Feeling Quite Contrary

The day after Mike and I got back from Tingo Pucará, we decided to start a new project.

We had just returned from working on George’s water project, and within hours all the physical and mental effects of a week’s backbreaking work and insanely cold climate had evaporated in the Guayaquil heat, leaving us with the hazy golden memory of peaceful village life on the mountainside. Where there are no speeding cars or megamalls, and where you needn’t take your life into your hands to dodge the one and arrive at the other.

Anyway, we were reminiscing about the good ole days back when we used to feel the nitty, gritty, dirt-under-the-fingernails satisfaction of performing a full day’s work with vigor and resolution.

And we missed that feeling.

What better way to get it back, we reasoned, than by starting an urban garden project?

So that is what we did.

I talked to my people, and Mike talked to his people, and his people talked to my people, and to make a long story short, we combined our superpowers…

…and voilá, egg carton seedlings.

We had to plant right away, because we are at the tail end of the rainy season, and it’s best to plant while there’s still moisture in the soil. Or so Mike tells me.

We planted tomato, pepper, and onion.

These were planted on April 27, and I took the pictures one day later to document their growth. Here is what they looked like on May 10, roughly two weeks later:

Today is May 16. They look the same.

Assuming we can get things to actually grow, here is the space we will be planting:

To the left is the Casita de Chocolate. To the right is the Subcentro de Salud, where people come for medical checkups, to fill prescriptions, and for exercise and health classes led by the doctors.

As you can see, it is a fairly large space, and there is a bit we have to do to prepare and make it presentable for the garden. That 3-liter Coke bottle, for instance, needs to go. Empty spaces in the barrio tend to fill up with trash, since there’s no other good place to put it, and this is no exception. So we had ourselves a couple little mingas, enlisting the help of some jóvenes along the way.

Here are the Fearsome Foursome clearing an area where we will put the raised beds; piling up leaves for compost; and collecting the heavier rocks for future use lining garden paths and beds. These four are brothers (hermanos), cousins (primos), and “political cousins” (primos políticos), as they explained to us. Meaning, for all intents and purposes, they are family.

In exchange for their labor, they earned a sense of achievement and responsibility for the future of the garden we will plant.

They also laughed at our inability to pronounce tongue twisters in Spanish.

They’re hardworking, goodhearted kids. Jair is a straight-A student and practices English every chance he gets. Emilio is one of the sweetest kids you will ever meet. Anthony threw a piece of trash here the day after we’d cleared it, and I made him pick it up again. (Sigh…boys.) And Ángel, on the left, loves to climb things. Walls, ladders, fences, but especially trees. In the park, at the Casita, at home: If you tree it, he will climb.

We’re still in the beginning phases of this project, but we’ve got all sorts of other crazy plans for the long term. Like the women’s group doing trainings in garden maintenance and nutrition, forming a garden club, and replicating the project by planting their own gardens at home. And like forming an Eco-Club with the jóvenes that will focus on gardening, the natural sciences, and organizing environmentally-themed cleanups and events around the community. And finally, like, having things actually grow.

So keep your fingers crossed, and I am off to paint my thumb green.

Until next time,
me