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TEEAer Becomes an African Farmer - Moses Howard

Page history last edited by Henry Hamburger 9 years, 7 months ago

 

 

In 1965, I had been in Uganda four years. I was married to a Tutsi woman and had one child, with a second child on the way. One evening after tea, one of my science students brought to me an African woman whose father was a County chief in Ankole. She offered to sell me twelve acres of her land. It was too much land for me. Besides, I was not a citizen and the law stated that only Ugandan citizens could own land.

 

This land-owning woman encouraged me in every way to purchase it. She was, I now think, an early-age African Feminist. She said, “since you’re married to an African woman and have children, then why not buy the land for your wife and children?” At her urging, I investigated land ownership law at the land office and found that it was legal for me to purchase land in my wife’s name.

 

I bought the land. It was surveyed and put in my wife’s name along with the child’s name. I put on a caveat that restricted the sale of it until the child reached the age of twenty-one. This pleased the seller very much.

 

It was my intention to make sure the land offered a safeguard of care for the mother and child. I was looking ahead, thinking of the welfare of the child and mother in case something unforeseen happened to me, or in case she decided to divorce me and marry another man. There was the possibility that I might not be any longer around and without the caveat the land could be sold and without it the child could be left with no means of care.

 

My students heard I had bought land and they came to visit me with large eyes of expectancy and said, “Sir, what will you do now?”  It was a question that said I was in some kind of trouble. I heard one student say, “…but he is the son of farmers in Mississippi.” The other’s retort followed: “But this is Africa. Can he farm matoke? Can he grow cassava?” That was more like a dare. It rattled my thinking just a bit.

 

That is the beginning of how I, a TEEAer, acquired land in Uganda and slowly became an African farmer. I thought I could at least grow beans and tomatoes in Ankole.

 

In preparation for planting, I hired a local farmer’s helper to make a potting shed, roofed it with grass roofing and made benches for the wooden trays in which I had about four inches of soil and planted beans, corn squash, tomatoes  and peppers. My students asked, “what is that for, sir?” None of the nearby farmers had a potting shed. And I was just doing what I had seen done back in Mississippi.

 

Other African farmers in our village of Kaberere which was about eight miles from the town of Mbarara and Nymatangia Catholic Mission came to visit often and offered advice.” Pay attention to the rainy season,” one warned me.

 

Further, I made use of the British government’s Experimental Stock Farm near Mbarara which was still in operation just three years after Uganda became independent. At the stock farm African farmers got farms started by purchasing baby chickens and pigs and hiring heavy farm tilling and plowing machines for a nominal fee. I hired the plowing of two acres and immediately planted beans, yams and peanuts.

 

I had tried to solve the water problem by buying a large five hundred gallon metal tank. I placed it beside the house to collect the roof runoff during rains. At first I thought to use it as drinking water. I found lizards skittering over the corrugated roof and birds dropping their feces on the roof and all this draining into the tank contaminated the water. We discovered the water could only be safely used for washing work clothes or for scrubbing our cement floors. But the tank was now almost full of rain water.

 

I went back to teaching at Kyambogo in Kampala and in my absence forgot to transplant my tomato and pepper plants from the potting shed. They were still growing there and cared for by my wife and my farmer helper.

 

Upon my return to my farm the neighboring farmers warned me that the rainy season was over and I could not transplant my tomatoes. The searing sun would shrivel and kill them. It was now the dry season we were harvesting beans and corn. I was disappointed but, still I went ahead and transplanted two long rows of tomato plants from the potting shed. 

 

In three days they lay shriveled and parched and died. Nearby farmers came,  looked at them sadly, and shook their heads in pity. My schoolboy students said, ”Sir, this is Africa!” as though they reminded me that I must not act like I was still in Mississippi.

 

But then I thought there should be a way to grow these tomato plants. So at night I thought of a way to possibly protect my plants from the searing rays of the sun. I dug a deeper hole for each plant and at night I transplanted more and covered all around the stems at the top of their roots with grass and banana fibers. My farmer friends watched, smiled and shrugged their shoulders as if they expected failure. Then each night I took a bucket filled with water and poured water from my big tank into each hill around the roots and covered around the base of each plant with more grass.

 

The next days I watched the plants carefully. They did not wilt and after a week of pouring water from my big corrugated tank the tomato plants were green and still healthy in the hot sun. They were growing taller and taller.

My neighbor farmers came to look and they raised their eyes in surprise clearly mystified that my tomato plants were healthy.

 

They saw my family visiting the bore hole for drinking and cooking water.

I finally told my farmer friends the secret of my mulching and watering the plants at night from water in my tank.

 

From then on they visited me often and soon the tomato plants bloomed and there were small tomatoes that kept on enlarging and all during the dry season they grew and we had plants loaded with tomatoes as large as a tea cup. My neighbors became more interested. We talked about mulching as a way of having plants growing during the dry season. They visited and went home with several huge tomatoes.

 

We all knew then that we could plant during dry season if we solved the water problem.

 

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