The levee system that has been built actually causes land to disappear.  Strange, right?  Wouldn’t you think that if a river no longer flows over land that there would be more land in sight?  Since the river carries and deposits sediment, the presence of the river builds land.  When it is diverted with the levee system, the land begins to disappear.  Buildings that were once on land, are now in water.  There is a group of Native Americans south of New Orleans, near Houma, and they cannot be recognized by the United States as a legitimate group of Native Americans, because the law requires them to have land, and their land is now underwater.  This is a fascinating subject in itself.

You heard the news this spring about the flooding in the Atchafalaya Basin?  The Army Corps of Engineers had to open the floodgate in the Bonnet Carre Spillway and Morganza Floodway to protect Baton Rouge and New Orleans from flooding.  Unfortunately, people who settle in that area lost crops and homes, but it’s important to know that they occupy that land with the knowledge of that process, and they are compensated by the government in some sort of legal business they’ve worked out.  I’m curious to know more about this subject.  It’s part of a larger theme that occurs in southern Louisiana.  The land is liquid here.  It floods cyclically, in a somewhat predictable pattern.  The Tigris and Euphrates rivers flooded, but with much less predictability, whereas the Nile flooded cyclically.  The differences between the ancient cultures that resided in these areas is largely due to the instability versus stability of these flood patterns.  Cultures of Mesopotamia created walls for protection from unpredictable outside forces (and encroaching, warring groups of people), whereas Egyptians were able to spend lots of time contemplating the cosmos and the afterlife, building giant temples and tombs.  The east side of the river was developed for daily life, with the rising sun, and the western side of the river with the setting sun was dedicated to building tombs and pyramids.  A quote from The Doors: “We have constructed pyramids in honor of our escaping.  This is the land where the pharaohs died,” The Wasp (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyravG0_JMM).  They spent so much of life contemplating the afterlife, the space in between death and life.  That’s what John Risk is teaching us in Landscape History, which is like Art History of Landscape.  I’m riveted by his lectures.  Imagine beginning with how people began to express themselves and their relation to the earth, to space.  Learn how these themes connect to contemporary architecture and landscape architecture.  I find it so fascinating.

Six weeks into it now.  Week Four I pulled my first all nighter and by Week Six I feel like 3 months have passed.  We’re in the middle of Project One, designing boxes.  It all began with finding three objects outdoors.  Relate them to each other, we were told.  Observe them and diagram them.  Look at them, really look at them and tell us what you see.  Make this a product and hang it up in front of the class.  Everyone will look at what you produced and the professors will tell us what we did wrong, and point out the few instances where someone almost got it right.  ”It’s starting to be something we’d call a diagram, but you all still haven’t quite got it.”  Only in hindsight would this be seen as a gentle response to our failings.

Next, take those objects and create space with them by using a specific wood and wire.  You are allowed to use wood glue.  Make make make.  The authors of the marble and the fork get it.  We pass theirs around and try to see what the professors are saying they did right.

Now, put the objects in space aside.  Design voids based on those constructs.  Draw it and show us.  Done that?  Good, now design a box that contains those three voids based on the objects, and tell us about the relationship those objects and spaces have to each other.

I organized my objects according to their density, with the heaviest object on the bottom, and the lightest on the top.  The voids of the two heaviest objects touched each other, while massing separated the third object that had such less density than the others.  Brick, moss stick, orange twine.

Made your box?  Show us what you did with a filmstrip and a collage.  Pin it up on the wall and we’ll discuss it.  They take a look at the work around the room.  We sit down to talk.  You all have failed. Now present your work.  Let’s talk more about how badly you all failed.  We can’t carry forward with the assignment.  You must make the box again.  This time, do a better job.  Consider the massing and don’t just slap pieces of wood on the outside.  Craft is suffering immensely.  Remake the box.  Gripe, moan, unbelievable, we say.  But we all know we could do better.  I had to quit designing at one point, and had to slap the pieces together, not even creating the third void i designed in my mind and created with chipboard and cardboard.  Second chance, hooray, we get a second chance!  I want to drop my box from the second floor fire escape and enjoy watching it smash apart.

Boxes made on the second try are remarkably better.  Everyone’s craft improves.  Everyone understands massing more.  Some people remain with the simple designs, others shift the massing of their voids to make more interesting boxes to look at.  The next step, the professors announce to us, is to disassemble the box.  That’s right.  After we’ve spent hours and days in the studio and in the woodshop, we are being told to disassemble the box.

I’m starting to see the humor in our professors having told us to pin up our work, tell us how badly we all failed, ask us to then present our work, talk more about how we failed, and tell us to redo the project. they are hilarious, those two.  That was the week before last.

With our successful boxes, the next assignment is to cut apertures into the box, to think about letting light in, how and why design your box to let light in.  We are assigned a site in the American landscape in which to place our box.  We thought we were done with the woodshop, that we wouldn’t ever have to return if we didn’t want to, but now we had to make return visits.   The guys in the woodshop (Check out Jonathan Pelliterri’s sculpture here http://jonathanpellitteri.com/home.html) are so sick of us.  Few of us have any woodworking experience and we go in there to use blades that could saw a body part off to do things we have no idea how to do.  Sometimes we don’t even know what to do, but we’re in a room full of miter saws, radial arm saws, band saws, drill presses, and sanders longer than our wingspan, and we have to figure out how to build the box we’ve designed in our minds and on paper.  Amazing how quickly we get over what we don’t want to do.  There is no time to act differently.  Good luck, our professors tell us.

Craft, craft, craft.  Take care with every decision.  Make design decisions that are backed by logic.  Cut into that object you spent so much time and effort to create.  Grapple with the feeling of unmaking what you put so much work into.  Take it apart like you mean it.  We make the cuts, let the light in.  We draw diagrams of the solar path including azimuth and elevation of the sun during September in our site.  My site is Mono Lake in northern California, east of the Sierra Nevadas and on the edge of the Great Basin that is one of the four biggest deserts in the country, stretching from eastern Oregon to the Wasatch Mountains of Utah, and down the the corner of California and Mexico.  The lake is three times saltier than the ocean, is a resting spot for migratory birds that eat alkali and maybe brine shrimp too.  No fish, it’s too salty.  I place my box on a small island in the lake where the light of the sunrise and sunset can enter the voids of the box.  The three voids in the box align on a vertical axis, which I decide is the axis mundi, and cut my aperture to let a shaft of light enter the box, mainly during mid day.

We were told on Wednesday to disassemble the box further by cutting it into pieces, with a logic and design behind each move, then use wire again to attach the pieces together.  Choose the most dynamic natural force of the site, and allow that force to run through the box in its location.  Create gaps in the box.  Allow the site forces to become spacemakers in your box.  Draw diagrams of how the force will interact on the box, and how the box will respond to the force.

Design is perpetual.  It evolves and changes.  We create plans, then we create models that differ from the initial plan.  Design school is different than regular school.  We don’t write papers and take tests, being told we understood 88% of the material, and that we were wrong for reasons a, b, and c.  Being in design school requires you suspend your concepts of right and wrong, and think about a million and one ways to do something.  Create a plan, and try to make it.  You won’t be told what percentage you got right.  You’ll be told what is working, what isn’t, and how to make it work better in ways you may or may not comprehend.  It’s challenging, time consuming, and full of ridiculous requests from our professors to do things we never even knew existed in ways we never knew we could think.

Taking a sculpture studio in undergrad is about the only academic experience I had that prepared me for the Design Studio in Landscape Architecture.  There was no way then that I knew how helpful his sage-like advice would be to my future professional life.  Three things my sculpture teacher taught me during undergrad: be deliberate- meaning don’t leave the viewer wondering if you meant to do something in your work,  realize that every decision is part of the creative process, and the table saw can be a very dangerous machine.  Mike Rathbun, you’re so cool.  Seriously, very cool.  When I had Mike as a Sculpture I teacher, he was planning a trip for his wife and two daughters to take the year before the eldest went off to college.  They were going to retrace Steinbeck’s route through the Sea of Cortez in a sailboat Mike owned.  They would live at sea together for a couple of months.  Mike taught us to make interesting sculptures.  He told us to make things that people look at for a long time.  If it’s interesting, people will look at it for awhile.  Here’s his latest piece at the Boise Art Museum:

More images of Mike's work: http://mikerathbun.com/index.html

Link here: http://blog.imaginaryfoundation.com/blog/07-18-2011/Ai+Weiwei%3A+Without+Fear+or+Favour%2C+a+BBC+Documentary

Ai Weiwei has gained popularity in the west over the past couple of years.  He has gained notoriety for his installation pieces at well known art museums around the world.  The world has become more aware of him also because of his outspoken critiques of the Chinese government and the abuse he has endured because of this.  AiWeiwei is known for designing the Bird’s Nest, the national stadium built for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.  He is also a photographer, graphic designer, and landscape architect, among other things.  He is a unique character in Chinese society, not only for his original work as an artist, but also for his drive and ability to speak out against restrictions and restraints of human rights and right livelihood he perceives within his country’s government.

In the video, you’ll see that recently he had an installation piece at the Tate Modern in London.  In an area of China famous for its history of ceramics, Ai Weiwei had artisans handcraft millions of porcelain sunflower seeds for this piece.  The sunflower seeds were then poured across the first floor of the museum and people were allowed to relax on them, as if they were at the beach.  Footage of this is in the video.  Very cool to see what people thought of it.  Quick view of the space where the sunflower seeds were displayed:

I recently visited the Tate Modern and while that particular installation had passed, there was a small cone of his sunflower seeds still on display.  Interesting to hear about the symbolism of the sunflower seed for the Chinese people in the video.

Neighborhood Street in Urubamba, Peru.

In Peru there were walls made from mud bricks, covered in plaster and painted bright colors.  Stiff shards of broken glass lined the tops to guard against intruders. Sturdy metal doors had to be unlocked to enter the plot.  Brilliant papery blossoms of magenta bougainvillea tumbled over and tops of papaya and mango trees peeped over the walls.

Walled Plots and Peacocks in Gaborone, Botswana.

Everywhere I went, I noticed that houses were fenced or walled out of sight.  In Johannesburg, South Africa and Gaborone, Botswana, plots are walled with electric fences atop and electric gates for entry.  Outside of affluent homes, guards keep watch over night.  Sometimes the same tactic of broken glass implemented, as I saw in Peru.

In Amsterdam, homes are built flush with the sidewalks, with small private gardens behind the houses.  Homes in Jordan and Israel also follow suit.  Rarely did I come across an unfenced yard or a front lawn in an urban neighborhood outside of the United States.  While I wasn’t undertaking research or a comprehensive survey, this was an observation I made many times in many places.

Atlanta may be unique in its prevalence of intown neighborhoods of single family homes with front and back yards as opposed to high density apartment complexes and condominiums.  However, the penchant for front lawns is unique to America, as I discovered after reading Michael Pollan’s essay, ”Beyond Wilderness and Lawn,” in the Harvard Design Magazine Reader 6, 2008.  In this essay, Pollan points out America’s bipolar relationship to nature.  We perceive nature as sacred and not to be interfered with by humans in the wilderness, yet around our homes, we choose to dominate nature through keeping mono-crop lawns doused in pesticides.  To Pollan, there is no in-between for Americans, no space for people to interact with nature without either a sense of interference (in the wilderness) or dominance (of the front lawn).

Pollan points to Frank J Scott as the person who pushed for the American front lawn, thus edging out the garden, a place of interaction with nature.  He writes:

“[Scott] railed against fences, which he regarded as self-ish and undemocratic- one’s lawn should contribute to the collective landscape.  [He] elevated an unassuming patch of turf grass into an institution of democracy.  The American lawn becomes an egalitarian conceit, implying that there is no need, in Scott’s words, “to hedge a lovely garden against the longing eyes of the outside world” because we all occupy the same middle class” (p76).

You see, Americans didn’t invent the lawn, we only democratized it.  We borrowed it from English estates and sized it to fit American homes and unite us as a community.  Pollan writes, “It makes sense, too, that in a country whose people are unified by no single race or ethnic background or religion, the land itself- our one great common denominator- should emerge as a crucial vehicle of consensus” (p76).  This explains the presence of front lawns and absence of gardens surrounding most American homes.

While Pollan finds it depressing that America’s greatest contribution to garden design is the front lawn (according to historian Ann Leighton), he is optimistic about the prospect of gardens replacing lawns; we will come around to a middle ground in our relationship with nature.  As an environmentalist keen on food issues, Pollan suggests that Americans get busy interacting with nature by growing food at home if we want to exist on this planet much longer.  He writes:

“to think environmentally is to find reasons to garden.  Growing one’s food is the best way to assure its purity.  Composting, which should be numbered among the acts of gardening, is an excellent way to lighten a household’s burden on the local landfill.  And gardens can reduce our dependence on distant sources not only of food but also of energy, technology, and even entertainment.”

Front Yard Produce Garden in Georgia.

We continue to exist on a precipitous ledge in relation with nature and our habits of consumption.  Inspiration comes from people who use awareness and intelligence to create solutions to abate our environmental crisis.  Pollan shows us, that like the American front lawn, gardening can take its place as a democratic activity- anyone can do it.

Avid Gardeners Ol Doc Wilson and Ruthie Wilson in Ruthie's Victory Garden, Palmetto, Georgia.

It isn’t surprising that Americans, the most wasteful population on the planet, choose to grow grass in the natural areas surrounding our homes.  Indeed, we are “getting it,” some more quickly than others, that humans and ecological biodiversity are undergoing damage and loss that we cannot recuperate.  Growing food and composting in our home gardens can actually alleviate this situation to some degree.  Simple.  Imagine if you strolled through your neighborhood to see more produce being grown than what is available at the grocery store.  Imagine front yards chock full of plum and apple trees, beds of dark leafy greens, onions, carrots, tomatoes, potatoes, corn, and herbs.  Trellises of grapes over benches for relaxing, surrounded by beds of rosemary, mint, dill, and lavender.  Now that would be an enjoyable place to live!

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads This blog is on fire!.

Crunchy numbers

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 2,400 times in 2010. That’s about 6 full 747s.

In 2010, there were 40 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 55 posts. There were 71 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 42mb. That’s about 1 pictures per week.

The busiest day of the year was February 4th with 52 views. The most popular post that day was Liwonde National Park, Malawi .

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were facebook.com, en.wordpress.com, me.com, alphainventions.com, and slafee.wordpress.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for malawi, chongololo, greek lady, lake malawi, and greek party.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

Liwonde National Park, Malawi February 2010
7 comments

Photos October 2009
1 comment

About September 2009

smashing plates and chongololo October 2009
1 comment

Growing Veg & Herbs in Southern Africa September 2009

Students at Maru a Pula School

While still at Maru a Pula school, I held a contest to see who could come up with the most number of ways to Save The Planet.  The 3 winners had between 20-30 reasons and I was very impressed with those students!  Props to Hamzah, Gogontlegang, and Deep for their good work.  Some of the usual suspects:

Make your own garden and compost bin, use energy saving bulbs, use cloth napkins, plant trees, use public transport or ride a bicycle, line dry your laundry, have a five minute shower not a five hour shower, unplug all unused electrical appliances, reuse glass jars, reuse paper, and use less plastic bags.

I stumbled across less conventional answers too:

Resort to french kisses.  Oxygen shared among two is better than wasted by one. [You are truly an eco warrior, Lesego]

And some people love to teach the teacher (I was also one of those students):

This piece of cardboard giving directions for the raffle could be used by a homeless guy who actually needs something!

To make all these prizes you needed to produce harmful gases.  And that could affect the green house effect even more.

Hopefully those two students saw the recycling and reusing of materials that was going on.  Good thing is, they are thinking.

Stay Green.

This week we had a two day celebration to commemorate the two years of work done at the school in the way of environmental initiatives.  The atmosphere was lively, with DJs spinning South African house music, a raffle for eco-friendly prizes, and face painting.  There were booths set up by eco-friendly businesses and organizations from town including Mokolodi Indigenous Nursery, Leaf Environmental Solutions, Somareleng Tikologo (Botswana’s #1 environmental organization), and BMS selling eco-friendly school and office supplies.  Additionally, the Eco Warriors planted 5 fruit trees, 4 guava and 1 mango, in the permaculture garden.  We were  able to throw the celebration because of a generous donation from Choppie’s grocery chain.  Big thanks to everyone who was involved!

Eco Warriors plant guava and mango trees in the permaculture garden.

Here are a few things we have accomplished through the Green Drive during the past two years:

Created and sustained an organic permaculture garden, growing vegetables, fruits, and herbs to give to hungry families via the school’s feeding program.  We have recently started sending deliveries of food to families in Gabane and Old Naledi.

Cleaned up the orchard so that the citrus trees are more productive.

Created a grey water pond with water-cleaning plants to recycle laundry water to irrigate the citrus trees.

Bolstered the forgotten Recycling Program.  Created the main recycling depot and 5 collection points on campus: Tuck Shop, EcoBusac, Girls’ and Boys’ Boarding Houses, and the Kitchen.  Each point has color-coded and labeled bins for recycling paper, glass, cans, and plastics.

Student design contest for signs to hang above the recycling bins at the Tuck Shop and EcoBusac.

Student clean-up of the stock dam, one of the school’s green spaces.

One of the many wives of Mswati III, King of Swaziland, has been caught having an affair with a minister in the Swazi government.  Nothando Dube is an Inkhosikati (queen), the 12th of 13 wives of the king.  Interestingly, she was dressing up in a soldier’s uniform when the king was not around.  The “soldier” was then picked up outside of the royal palace and dropped off at a hotel to meet her man.  The minister has spoken with the king and he has resigned.  He could be banished from the country while she could be confined to her parents’ home.  Both could owe the king a herd of cattle each.

My initial feeling is of sympathy for the woman.  She is one of thirteen women for one man and it’s no wonder she is having an affair.  Who is capable of providing for 13 women at once?  Whether it is seen as right or wrong for a king to have 13 wives is not for me to judge, I can only offer my opinion.  Maybe the women really like it, maybe they feel trapped and suffer a lot.  Either way, I am sure it is, like many things in life, full of advantages and disadvantages.  That being said, I find the punishment for such an offense interesting.  Rather than incarcerating the offenders, the tactic seemingly is to make them pay - in this case, a herd of cattle which is quite valuable- and then send them away.  This makes a lot more sense than paying for them to stay in jail.

I’ve just found another news report on the same story, but quite a few details are different than the one in the Sowetan.  My intent in bringing this story to attention is not to point fingers at what may be perceived as “funny” practices.  Rather, I find it interesting the different ways people live together and how we punish adultery.  Many people in the world have situations where one man has many women.  More rarely, but it exists in a community not far from the Himalayas, is the situation where one woman has many men.  How do we approach love, marriage and relationships?  How has it been over the past thousand years, and have we really changed that much as humans in this time?  Additionally, many people have different ways of conducting their lives, so who are we to say what is right and what is wrong.  Isn’t it all about what you want out of life, and creating the circumstances to have that?  Of course it depends what kind of society we live in as well, as to the degree of freedom we have to choose our partners and be able to live by one’s own wishes shared with someone else, beloved or not.

For more info, search www.zimdiaspora.com for an article about it.

The other article was about the story going on with Naomi Campbell and the diamonds she was given supposedly by Charles Taylor, the former president of Liberia.  The term ‘blood diamond’ refers to diamonds mined illegally and used to fuel conflict.  For example, during the civil war in Sierra Leone (a neighbor to Liberia), blood diamonds were used to fuel conflict and vice versa.  Naomi met Charles during a function some years back.  Later that night, a small bag of rough diamonds were delivered to her at her hotel room.  It wasn’t clear who they were from.  She has claimed to have donated them to the Nelson Mandela Children’s Foundation, yet no evidence has been found of this actually happening.  Naomi and her diamonds has been brought to light because of the current charges against Charles Taylor for war crimes because of his involvement with the Sierra Leone civil war.  There are also investigations into his involvement with blood diamonds.

I am not claiming to be an expert on this case.  This is only opinion.  There is plenty more information about this case on the internet.  The issues surrounding diamonds are quite interesting.  Botswana has beneficial results linked with the discovery and development of diamonds.  There has never been conflict surrounding the issue of diamonds, and Botswana has never experienced a civil war.  Currently, the country is developing its ability to not only mine diamonds, but to also polish them.  This is an important factor, because it means that more job opportunities and revenue are created within the country from the process of cutting and polishing.  Rather than the raw material simply being extracted from the land and sent to foreign countries to create wealth, more of the wealth remains within the country.

When I was attending Lewis and Clark College, we invited the Minister of Energy, Water and Minerals from Botswana to our International Affairs Symposium.  Also in attendance at the symposium was a woman who worked for an organization in Washington DC that advocated around conflict from natural resources.  When the Hollywood film Blood Diamond was being produced, her organization did a lot of research and advocacy for the film around the issue of blood diamonds.  Sitting at a table, with this woman and the minister from Botswana, we entered a discussion of the production of diamonds and consumerism in the world.  She, of course, wanted to make the public more aware of the origins of their diamonds so as not to fuel conflict in Africa.  The minister, however, voiced his concern because he wants the world to keep buying diamonds.  He was concerned that people would hear this message and decrease their spending on all diamonds, and this would be detrimental to Botswana’s economy as the country’s main source of income is from diamonds.  He also mentioned that the next step for Botswana would be to start cutting and polishing its own diamonds within the country.  This meeting was in 2007, and Botswana did not yet have the facilities to do so.  Nearly four years later, Botswana is now involved in these activities.

Monday’s permaculture group plants seeds to grow seedlings for the garden at the Botswana Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.  The young man seated in the photo is schooling the others on countries like North Korea and Macedonia.  These kids know what’s up in the world.  Some ears perked up when I mentioned I visited Zimbabwe last year.  We were discussing Tatenda’s name, as it means “thank you” in Shona.  My conversation elicited quite different responses when I mentioned I thought a mouse or bat might be living in my thatched roof house in the bush.  They might find me a bit strange, especially with my response last week to a student who asked if I talked to plants:  ”Yes, just like I talk to dogs and cats.” At least their attention is held during their hour of service, which most often drags out the moaning and whining within everyone!

The germinating medium is made of sifted cow manure and river sand.  Most of them dig their hands into the mixture without revealing squeamishness on their faces.  I am pleasantly surprised that a couple of them have gotten over their aversion to composted cow manure since last term!  Ever so gingerly, the students place two seeds into small divots in the moistened germinating mix.  They plant onion, beetroot, gem squash, and radish seeds.  I am confident that this term will bolster all the activity taken place in the garden for the past two years.  My greatest hope for the garden is that it will only continue to improve and produce abundantly once I leave and return home.

The organic vegetable and herb garden is alive and well at Maru a Pula School.  Term 3 has begun, and the Monday and Thursday groups have some healthy competition going on to see who grows the best garden in 8 weeks.  My suspicion is the winning group will come down to those who water, given that the temperatures will be high and the air dry for the rest of the term.

In addition to the student gardens, Itumelang is helping us cultivate food to send off to hungry families in Naledi and Gabane through the school’s feeding program. We are growing choumolier, onions, and tomatoes for these families.  Other students at the school are creating a garden at the Botswana Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, so next week we will plant seeds to grow seedlings for them.

Thursday’s group has some students returning for the third term in a row: Rishabh, Deep, and Anjaney!  Some new students have joined as well, including Nayana and Neo.  They have planted choumolier, green peppers, squash, and spinach.  Monday’s group has some returning students like Ovini and Tamsyn, also joined by new students Tatenda, Daniel, and Weidong.  Monday’s group has planted eggplant, beetroot, spinach, and choumolier.  Tatenda showed up to water last week with 4 of her friends, so Thursday’s group better stay on their watering if they want to have a chance at winning!

I begin the drive to Mochudi- the first sizable village north of Gaborone- my baakie laden with wooden pallets to construct a compost bin, empty glass bottles, a box of seeds, and bags of elephant dung from Mokolodi Game Reserve.  The sun shines strongly in the wintertime and I feel it baking my skin as I shade my eyes and maneuver the traffic of people leaving for the long weekend.  Ahead, a white covered baakie is packed with mattresses, blankets, jugs of water, jerry cans for fuel, and a coolerbox.  Day laborers in blue jumpsuits and men and women in business suits  stand on the sidewalk alongside the bus stop, waving down passing cars for a lift north.  A cloud of smoke wafts up from the bush on the horizon, drifting steadily north in a light haze.  Must be a bush fire on the Tlokweng side, near South Africa.  It’s the time of year when people burn roadsides and fields of crispy, colorless winter grasses, knowing the young green grass will appear quicker than if left untended.

Cauliflower!

Arriving in Mochudi at Stepping Stones, the kids are busy in the garden, pulling the hose through the fence, pushing a wheelbarrow with orange plastic watering cans, and forking the soil around the vegetables to let it breathe.  Glass bottles glint shards of sunlight.  The marigolds have released their color and moisture. Dried stems hold up flaky seed pods like sticks holding up burnt marshmallows. Choumolier, cauliflower, Swiss chard, and rape thrive in the winter climate and fill in the circular beds with broad strokes of green.

We open bags of elephant dung from the game park across town, Kgale side.  A young guy asks me in Setswana if it is elephant poo poo and cackles, more than partly because he knows I don’t fully understand his words.  Sleeves rolled up, hands plunge into bags and spread the composted elephant manure into the vegetable beds.  Parts of the dung are light brown and fibrous, like the dried grass was barely processed before returning to sunlight, others are chocolate brown and moist.

Elephant dung to feed the plants.

A young girl who I recognize by the small scar on the right side of her upper lip tugs at my sleeve, looks at me sternly and asks what seeds I have for her.  She sifts through seed packets of carrots, chilis, dill, onions, choumolier, and beans, settling on onions.  The other girls are singing a beautiful song, crouched on the ground, mixing the soil with bare hands.  A slender young woman wears a yellow t-shirt that reads “Got Brains?” and a white cloth around her head, knotted at the nape of her neck.  She pulls the seed pods off brittle stems and tosses them into a white plastic bag.  Occasionally she pauses to send a text message on her cellphone.

Neighbors rock up to check out what's happening at the garden.

Some of the young guys place bottles neck first into the ground to finish the borders of the circular beds.  They charge and roughhouse  with each other, laughing and clapping hands.  They are enjoying themselves in the garden and they are taking good care of it, both of which make me happy.  A group of kids walking by stop by the garden to see what’s happening.  They talk with the kids in the garden, have a couple laughs, ask for a photo and then carry on down the dirt road they rocked up on.