Saturday, November 12, 2011

Season of Plenty

It's been a while since I last wrote. Here's the latest update...

September and October I spent mostly in my village after being in Lusaka and Livingstone for most of August. September and October are the middle of the hot season here. Most people have told me that the hot season this year was much cooler than normal. This time of year we get a lot of fruit ripening in our area, mostly because it's hot everyday and the rains haven't quite begun yet. We have pineapples by the truckload in Kelondu this time. People wait by the road with their giant piles of pineapples, waiting for a truck to come and buy them. Usually the pineapples get taken by trucks to Solwezi or Copperbelt where they sell for 3-5 times as much as they do in my area. Some pineapple farmers rent trucks and take a load of pineapples to the DRC border and sell them for 5,000 Kwacha each (about one US dollar).  In Kelondu, pineapples usually sell for 1,000 Kwacha each, and these are the best pineapples I've ever had in my life. You've really never eaten a pineapple until you've come to my village and eaten a ripe pineapple straight out of the field. This time we also have a lot of other fruits including papaya, mulberry, and avocado.

My garden project has been taking a lot of time. My garden is a small plot, maybe 10 by 10 meters. I'm trying to use it to demonstrate practical, organic gardening techniques. Gardeners and farmers here suffer from the same misconceptions here as they do everywhere else in the world. The biggest issues...mono cropping, lack of crop rotation, insects, poor soil fertility, and of course, goats. We have some excellent gardeners in my area. We have abundant, year-round water sources, which makes gardening very practical. Most people have very impressive stream-side gardens. Unfortunately, farmers here suffer from the lack of availability of a good variety of seeds. Most of the seeds that they can get are poor-quality GMO seeds that can't be recollected and replanted from the crop. The major agro-industrial corporations have their grip even on the poorest and most remote areas of the world. There are a few local varieties of eggplant, tomato, and onion that people here have had a great deal of success growing here. People save seeds or bulbs and replant them. Unfortunately, because people plant these same crops every year, all year, the pest issues have become a huge problem, lowering productivity enormously and requiring people to spray pesticides. In hot season, all of these problems combine to make organic gardening extremely difficult. The goats, the insects, and the weeds have all claimed my garden as their home, and they love being there when I'm in Solwezi or Lusaka.
I've been holding some meetings with the gardeners in my area to discuss conservation farming techniques. Every time we meet, we discuss a different topic, composting, bed construction, pest-control, etc. So it's been a slow process getting farmers used to the idea that they can use certain plants to make pesticide sprays, or that they can use manure from their chickens or goats, or that they can plant different crops every season. The main incentive is that all of these things don't cost them anything, so it doesn't hurt to try a little. I don't have much to show for in my garden right now, but I'm trying to set it up well for the future integrating some useful tree species, live fencing using pineapples and mulberry to keep the goats out, stabilizing slopes and reducing soil erosion using grasses, and slowly improving the soil using manures and nitrogen-rich plant material.

The garden project is part of a larger idea that everything should be designed well and have a purpose. I'm trying to convince people that they should have chickens or goats for good reasons, not just because other people have them. They should be thinking about the purpose and function of everything they do... BEFORE THEY DO IT. People should grow pineapples, or garden, or plant certain trees, or have fish ponds because they fit into a larger system instead of standing as individual projects. For example, you can use the sludge from your fish pond or chicken poop as manure, then you can use garden wastes to feed chickens and fish. Pineapples can be used as live fencing, and don't necessarily have to be planted in perfect rows. I'm starting to keep some chickens (I have 4 hens at the moment) as somewhere to start. Lundas aren't traditionally good with animals. They have always hunted their meat and have never had the need to raise animals until recently. Now all the game has been sold down the road and people have to keep animals. Animals are, for the most part, treated like things. They aren't treated as if they have feelings or as if they can do useful things like pull carts, plow your field, or eat weeds. Animals here function as bank accounts, as indicators of wealth, and as sources of manure. It's really become something I want to focus on in my service, getting people actually using their animals correctly and having them for a good reason.

I've also finished building and have begun using a fuel efficient stove made out of village materials. I'll include photos of this one soon. This stove uses about one third of the firewood as a traditional 3-log fire, conserves heat, and cooks rapidly. I'm trying to promote these stoves trough the Forestry Department and through the local women's groups. These stoves are practical for families that have nshima cooking all day long. I used bricks, mortar, sand, and rocks, all from a 100 meter radius of my house.

That's all for now but I'll post more pictures and more stories next week.