Differing viewpoints and work on the shamba

Thursday March 31st 2011
Another thunderstorm from 6.30, which lasted into the early afternoon again. The day stayed cool until the sun came out around 5 pm.
Breakfast was the standard cold rice and chai – and I still struggled to eat it. On the other side of the table was a bowl containing some left-over sweet potato, but I was too shy to ask pastor if I could have a piece, and he ended up eating them all up.
We had ugali and beans for lunch. I was really hungry and ate quite a lot – so much so that I felt a bit queasy for the rest of the afternoon! Oh dear! Bruce didn’t enjoy the beans as much. Ugali is a staple food of many parts of Tanzania and Kenya. It is made from white maize flour and water, and is cooked until it is very stiff and turned out in a mound for everyone to pull pieces off to eat with the mchuzi. On its own, it is quite tasteless, but with mchuzi becomes quite edible. The Maasai have a variant of this made with sugar and fat, and it is quite tasty on its own.
In the afternoon, we went outside once the rain cleared to watch pastor working on the shamba. He was trimming old leaves and other old plant material on the stems of his banana palms. You have to do this once or twice a year. He also planted a few new ones. He says that to grow good bananas, you need plenty of manure. He was using dung from the area where the goats are tethered.We watched him selecting banana stems for planting. You can either take a stem from a banana palm that has already fruited and cut it right back, or use a new one growing from the base of the plant. Each stem only lasts one year, then dies after it has fruited so you usually cut them down afterwards. New shoots grow out from the side of the old base and will be flowering and fruiting that same year. So you can get quite an ‘orchard’ growing if you take the time to propagate them and don’t let hens or pigs destroy the bulbous stem bases and new shoots.
Some of the palms were diseased – when you remove the surplus leafy material from the bulb at the base of the stem, you might see some brownish streaks. If you cut into the stem, you’ll find some beetles or other pests inside or an area of rot. Pastor had to throw out a few like this, but he found quite a few healthy plants too.
Before putting the stem into the hole, you have to trim it really well of all surplus material and cut off most of the old roots if it’s an old stem, or trim back the top hard if it’s a new one. Then you replace the soil around the hole, and mound it well up, leaving a depression for water to collect and soak in. Mulching the mounds is very important too. We had been very impressed with Fideli’s neatly-made mounds, covered with grass mulch.
We also watched pastor layering coffee plants. If you bend over the stems and tie them down, they will grow lots of new branches from the top surface of each stem, and so you can vastly increase the yield of each bush. He has been planting coffee as the prices have gone up quite a lot, and so he hopes to be able to improve the family’s income.
They also have a small plantation of sugar cane near the stream, and each year, cut it and send the stems to the mainland. He says they’d get far more for it if they had a crusher to extract the juice.
The long rains last until May, then it gets really hot, with some rain off and on. They can plant beans and other vegetables in August.
We enjoyed watching some hawks hunting around the shambas – one even sat over our heads in a tree. We saw one swooping down then returning with something in its claws. It flew far away, presumably to its nest.
I helped Meshaki with the goats this time as Rosemary wasn’t around. I asked him to show me how they are usually tied up, but he just stood there – so I was left to my own devices. I was glad that they didn’t escape!
We had another new addition to the menu – matoke (cooked green bananas) – as well as rice, fish and chai. It was nice but I couldn’t eat much, having eaten too much for lunch!
It had been a long, slow, rather boring day, being kept indoors in the morning during the rain, and then just watching pastor on the shamba. Mama had proudly shown us her two pigs, one of which loves rolling over onto its back for her to tickle its tummy! It was funny to watch. She doesn’t eat any meat or chicken, although she doesn't mind preparing and cooking them. She laughed when I said she must be very soft-hearted!
At one stage during the afternoon, we ended up talking about different viewpoints re population growth and contraception. She said that their viewpoint is that it is a sin to limit the size of a family as God told us to fill the earth with people. But I said that some countries were already having serious problems trying to feed all their people and is it fair to overpopulate a nation and thus put people into hardship? I also said that many people, and not just in the West, feel that it is irresponsible to keep on having babies without putting any limits on family size, because in many cases, people cannot afford to feed them all let alone send them to school etc. Others choose to limit their families owing to having had serious problems giving birth, or when there’s a family history of inherited deformities or serious disease. Still others can’t even have children due to infertility, and even pastor and mama only have two children.
With many disturbances during the night – rats, Bruce’s early morning wander, and a lumpy pillow – I ended up spending some more time thinking about these things.