ecosystems across Rwanda.

“The Rwanda we are contemplating in the years to come will look more or less like an afforested area, while under the canopy you’re having all the types of crops people need for their wellbeing,” he said.

Changes Already Underway

You can see an example of the vision behind the restoration plan less than an hour south of the country’s capital.

The Bugesera district is a dry and drought- prone place. In the last decade, some droughts have been so severe that international organizations have had to step in with food aid. But the environment is becoming a priority here, and it’s easy to find newly planted trees.

Along the main road, tall trees shade rows of coffee and cassava plants.

Paul Kalimba, who owns some of the trees, tears a branch off a bush, crouches down and pokes it into the ground, demonstrating how he planted the trees as saplings just three years ago.

Local authorities gave him the saplings, and paid him to plant them.

Kalimba says people around here are happy with the trees, because there weren’t enough before. He says it’s very important, because he believes the trees have brought more rainfall.

It’s a small success, so far. But the Rwandan government hopes its Landscape Forest Restoration Initiative will replicate this scene across the entire country, from the dry plains of Bugesera, to the wet hills of the northwest.

Supporters acknowledge there will be big challenges. But, if it works, Rwanda will look very different, and perhaps be a healthier and more prosperous country, a quarter century from now.