Kitchen gardens

One of the practical lessons that our livelihoods volunteers teach is how to make a kitchen garden. It’s a dirt mound with a cylindrical space in the middle to put your food waste; the food decomposes and fertilizes whatever you plant in the dirt surrounding it. Nice, huh?

Man, stuff grows here! Here’s our personal kitchen garden under construction about a month ago:

When we left for the holiday, the dirt was piled up but we hadn’t planted anything yet. Come back two weeks later, and here’s what you find:


Massive plants! That we didn’t even plant! And better yet, it’s dodo, an edible fibery green that Dennis happens to be pretty good at cooking up. I love it.

Lucy and Wilber started a kitchen garden with their Kalebera farmers’ group before our break, and when we went back today they had not only finished building it, but had been using it for their kitchen waste. This is the same group that was generally rude and took any excuse not to turn up for meetings just a few months ago. Now they’re friendly and seem to be taking the lessons to heart. A little SPW success story.

The kids were around too, of course, and they wanted to make sure the baby’s head was turned my way for a picture. Poor baby.