Fw: Seedsavers in Balkans
Robin Wheeler
Sent from Seed Savers phone from Serbia invited by Seed Savers Zoran Petrov who organised a screening of seedsavers documentary Our Seeds and talk in Belgrad's Belgrad Chamber of Commerce with wide interest audience. One third academics, one third gov. officials, gov. plant breeders, organiic certiicatipn bodies, NGO, biodynamic assoc, medical Doctors TV Journalists and press Australian ,deputy Australian ambassador insured lively discussions now ongoing on seed supplies issues, seed imports seed sovereignty We previously were in Bosnia, sending updates at occasional wifi hotspots. Our apologies for the short responses.
cheers-N
On Sat, Sep 4, 2010 at 5:19 AM, steve cran <green.war...@gmail.com> wrote:
I"m alive and Im back training the next batch of Community Sustainability Specialists (alias Green Warriors). These guys take to permaculture like ducks to water. I’ve been back in Uganda for almost 2 weeks now after repairing my body in Australia form the ravages of malaria, typhoid and a lung infection. It’s amazing how fast your body caves in once your immune system is compromised. The trick is to give yourself enough time to repair before going back into the field. Maybe I should listen to my own advice more often!
Before the training starts, the staff and I conduct interviews to determine who’s suitable to become a Green Warrior. I sit the team down-wind of the interviewees. This is so I can smell alcohol coming from their body and clothes. In Karamoja, heavy drinking is a pastime for people in poverty. In fact a lot of their grog is home made from the food given to them by aid organizations. Sorghum and millet are brewed in plastic jerry cans which sell for $3-$7 a jerry. If a candidate reeks of alcohol at 3pm we have a good idea he or she is a heavy drinker and we bypass them for a more suitable person. Some dudes smell so strong I ask them one question, “what’s your name?” and that’s the end of the interview. The team and I have special signals with our eyes when we have a winner or a loser.
The training kicks off with the trainees getting issued a tent, bedding, a sleeping mat and a set of farm tools, quite a haul by local standards. Salome, one of our staff has to take the women to the toilets and teach them how to use it hygienically. Most of them have never seen a toilet or a flush system. They watch Salome push the lever and gasp in amazement as the water spirals down the pan. It takes them a few days and an irate cleaner to get it right. The men have to use a pit toilet we dug at the back of the field away from the camp. It has several luxury features like 2 squat holes with wooden covers and an ash bucket to smother any flies on the faeces. It also has a tap and soap outside for personal hygiene. We’ll fit a roof, next training.
There’s a brick kitchen now with a large 2 burner mud stove that the last course built. The cook ladies tell me it is very efficient and they want one at their homes. The builders are still building the bush kitchen around the cooks as they work.
We begin the training with 50 trainees but only have the resources for 44. I have to wean the numbers down over the first few days by watching them during the fieldwork. The lazy ones go home and don’t come back. Fieldwork sorts them out quickly. I give them the rules of the camp, which are quite simple. Get along with each other and no drinking in the camp unless it’s a special occasion authorized by staff.
Each day is the practical field work first and the theory second. This may seem upside down to conventional trainers but I find it gets a better result. After the trainees for example have constructed a home garden, they are much more interested in the theory and they comprehend it at a greater depth.
On day three Salome comes and sees me with an urgent problem. She tells me 2 trainees were drunk last night and almost caused a riot. One was riding his motorcycle between the packed rows of tents pissed out of his mind on local brew. I front the 2 idiots up out the back of the training hut. Unfortunately they are 2 guys from the same village and they show great aptitude for the training…I decide not to send them home but they must be punished. An hour later they are stripped to the waist, each digging a grey water pit 1.5 meters deep, out the back of the new kitchen. The other trainees have a laugh at them while they are eating breakfast. If these dudes weren’t seen to be punished the trainees would have done it themselves the next night.
Today is Election Day and half the students have walked off to their villages to cast their vote for federal and local leaders. The handful of trainees left, and I, construct a brick duck tank. The duck tank has a multifunction purpose. Our ducks get a swim and we get duck manure infused water to irrigate our gardens with. It’s a self-producing liquid manure factory.
The women mix the mortar and the men lay the bricks. I join in the digging and the students tell me they have never seen a white man dig before. I tell them I have never seen a black man on a computer before, we all laugh at each other. At lunchtime the team wont break for lunch as they only have one more course of bricks to lay. They are a solid bunch of Green Warriors. They do what has to be done. In a few weeks they will be training their own people and setting up demonstration community gardens. Karamajong teaching Karamajong, creating the Green Warrior ripple effect., so far it’s working!