The Garden - I (March 23rd)

Few days ago I started the garden, or to be more precise, a nursery bed. It is located in my small back yard, near the bathroom area. My family has the garden in the back of the house where they grow vegetables and have some fruit trees (bananas, papaya and mango). There was still a small plot available for gardening behind my bathing area, which was kindly given to me upon the request. It was covered with leaves, trash and other things so the first step was to removal of unnecessary matter was completed today.

There is no such thing as a garbage can in the Gambian homes and streets. Although, there are some exceptions – few areas to my knowledge are: a tourist area and my work place. People throw garbage anywhere – on the floor in the house, yard, garden, and street. They do of course sweep their homes and yards and dump the garbage behind the fence. So the piece of garbage changes few ‘homes’ but does not travel too far from its initial point.  Garbage is a huge problem here. Part of it is culture (my guess) and part of it is lack of the waste management system. There is no centralized garbage collection system in place except for the Kombo area. Collected Kombo garbage is transported to the dump site in the middle of the city, which is another issue. Children and adults visit this dump site daily to collect scraps and other things. When we visited this site it was hearbreaking to see that. The garbage is constantly smoking. Afterwards I passed by the dump site (landfill) several times with gelli gelli and I had to cover my nose because I could not bare the smoke smell. People who residing next to it (including SOS Children Home) are breathing it everyday… Add another problem to the endless list of problems. I understand that such this picture is not unique only to the Gambia - in Lithuania there are people who also spend their days in landfills collecting the scraps to generate income. However, that was the first one I got to know personally. 

The garden… Even thought it has been a dry season for more than a few months now, I did not expect the ground to be as hard as a rock. The hoe was bouncing back of the ground like a spring with minimal impact. Although watering loosened the soil I still had to put in some sweat a bit until I finish the first and only nursery bed. Then I watered the bed for several days, before planting anything. My family has a big gang of chicks that generates a reasonable amount of this fertilizer but I was not familiar with using chicken dung for the garden so was hesitant to try it. I only added some Neem tree leaves (organic pesticide) to the soil to repel the uninvited guests (insects and etc.). A day before yesterday was the big day! I planted lettuce, tomatoes, carrots and eggplant. Yesterday I did another small plot along the fence in my back area for the pigeon pea. After consulting with the expert (another volunteer working a lot with poultry projects) I mixed with the soil some chicken dung, some compost I was able to locate and Neem tree leaves. I let it sit for a day and planted the peas. These plants are perennial and more like trees. They are also called NFP (nitrogen fixing plant) and are some sort of hybrid between the green peas and beans.

I hope that in the next two weeks I am (or ‘we are’, with the help of the women in my family) able to prepare the soil for sowing some other vegetables and replanting the ones from the nursery bed; and starting a tree nursery.