Garden Project

The Garden Project came and went and I havent found the time to write about it until now.

In my village there is a community garden with ten plots that has been around since 1982. I walk past it every day and three of the Gogos I work with have plots in the garden. One of these women is the garden Chair Person.

I proposed the idea to them of a worm farm: a sustainable compost system, using worms, to generate better crops and soil. They were interested happy to have anything help the garden, in spite of a fear of worms.

So I discussed the idea with the three Gogos and they scheduled a meeting with the garden committee. This meeting took place one after noon scheduled for three. As village life often dictates punctuality, we sat for an hour in the garden until everyone showed up. I explained the concept of the worms; still afraid they agreed as a committee. At this point I asked my mom, dad and step mom to donate for the supplies and the start up of the project. They generously agreed.

I had run into a fellow Peace Corps Volunteer a few weeks back on a weekend in the Berg. Justin, a former volunteers twice over, is currently working for his NGO doing agricultural work: setting up Worm Farms. He agreed to take a day of his work week to help this community set up a worm farm. Within six weeks of our run-in, Justin was in my village, along with two workers from his NGO, all the supplies and ten boxes of worms.

Twenty people showed up for the Worm training. People from my NGO, and several community members. Justin gave an impressive speech / explanation / training in excellent Zulu. The trench was dug, the mesh covered pipe placed down, cow manure and worms and grass placed on top. A hole was dug at the end of the pipe to collect run off, or Worm Wee, and we covered the worms and let them go to work.

The worm wee is a highly effective fertilizer when diluted with water usually at a ratio of 30 parts water : 1 part Wee. The worms also turn the organic mater within the trench unit into a very rich fertilizer over the course of a few months.

I am happy to say I am able to step away at this point and watch the people involved guide the project in the directions they want. There was only a few initial goals for this project. To create sustainable, nutritional crops and apply this goal and technology to all of the Kids Care Centre gardens that my NGO oversees. The Gogos would be the ones to teach these trainings to other Child Minders and Community Workers. From this several other potential and sustainable goals have been made: apply the concept to our HIV support group gardens, use worm wee and extra crop as income generation for gardeners to be sold at pension day, teach the orphans and vulnerable children about sustainable agriculture, nutritional eating.

Every morning I pack my dinner scraps and my morning tea bags into an empty yoghurt container. When I get to the Kids Care Centre, I add my Worm Food to the larger container there. I cant walk to work without having a conversation with someone about worms.