Everyone in Tanzania is a Farmer

Tuesday was also a holiday from school as it was Tanzanian Independence Day, so I took the opportunity to do a little gardening. One of my goals for my time of Peace Corps Service is to have a garden and grow some of my own food. When I learned that my site assignment at Songea Girls was located in them middle of a big town and that my house was part of a block of faculty housing, I was concerned that I would not have the space for a garden.

I needn’t have worried. The CIA Factbook says that about 90% of Tanzanians are employed in agriculture and now I see how that is possible. Almost every teacher at my school has a large vegetable garden. Our houses may have less yard space than the average American suburban house, but what area is available is used for growing food. Nearly every Tanzanian, no matter what their occupation, is also a farmer.

My next door neighbor, Faraja, is my age, single, and a teacher of Kiswahili and Geography here at Songea Girls. She graduated from college in Dar es Salaam last spring and has been teaching here for only a couple of months. She just moved into the apartment next door to mine one week after I moved in.

Although now is the rainy season, and the perfect time to start planting crops, I had planned to take things slowly and not burden myself with the responsibilities of a garden so soon. But I was visiting Faraja, and she told me that she was going to start planting a garden the next day and would give me some seeds if I wanted to do some planting as well. So I decided to give it a go.

So I got up early the next morning and luckily found some old jeans that the previous volunteer had left that are perfect for yard work. Niether Faraja or I have any farming tools, so we set out to borrow jembes (Tanzanian hoes) from the teacher in charge of the school farms. We were faced with a few set backs. First of all the school’s jembes were locked up and the key somehow inaccessible. Then after borrowing two jembes from a neighbor, it started to pour rain.

Finally around 10 am the rains died down and we set out to work. Behind my house is a slope that was bare of crops but had obviously been farmed before in the not too distant past as the terraces of disheveled garden beds were visible. It is surrounded by my house on top, Faraja’s plot on one side, my other neighbor’s pig sty on the bottom and his crops on the remaining side.

As I was scoping out where to begin, my neighbor, Isaac, who keeps the pigs, came out to help me. Isaac is also about my age. He farms full time and lives with his uncle who is a chemistry teacher at the school. He raises pigs and grows crops on the land around our house to sell at the market in town.

Isaac comes out in his bare feet with his jembe and eagerly sets to work hoeing the terraced beds. I was a bit confused as to why he was so quick to help me. I thought maybe I was intruding on his space, even though it is directly behind my house. But through a combination of broken English and Kiswahili we came to an understanding that the space was mine to use, but Isaac was ready to tend any space leftover that I did not want to use.

During Peace Corps training I learned some gardening techniques such as double digging that I wanted to try out. Isaac was incredibly eager to teach me the Tanzanian method of farming and start planting right away, so I had to reign him in before he planted my whole garden for me. Eventually I slowed him down and I was able to teach him the technique of double digging, which is basically about digging twice as deep as you normally would in order to loosen the soil and make it easier for plant roots to penetrate deeply. The soil is very rich and soft and as we prepared the beds we added Isaac’s compost from pig manure. Yet as healthy as the soil is, we found all sorts of interesting things when we dug deep. My favorite find was the sold of a shoe, and then a little bit later a shoe lace.

Here at the school there is no garbage collection. Each household is responsible for disposing of their own garbage, which generally means burning or burying it in your yard. It is amazing how little trash you generate when you have to dispose of it yourself. In two weeks I have barely filled a grocery bag.

Isaac and I double dug three full garden beds on the slope behind my house, and then we moved to the front where he showed me the quick and easy method of Tanzanian farming. In front we planted corn and beans. In back we planted a bed of pumpkin and corn, a bed of corn and beans, and then the last bed with corn and mchicha (like spinach). We also dug a ditch above the garden to channel water around the beds. Along the ditch we planted some sweet potato plants to hold the soil in place.

I couldn’t believe how much we accomplished in one day. I had only planned to plant a bed or two. The other teachers are skeptical when I tell them that I know how to farm and am growing crops. They are also skeptical when I say I like to eat ugali and cook other Tanzanian food. Maybe they will believe me when my corn stalks are growing strong and tall in the months to come.