Eat the greens

Written Weds 24 Feb

Near the beginning of this visit, I went to look at the sack planted in October at Gasharu Friends Church. It's not it a prime position, as it needed to be tucked out of sight of the many children who pass through. It has a single green pepper growing on the top, and some good sized leeks on the sides. Why has nobody eaten the leeks?

Today I was walking past Mwana Nshuti, a training school for teenagers that is the longest running programme of Friends Peace House. In early and late October I took two photos of one of the sacks, showing how spinach beet planted last February, which was nearly dead at the beginning of the month, had revived when the rains came. I stepped off the lane to get a closer look at the year-old sack: there is copious spinach and three small heads of cabbage.

I took out my camera and four students pulling weeds nearby came to see what was going on. One of them posed next to the sack. Her friends enjoyed seeing the photo.

I had just been asked to advise on how to make best use of the land round the school, farsightedly purchased more than 10 years ago. I declined, offering my usual line that I do gardens, not fields. Debby or David Thomas will be much more use to them.

I tried to talk to the students, but as I expected they had no English of French. What I wanted to communicate was that the spinach needs eating, before it gets tough and dies back again.

Ruth and Krystan, the Canadian couple working with FPH, came to lunch before working for a while with me in David Bucura's productive garden, tryig to establish some demonstration herbs. David was talking about the difficulty of changing African minds, so that new methods and skills once learned can be usefully applied. Local churches and international development agencies are putting a lot of effort into finding ways to empower ordinary people to identify the real improvements that matter and to make them happen.

Malnutrition, affecting both bodies and minds, makes it harder for people to accept new ideas. Projects like mine tackle the problem by showing how nutritious vegetables can be grown simply and economically. Micronutrients could be a real help. Most Rwandans, however, are very conservative in their eating habits. To get the benefit from what you have grown, you have to eat the greens.

I mentioned to David that the leeks at his church need eating too. 'Yes,' he said, 'and the women are busy deciding which sick or old or needy people ought to get them.' I can't fault that.