17 September 2009
By Randee Edmundson, PCV TZ
Rose’s Garden
I talked with Rose at Nice’s office, an NGO – For Youth Development and Controlling AIDS in Lushoto. I was there to see what she would want to do at her garden when Peter Jensen returned – one year after developing her bio-intensive garden next to her house. Peter is an agricultural specialist working in several East African countries and specifically all over Tanzania to improve the nutrition of people. Peter wanted to come back to Rose’s garden. He seemed to feel hope that things could improve for her family with the garden and he enjoyed working with Rose, her children and her friends.
Rose, this day was not feeling well. She explained that her legs were swelling, she had a cold and her energy was low. As we talked, she told me of the problems with the garden. There is not enough water to sustain growth to get much food; she cannot get water carried up the mountain for basic needs of cooking, drinking, and washing. She is discouraged and tired. I listen. I tell her Peter does not have to come next week. I said I could come after the rains start and we can prepare the beds. To this idea she replied adamantly, “No, I want Peter to come. But, I do not want to have all the friends and people. I just want my family and a few close friends.” I offered to provide lunch for people. She again replied, “No, I want to make tea and lunch for Peter and you and family. I can do this, I want do this.”
So we made a plan. She assured me that her children and neighbors could get the buckets of water and manure needed brought to the house. Peter and I would bring the charcoal pieces we wanted to try adding this time to capture more water and also drinking water for people while they worked.
It is a privilege to know Rose. She has a strength one can sense. I remember sitting in her living room for the first time last year with Nice. I had come to talk to her about the garden she wanted to make by her house. I had arranged for Peter to come teach us bio-intensive gardening methods by developing her garden the first time. Sitting with her, I read the greeting cards from birthdays past displayed on her coffee table. She showed me her family picture album, explaining who was who at different events. Her husband on their wedding day, her children when they were small held by her mother and husband. I had heard parts of her family story months earlier at the Girls’ Leadership Workshop where she was the guest speaker on “living with HIV/AIDS”. But this time I heard new pieces of her story as we viewed the pictures. They married, they had three children, a girl, a boy and then the youngest girl named Upendo (love). Then he got sick and was diagnosed with AIDS. He died and she then got tested. She, too, was infected with HIV. When we first met she was taking medications. In Tanzania, you cannot get medications until the disease has progressed -- so the medications can give you enough years to maybe raise your children.
Talking to her you know she loves her children and she loved her husband. She is a woman that is determined to have a normal life – with the years she has left. She is physically and mentally strong, she is able, she is determined to provide for her children together with them so that they are equally independent and strong, relying on each other. And did I mention...Rose has the most beautiful smile.
Last year, when Peter came to develop a garden with Rose and her children together with friends and neighbors, some who are also living with HIV/AIDS, we learned how to prepare a small garden close to her house that can grow more food in a small space. Nutrition is so important to the success rate of using medications to reduce the HIV viral load and to extend your life with AIDS. These bio-intensive gardening methods help by providing highly nutritious vegetables and fruits near the house when the person living with AIDS and their family has less energy and less money to manage. And many times, without a spouse because of death or stigma. In addition, Tanzania is having increasing length of the dry season and even drought due to global climate change. These methods can also capture more water and hold it when the rains finally do come. Rose’s first garden was two beds each one meter by three meters. We planted local beans, spinach, and orange sweet potatoes. We also planted a small perennial garden including a papaya tree, lemon grass, aloe vera and a highly nutritious edible green that is a ground cover as well.
What is really important to know is that the soil by her house was very poor before preparing the first beds. This is because her house and all the houses around Lushoto are in the Usambara Mountains such that when a house is built a wedge is cut out of the mountain to make a flat level platform, removing any top soil and leaving only deep subsoil around the house. In preparing the garden, Peter found the soil rock hard and lacking nutrients and fiber. It could not absorb water, but instead, water ran off the land down the mountain. For those first beds we used the double-digging method to break-up the hard subsoil layer as deep as possible, we made the beds flat like a table top and added manure to the bottom layer and to the top – one bucket per meter length. This was our way of capturing rain when it fell on the flat tops and catching any of the water running down from above, dropping into the deep beds of light loamy soil.
Coming back a year later, Peter wondered, “Did it work in these impossible poor soil conditions?”, “How did Rose and her children manage, with health and school and work challenges, to sustain the garden in a year when the area was experiencing the lowest water levels in the lifetime of the people of Lushoto?”
Peter returned on a Thursday morning in September 2009 to find three more beds prepared by the family next to her house and a series of shorter beds terraced next to the path as you walk down the mountain to the main town of Lushoto from her house.
People arrived soon after Peter and I. Rose’s oldest daughter was preparing food for the lunch meal and also, tea with lemon grass for a mid-morning tea break. Peter began digging one of the beds that was laying dormant, waiting for the rains before planting again. He was amazed! The digging was easy and the soil was a dark rich brown with lots of tiny roots making the soil light and also it was sticky showing that water was being held. This difference was clear. Double-digging and adding manure allowed the plant roots to grow deep and break-up the hard subsoil. The water was able to sink and stay, giving the bacteria moisture to continue to move down, breaking up and enriching the soil- lower and lower. Peter was so excited that at the end of the day he collected soil samples to take to Dar es Salaam for testing, comparing it to the hard orange subsoil next to the garden beds.
By the end of the morning, we had re-dug and prepared three beds and reshaped two more beds that were already planted with spinach. Peter worked on the lower beds to shape the trenches between beds directing the water to go from bed to bed when the rains come. Rose dug and planted seeds, her son dug and added manure, Upendo added charcoal and mixed the manure into the beds and the eldest daughter put lunch on the table for all to eat and rest and talk after the work was finished.
The energy and ease with which the family worked together was visible. I knew today was different from the day we first talked about lack of water, the difficulties with her health and with managing alone in hard times. Rose could see the rich deep soil and the confirmation from Peter that her work to build and maintain the garden for a year had changed the land, her home and the home of her children in a sustainable way. This garden has brought a renewed sense of control and accomplishment for the family. For Rose, when hope comes, you can see it in the way she kindly takes the jembe from your hands, enjoying the swing and the sinking into the deep soil that brings nourishment to her family. She has hope for more nutritious food this year and enough food in the future in a small, manageable space next to their home.
Seeing her children carry on the good lessons learned brought a broad smile to her face as Peter took a family photo to document the day.
