GO Green Warrior!
by Marsha Campbell
I LOVE the Green Warrior! He is a zealous warrior on a mission to eradicate hunger and empower others to turn problems into solutions.
“Rebuilding a community and eradicating poverty can only be done sustainably when the people involved form a partnership with nature. With clever strategic planning and implementation a community can rebuild its resource base and solve all its problems at the same time as repairing the environment.” – Steve Cann, 2011
Partnering with nature, repairing the environment, eradicating hunger – turning problems into solutions – WOW, is it possible? It is when mild mannered Robert, an Agricultural specialist, teacher at Kigezi High School, and community consultant morphs into the Green Warrior and goes on his permacultural warpath! The Green Warrior will exhort you. Demonstration is POWER!
If you can see it, smell it, feel it, pull it up by its roots and eat it you have experienced what the ground has demonstrated and you can eat a great meal and ingest the POWERFUL fruit of Permaculture in Sub-Saharan Africa!
Turning problems into solutions. Permaculture is a model that explicitly integrates sustainable farming and renewable energies into a circular economy. Small home/community gardens (agro-ecological farms) are known to be highly productive, and are ideally served by new renewable energies that can be generated and used on site.
The Green Warrior is educating the children at The Father’s House, their mothers, guardians and Rugarama/Rewere communities in these new farming technologies aimed at minimizing food costs and maximizing food quality for sustainable, healthful results. Robert explains,
The training centers are using local resources to revitalize depleted soils. A shift to small scale sustainable agriculture and localized food systems will address most if not all the underlying causes of deteriorating agricultural productivity as well as the conservation of natural soil and water resources while saving the climate. Harnessing effective micro-organisms accelerates the decomposition of organic matter and produces organic fertilizers and pesticides that enrich the natural productivity of crops and livestock. I love my million guys (these are the micro-organisms that he loves!) They work and make their “stuff”—it is liquid gold—it transforms our soil into fertile richness that produces health and hope! – Robert, The Green Warrior
The “million guys” have an added by-product! I was never good at chemistry, but this chemistry is awesome. Lactic acid feeds on ammonia. Why is that important you ask? A bit of the “million guys stuff” sprinkled amongst eleven pigs every ten days in the “piggery” eliminates any, seriously any, scent of a pig! (Sweet, Charlotte’s Web re-envisioned in Africa!) Our team chortled as the pigs snorted along on our personal piggery tour; it smelled as fresh as a daisy! If it can do that for a pigsty what will it do for the pit latrines? I’m sniffing a great solution to a smelly problem!
Additionally, with these garden wonders are a compost shower and a compost latrine. So much more than you can imagine. Waste is not wasted! Bet you didn’t know that a urinal garden grows some pretty wonderful vegetables! For those who don’t have much land how about a sack garden? The Green Warrior is on a mission for all! No one will go hungry in his midst.
Being most welcomed to the Green Warrior’s home, one is amazed at what seems to be a Food Forest! Everywhere food is growing as if on a Miracle Grow commercial on steroids! With enriched soil, nine months of rain and plenty of sunshine this slice of sub-Saharan Kabale, Uganda has become a veritable Garden of Eden! The Green Warrior must have 10 green thumbs!
No need to cut any grass, as all possible space is used for growing nutritionally, vitamin rich crops: sunflowers, sugarcane, spinach, gooseberries, green peppers, lettuce, avocado, broccoli, cauliflower, leeks, pumpkins, eggplant, cabbages, amaranth and tree tomatoes!
Whole Foods meet SUPER FOODS!
Robert’s students (alias-Green Warrior protégés) at Kigezi High School are also sharing in their own garden. No need to shop at the market anymore as the staff and boarding students grow and harvest their own fruits and vegetables for the Kigezi High kitchen. The school then pays the students for the food they have grown! Education, training, producing and harvesting meet sweet tasting, healthy sustainability! Bodacious, Bon Appetit!
Robert, The Green Warrior is a permaculture hero creating quite a following. Recently he was interviewed and featured on Uganda television. He is also our GO traveling consultant championing this technology for all The Father’s House children’s villages in Uganda.
The Green Warrior is greening the villages, producing fruit that will transform the lives of hundreds of orphaned and abandoned children and their communities. From a garden they will grow healthy and strong.
“They are like trees planted along a river bank, with roots that reach deep into the water. Such trees are not bothered by the heat or worried by the long months of the drought. Their leaves stay green, and they never stop producing fruit.” Jeremiah 17:8 NLT
GO Green Warrior! Godspeed in His gardens!
