gardening…

One of the many highlights from my work in Uganda was gardening! Yes, I know I always moaned about doing gardening back in London, but it’s just not the same here for different reasons…

The company! Sunday is the gardening expert on the team here. He’s just a great person, calm, eager to learn, hardworking and has a wise, old head in spite of his young age (25!). We spent hours weeding and talking about different crops – both local and exotic (Elin just for you: they call cauliflower an exotic vegetable!). He had many herb seeds that he just did not know what to do with, so we decided to create a herb garden…was a great day! I was the ‘designer’ and Sunday was doing most of the hard work, but I think he loved the company and input…and as is his motto – ‘two heads are better than one’ 😊

The purpose! The garden is called Okakuza Amagezi which means Developing Knowledge and it is a garden managed by Sunday and the Big Beyond team. It is a place for the community farmers to learn about how to get the most out of their lands. It demonstrates composting and how that can make a difference to the crop quality, it has nursery beds, experimental crops, different ways of growing the crops etc. The garden is actually being moved to a new plot – so it has been interesting to get to help with planning the layout and the different purpose areas!

(Paul, you’d have loved it!! And your drawing would have been much better as well 😄)

The garden also has space for community members to come for workshops or just to gather…which for example the performance ladies and the veawing ladies do every week. Some inspirational ladies…they work hard at home, do all the work in the fields, take care of the children but also find time for what essentially is a hobby even though they hope to make some money as well of course…