Machambas

By Marifi Jara

QUELIMANE, Mozambique–The police are doing it. Students in public schools have been and continue to be into it. A balikbayan has taken an initiative to get his former barangay involved in it. Another community is coalescing with the government for it.

Vegetable gardening, that is. Or backyard vegetable gardening, to be more specific.

And there is actually a word for it here – machamba, which goes to show how agriculture is such an intrinsic part of the Mozambican life, culture and economy. About 80% of the population is involved in farming, mostly on a small scale. The common crops I have seen are cassava, maize, tomato, and beans among others.

Machamba, rooted in the African language Swahili and not coming from Portuguese, basically means a farm, but within the Mozambican context, it denotes a plot that is small, oftentimes just the area surrounding the home, and intended really more for subsistence farming.

FARM IN THE CITY—A machamba of corn, squash
and beans on the roadside along Rua de
Resistencia in Quelimane, a block away from
our home in Rua 7 de Setembro.

Machambas are fundamentally grounded on survival here, as well as in other African countries; and the Ivatans too in Batanes, which is prone to harsh weather, commonly keep a vegetable garden around their home (and that really meant a lot to us, a group of Manila-based journalists, during a trip back in 2004 when we were stranded there for several days due to a typhoon.)

But in some developed countries, there is an emerging movement known as Transition Towns (www:transition-towns.org) which advocates backyard gardening – or simply planting and growing things – as one of their relevant programs. The general idea is to get together people within a community to come up with local solutions to minimize fuel consumption and address climate change. It started in the UK and has since spread in Ireland, Wales, Scotland, Australia, New Zealand, and the US. There is also one Transition Town now each in Japan and Chile. (The US-based Christian Science Monitor recently featured an article about Transition Towns —www.features.csmonitor.com/environment/2008/09/11/communities-plan-for-a-low-energy-future — which makes for an inspiring read.)

The stories about machamba initiatives, mostly in Dagupan, that have appeared in The PUNCH over the last two months point to a potential for being organized into a bigger community-based endeavor, which perhaps could eventually branch out to other environment-related efforts. How about a Transition Town in the Philippines, and why not in Pangasinan?

The issues of climate change and peak oil are oftentimes too daunting and rather vague and remote for ordinary human beings like me. But in my simple mind, I think machambas, placed within the context of a Transition Town, is a down-to-earth solution to a valid global problem.

And on a more personal level (never mind economics and the environment for a while), machamba farmers (like my retired dad in San Fabian) know that there is a certain delight in taking a meal with something that you have nurtured and harvested yourself from the earth.

(Readers may reach columnist at marifijara@gmail.com. For past columns, click http://sundaypunch.prepys.com/archives/category/opinion/roots/
For reactions to this column, click “Send MESSAGES, OPINIONS, COMMENTS” on default page.)

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