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From: Permaculture.TV free video cooperative <permaculturecoop@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, Mar 9, 2010 at 5:02 AM
Subject: Permaculture TV - Green Ugandan Warriors - Extreme Permaculture
with Steve Cran
To: permaculturecoop@gmail.com


   Permaculture TV - Green Ugandan Warriors - Extreme Permaculture with
Steve Cran <http://permaculture.tv>
 
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   - Green Ugandan Warriors - Extreme Permaculture with Steve
Cran<#1273ef17f47528f0_1>
   - guerilla gardening - the movie <#1273ef17f47528f0_2>
   - Avatar - Jake Sully , Na’vi hero , sent you a message to fight for our
   Earth <#1273ef17f47528f0_3>

  Green Ugandan Warriors - Extreme Permaculture with Steve
Cran<http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/permaculture/EHmn/~3/UJREzOya4xw/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email>

Posted: 07 Mar 2010 11:54 PM PST

*It’s the beginning of the wet season. It’s staggering how fast this place
greens up with a bit of rain.
*
[image: Green Hills of Uganda wet season]

Green Hills of Uganda wet season

I walk through the village seeing every spare piece of ground is being
tilled for growing maize. There are no fences and the animals still roam
free. Luckily the grass has also started to grow rapidly. The dry stoney
ground is now a new lawn. If these people knew how to use this growth energy
they could transform their communities into paradise. *The Green Warriors
will show em!*

[image: My experimental garden at HQ.]

My experimental garden at HQ.

Only 2 weeks to go before the first phase is finished on my project. We
drive to the 5 km village just on the edge of Abim. *It had rained so now
the brick hard earth has turned into a soft dark loam*. The womens group is
waiting with their tools under the shade of a large tree. Fruit is laying on
the ground under it. I pick one up and sniff it. Smells ok so I taste it. I
think its a Noni fruit or something related. Santos gives me the thumbs up
which means it’s ok to eat. Too late if it was poisonous!

I see I’ve got about 50 people, mostly women, ready to work. I know most of
their time is taken up milling around. I decide to show them how to use
labour effectively. No stuffing around. I grab a hoe off the ground and walk
into the field they have cleared. A pile of stumps lays on one side of the
thorn fence. The women have chopped out all the scrub with primitive African
axes. Hard work. They’ve built a rough fence out of thorny shrubs. The
thorns are like short porcupine quills. Effective. I whistle loudly with 2
fingers in my mouth and hold my arms out to show I want them to form a line
on both sides of me facing up the hill. Ram, my interpreter rounds up the
women like a sheep dog and gets them into line. Many of them are laughing at
this new method the Muzungu is using. OK, go!, I yell and start hoeing a
trench. Everybody joins in, copying my actions. When I see the trench is dug
I step forward a meter and turn around facing the mound next to the trench.
Ram barks a few commands and the group copy me. We go again.* In a few short
minutes we have a raised garden bed 30 meters long.* I get the extra people
with no tools to come from behind and pick out the grass and weeds. Others I
show how to flatten the top of the bed by running a hoe handle accross the
top.

[image: Baked bricks made from topsoil. Wood used is chopped from remaining
trees standing.]

Baked bricks made from topsoil. Wood used is chopped from remaining trees
standing.

We do the same drill 6 times and end up with a sizable chunk of the
community garden finished in 30 minutes. I change the workers over every 2
beds. The leader woman watches and learns. It’s her turn. She takes control
and gets the same result. Everybody is happy. It would have taken them all
day to do the same in their usual way.

After the 6 beds I take them up on the slope above the garden and we dig a
swale. Everytime I grab a hoe, an old man muscles in besides me and trys to
out compete me. He’s got only 2 teeth like a vampire and he grunts as he
slams the hoe into the ground. I’m fit, I can hoe all day if I have to.
Finally he gives up and falls back as somebody takes his place. Later I find
out he’s the local school teacher and he knows a bit about farming.

Its rest time. We all move to the big tree. A wooden seat magicly appears.
I’ve a box of non-hybrid seed in cans I unpack in front of the group. Dont
eat the seed I tell them. Wash your hands after handling the chemical coated
seed. They nod. I pass a few cans around. Many of hese people have never
seen more than 5 vegetable types in their life. There’s a colour picture on
the front of the can. I put the school teacher in charge of seed
distribution and seedling production. Using 2 interpreters, I give them all
an hour lesson on planting and integrated pest management. I tell them to
use the children as pest control. Kids have little fingers and sharp eyes. A
group of children in a garden of this size can squash the pests manually in
no time. At the end of the session we say goodbye and the women make the
leeleele noise. I do a yee-ha! as a reply. They all laugh.

[image: Local mud hut made with no windows for security not comfort.]

Local mud hut made with no windows for security not comfort.

We drive to Irriri following a military escort. Im in an official car now as
the batmobile is in for a rebuild. Having a logo and a white landcruiser
means we need an escort to protect us from Karamajong raiders. The new rules
out say the escort sits on 50 kph. It takes us 3 hours to get to the
ex-warrior farm. Bloody slow!

The farmer group are sitting under a mango tree on the side of the road.
There’s a few mud huts and a kind of shop that sells the basics, washing
powder, biscuits, coke and flour. The whole of the shops stock would fit
into my suitcase. The chief thanks me for the tools we gave them the
previous week. He asks if I could give them a tractor. I tell them I have no
tractor only training to make them better farmers. These guys are all hard
bitten ex-warriors that have given up the gun for a new life. So far they
have planted 400 acres of casava with the help of World Food Program. I’m
helping these guys because they run the risk of losing everything if the
casava gets a disease.

 Suddenly there is a commotion. A guy staggers out of a hut yelling abuse
and crying. He’s agro! He runs up to a village fence and begins breaking off
a big stick to use as a weapon. The farmers try to calm him down but he’s
going off big time! One of our escort soldiers ends up holding him at
gunpoint until he calms down and runs off. Ram tells me he was wrestling.
Later I find out it was a woman who beat him. He was a big bloke so she must
have been an amazon! Fun on the farm…

*At the prison the Green Warriors have built several raised beds ready for
planting.* They are happy. I have places for the 2 guys getting released in
a month on my program. The farmers at Irriri have agreed to give them an
acre of land if they want to start a new life. How cool is that! We do a bit
of classroom work under the huge fig tree near the prison garden. The dude
with the dreadlocks has got me interested. The guard tells me he’s a music
artist. They’ve allowed him to keep his mop hair.* I ask him if he can write
some Green Warrior songs. With a big grin he agrees and shakes my hand.
“Call me Ziggyman!” *Music is a big part of Ugandan culture. Ziggyman’s got
plenty of time on his hands to write the Green Warrior top ten.

 <http://permaculture.tv/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/woman-hyrbids-6001.jpg>

*My time is almost up before I take a break.* I’ve learned so much being
with these people. In the west we have more money and better infrastructure
but these guys have something we don’t. Our “stuff” keeps us entertained and
too busy to really know each other. These guys only have each other. These
Ugandans have extended families and clans where we have sole parent families
and single people living alone, watching “Neighbors” on TV and not even
knowing their real neighbors. Our old people are wharehoused in “old peoples
homes”, while their old people are called “elders” and play a role in
community life…*They’ve got hardly any food and they live in dirty mud huts,
but for some reason these guys smile a lot more than us!* Mmmm…

   guerilla gardening - the
movie<http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/permaculture/EHmn/~3/M_F0od2jH8U/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email>

Posted: 07 Mar 2010 08:50 PM PST

   Avatar - Jake Sully , Na’vi hero , sent you a message to fight for our
Earth<http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/permaculture/EHmn/~3/7qL81gBsbVk/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email>

Posted: 07 Mar 2010 03:15 PM PST

Avatar - Jake Sully , Na’vi hero , sent you a message to fight for our Earth

 Avatar - Jake Sully speech.
Maybe one day , someone leade us to fight for our mother Earth.

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