There’s always dirt here – never have gotten so dirty so quickly – and that’s just walking to work. But today was real dirt and we were up ears in it. Still picking clumps out of my hair from digging and being in the wrong place when others lobbed shovels of dirt through the air.
Uganda is still a largely agrarian culture and here in the north, much farming has been destroyed due to the fact that people have been living in IDP (Internally Displace People) camps for 20 years of war. When they were moved (or were convinced to move) into the camps for their safety during the war, they had to abandon their crops and could not leave the camps to go and dig. While most are back on the land now, their farming practices can’t keep up with the need for food and a vast number of people are suffering from HIV/AIDS and simply don’t have the strength to manage a large garden.
Enter Perma-gardening, a child of Perma-Culture. In short, it’s a method of gardening using small plots of land and natural, local resources very efficiently to increase yield. A small garden, done this way, can feed a family or a village year round and for years without the need for crop rotation, etc. It’s a very different way of digging and planting, so that’s what we learned today. And this day, we cleared, dug, weeded and planted nine individual gardens and one “kitchen garden.”
We discovered black ants over a half an inch long that hiss and smell funny. Nasty creatures – when they bite, they bite like a crab and don’t let go. (More visions of Poisonwood Bible and the river of ants…) We did double digging (digging down two feet in stages and bringing the deep soil up), water trapping, water channeling, composting, more digging, more weeding and learning how to make a central compost well in the center of a round garden, to continuously feed the garden.
There were about PCV’s and their Ugandan Counterparts there and we will all go out and use these methods and teach them in community. In the villages, these concepts put into play will offer better nutrition, more efficient farming practices that will increase yield and reduce costs associated with some other forms of high yield farming, offer HIV patients a way to manage their disease through improved nutrition and hopefully feed some school kids and have some produce left over to sell.
So I returned at 7:00 to – once again – no power and no running water, had a ripe papaya for dinner, a cold bucket bath (which I have learned to like…) and a visit from some PCVs close to what’s called COS (Close of Service). They all say time really flies after training when you’re at site. I’m waiting to see how this works – because I haven’t seen any wings-of-time flapping thus far, but the time is early “somehow.” Still busy trying to keep up with hauling water, lighting candles praying for power or water – or both.
Keep those e-mails and letters coming folks! It’s amazing what a difference in mood is generated when we get an e-mail from home. It’s like Christmas morning al over again 😉
Eyes are closing at 9:30 PM – absolutely disgraceful – but true. Nighty night ya’ll.