Garden Sanctuary

I think one of the biggest legacies that will come from my service in Mwazisi is the little seed packets that my family and friends send in their letters and packages. Having new and different vegetables available in Mwazisi will have a significant effect on the overall nutrition of the people living in Mwazisi. Being organic seeds they also provide the gardeners of Mwazisi with a reliable reproducing seed base as opposed to the hybrid seeds that are spread all across Africa, by seed corporations like Monsanto. Most of all having these seeds has given me the opportunity to demonstrate simple sustainable gardening techniques like mulching and composting which, slowly by slowly, seem to be utilized by an increasing number of my fellow gardeners in the dambo (river valley). The world is headed into a global food crisis, but it will be particularly hard hitting in Malawi where an erratic rainy season last year devastated the south and central regions harvest and a focus on tobacco farming in the north. So I'd say one of the best things I can do for people in Mwazisi is hand them a pack of seeds.

I have already seen the diversification of Mwazisi's diet improve tremendously in the past year. When I first arrived the only vegetables growing in anybodies garden were rape, mustard greens, cabbage, tomatoes and onions. Not only does it seem they just plant these few vegetables, but these are also the only vegetables aside from wild amaranth and pumpkin greens that people know how to prepare. But since I started giving out different seeds I see scatterings of carrots, spinach, and romaine lettuce mixed into the gardens, and I'd like to imagine that's getting eaten.

At first most of the people that I gave seeds to weren't planting them. I think people asked for the seeds simply for the novelty of taking something new and different from the azungu. Maybe they were intimidated to actually plant them feeling like they wouldn't know what to do with the strange plants if they actually germinated. So I stopped just handing them out and started using them in demonstration gardens at both the secondary and primary schools. These gardens had a whole slew of problems, From the bore-hole drying up to goats breaking through our weak fence , and going to town on anything green, to the students just plain forgetting to water the garden for a week or more while I was away at trainings or trips to Lilongwe. But these first gardens were useful because they were the villages first introduction to the strange new vegetables. The students got to see them raised from seed to harvest, and they saw little things like a pepper plant is grown the same way you grow a tomato plant, or that you don't transplant carrots.

The students also were the first to taste the vegetables as well. As the carrots started to pop up I pulled and skinned them there and gave everybody a taste of raw carrots. They must have thought I was trying to kill them, as they slowly chewed the strange food with nervous smiles on their face looking to their friends for reassurance, only to have their friends watching them intently to see if at any moment they keel over and die. After getting their nod of approval I pulled up enough carrots for everybody and told them to slice up the carrots and mix them with any greens that they might be cooking. Soon students were coming up to me asking for carrot seed instead of the usual tomato and onion request. The vegetable sampling had a domino effect, as students carried home bundles of swiss chard, beet greens, and spinach, I had more and more people coming up to me to ask about what they had tasted and how they could get some more.

Another benefit of those first gardens was that it was a great opportunity for seed multiplication. I was amazed that despite the common complaint about the high price of seeds nobody seemed to be collecting their seeds after the vegetables were finished. So when our garden started to shoot flowers, we let them all go to seed, and I used it as an opportunity to teach my wildlife club about seed saving, as a result we collected a fair amount of spinach, and arugula seed, and bags of romaine lettuce seed. The students were excited to see how much seed could be collected from just a few plants, and I hope that they will continue saving their seeds so that the packets I hand out during my service will be supplying the gardens of Mwazisi for years to come.

This year I've done all of my gardening down in the dambo instead of dealing with the goats and lack of water in the village. It's a short walk from my house, and being a bit outside of village has made it into my quiet sanctuary at the end of the day. The brush surrounding the river is always alive with the sounds of birds and crickets as the sun begins to slide behind the mountains in Vwaza, and the nights first stars begin to appear overhead. These last few months things have become more hectic for me; I feel like I'm running back and forth between teaching, my tree nurseries, and the EPA project. So I think the couple of hours of quiet work in the garden every afternoon have maintained my sanity.

Another benefit of keeping the garden in the dambo is that my plot is together with the most serious gardeners in Mwazisi, so we are always learning from each other, and I know that any seeds I share with them will be put to good use. For example Mr. Mkandawire is a man in his sixties who keeps about a quarter of an acre next to my plot where he spends over three hours a day moving from plant to plant with two broken watering cans. He greets me with a warm smile every afternoon and we always share what we harvest that day. I also shared a lot of seeds with him early on, so now mixed in with his many cabbage and tomato plants, there is a whole section of butter crunch lettuce beds, the occasional bush bean plant, and even a few broccoli flowers. He showed me how to dig out a well when the water level of the river dropped, and I showed him that beet roots and cabbages make great companion plants. I was especially happy when I saw him mimicking the heavy mulching I put on my beds, the day after I explained that I do that so that I don't have to water my garden so often. I have introduced him to many vegetables that he has never tasted before, as I always send him home with instructions of how his wife should prepare the veggie of the day. He comes back with plans for next year to grow whatever vegetable I give him, and judging from what I've seen him do in his garden so far, I would never doubt that he could live up to his most ambitious plans.