A Fistful of Seed
I took this photo of a sorghum panicle (seed head) during a visit with 30 children to a vegetable garden on a homestead in northern KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. There was no sound but the their twinkling voices and scattered birdsong.
Small children followed the farmer along narrow paths of soft, dark soil. On either side, raised beds of verdant spinach, intercropped with onions, mint, imbuya (green herbs), marigold and chilli. A boy pointed to the single sorghum plant and asked ‘Doesn’t that belong in the field?’ The farmer smiled. ‘Yes!’ she answered. ‘It’s there for the birds – something sweet to keep them away from my vegetables.’
Later, we gathered to hear what the children had learned about agroecology from their tour of the garden.
‘The soil is protected by dry grass!’ called out one girl.
‘There are no birds eating the plants because they have seeds’, observed a little boy.
‘The vegetables drink tea that Gogo makes… oh but it smells horrible!’ they laughed.
The children attended every session of a 4-month Biowatch agroecology programme, drinking in information and breathing out wisdom the way plants draw in nutrients and release oxygen. They wanted to make connections between their rural lives and the cities to which everyone seemed to want to migrate as soon as possible. I told them that wherever food – real food – is grown is the centre of the universe. Of course you cannot know that until you have travelled, in your country or your imagination.
A teenage girl approached to help pack stationery. ‘I love your pin’, she said, pointing at the small watermelon brooch on my jacket. ‘Thank you! It’s for…’
She interrupted, smiling – ‘I know what it’s for!’
Children are ethical beings, innately compassionate. They understand connections unless or until we slice through them. The children in rural South Africa easily embraced the principles of caring for self, for others, for all life and the land on which we depend together. Which takes my mind to Gaza and the West Bank, to Lebanon, to Iran, to Syria, to Yemen, back to Sudan, to the DR Congo, and to the utterly disconnected and deluded megalomaniacs sucking us all to war. That was what prompted the poem.
Image description: a panicle of ripe red sorghum spears a deep blue winter sky. Its tiny round grains cling to delicate stems. Bold white text set left on the photo reads A fistful of seed. Below that, smaller, Deborah Ewing. The following images show the same photo but almost transparent, each with one verse of the poem imposed on it.
