Digging

21/11/2007

Good God, my everything aches. Spent the morning with Y preparing the soil in our FAITH Garden, for the vegetables we're going to plant next week.

We dig a lot. Dig to loosen the soil. To remove the rocks. To build the beddings. Dig again in the beddings to remove the little rocks.
Not surprisingly, 8 years of med school and sterile doctoring in Singapore has not adequately prepared me for farming. My knees, my arms, my back - oh, my back - are profoundly sore. The dirt seems to have found its way not only under my fingernails, but embedded right into them. The blisters on my right hand are threatening to pop. I've been chewed on by unknown bugs in unmentionable places.
Genesis 3:17 "...Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life..." No kidding.

Why am I putting myself through this?

Three quarters of the population of Timor, and almost all of Vatunau, are subsistence farmers. What they grow, they eat; Any left over, they sell; Harvest inadequate, they starve.
The traditional practice here is slash-and-burn shifting agriculture. This may work in a small isolated community, but becomes rapidly unsustainable in a small nation with a growing population. There isn't enough unused land to go around, and vast areas lose their fertility. Solutions that more developed countries use - farm machinery and chemical fertilizers - have an initial cost far, far out of reach of the majority of Timorese.
The FAITH (Food Always In The Home) Garden method that Yudha and I are applying makes use of a relatively small area of land, a lot of labour, and natural fertilizers. It keeps the soil productive and generates a much greater yield than than the traditional method. By demonstrating and teaching this in our back yard, we aim to advance the entire village's farming efficiency.
Better farming, better crop yields and consequently better nutrition would have a far greater impact on the long-term health of Vatunau's children than ten clinics.

And that is something worth putting aside the stethoscope, and geting sore, dirty, and bitten for.

- raj