Farming

Man can these people work! Lara and I were invited to help work the garden on the property of the clinic here in Jima. The plan is to use Jima, which has the central clinic in the area, as having the central garden for which they grow natural medicines and then can give seeds to the other surrounding towns so they can grow some of the natural medicines as well. We aren’t exactly sure what specifically they will be growing, but I’m sure it is the same stuff that they brought with them when I went to Zhamar and they taught the mothers how to make the elixir. Anyways, the area they are going to use as the garden was basically a maybe 40 yard by 20 yard area of grass, mud and trash. When we got there at 9:30am in the morning there were already 8 or so volunteers from the community already working on the area. They handed both Lara and I hoes and told us to turn up the soil. We worked until about 12:00, both Lara and I aching in our backs, hamstrings and hands…oh the hands. I had 4 blisters open up with another 8 blisters on my fingers and Lara had at least 3-4 blisters on her hands. We then went out to lunch at our normal restaurant with all of the other volunteers, paid for by the Ministry of Health.