Jeanne Noubissi

Hard-working and generous, 38 year old Jeanne Noubissi is the caretaker of not only her mother and two young children, but has also taken under her wing eight family members including brothers, sisters, nieces and nephews. All twelve live in a small wooden shed on 3 acres family owned land in Njombe, Cameroon.

Born in 1970 she grew up in her father’s native village of Nkongsamba in the Littoral Province, and went on to study Home Economics in the country’s industrial capital of Douala. Facing unemployment at the time of her father’s death in 1992, Jeanne decided to join her mother and returned to her native town.

On their 3 acres of land in Njombe, the family grows staple foods like sweet potatoes, squash, and cassava that are partly used for own consumption but also sold to support educational and health expenses of the family. Jeanne further undertakes small commercial activities like trading fresh eggs with the small restaurants on the main road across town and buying up rejected bananas from larger agro-businesses for resale in town.

Jeanne’s greatest passion and dreams, however, are invested in her cottage fruit drying industry, which has allowed her to gradually raise her living standards: to send her oldest child to school and to even start building a small house to replace her current living quarters.  

One day in 1998, Jeanne had been approached by a fellow youngster from Njombé, Daniel Hamaha. Among the first recipients of a training organized in 1992 by the Swiss Protestant Churches through Cameroon’s National Council of Churches, Daniel had over time continued to develop his newly acquired fruit drying skills. Sharpening his know-how, experimenting to achieve the best quality dried fruit product and training others to join and participate in a Fair Trade partnership with Switzerland he had become expert in this unique trade. Seeing her destitute situation and poor health, Daniel had decided to pass on the skill to Jeanne and help her improve her circumstances. Jeanne then invited other youth with whom she had grown up to form together the dryers group Jeunes de Bonandam.

Striving for a high quality and nutritious product, Jeanne maintains a friendly relationship with the Agricultural Research Center for Plantains (CARBAP), a research Center supported by 14 countries of the European Union. They are more than willing to test her products upon her request, and the Center’s leadership regularly drops in on her to show visiting groups her cottage fruit drying unit.

Wanting to make it their main economic activity, all group members are prepared to sacrifice for achieving that goal. You can help Jeanne and Jeunnes de Bonandam achieve their goal of becoming full time fruit driers by purchasing their dried fruit from PJT.