After a month and a
half of growing seeds in egg cartons, yes, I finally started my garden!
My South African
friend who lives in my village had given me 5 big bags of manure, peat, straw,
coconut shell mulch and wood chips (I used some to start a compost and the rest
to put into the garden itself) while my Japanese friend in town had given me a
bunch of lemon grass and sweet potatoes to put around my bern (a bern is the
outer perimeter of a garden – good ol’ PST!) This past Tuesday was a national
holiday so I took my day off to buckle down and start digging up the beds and
whatnot. It’s a good thing we learned about perma-gardening in training because
if I hadn’t done the famous “double dig” I would have missed all the treasure I
dug up. Turns out the spot I’d chosen for my garden (let me clarify, the ONLY
empty area in the quintal) is also coincidentally the location of the most
recent garbage pit. My bounty included a lovely range from clothes hangers to
polyester hair extensions…
The highlight of my
day however wasn’t the occasional plastic bottle cap but the fact that within 2
minutes of my gardening I heard muffled giggles and turned around to see 3 of
my neighbor’s children up in a tree watching me from the other side of our
fence. Now, try to imagine this: 1. The place I’d chosen for my garden so
happened to be in the far end of the quintal so these children were no less
than 10-15 feet away from me, high up in a mango tree, leaning over a rickety
old reed fence. 2. I don’t own a shovel so I was at the moment digging up
trenches with a tin can. 3. I’m the only white female in the village. Haha, so
yeah, I cracked up when I saw them all giggling up there and waved to them in
good humor since I realized, yes, this was funny.
I’d assumed that after
a few minutes of watching me they’d get bored and go off to play, but alas, 10,
15,… 30 minutes later they were not only still holding ground (or well, you
know what I mean) but had tripled in numbers to include now 5 children up in
the tree and 4 kids that had climbed up the fence and had their eyes peering
over the top. Far from being annoyed, I honestly felt a little bad that
watching some white girl dig holes in the ground was the most interesting thing
they could be doing on their day off from school. So instead of shooing them
away, I finally decided to put them to use! One was sent on the mission to find
me a decent shovel (in a belated attempt to save any back muscles I may not
have yet pulled by this point), another was given the important task of
occasionally going inside to tell me the time, and the remaining children were
burdened with entertaining me J
We sang songs together
(after a few Portuguese songs one of the older kids ran inside the nearest
house and within a few minutes out blasted Abba, Bob Marley and Michael Jackson
from it), we discussed our favorite fruits (a topic that came up quite naturally
sine the mango tree some of them were sitting in is currently budding baby
mangoes), and I probably asked them to repeat their names no less than 3
separate times since more and more children kept on magically appearing.
Eventually they lost all pretenses, climbed over the fence, and sat by the edge
of the garden on the ground watching me as if I were a captivating TV show. At
one point some of the more annoying kids in the neighborhood came by and
started throwing rocks into my garden to bother me… not realizing now that I
had acquired a posy, the culprits were immediately besieged with a wave of
angry yelling from my new friends.
The hours slipped by
and before I realized it I was late for a lunch date I was supposed to have
with a friend in a nearby town. I bid my audience a quick farewell, hauled the
remaining bags of mulch and whatnot back to my veranda, quickly changed out of
my manure-covered clothes, and was running outside to lock the door when I
realized my entire fan-club was standing outside my door. I assumed they hadn’t
understood me when I said I needed to go and I was about to explain again why I
must leave both them and my garden half-finished, but then I realized that the
kids in the middle of the group were hiding something behind their back.
Looking up bashfully, the children presented me with a big papaya and thanked
me for spending the day with them.
Yeah. “Adorable”
doesn’t even cut it.
All and all, I didn’t
finish my garden but now when I walk down the dirt path home from work I
occasionally am assaulted with a mob of children running to come hug me. All
for letting them watch me garden J
I think this is my new favorite post :)
ReplyDeleteAhh, this is absolutely adorable!
ReplyDelete