how and why i live like i do

my lifestyle, how and a bit of why

I try to plant all the fruits and vegetables that I will need to eat in my backyard. I’ve recently begun to harvest cucumber, kale, spinach, lettuce and okra. Soon I’ll have pumpkin, peanuts, long bean and hopefully carrots, tomato, and basil in December. I have a large mango tree in my backyard and papayas grow all around. There’s a lemon tree down the street that I pick lemons from and also use the leaves to make tea. The foods that I do not grow that I eat on a regular basis are rice, oatmeal, wheat, spices, garlic, and onion.

I love growing my own food. I love trying to be completely self sustaining.  I love thinking about what I’m going to have for dinner that night and know that all I have to do is walk into my yard and harvest whatever is ready or what needs to be eaten. I feel the best when i'm in tune with the surrounding environment and eating what is available in my yard is one of my favorite ways to do that.

I also feel that its really important for me to live how my surrounding community lives. My specific neighborhood is very educated but the people I work with in the public health sector don’t have much. So I don’t have refrigerator, I don’t have chairs (everyone sits on the floor in fiji), I have a mattress on the floor instead of a bed, I have a two burner stove (a lot of people here cook over fire, but its just me and I don’t have enough time with all my other chores, someday though), no t.v., and I take and wait for the bus instead of hiring taxi’s.

The hardest part is not having a refrigerator because I have to be very accurate with how much I cook, I have to cook every night, I can only buy cheese or milk if I’m going to finish it all in that day, and nothing cold (like ice cubes or beverages) for the hot season. But I’m learning so much more about cooking, food, myself and how the majority of the world lives. One of the reasons I joined peace corps to have the experience living this way.  If I bought a western style life I would never get the chance to learn these lessons that I think are really important that will stay with me for the rest of my life.

The most wonderful thing about gardening in Fiji is that it is summer all year long. I’ve already gotten a good feel for how long things take to grow and when I mess up I don’t have to wait for another year to replant, I just plant. After this I definitely want to go to a place with seasons though, I want a cycle, I also want to do this with a community rather than just myself.


Why garden? (worldwide)
-a source of local and organic food
- it saves money (transportation, market prices, other things you end up buying while on your trip to town/ the store)
-helps you eat a balanced diet
-its fun to watch things change and grow
-reduces waste (the food from your garden does not come in a plastic bag)
-harvest dinner parties… if too many vegetables are growing at one time and you’re worried you won’t be able to eat them all, no worries, it’s the perfect excuse to throw a party!
-is water efficient (planting a garden will end up using about the same amount of water as a lawn/grass, but produces a garden produces an economic reward)
-gardening is meditative and can be considered exercise.

The above list is all the reasons for gardening that I talk to the locals about when I go on my visits. If I go to villages I usually tell them that gardening can also be a great source of income and they can not only plant gardens for themselves which will save money, but they can also plant gardens to sell at the market which generates money. This is important for them because they can then use the money to buy other items like soaps and shoes or pay school fees for their children.

I also compost and reuse recycled material as much as possible. I used my first batch of compost today and i was so excited!  The neighbors think I’m a bit strange, but I’m okay with that. They always ask questions though and I really hope that if they see some young foreign girl come into their country and be almost completely self sufficient it’ll motivate them to do the same things as well.


Pictures

Starter pots from recycled materials

Compost, my bin was made out of wood scraps that i found and my covering is made out of palm and banana leaves.

cucumber, yum

AND! i'm the first official member of the Slow Food movement in fiji.  I'm going to start a group, hopefully of locals and not just other peace corps volunteers, but either way it'll be great.  i have ideas to have local food/harvest parties once a month and start a booth at the local market to give away free fruits and vegetables so people can try new foods that they can grow in their backyard and learn different ways to prepare them. maybe even start an earth market. no action yet this all just happened yesterday, i'll keep you updated!


Love and miss you all dearly
monica

diwali and a bit of work

Diwali was the best cultural experience I have been to thus far. I was invited to spend the day with a gardener that I work with at the Ministry of Health. It was raj, his wife and two daughters, david and I just spending the day visiting his extended family and then relaxing at his home, sharing stories and eating delicious Indian food.  This day was unlike any experience I’ve had in Fiji because his family was warm, open and extremely happy and grateful for everything they had to offer. 

Diwali is a celebration of lights.  It started as a celebration to welcome the Hindu God Ram back from exile. The best way I can describe the excitement around the holiday in Labasa was like a mixture of Christmas and Easter.  Christmas because of the lights and massive sales beforehand, and Easter because they’re celebrating the return/appearance, no gifts just good food and a day with family.

Here are some pictures

Project: Labasa Hospital Garden

I know in one of my previous blogs I talked about how I will be spending a lot/most of my time with  school gardens and canteens, well that didn’t really happen as predicted.  One really unique thing about being a peace corps volunteer is that you are given the most broad job ever and have to determine how you are going to tackle it with as little money/resources as possible.  After being at sight since july, I’ve only recently figured out how I’m going to get anything meaningful done here.  Its been a lot of ‘I want to do work so badly, but everything ends up at a dead end’.  I’ve learned that if I truly want to help, the effort must be two sided and has to be initiated by someone who is looking for help.  That might sound strange, but it’s the truth.   I recently had the most promising conversation about my work and I’ve started working on the Labasa Hospital Garden. 

The Labasa Hospital is the largest hospital on my island and has the most number of patients at any given time.  The Administrative Office and Dieticians approached me asking if I could give them advice and help them start a large scale garden on some of their open property.  They received $20,000 from AUSAID to create a large green house that can support their kitchen’s vegetable needs year round. 

Why does Labasa Hospital need a garden?  Simple, to provide patients with local, fresh, and healthy food and also cut down on rations cost.  I did a sample budget for the hospital and they spend over $70,000 yearly on vegetables that they could easily grow.   That money could be spent on better facilities, more wards, increased training, better technology, ect.  Im excited because I think all hospitals should feed their patients with foods from farms, but they’re really excited for budget reasons. If I were them I might feel the same considering I’m scared to death to have to be treated in any of these hospitals and more money to improve the hospital would be amazing.

Here is a picture where we are building the green house. I’ll take pictures every few weeks to show the progress.  The specific things I’ve done so far is designed a 20m x 20m plot of land to plant all vegetables that would be in the green house.  Since the land is rocky and the soil is horrible, we are going to make raised vegetable bed boxes and only place dirt inside of each box.  I’ve also started working on designing a schedule of when to plant, how often we need to plant, how much we need to plant, transplanting times, and harvest times.  I’m really excited because I know how to do this, but not really on a large scale (they don’t know this).  its going to be a great learning process and give me really wonderful work experience so someday I can have my own farm or something like that.

Other random things:

The hot/wet season has started. The days usually go from the sun being so hot that I feel like I burn instantly to torrential downpours almost every afternoon.  Its only been a few weeks and I’ve already told myself that I’m not allowed to say its hot.  At the beginning I asked people, “does it get hotter than this” and they all just laugh while nodding their head up and down. 

Its also mango season and I’ve been having to eat at least 2 mangos everyday to keep up with them falling in my backyard. I need mango recipes!

Life without a refrigerator has been great so far.  

art...

music in my ears!
gotan project
erykah badu
jay-z
ray lamontagne (always)

so much love to you all!