After a month of carefully watering the garden everyday, (and by carefully watering I mean scrounging to find said water, lugging it in buckets to the garden, and then carefully dumping it onto our sun baked soil with metal minnow bowls) we finally were able to start to take the fruits of our labors…or rather, vegetables of our labor. Every day since the month we planted we have been eating non-stop spinach, sweet potato leaves, and ochre. It took a lot of patience, chicken shooing, goat rock-throwing and water fetching, but everyday we have a variety of fresh foods to choose from, and that is truly wonderful. These pictures are of my house helper Joyce and Mustafa, both with things that have grown in our garden. The truly remarkable thing about our garden, is the street cred that I now have among my peers here in Makong’onda. Every day as mamas and babas are passing by on the path to go to their respective fields, they all stop and glance into my garden, “Mama Mirinda, your garden is so beautiful” or “Mama Mirinda, when are you going to give me some spinach?” or (the most popular) “Mama Mirinda, your garden is beautiful but you need to wear your khanga properly…your kneecaps are showing!”. A large number of Mamas expressed an interest in making their own garden, and so we are in the works of planning a garden-making/nutrition seminar for the Mamas of Makong’onda. Stay tuned for updates…on the seminar, and the state of my tomatoes…(THEY JUST STARTED FLOWERS!!!).
No comments:
Post a Comment