Mamsy and I traveled to Pretoria for a permagarden training. Mamsy is our garden facilitator and a total rock star. She is great at what she does and I am honored to be working with her to improve her delivery of gardens to HIV and Tb patients. The treatment for both of these diseases makes patients very hungry and also, the medication is much more helpful if coupled with good nutrition. Hence the household gardens. We spent a lot of time planting a sample garden using the double dig and berm methods. We also made some awesome compost. Yes, we dug in mud and played with horse poop, but we did this at an amazing hotel and spa! It was beautiful and we had a blast and it was brought to you by the American tax payers and PEPFAR! 33 of us (15 Peace Corps Volunteers and 18 of our counterparts) were trained and put up at a great hotel for four days for only $3000! You can’t beat that. And, although money could have been saved by staying at a less posh place, it was very exciting sharing in the excitement of many of our counterparts who had never been to a big city or, in many cases, never bathed in a stand up shower. And, we have been living in villages long enough to be equally excited as them!
One man, Baba Zulu, an older gentleman, had a bit of a breakdown (it was actually pretty extreme) at the end when he was filling out the evaluation because working side by side with “white” people who respected him and wanted his opinion had become too much. He had never experienced such a thing and he started to cry and carry on. He said it was too different to be with us all treating him as an equal and it seemed as though this paradigm shift was painful for someone who had grown up and worked under the apartheid regime. Good Lord this world and each of its inhabitants is more intense than any of us will ever fully understand.
