The heart of it

The classroom space inside Gitarama Friends Church


Participants bring contents for the sack gardens


The heart of it, Thurs 12 Feb

It's the mid point of my time here, the middle day of three for this workshop with the women of the Friends Church in Gitarama, and this is what I came for.

Standard workshop facilitation practice matches Rwandan custom as we review yesterday's work. The president of the church women's associations thanks the visitors – Jeanette and me – for being here again and leads a prayer to thank God for protecting us on our journey sand everybody else in their homes since we were last together. I thank the women for their hard work yesterday – and I mean it.

Yesterday we were setting up the sacks for planting in the yard behind the pastor's house. Nothing we needed was to hand. Topsoil, rich and poor, from round and about; manure, fresh and rotted, from people's homes; stones from the adjacent hillside; all brought in sacks and bags and old cardboard trays and emptied onto the ground. The biggest problem was finding bottles or tins for forming the column of stones in he middle of the sacks: these women don't have drinks in plastic bottles - only occasionally coke and Fanta in returnable glass bottles - and they don't eat from tins. We found one discarded plastic tub of acceptable diameter and I donated my personal water bottle, saved from a restaurant at lunch time the day before. Eucalyptus saplings, already stripped of their branches, were cut to length by the pastor's wife, in apple green broderie anglaise, expertly wielding a machete. Soil and manure were mixed with hoes and the first two sacks filled.

Continuing my introductory remarks, I say that today we will be preparing the remaining sacks, seven in all, and planting the seeds. Abandoning the reticence that is so prominent a feature of British Quakerism, I find myself talking to these women in a way I would normally risk only with my closest friends. Perhaps it helps that my limited command of French does not allow me to be subtle. God, I believe, has planted a seed in my heart, and in all our hearts or souls. We know the work of God in our individual lives and we know God's creation includes the way seeds develop into plants. When we tend our plants we are co-operating in God's work in the world. I hear little sighs of agreement; I am not being heretical or absurd.

The women re-form into yesterday's groups, absorbing three newcomers and filling the gap of several absences. (It's not surprising that there are comings and goings – at least half of these women have up to six or eight children and some have brought toddlers who are left to play within view outside, as well as babies who are shifted from back to breast to lap. Only one or two participants are old enough for their children to be adults and perhaps half a dozen are students not yet married.) Preparing the remaining sacks takes most of the first session, before a break for sweet milky tea and doughnuts. Jeanette and I are not detached instructors: I am watching as closely as I can – showing how close the stakes have to be to support the sacks, setting aside the freshest manure for using in the compost heap tomorrow, making the first cuts in the sides of the sacks and indicating the spacing for the holes. I am also taking plentiful photos, not only of the work but also of various importunate children. J is hands-on in a way I had not expected from her formal demeanour at FPH.

After the tea break the groups choose which seeds to plant and I issue supplies from my collection of packets. It's not easy to get a sense of how much seed I have given out but I'm beginning to be suspicious. Somebody extends her hand for cabbage seed and I ask her which sack it is for. She withdraws, giggling. I close the bag of seed packets and set it aside. I have already explained that my supplies need to provide for three more groups. The only participant who speaks English has declared herself my special friend and she asks for some seed to take home. I refuse.

Planting completed, the women decide to pray for the seeds they have planted. The seven sacks are in a row close to the back wall of the yard. Seven groups form and pray in quiet voices. Then the pastor's wife prays more loudly for the whole enterprise. There is a sense that we've done our best.

After lunch we make a prompt start. More than with the youth group last week, who were well disposed but for the most part not really concerned about the subject, I sense a real desire among these women to extract as much information from me as they can in the three days. We have touched on the matter of feeding the plants in the sacks, especially if the soil is not particularly rich. The recipe for a 'plant tea', made with an infusion of different kinds of green leaves, will have to wait till tomorrow when I shall have visited Debby Thomas to get the Kinyarwandan names for the plants needed. For now I have instructions for making a liquid manure feed. By the time the instructions have included a sack for soaking the droppings, a container for the water, string and a stick for suspending the bag in the water, a dilution of one cup of fertiliser with two of water and an instruction to give one cupful per plant every two weeks, I'm glad of a good diagram to pass round for clarification.

Next the theory for tomorrow's compost heap. The women listen attentively to Jeanette's account, in which she expands somewhat on my French, sentence by sentence. She and I have already looked at most of the diagrams together and I have checked that she understands not only particular words but the conceptual framework as a whole. There are some good questions and comments. I hope I am emphasising adequately the difference between concept and particulars, establishing categories as well as examples. I keep emphasising, too, that they are the ones with the local knowledge, the experience of their own growing condiions; I an bringing only ideas for additional resources. 'But you are a “muzungu” (a white person)', they say. ' You know so much.'

Enough. The group wants to get on to the next activity.

Today the CD will really play when I need it. We assembled and tested the system before the first session this morning and I ran it again during the lunch break. I teach a simple French dance. This is fun. I don't need many words so there's no need to wait for translation. Once we have established that everybody starts with the left foot, even those on the opposite side of the circle, they soon have a good enough idea to dance to the music. And yes, it works. I add the arm movements, to much hilarity. We do a second lively dance, and a third, calmer, before coming back to our seats for finishing off and praying again.

The pastor comes in for the closing prayers. He has been looking at the sacks and counting the holes for planting. On one sack he found exactly 30 holes and prayed for the group of 30 women. Then he considered the total of around 300. How much money could be saved or earned if a cabbage costing 50 Rwanda francs grew at each station? They had a project of raising goats once but the goats died. This will succeed.

I wish I shared his confidence. I have tried to be realistic a every stage.

A satisfactory day's work, however, Jeanette and I agree on the bus home. Tired and grubby and slightly sunburnt, I am glad to be here.