Here at the Ruzizi Plain, the soil is rich but stubborn. The farmers, labor with broad-headed hoes. Step by step, they turn over the dark earth lent to them by a local landowner. Their strong, sure strikes carve diagonal furrows designed to catch just enough moisture without letting the cassava rot. The cassava is native to the Ruzizi Plain. The cassava has been cultivated in DR Congo for a long time. This traditional plant is richer in vitamins than the uniform crops grown for industrial markets. But despite their dense nutrition and cultural value, many traditional cassavas have all but disappeared from cultivation. Today, with all the famine and hunger people need a reliable source of nutrition. KCCA is determined to change that. Together, they are reviving native cassava and the ancestral ways of growing them, honoring knowledge that was nearly lost. At the same time, the women are pushing their community forward, placing themselves at the center of agricultural leadership. But the climate here is changing. “Sometimes it rains, sometimes it doesn’t, and sometimes drought destroys everything,” says Maria, a fellow farmer and one of the group’s leaders. The food was all delicious. Now, as the weather changes, sometimes the plantings just fail." When harvests are good, the women store the cassava in the traditional way: straw laid down like a bed, ash sprinkled to keep the tubers from rotting, then covered again with straw. “Like that, they last a year,” Sada explains. “In hard times, we could eat them and share with families who had none. The cassava is good for everyone’s health, worth cultivating and worth preserving.” These women are proud of their work. They talk of their next goals: a new water pump, an early warning system for drought. They want to save up to buy their own land and have plans for a tourism project. The women carefully plant row after row a traditional crop made new again, carrying with them culture, resilience, and the strength of women who refuse to be invisible.