The Garden Fence

So our garden was all dug up, divided into plots and ready for planting thanks to the hired help and some primitive tools.

Having the mind of an engineer, I, of course, had to create a sketch of the garden and a table of plant characteristics so that I could accurately plan the upcoming planting from the comfort of our living room chair. As you can see below, the little garden I had planned was now a whopping 24 plots (each a "garden" in themselves). 

Garden Layout

This was back in December before going to Mozambique for 3 weeks, so I thought I'd just plant a couple of things. I started with a plot of coriander, one of parsley, two of carrots, and two of cauliflower. After a couple of days, proud of my first planting, I went out to see how things were growing (still dirt at this point) and to my dismay I found rabbit, dog and chicken tracks all over creating holes and messing up the beautifully formed plots. Sheesh! 

I should have known better, chickens are everywhere looking for insects, the neighbour has rabbits and wild dogs are common....time to build a fence!!! 

Chicken wire was super expensive being an imported product, so I decided to go with some local bamboo, the locals estimated I needed 50 pieces, but I "knew better" and said 30 since I didn't want to decimate a bamboo forest or spend more than I needed. Sounds pretty easy right, go down to Home Depot or Revy and load up, right? Not exactly...the only way to get bamboo was to first apply for a permit with the city of Zomba, pay the require fee, gather your tools and work men, find a city official to escort you, hike up the side of Zomba plateau, find the bamboo in the forest and cut them down one by one. Oh, and of course you have to transport it back to the garden...either one by one on foot, or hire a truck and driver, who may or may not have diesel on that day due to the fuel shortages.... ok...here we go

First step, buy a saw and a panga knife, which is essentially a machete knife that almost everyone here owns. Like Danny mentioned in previous posts, knives are common and are everywhere. They look pretty evil and essentially are since every day I read in the paper of a robbery or murder or dispute involving these things. Some may consider my chopping down of bamboo an evil as well. I don't necessarily disagree but I need a fence darnit!

Malawian Panga knife

So after weeks of walking to the city hall trying to meet with city officials, getting the run around, meeting one person who said I had to meet with another person who said I had to meet with another person who said..., finally paying the fees (50 Kwacha a piece), gathering my hired help and the tools, only to have the city official to be at a funeral that day, coming back the following days, only to have the city escort be off on another job, to FINALLY having everything fall into place and we hiked the side of Zomba plateau and found some bamboo and went to work. 

Bamboo!

30 pieces of bamboo each at 10m long finally laid in a pile waiting to be picked up. But of course the truck I hired from our housekeeper hadn't returned from another job, but luckily he called a friend that came with his. This is how things go here, you can't plan too much, you just have to have patience and go with it and it's all about who you know that can bail you out at the last minute.

So, the bamboo fence was made after studying how the surrounding neighbours did theirs. As you can see in the pics below, the fence is a little short....looks like I did indeed need 50 pieces....but I was not going to go through all that again. It'll keep the chickens and rabbits out at least and hopefully deter the wild dogs.

Bamboo fence, Malawian style

thanks to Google for the help with the knot tying techniques

 Notice the dry grass on the garden beds, this is what the locals do after planting to prevent the heavy monsoon rains to wash away the seeds until the seedlings come up. Unfortunately it also leave a nasty mess behind not to mention weed seeds. Well, we'll see how things have grown. This is how it looked the day before we left for Mozambique with the guy, Medson, from the market tending to it while we were gone. How do you think it looked when we returned?

Garden fence