Com- Posting

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This project has been a long time in coming for our family (especially since we’ve allowed ourselves to be called “gardeners” for the past few years)– building our first compost pile. We’ve been hearing the praises for this stuff far too long without getting up the gumption to go and make it ourselves.

We’ve started a few half-hearted piles in the past: when we were keeping a garden at Monte and Beth’s house I would pile all of the yard trash up in a little opening behind their tool shed. Over the course of 2 years it grew into quite a heap. The problem was I literally threw all of the yard trash in there: broken tool handles, busted buckets, plastic bags (from the bags of store-bought compost I used since I couldn’t wait to make my own). The pile was basically a trash pit that I jokingly referred to as compost. It ended up being an eye-sore to Monte and Beth’s backyard… and I’m sure Monte has recently had to clean it out.

When we first got into our house here in Mtwara we made another failed attempt. We would collect all of our kitchen scraps– both pre-meal and after meal– and throw them into one big pile in the backyard. Not a well balanced pile. The nitrogen content of that little pile must have been through the roof and after a few months, all we really had was  a slimy, stinky mess that attracted some of the most unsavory of visitors to our backyard. Had to stop making that “compost”.

So, inspired by our training in Lesotho and convinced that compost is the indeed the most beneficial fertilizer for rural farmers, we decided to give it an honest effort and build a legitimate, well-rounded, proportionally correct compost pile. We started collecting the necessary materials for the pile in mid October and by early December, finally had enough of the 3 main ingredients to start: greens, browns, and manure.

Our biggest obstacle by far were the greens. This component includes almost anything that was cut when green. The dry season is just coming to an end and you can imagine the scarcity of green grasses after 4 months of little to no rain at all. What the cows couldn’t eat, the sun withered away, leaving nothing for us to collect. Every morning Johnny, a friend from town, would come to our house, grab a “slasher” and two gunny sacs and go out in search of greens. It took him almost a month to find all that we needed.

The brown components were easily available– crop residues from last season, fallen leaves, pruned bushes, and wood shavings from our local carpenters shop.

And the manure came from a friend down the street who keeps a few cows. We got (15) 50 kilo bags of manure from her which were carried from her cow pens to our backyard (about 1/2 mile walk).

Having collected all of our components, we decided to start early one Friday morning to get this pile built. Our aim was a 2m x 2m x 2m compost pile using the following layering: 20cm brown/woody, 20 cm greens, 100 kilos cow manure. We would repeat these layers, constantly dousing the pile in water, until we reached 2 meters in height.

The building of the pile was quite a spectacle to behold. Anytime you mix 700 kilos of cow manure, nearly 400 liters of water, and 5 men in  98 degree weather, you’re bound to end up with a mess. And a mess it was.

We started at 8:00 in the morning and put our last few buckets of water on the pile at 6:00 pm. We never quite made it to 2 meters in height– with the compression of the water and manure it ended being closer to 1.5. But when it was done, it was (to us) a thing of beauty.

Since we built the pile along the fence that runs parallel to the main road, it attracted a lot of attention from the passing traffic. People on bikes would stop and stare, children would point and laugh, and vehicles would stop and get the low down on why we were building this grass and manure fort. But very few of those who stopped knew anything about fertilizer made from decomposing materials. And for us, that was exciting. If this pile turns out well, getting to share with people who have never been exposed to composting is an exciting prospect– especially when it can make such dramatic differences in their annual yields.

From here the pile will be turned every three days (the first turn took me 5 hours) for the first 3 turns, then every 10 days for the next 5 turns. Turning allows the pile to mix it’s layers, cool down, and incorporates oxygen back into the system. It will then sit  and cure for another 4 months, ready for use in early May. It’s definitely an experiment in delayed gratification. But living in a culture where planning for the future is nearly taboo, I think it will be healthy practice for us all.

We were pretty excited to finish building the pile at the end of the day. But for me, the most rewarding moment of the day came about 3/4 of the way through our work when a mother and her daughter passed by hand in hand. Seeing us all there working, soaked in sweat, covered in mud, and reeking of manure, she bent over and told her daughter in Swahili,

“This is how our relationship with Wazungu should be. We should work together. And no one should be better than anyone else.”

While our life here isn’t yet a perfect example of that kind of reciprocal relationship… I couldn’t agree more.

And if 10 hours of hard labor with our Tanzanian friends can get that message across, you can bet there will be many more compost piles to come.

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