Agriculture Program

I am not the ‘go with the crowd’ charitable person. Not that I am a particularly defiant person but I don’t tend to like to do what I ‘should’ do, so I tend to go kicking and screaming to any of the off ship programs. Of course, I have various good reasons. Making relationships in one day with someone (especially children from orphanages) then only coming sporadically because my schedule doesn’t allow any different, seems almost cruel, and not worth it. Unless I can see a good reason for being somewhere, or feel I make a difference, I don’t see the point. The question comes up if I would do even more evil by going. For example, orphans need constant love, so going to an orphanage, and one of the children get attached (thankfully the orphans seem to have learned and psychologically extract themselves from large groups when they come) then never coming back or only coming back sometimes, only to leave for good in a few months seems cruel. Anyways those are my reasons for not going to our off ships charities often.

The credit for this photo goes to someone other than me.



One of my friends goes to the Agriculture sight almost every week. The Agriculture program is run by Congolese man by the name of Jean-Claude who does an excellent job of teaching about twelve people for three months how to farm and how to teach others to farm. Anyways, my friend wanted me to go with me, and I needed to get off the ship so yesterday I went. At least, I thought, it would be more about the labor than friendship building. Well I was wrong, but it was quite a good experience.
By now the twelve or thirteen people there have been there for two months so they have gotten it down pretty well. They were teaching us (not an incredibly hard thing in my case since I am a city girl I have to admit). Very patiently, a young Sierra-Leonean man and his wife (who had a cute little baby on her back by the name of Anna) showed Penny and I how to plant the seed. They even told us why we did it in that specific way.
Later, after a long lunch break Penny and I went to the other side where a group of men and a woman were fixing plant huts for the saplings (or whatever you call it). They taught us (sometimes patiently and sometimes not so much) how to make very natural rope out of banana palm leaves and tree bark. I am proud to say, I can now do both.
They were very friendly. I felt like I got to know them, which I need to do in another culture. How else can I understand a culture otherwise? Thankfully, they treated me like the friend of Penny and so kept me from feeling as if I have to go back every week, as I don’t think I’d be any use there.
I learned that we have so much to learn from the Africans. They are naturalists by nature. Everything they did at that sight they did without using chemicals and did it with an ease of people who felt that it was how it should be. They understood the need for it better than my American compatriots could. It might be partially because it saves money in Africa, it would not save money in America. Still… I learned. I love learning.
I was probably mostly in the way, I didn’t know what I was doing, and I was a complete foreigner and a complete idiot at times, but I’m glad I went. I like it when for once an African is lording knowledge over me instead of a westerner teaching an African.