Fame

Upon hearing my name, the new Peace Corps Volunteers gushed, “So you’re worm-girl!” They were referring to my recent worm-compost project. The nickname is unfortunate; I’m just glad I haven’t done a latrine project yet.

Our compost worms are happily procreating (assuming that’s an applicable term for hermaphrodites) in their new beds of manure and coffee pulp and tortilla crusts (you didn’t know tortillas had crusts, did you?). We are now embarking on phase 2 of the project: permaculture gardens.

The so-called Green Revolution sprouted in the US in the forties and fifties; newly-developed agrochemicals caused agricultural productivity to soar. One of the most famous of the pesticides from this era is DDT, which was used for malaria-control as well as crop pest-control. Of course, in the US, there has been a strong movement against the use of pesticides, and many of the systemic or “red-tag” pesticides have been banned (aldrin, dieldrin, endosulfan, several organochlorines). Environmentalists have raged against “persistant organic pollutants;” these are organic chemicals that persist in soils, and when ingested, in human fat tissue. The US still manufactures many of the banned pesticides, exports them to poorer countries where restrictions are fewer, and then often buys back the produce. In western highland Honduras, the vast cabbage fields are kept worm-free with frequent sprayings of Tamaron. When a field needs to be cleared in order to plant or if the schoolyard grass is getting too tall, the herbicide Gramoxone (Paraquat) is applied. In some countries, Gramoxone has been used as a chemical weapon, much like tear-gas. The WHO has recommended that Gramoxone be prohibited for its acute poisoning effects.

Now, forgive my tendency to compare everything in Honduras to Tanzania. But in Tanzania, people would boast when their cabbages were organic, and shyly tell you the only way they could get their tomatoes to grow in the wet season was by spraying, and did you still want to buy them? There was at least an awareness about the environmental and health effects of certain pesticides. And they were expensive! In Honduras, I feel that the environmental movement has been born, but is taking its sweet time with its first steps. Coffee is the only product that is widely grown organically.

It is extremely rare to see a farmer with adequate protection spraying his fields at a time when he has determined the weather and wind-direction are prime. More common is to send a teenager in a t-shirt and jeans to spray, and then hang the chemical backpack in the yard where the kids play, dump the chemical container by the river and have the boy's pregnant mother wash the contaminated clothes (soap helps many pesticides penetrate your skin). I’ve heard more than one horror-story of pesticide poisoning from drinking liquids stored in unmarked soda bottles. And who will ever know whether the seemingly high incidence of birth defects and cancer in the area or the fact that almost anyone you talk to is suffering from “bone aches” of some sort are related to long-term exposure to pesticides?

There is a cabbage field just above my town’s water-intake in the buffer zone of the Biological Reserve. I’m working with the water-board to buy land to protect the watershed, but buying up the land in question is a distant dream.

When I embarked on a permaculture garden project with the worm-composting group, I didn’t know what to expect. The group members all claim to know the benefits of an organic garden, and unanimously agreed to grow these family gardens without pesticides (we can’t say the gardens will be completely organic because it’s near impossible to find organic seeds around here). But whenever I’ve visited the plots where people hope to plant, they point out some caterpillars or ants and say, “I’m going to spray those.” Then, checking themselves, they say “Oh, but what can I use, because you said these are supposed to be organic, right?” I feel that they actually doubt it is possible to grow without chemicals, and ask them how their parents grew vegetables.

Organic vegetables aren’t sexy. They are often smaller, paler, spotted and pimply. Growing them isn’t very glamorous either; you may have to withstand more bug-bites, spend more time inspecting vegetables and making natural pesticides, and put up with small yields. Sadly, despite my best efforts to convince them, many members of the group may be growing organic just to humor me. On top of insisting on using several permaculture techniques, a leader of the group and I have lobbied to avoid using hybrid seeds. They have agreed, but grumble about the varieties of carrot, which will have a low germination rate, and won’t grow to be a pound each, like the monster carrots to which they are accustomed in this area.

I miss Tanzania, where the biggest challenge was water (scarcity in the dry season, its brute force in the wet season), men didn’t disdain my farming attempts because of my gender, and the default for growing was always organic.