“A Sack of Hope”

Although the title of this blog entry is pretty cheesy, it really does describe my kitchen/balcony garden project and what it means to the PLWHA community that my organization is working with. This past Tuesday and Friday we held our training sessions with the first group of participants. Tuesday was the “theory” part of the training. The representative from LICODEP, named Mwasina, gave a very thorough and informative talk about how to start and manage a micro-enterprise (it was all in Swahili, but I looked at my co-workers notes, which were in English, afterwards). Then we had an AMAZING representative from the Ministry of Agriculture, Tabitha, come in and do a tutorial on the logistics of kitchen and balcony gardening. It was really useful and I actually learned a lot from the talk too. She covered the technical and theoretical foundations of kitchen/balcony gardening (like what plants you can grow, why it’s sustainable, the materials you need to make a kitchen or a balcony garden and how to construct them). Apparently, there are many different names for this kind of home gardening. In Kenya there is a distinction between “Kitchen” gardening and “Balcony” gardening, which I didn’t know. So a “Kitchen garden” is like a mini farm on a plot of land right near the homestead and a source of water. I think some of us might even have something like a kitchen garden in our back/front yards back home (my grandparent’s vegetable garden in San Mateo comes to mind). But many of the participants don’t have the money to acquire that extra amount of land (which made me wonder why she even covered it…but in the long run, I think it was best that she introduced it just in case someone happened to have a little land they could spare), and so then she introduced “Balcony gardens.” These are the sack gardens I was talking about earlier (apparently, their official name is “balcony gardens”). Tabitha gave a nice explanation about why this form of gardening is a great alternative for people who don’t have any extra land and don’t have access to much water. After a quick break a representative from Equity Bank, Joseph, came and gave his talk on Equity Bank’s micro-loan programs and how they expect their members to manage their groups and payments. It was very interesting to get a short tutorial about the logistics of micro-finance. Before this training I had a basic understanding of how micro-finance programs worked, but it was really great to get a more detailed definition. Joseph also kindly typed up an outline of his talk in English for me so I could follow along, which was very helpful ☺

On Friday we met up with the participants at the Ministry of Agriculture’s district head quarters (which are apparently in the Likoni town center, right near the Hospital, and NOT in Dogokunda – which is in the middle of NOWHERE). We went across the street to pick and buy seedlings for the participants to put in their balcony gardens. Friday’s experience really reminded me how much of a city girl I really am. I thought a seedling was just a seed that had only sprouted a little bit, but apparently seedlings are pretty well grown plants that you just uproot. Some of you reading this right now must be laughing at my ignorance, but hey, I’m still learning here folks. However, I will admit that I was kind of shocked and embarrassed that I didn’t know what a seedling was (especially because I had done the research on kitchen gardens, but there were just no pictures or a description of what a seedling was exactly). Oh well, we live and we learn.
After collecting and purchasing the seedlings we went to the house of one of the participants, Mart, to do the demonstration. At the training on Tuesday, Mary had volunteered to get some soil, manure and gravel for the demonstration. I don’t know if I mentioned this in earlier blogs, but apparently in Kenya, people don’t buy soil or manure or gravel. You just kind of take it from anywhere. When I first heard this, I was totally shocked, especially because I immediately had images of people just going to a neighborhood park and digging a hole to collect soil for their gardens. I think you’d probably be fined or something for that. My co-workers could see that I was shocked and kind of confused and they were like, “Do you have to BUY soil in America?!” And I said, “Yes, of course! Where else would you get it? You can’t just go into someone else’s yard and dig up their soil to use for yourself.” They didn’t understand and just said, “but there is soil everywhere. It is a natural resource, why would you pay for that?” It was a good question because it really made me think about the fundamental differences between America and Kenya (or just the differences between developed and developing nations in general). For me, this conversation highlighted the drastic differences in the infrastructure of developing vs. developed nations. For example, America has the infrastructure in place to support a business for soil, and laws in place, which inhibit people from randomly digging up public property. But in Kenya (and I’m assuming other developing nations), that infrastructure just doesn’t exist. Also, just in general, with the exception of Mombasa city center and Nairobi, most of Kenya is just really underdeveloped as a whole (I’m speaking in terms of land here, but it’s obviously underdeveloped in many other areas as well, unfortunately). Other than main highways, the roads here are all dirt, and from what I can tell, there really isn’t any town/city planning, especially the farther away you get from Mombasa or Nairobi, which means that there are no real laws saying that communities have to “preserve” a certain area or so. Furthermore, the majority of the population here can’t even afford one meal per day, so why would they pay for soil if they could just get it from the side of the road?
Anyways, that was a long tangent, but it was definitely an interesting conversation.

SO…we went to Mary’s house and we constructed a balcony garden. As many of you know, it is one thing to read about something but it is a completely different thing to do it. Having said that, I definitely learned A LOT during the demonstration and realized some logistical adjustments I need to make to my project. So the sacks we used were MUCH bigger than the ones I had seen in the research I did. Fully packed with soil, they come up to my mid waist. Needless to say, they are REALLY heavy. In my grant proposal I said that each participant would make one bag on their own during the demonstration and then we would drive that sack to their houses. Hahahha! There is NO way anyone is picking up one of those sacks after it is made. I think a fully constructed balcony garden probably weighs twice as much as me because there is a ton of soil and a bunch of rocks in there. There is also the challenge of getting enough soil, manure and gravel for each participant to make their own balcony garden during the demonstration. Since you can’t buy soil in Kenya, there is no place where you can get a sufficient amount of soil to fill 15 huge sacks. Therefore, we’ve decided to just to a hands-on demonstration with the participants and do routine check-ins with them at their homes over the course of 6 months. What’s great is that Tabitha was already working with individuals who wanted to start balcony gardens, because promoting this kind of farming is a new initiative of the Ministry of Agriculture. So she’ll be doing most of the checking in with the participants since it’s already part of her job. Yey for community and stakeholder involvement!!

Anyways, on to how we constructed the balcony garden: First we placed the bag in an area outside the house that received some good sunlight. Then we took and empty paint can (the ones you buy when you want to paint a room), with the bottom punched out, and placed it in the center of the bag. We filled the paint can with stones and started packing in soil around the can. We kept adding more soil until it came level with the paint can and then we pulled the paint can up (the rocks stay in place because they are now held there by the soil) and place it on the top of the first layer of rocks and then fill it with some more rocks, pack the soil around and repeated that until we reached the top of the bag. The column of rocks acts as a natural filtration system. Then we cut evenly spaced holes (about the length of a hand apart) into the sides of the sack. Next, we put the seedlings into the holes (roots first of course) and in the soil at the top of the sack. Finally, we just poured water onto the top of the column of rocks in the middle of the sack to water the balcony garden. It was SO satisfying to make it and see the final product. All the participants were really excited about learning how to make these gardens, having access to a sustainable source of nutrition and the potential of some extra income. It was just a really rewarding experience overall.

We’re sensitizing a new group of PLWHAs, who are taking ARVs, on nutrition and ARV adherence next week, so we’ll probably have another training the week after next. I can’t wait!!

Sorry for the novel. I hope everyone is doing well at home! I love you all!!

P.S. There are pictures from the training at the bottom of this blog

Best,
Anna