School Garden

As part of our agriculture club, my counterpart teacher for the club Chris and I wrote a small grant to do a school garden with the students. Thanks to generous donations the grant filled quickly and now our project is in the works. Here’s more about the project from part of the write up that went online: Two student leaders and I attended a Peace Corps Food Security Youth Camp in our region in October to learn more about agriculture topics including nutrition, school gardens, animal rearing, beekeeping, tree nurseries, and farming practices. The goal of the camp was to equip and inspire students to become involved in tackling food security issues in their community by forming a club. Since the camp, another teacher and I formed an Agriculture Club with the two student leaders and interested students from our school. The students are especially interested in school gardens and beekeeping and it's exciting to see their desire to learn more practically and outside of the classroom setting. This project hopes to allow students to experiment with gardening and in the process learn a lot and gain skills for the future.

The main item we needed funds for was the wire fencing but I wasn’t very sure how to get the fencing from the place I knew to buy from in Tamale back to my village (especially since I take 3 cars for that trip). Thankfully my Peace Corps supervisor Mary was coming for a visit to my village in late February to hold a community meeting about getting another volunteer me once I finish my service. Since she was coming from Tamale, I was able to snag a ride for the 4 rolls of fencing, fertilizer, watering cans and even myself for part of the trip. It was a huge help and am so relieved I didn’t have to find other means of transportation! I know what a hassle that would’ve been…

Starting on Thursday this past week we started holding work days to create the garden. We chose a location close to the borehole in front of the other teacher’s quarters to make the watering easy and to have eyes watching it too. After the Independence Day marching Wednesday, Thursday was also a holiday so we informed the agriculture club members to come work on the fence if they could. We’d been asking the students who were late to school (we often punish latecomers by having them bring useful items like stones, sand, sticks, etc) to bring sticks for us to use as posts for the wire. Several hours were spent in the morning working on the fence and we finished before it got too hot. The students who came out were rewarded with pure water, biscuits, and toffee. Also we played music and I took photos to make it more fun. One thing that should be said about this project is that we’d intended to do it in February before true hot season started but because of the holidays in December and January the processing was delayed and we had to wait. Nobody else seems to mind to terribly much about being out in the hot season sun but for me I have to be super careful to wear sunscreen and drink tons of water.

Friday was a school day but since little effective teaching happens we again used the morning to work on preparing the land and creating sunken beds. This time we recruited all the form 1 and form 2 students to help since it is a “school” garden after all. One of our active students Edward acted as our school garden “manager” he told me and took the names of those who worked so I could reward them with candy later. The sun got pretty hot early that day so we closed early and decided to hold another work day on Saturday to finish the beds. Saturday we held another work day to finish the beds and again around 20 students came out to help. I’m very impressed with how hard some of the students are willing to work. It was funny too because I tried to pitch in and do some digging and hoeing but then a student would come and take over for me. 

Mostly I felt like I spent the morning running errands to buy food for the students who came to work. My “daughter” Linda helped me go buy one item at a student’s house. Because I’d never been to this particular house before it took time since I received the customary flour water (it’s as weird and disgusting as it sounds) to drink/eat) as a stranger/guest. And apparently people call Linda my “daughter” since we spend a lot of time together (she’s active in girls and agric club, peer education, and even went to camp). Even her parents when she gets home from being at my house will ask her “How is your mother?” So yes I have a teenage daughter. Back to the garden work, the boys work very diligently and finished the beds even in the noonday sun. They were rewarded with food and more candy. This coming Friday we’re planning on holding our final work day to sow the seeds (namely tomato, carrot, lettuce, cabbage, onion, and pepper). Then the students will be in charge of maintaining the garden by watering and weeding- so we’ll watch and see what happens. I also want to teach them to nurse trees using mango and moringa seeds which we can later transplant.