You would not have predicted it when I (Gordon) was a child, but now zucchini is one of my favorite vegetables. I love to cook it in a stir-fry. But zucchini is quite hard to find in Mwanza. Sometimes one vendor has it in the distant big market (never in the near market) and once in a while it can be found in the vegetable stand near the U-Turn Grocery. So even before we left Tanzania last May I was planning my future vegetable garden. I figured that the way things grow here in the rainy season, a few green vegetables ought to grow, too. While we were in the states I bought some seeds -- zucchini, green pepper, and spinach. Shortly after we arrived, some rain began to fall. It seemed a little early for the start of the short rains, so I thought I would plant just a few seeds in a little test plot. Now the zucchinis in my test plot are growing seriously fast, but if the other plants germinated, I still can’t tell their sprouts from the blanket of weeds that is also sprouting everywhere.
I know I will enjoy the zucchinis and other vegetables come harvest time, but today they are nearly killing me. Encouraged by the success of my test zucchinis and with rains now coming often, today I started preparing the ground to plant the rest of my seeds. Before I began I had visions of long rows of green peppers and spinach. Zucchinis would be spreading in all directions. So much would grow that I could open my own little vegetable stand at the market. But the reality of digging out the carpet of grass and weeds with my short-handled hoe hit suddenly and painfully hard. Just one hour of hoeing, even with my alternating of five minutes of hoeing with five minutes of rest, had me walking around the rest of the day with my back slightly stooped and held at just the critical angle (listing five degrees to the right) to keep it from going into spasms!
Thank goodness the daily downpour came early today, giving me a perfect excuse to cut short my garden work and run for cover. But the job is not done. My cleared spot is only about 10 feet long, and I still haven’t pulled all the weeds out of even that small area. I have more hoeing and raking to do, and some shoveling, too, before I am ready to plant. Maybe tomorrow. Or perhaps in a few days. I might even have to think many thoughts of stir-fry to convince my back that it really will be worth it to go back out in the garden.
My visions of having my own vegetable stand are gone forever. The long rows of vegetables I envisioned have shrunk to a rather small plot. Today I gained some new-found respect for the men, women, and children that toil day after day in the fields around Mwanza with nothing but a hoe. It is a back breaking work that they do, growing food and crops. And for all their work they get very little income. Despite working very hard, they are still desperately poor. The farmers deserve more than they get. In the future I’m going to be more serious about looking for the Fair Trade label when I buy goods made or grown in developing countries.
