Garden

The rain brings new opportunities to Nyagatare. No, not life directions or insightful revelations but the chance to grow a garden! My neighbor Sawa and I spent a majority of Sunday preparing our new garden. Our last one went pretty well, we were able to have some beautiful cucumbers, eggplants, basil and rocket. This time we are growing more of the same but reducing the amount of eggplants and increasing the amount of cucumbers and adding radishes. Although this was a day full of manual labor, I really enjoyed the uncomplicated process of getting down and digging in God’s beautiful earth. The simplicity of growing your own food in your backyard and being able to just walk out and pick what you need for dinner that night is plainly wonderful. I will say, growing a garden in Africa is quite a bit different from the States. You have to do the normal clearing and churning of soil but the soil isn’t so fertile over here and we can’t just go to the store to buy fertilizer so we have to collect cow patties and till them in. Also you can’t just throw the seeds into the flat tilled soil. You have to create- as Barbara Kingsolver described so well in Poisonwood Bible- mounds that look like little burial tombs. So we threw the seeds in the mounds and after a couple weeks of watchful watering and making sure the cows don’t trample the plants we should have some healthy veggies to add to our boring starch filled diets.

I know it’s turning toward fall but if you’re real ambitious you can grow a nice fall garden in the States or if you are just starting gardening try to plan ahead to spring. Check out what land you could use and see if there is anywhere you can start your own garden.

There are many benefits of growing some of your own food. First, this might be psychological but homegrown food just tastes better. Second, especially in America, the average grocery store veggie travels hundreds if not thousands of miles to get to you. If we pushed for more local or even better homegrown food we could drastically cut down on the greenhouse gasses being produced from bringing food many miles to you. Another good thing about gardening is that by eating your own or hopefully local food, you can really cut down on the amount of pesticides in your body. To be honest, I’m not up on recent pesticide studies but I have a feeling that they aren’t healthy for you and the less you have in your body, the better for you and for the environment which greatly suffers from pesticide runoff. Pesticide runoff in developing countries is a major problem that isn’t getting much attention.

Bottom line, I want you to grow a garden. Grow whatever fruits or veggies you want. Slow down, dig your hands down in God’s good earth and watch a plant grow that will feed you and have no negative side-effects besides being too delicious.

( It doesn't look like much now but waiting is part of the fun)