It’s starting to feel like the logo for Peace Corps Malawi should be something like: ‘Homesteading on a Shoestring’, or ‘Little House on the Savannah- the Next Generation’. Although the work of community health assessment continues, my attempts to turn my dusty, scorched-earth yard into an African Eden (or at least more green than brown) are intensifying.
When I arrived in Chiwamba, it wasn’t yet the season for harvesting the grass reeds used for fences, so the health center staff used cardboard to create a little courtyard for my privacy. But then it became grass season, and I was ready to do some full on landscaping.
I got out my khasu (like a short hoe) and started hacking at the ground, not really accomplishing anything. I built a rickety hand-washing station and a dish drying rack that had to lean against my house (and still fell over sometimes).
“What am I missing?” I asked Chancy, my counterpart.
“You have to wet the ground first, it’s too dry.”
I tried to dig a rubbish pit, pouring my used dishwater in the hole each night to soften the earth. And it worked, to an extent. But not well enough to dig garden beds.
I was in Lilongwe that week and asked a veteran PCV there.
“Get a pick-axe,” he said, “the heavier the better.”
I found a nice huge pick-axe in town and had a lot of fun getting it back to my village. Hitchhiking was a no go- I looked like the grim reaper in a Chitenge. But even the axe couldn’t break the earth without first soaking it.
I needed a TON of water, and I couldn’t carry it all myself.
After mapping out where I wanted my garden to be, I headed to the health center and talked to the guardians. These are women who travel with pregnant relatives who live far away. They come to the health center three weeks before the due date and sort of camp in an outbuilding, waiting to go into labor. The guardians take care of them before and after the birth.
I hired two women to carry water from the borehole and soak the area that I wanted to plant. They were a little perplexed as to why I was planting during the dry season, but they were glad for the job. Then I took my pick-axe and khasu and hacked away at the earth until I got blisters. My night watchman, Botoman, found me covered in sweat and dirt. The beds were still only a few inches deep and my hands were bleeding.
“What are you doing?” He asked in his baritone voice.
“I want a dimba,” I said ”I want to grow my own tomatoes and onions.”
He shook his head and made a tsk tsk sound, then took my axe and hoe. We made a deal that he would dig that night for some extra money. His wife is pregnant, so odd jobs are welcome. I heard the whack, whack of the pick-axe all night, but in the morning, there were my three garden beds, each a meter deep.
“Great job, Botoman- they look like empty graves!” He smiled.
That week the fence was also expanded, with the cardboard taken down and replaced by tall, dry grass. It enclosed my empty garden perfectly, shading it on three sides. Following one of the books on tropical vegetable gardening provided by the Peace Corps, I started filling the beds with organic rubbish, one at a time. Lots of leaves, paper, fruit peels and eggshells went into the pit. THEN the fun started. Once the rubbish was a few inches deep in the pit, I started going manure hunting.
I began in the maize field between my house and the borehole. It belongs to the headmaster of the local primary school. I had him and his wife over for dinner and when I told them about my plans, they gave me permission to gather cow manure from the empty field. So every afternoon, when I ran out of other things to do, I took a bucket and trowel and went out gathering cow dung. It was pretty slow work, but after a few days, a woman on her way to the borehole took me to her house, where there were eight cows. I met the family and they said to take as much manure as I wanted. I carried six buckets back on my head that night, until the hole was filled with several inches of dung, and the rubbish was no longer visible. Then I mixed the soil that had been removed, and replaced it in the pit, topping it off with several inches of mulch. Every evening I wet the mulch, and now after a week and a half, the bottom layer has begun to rot. Soon it will be ready for planting.
Now my rubbish is going into bed number two. And after all the careful observation of how the fencemakers plied the ground to make sturdy fenceposts, I tore down my rickety hand-washing station and dish drying rack and made new, firmly planted ones. I started a nursery beneath my hand-washing station, germinating cucumber and tomato seeds. Every time I wash my hands, the water drips on the nursery, conserving every drop.
As much as I appreciate my neighbor with the cows, I don’t want to wear out my welcome. Plus I really enjoy the afternoon walks, exploring new trails, searching for dried poo. I discovered a really nice field behind the primary school where cattle had obviously been grazing recently. I can’t go near the school during classes, because seeing an Azungu stirs the kids into a frenzy, but there was still a teacher’s meeting going on. One of them leaned out the window.
“Eliza, what is it that you are looking for?”
“Ndikufuna manure! Ndidzkhala dimba!” I yelled back.
“Oh.”
A few seconds later I heard the room full of teachers roaring with laughter.
During training an experienced PVC told us that we will inevitably do so many culturally strange things during the first few months at site, that the people who are going to think we are nuts will probably come to that conclusion no matter what.
I take that as consolation when I am surprised by someone overhearing me talking to the manure, saying things like, “oh, you’re a nice big plop, yes you are! Hold on maggots, this is MY cow pie now!”
After a few days of this “wild” hunting, another neighbor saw me and led me to his pig farm, and said I could have two bucketfuls of pig poop. I was so excited that my Malawian pastor overheard me from the nearby trail. He helped me carry the manure home and looked intently at the garden beds.
“This is totally different,” he said “I think I may have to try this.”
I lent him a book on permaculture in Chichewa and went back out hunting.
Today the manure in bed two is basi- enough. I will go out and fill in the bed with soil, cover it with mulch, and start tossing rubbish in bed three. When all the beds are filled, I will make a proper compost pit and start planning the magnificent herb garden I have envisioned for the other side of my house. In the meantime, word is spreading about my garden. Nearly every day I get a shy visitor who wants to look at my different way of preparing the soil. I guess the proof will be in the vegetables, though.
Today, as I look out at my no longer scorched-earth yard, I am thinking- “How hard could it be to raise chickens???"
