Getting Down and Dirty

by Lauren Roodt

Ah, you have got to love us Ruth First girls. What a team we are! On Saturday a couple of our girls teamed up with the boys from Centenary to plant a veggie garden for Cynthia's Soup Kitchen in Joza. Cynthia feeds many children in the area by providing them with regular meals. If only we had more selfless people like her in the world.

Putting the little old bakkie in danger of defying legal carrying codes we all enthusiastically piled into the back. Benita balanced precariously on a rake while I steadied myself against the sharp edge of a spade. With our spades, rakes and watering cans my alter ego - farm girl came out to play. My body sang to have a spade in hand as I put my back into it to turn the soil. My nose flarred to take in as much of the smell of newly turned earth that it could and my fingers itched to dig deeper. Pressing the soil firmly around the baby seedlings was like sealing a promise to the children of good food and care our the next few weeks. So humbling.

Everybody was having a blast! Passers-by stopped to chat and give their advice and many asked when they could have us visit their gardens. It dawned on me how important it is to be able to speak isiXhosa and made me revisit the abandoned thought of taking it to second year. Although we could communicate roughly it would have been fascinating to speak to the vibrant young boys and to ask the old man with the crinkled yellow hat where he had been. It was beautiful to see us all getting stuck in with the common bond of producing something worthwhile.

Ruth First and Centenary are considering taking this on as a fixed project. We will help Ma-Cynthia to maintain the garden and to provide the necessary gardening tools she might need. We also hope to start up more gardens in other areas of Grahamstown. With 70% of our town unemployed we all need to pull our weight to reduce the massive amount of hungry kids.