Haiti

It was sometime back in the early 90’s, when my good friends Pat & Connie Lahr, of Maple Lake, Minnesota, asked me to come to Haiti with them to experience their mission to teach the Haitian poor how to square-foot garden and make them more self sufficient. They have been doing this for many years and have set up quite a program with a lot of support.

I was very hesitant to accept the invitation and even more apprehensive about actually going because Haiti was not the most stable country at that time, and I believe “Papa Doc” was still heading the government, but military and private coups were happening all the time, it seemed.

As we landed and traveled to their apartment in the city, we saw the usual military presence found in many developing countries. There were lots of army vehicles, men, and guns all over the place, but things seemed stable enough, so I started to relax. They took me on many excursions through Haiti, including some of the very poorest parts of the cities (make-shift shanties and cardboard shacks). But,

all the local people were very interested in why we were there and were very hospitable and easy to get along with. Pat and Connie had set up several demonstration gardens and we taught square-foot gardening with the help of interpreters and good-ole stand-by sign language when all else failed.

Several things stand out in my mind when I think about that trip. The first was goats. You have to be in one of these countries to appreciate how many goats, chickens, and other animals run loose throughout the towns and countryside, and they will eat or dig-up just about any garden as soon as you plant it. They are always scrounging for food. I just told the people to get some chicken wire to cover each 4 foot x 4 foot plot. I explained, with great pride, that square-foot gardening condenses your garden down to only 20% or 1/5 the space of a conventional single-row garden, which incidentally was what they were being taught by their government and agricultural experts. My, my, when will the world learn that single-row gardening is an antiquated wasteful, harmful way to garden, even to farm, for that matter.

After showing them how little space they need, I said, “Now to keep out the goats or chickens, all you have to do is cover this 4 foot x 4 foot garden with some chicken wire. Make a frame out of any other kind of wire or pipe, and then cover it, and you will be able to lift the whole thing off and tend to it, and yet it will keep all those animals out.” Well, they merrily shrugged their shoulders and finally said, “We don’t have any chicken wire. We are a poor country and poor people, and we have nothing like that. You can’t find wire or metal thrown anywhere.”

Well, I was stunned for a little while. How to solve their problem? Bamboo fences and covers might work, but they in themselves were a lot of work to make and no one seemed really interested in this extra work. Then one morning I woke up with that light bulb on in my brain. How could we keep the animals out of the garden? Well, lets locate the garden where they don’t or can’t get to, the rooftops. Every building in Haiti has a flat roof and I was told that they were strong enough to stand and walk on, so why not put a ladder up and build our 4 x 4’s right up there. You’ll get better sun, no vandalism (take the ladder down at night), no animals, and just about a perfect spot for a garden. Because square foot gardening uses a light-weight soil and compost mix, there really wasn’t much extra weight on the roof, and since we control the watering, that would also not cause any problems. Using scrap lumber, sticks, or tree bamboo and a sheet of plastic to contain the water inside the garden, it turned out to be a snap. It took a little getting used to watering so that the garden did not become soggy, and yet it was kept moist for the plants sake. Sorry about that goats!

Last year at one of our international training camps in Florida, I met someone who goes to Haiti a lot, and she said a remarkable thing. She was telling about her work there, and said, “You know, a lot of the gardens in Haiti are located on the rooftops.” I was very pleased at that and so you see, one person can make a difference in the world, even if it is just from one idea.

Another thing that comes to mind from that trip is the Peace Corps. In my travels around Haiti, and actually since then all over the world, I’ve met many Peace Corps members. What a dedicated group they are. Quite often they were volunteered by the hosting organization in whatever country I was in as an interpreter for my talks and clinics. The first thing that all of the Peace Corps people said was, “Wow, now I can have a garden right here, so I can have some fresh vegetables.” The next thing they all said is, “You should go to Washington D.C. to meet our headquarters and explain to them how perfect square-foot gardening is for the third-world developing countries.”

What most people seem to grasp and comment on when I explain SFG is that, no matter what someone is doing in another country, whether they are teaching or helping with schools, or medical facilities, the additional knowledge they could present to that locality and it’s people about a new method of gardening that takes so little space, yet provides so much for those who need the extra nutrition and food sources, just fits in so well. I know many organizations send groups of people to a developing country to some small locale in order to build a new hospital or clinic or new school, and they are there for many, many months. Well, why not at the same time be able to teach square-foot gardening to all the local people. It works anywhere in the world and it will enhance and enrich everyone..

It was good advice, but like everything else in our busy lives, I never got around to it. Does anyone out there have any connections with the Peace Corps or with the government in D.C., or for that matter do you have any connection with any organization that sends volunteers, missionaries, or help to other countries. We would like to contact and tell them all about the square-foot gardening system. Incidentally, we have converted square-foot gardening to square-meter gardening for those areas of the world that use the metric system.

HAITI GARDENS, was established in 1985 by Pat and Connie Lahr of Minnesota, to empower the people of Haiti to plant small vegetable gardens near their homes to combat malnutrition.

Each year from 2,000 families have been involved with the program. In 2003, 4 project leaders, are directly working with 360 families and 4 classrooms of students.