A farm in Nyamata

(Written Early July)

I basically have nothing to do all day, every day.  I don't really have any friends; I don't have a job; there is nothing much to do in Kigali - and anywhere I'd want to go requires a long, long walk, a dangerous moto ride, or a prohibitively expensive taxi.

I apply for jobs, but there aren't many to apply for.  I run errands, but there aren't too many to run.  I seeded some at the restaurant.  But mostly I feel like kind of a bum because we're staying at the restaurant (they have guestrooms) and I don't like feeling like a waste of life when everyone can see me.

So I started volunteering at this farm in Nyamata.  The woman who runs it sells a few things to Heaven, and she has a piece of land where everything is grown organically and she gives jobs to the local community.  It worked out well because she stays in Kigali and can drive me out there and back (it's 40 minutes south of the city), and I could start right away.

The farm is gorgeous.  She has over 20 goats, lots of chickens and rabbits and guinea pigs, some fruit trees and a vegetable farm.  There's a pineapple field, a greenhouse, and a few different plots growing different vegetables.  I met her all Rwandan staff (only one of whom speaks any English), walked the land, and saw an absolutely stunning sunset.

Man, do they need help.  Neither the owner nor her manager seem to know anything about farming.  Like, she didn't even know what crops she was selling.  The night before, she'd handed Alex a frisee lettuce and called it arugula, then called the arugula kale, then took out a few leaves of winterbor kale and said she had no idea what it was and was he interested in buying it.  !!!?!!?  She also sold him a bunch of lettuce that turned out to be raddichio!  So crazy.  Who starts a farm having no idea about anything?  But I needed to get out of Kigali and do something, so I went to check out her place.

Her manager seemed to also have no idea about most crops they were growing.  They were harvesting leaves off their broccoli and cauliflower plants to give to their rabbits, because they had no idea what the plants were, and the rabbits liked the leaves!  It was kind of a mess, but it was really pretty, and nice to know I could help out in a very meaningful way.  And there was lots of room for me to potentially help their organization.  However, knowing I wouldn't be there all day, every day, also made it pretty hard for me to manage or direct anything.

I did some seeding, which was fun.  But came back a week later to find that no one had watered any of the seeds, so that didn't work out too well.  I still enjoy getting out of the city and being on open land, but I'm not sure what my role at this place will be, or how much I want to be involved, for a wide variety of reasons.  My future here, TBD.