Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow?

When I was little (and not so little), my mom was fond of reciting a nursery rhyme to me: "Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow? With silver bells, and cockle shells, and pretty maids all in a row." I don't know what a cockle shell is, but in all fairness, I do have a tendency to be contrary.

I came to Ghana to be a volunteer in the Peace Corps health sector. Of all the Peace Corps sectors in Ghana (health, education, and agriculture), I would say that ours is the most loosely defined. At my site, I don't have any projects that I'm specifically assigned to work on. For the first three months, in fact, we are not encouraged to work at all. Instead, we are meant to spend time getting to know our new neighbors and friends and practicing the language.

This is all well and good, but to be honest, there are only so many hours I can spend every day socializing and hanging out with people with whom I still don't share a common language. I have a pretty high limit, but socializing is not a full time job. To occupy some of my time,  I've started working on a garden.

Gardening is something that the regional nutritional director for Volta Region is trying to promote. The idea is that gardening can help families who otherwise have limited access to fruits and vegetables to have access to a varied and nutritious diet. In my community, for example, there is no food for sale. People tend to get corn or cassava from their farms and create a thick, gooey dough--"akple" is made from corn, and "fufu" from cassava. They eat this day in and day out, generally with a little soup. If they did happen to want to buy carrots or lettuce, for example, the market in Ho takes about an hour or so to reach. I find myself going to the market a lot, but many members in my community do not. If they had gardens, however, they would be able to walk a few feet from their house, pick some tomatoes, and generally have a healthier diet.

In theory, at least. Because what have I discovered over the course of the last month or so? There's a reason gardening is not a hobby in Ghana the way it is in the United States. And that reason is that starting a garden is...pretty damn hard.

I told my landlord I wanted a garden about a month ago. He, being the spectacular person that he is, told me that he didn't want me to have to work on it alone; it would be a joint project. Accordingly, about a week later,  my landlady and I grabbed our hoes and went out to a spot at the edge of the bush to start clearing a patch of earth. We chopped trees, we yanked thorn-covered vines, and I ended the day with a hand covered in blisters.

Here's the garden site shortly after we started clearing...

...and a few hours later.

That was the easy part though. The really challenging part was building a fence. Fences are an absolutely necessity, at least in my community, because the place is more or less over-run with goats and chickens, who seem to have a personal vendetta against humans. Over the years it's become mutual. Even an animal lover like me can admit that goats are basically giant hairy rodents. An unfenced garden would never have a chance.

Along with a PCV friend, I traveled to market and bought a machete. I figured I could use it to chop down a few branches, dig a few holes, and voila: fence.

Yeah, not so much.

What ended up happening was that I took out my machete and managed to get through a few lackluster whacks before it was pulled from my hands and I was assigned to the post digging team. My landlady, meanwhile, headed off into the bush and started coming back with logs eight feet long with the thickness of my calf. We worked all day, and still didn't have nearly enough to build a fence. I was starting to lose hope. Then later that evening, I saw my landlord having a hushed conversation with a group of men, pointing to the garden. "Oh," I thought. "I guess he's letting them know that I couldn't figure it out."

The next day, I woke to the sound of machetes and happy conversation.

I went outside to discover that my landlord had rallied together a team of  15 or so men, women, and children, all of whom were giving it their all to help me build a garden. Men were perched in trees chopping down limbs, children were balancing the branches on their heads and carrying them back to the garden site, women were tying branches together and chopping the branches down to size.

Some of the fence post crew.

I honestly just about started crying. It was an act of pure generosity. Some of the people there were my friends; others I had interacted with in passing; some were nearly strangers. And all of them had decided that it was worth it to help me get my little project off the ground. I did what I could to help, but to be honest, I think I was more useful as a mascot than anything. I do not live in a wealthy community. While I don't want to idealize life here or paint some exoticised image of Ghana, I think it is fair to say that the generosity that was shown to me was unique, and probably not something I would have found in the United States.

And now I have a garden. My mom was kind enough to mail me some seeds to help get it started, and I'm proud to say that the green beans, squash, and cucumber are all taking off. I do feel a certain amount of pressure to get the garden running successfully, since one of my goals is to encourage others to try to start their own gardens. But for now, it's at least serving as some stress relief. More than that, it is a massive, visible symbol for me that I am accepted and welcome in my new home.

Yes, that is dirt on my nose.

How does my garden grow? With sweat, blisters, and a ridiculous amount of help.