Chapter 7: Gardening

As an environment volunteer in Mali, my primary role was helping our local rice group with their crop production. Because we were evacuated, I never got a chance to help them with that, but we were able to help them work in their community gardens. 

What you do in Mali changes based on the season because of the weather and resource constraints. There are three main seasons: the rainy-hot season from around June-September, the dry-cold season from October-February, and the dry-hot season from February to May. You'll notice that for a majority of the year, there's little to no rainfall; when the rains do come, people have to make the most of them to survive. Beginning in late May, they are usually preparing their fields for planting corn, millet, sorghum, peanuts, or rice. Thus, during the cold season, people start small gardens to supplement their diets. So how do you grow veggies in dry season? Here's how. 

You'll have to find plenty of land to use. You need to weed it, till it nicely, make sure you have a way to protect your garden from pests (this can be a metal fence, wooden fence, or other sort of barrier), and have a close water source. Take a look below at what the mango grove looked like at my homestay. This is where they grew most of their vegetables.

During the dry season, you actually want to put a mound around your garden's bed to keep water in. Sort of like this: 

From there, you plant! Here's a picture of our nursery from homestay: 

At our actual site in Niena, the gardens were a lot bigger since it was part of a project funded by local NGOs (Non-governmental organizations) who were providing support to the group and helping them build capacity and sustainability. They had an official sign and everything.

For water, there are two main sources: wells or a pump. Below you'll see a view from the top of our well, though because it was drying up, we had to get water from the pump.

To start off, we had a little bit of...nothing. We planted everything, made a makeshift nursery and covered it to give it a little bit of shade. 

As we watered it every day (twice a day actually, morning and evening), it grew. We also had the help of a friend, Sidy, who was kind of a master at all things gardening. Take a look at his garden (enclosed by the mesh barrier): 

Once we got the hang of things, we started to see some progress. Below you'll see quite a bit, namely: collards, carrots, and basil on the left plot; peppers in the middle one; and swiss chard, squash, and zucchini in the far right one. 

We also planted some bashiyirini or Moringa that we were planting because once you nurture it after 6 months, it requires almost no maintenance and the leaves provide a lot of nutrition if you process them correctly. Quite the bang for you buck, really. 

And we're afraid that it stops there, unfortunately. The final step in gardening is eating the fruits of your labor and then clearing the field and starting again. We had to leave before we could enjoy our crops but we left everything that we grew with our host family and friends to enjoy.