A magical garden with a wonderful harvest

A story of Local Response from Katabi community, Uganda by Phil

A magical garden with a wonderful harvest

We went to visit Mrs. Maria Kabajungu on a beautiful morning in October. We got off the bus on the main road through Katabi. The road was busy with people walking and on bicycles and some cars and trucks. Maria’s garden led directly onto this busy street and there was no barrier at all between the garden and the road.

The garden was a very large garden. When we walked off the road there was quite a large grass space that was being cut. We walked down to the bottom of the plot of land and there was Maria’s neat and tidy house. It was only when you got down to the house and looked around that you felt yourself surrounded by vegetation of all sorts. When we first saw it, we all thought it was very intriguing, but little did we know what was in store for us.

Maria invited us to a tour of the garden. I am not going to go into lots of details, but it is important to give a feeling for the range of things growing in this garden. Scattered around the garden there were a variety of banana plants. Some of these produced highly prized (and priced) bananas. There were beans growing among the ‘undergrowth’ with a fine crop of beans that would be ready in about 4 weeks. (I suspect that we had some of those beans when we had lunch with community later that day and they were excellent.) There were young aliums that might have been garlic or onion spread around the garden. There were brassicas that provided the greens that we also had at lunch. We saw sweet potatoes: there were delicious fruits of physalis: there were aubergines. The list could go on and on.

There was okra. Maria took the seeds from the okra, fried them and crushed them and produced a ‘coffee’ from them that was certainly very fragrant. Maria could also sell this ‘coffee’ powder locally.

And then there were plants that could be used to treat different problems. We tried a pleasantly flavoured drink that was good for dealing with blood problems. There were all sorts of fragrant plants that I had never seen before.

We sat with Maria and her grandson and talked about life surrounded by this beautiful garden. I confess to eating a wide variety of delicious bananas. I felt welcome, relaxed and at home. I would have been very happy to stay for the rest of the day to help Maria with her weeding.

We discovered that Maria had been a member of Katabi elderly group for many years. She had joined because she enjoyed meeting people and talking to them. She provided many of the products that she grew to the group. But most importantly, she provided advice and expertise on cultivating this wide range of plants and on making use of them. Maria would be a wonderful ambassador for the idea of growing your own food in the smallest space and could provide practical advice. In addition, Maria was also a vocal champion for healthy eating in the group.

When Maria joined the group she was looking for companionship, but the knowledge and expertise that she had with regard to growing vegetables, fruits and herbal remedies has been a valuable resource for the group as they pursued their agenda of a healthy lifestyle.

Maria provided us with a morning that we will carry with us for a long time. We left inspired by this wonderful woman.