Zucchini-less

It’s a good thing I didn’t come to Africa as an agricultural consultant. My zucchinis have all gone to rot. My hopes were so high after that first promising zucchini-let. The plants grew big and green with lots of yellow blossoms. They looked beautiful, but they never developed another further fruit.

Indeed, I have to admit the whole garden has failed. The green peppers and spinach I planted never produced a plant. Even the watermelon that grew “wild” from the compost developed only one melon, and, infested with insects, it rotted from the inside. Should I blame it all on the bugs? Or maybe it was the el Niño weather we are having. The normally dry month of December was anything but dry this year. Probably bugs and the weather both contributed to the loss. But what do I know about weather and the crops?

The only thing I know for sure is how much hard work it is to grow vegetables using only hand tools. Now, each time I pass by the large fields with men, women, and children all using nothing more than a hoe to cultivate, I must nod with respect acknowledging the hard work that they do. And then when I pass by the piles of those same vegetables in the market, I marvel at how little we pay for all that hard work. How did it ever come to pass that they should be paid so little for the back breaking work that they do?

With my garden nothing more than history, I have something else to look forward to. My latest assignment at work is to try to make the AICT computer lab’s ancient computers work faster and better. I can’t do much about the slow processors and RAM limitations – forget about the recommended 4 gigs, we are talking 64 MB here! But I think I can wipe off some of the viruses I have already identified. Tomorrow could be interesting. But then, every day is interesting here.