On Sunday there was an expedition to Antoine's place in the country. His older brother was with us, and the girls, Sandrine and Giselle. (Oh, and Giselle's phone, on which she played incessant tunes and sang along.) A's been joking that quite soon he would be able to feed the family if his salary stopped. He intends to move there with his wife once he's 60. There have been some improvements since I visited in February. - a second Fresian cow; a new pen for the calf, now a fine bullock, which might be used for breeding; more mulching with maize stalks round the bananas.
Most interesting to me, however, was a construction near the little house – and I don't have a name for it, so here are a couple of pictures. It's a bed for planting, obviously. It's not exactly a keyhole garden, as developed in Lesotho, though that's a design I have seen replicated in photos and, indeed, there's a half size one on my own allotment in Ealing. It's a concentration of soil well mixed with compost and manure, and the change of height makes it all easy to reach. The construction seems to be of staves and banana plants, both plentiful. The cabbage and aubergine seedlings and the green onions are all thriving.
This is new, I say. Yes, the government has been teaching people to make them round here. Good. And today after we'd filled two sacks in the school grounds, redy fro planting tomorrow, on of the men said he'd learnt to do this atthe institute at Gako. He didn't know who had paid. Send-a-cow, I expect.
I have NOT digested all the above but wanted to alert Elizabeth that my co-panellist on Peace at Walthamstow QQuest on Tuesday is Rwandan, tho he and his family spent many years in the Congo and missed the genocide that way (he is Tutsi and described how bad feeling between the communities was stirred up in the years leading up to 1994). He came close to qualifying as a priest ?Catholic? before admitting to himself fully that he could not sign up to all the apparatus. His first name is Vedast, not sure last.
ReplyDeleteNB Anne Wade had trouble posting as have I-- it seems just to call for trying again in a few hours.
ReplyDeletethanks, Margot, for both points. I was about to post an appeal for help with posting comments, since 2 people have told me they've failed.
ReplyDeleteAs for the Rwandan Quester, I'll be delighted to make contact when I get home. My translator this week also grew up in Congo: I'll be writing about him with his permission. E