Bustani Bonanza August 2009

“Mwalimu, come back outside and help us”
“No, apparently I can’t do ANYTHING right, just DO IT YOURSELF.”
“You didn’t understand us”.
“I understand that I can’t do it right, so I might as well just sit here”.
“When we said ‘you couldn’t do anything right’ we meant it in a respectful way!”
“Ba!”

After a successful Pima day and a whirl-wind form four mock examinations week, we have finally had some time to do what we excel at doing in Makong’onda, hanging around and relaxing. In my American home and upbringing, it has always been suggested that idle hands are the devils playground. In my Tanzanian home with my new “son” and “children”, I have started to implement the same “lets always have something to do so that we never have to say the word bored” policy. Thus began, bustani bonanza.
Bustani is the Swahili word for garden, and ngumu is the Swahili word for difficult. To make anything grow in Makong’onda is NGUMU. This is mostly due to the lack of rainfall and then lack of working pump. What better way to keep us busy than to start an impossible garden that will take far more upkeep than what we will be able to grow?
The above dialogue occurred after my first hissy fit, directed at two students who wouldn’t let me dig, then made fun of the way I was watering the plants, then said I couldn’t spread manure correctly (“just go fetch water, you can do that right?”), and finally, told me I was pulling water from the well too slowly. Working with students who have much more experience working their own soil is a challenge, but I came prepared. I had read a book, sharing all the things we would ever need to know to make our soil healthy and plant our companion crops. One kid used my book as a coaster for his tea. Bummer.
After a long period of learning, listening, and 2 more hissy fits, we had a garden. We planted tomatoes, cabbage, spinach, chinease cabbage, and carrots, as well as 3 papaya trees. We haven’t yet decided if we are going to be able to eat all of the things that we planted (indeed we don’t actually know if what we planted is going to grow) but we have decided that we are going to go use this garden as a demo, and encourage the mamas of the village to grow their own as well, using the water they have available after bathing, doing the dishes, or drinking chai.
There were only 4 people who insisted I was doing a bang-up job in the garden. I decided to include these cheerleaders for your viewing pleasure. More pictures of the future garden and (hopefully) the fruits of our labor later…