An Organic Communion

What a day. We're back now finally in our rooms after a very full day writing journals, writing blogs, reading traveling children's blogs (Brooke) and trying, among other things, to catch up on the blow by blow in the past week's drama in the Anglican Communion (Della). If it didn't matter so deeply to so many, it would make great television. So here we are, like college roommates except for our emails to our traveling children and anti-aging formula suncreams, calling out the experiences of the day and weaving the tapestry of our pilgrimage. "What was in that soup today?" calls Brooke. "Pumpkin. And cumin, I think," I say. "No walnuts in that part, though." "How do you spell that stuff they put in the passionfruit caipirinhas?" Brooke asks. "No se," say I." I couldn't have spelled my own name after the first one, much less its main ingredient. Pretty good, though.

The highlight of the day for me was an early trip to the Community Garden, a reclaimed plot of land at the edge of a favela, where organizers are experimenting with permaculture as it relates to organic gardening. Everything is reclaimed, and nothing is purchased. Containers for seed starts are milk or juice jugs turned on their sides with an opening cut out, juice boxes on steriods (about 18" tall and 12"x12" -- the flexible "juice box" package is used widely for food products in Brazil), and literally thousands of liter Coke and Sprite bottles used for every creative and ingenious purpose from semipermeable fencing (keeping out dogs and cats but allowing through light and water drainage) to raised bed borders, corrugated plastic roof weights, wall planters, drainage funnels into cisterns and containers for planting. Bottle caps were also used as colorful, useful and durable washers to hold otherwise flyaway corrugated plastic roofs in place, with two holes tapped in the top of each with a found nail and a rock (no fair in the Community Garden buying tools that everyone wouldn't have; the whole point of the experiment and learning is to figure out what works that is sustainable and accessible to the poorest of Rio's people who nonetheless have access to a small patch of dirt, a small roof or an exterior wall where planters can hang). In many cases in the favelas, for instance, the roofs are corrugated plastic or just not sturdy and can't bear the weight of a person to tend the garden. A post doc student from Sweden is studying sustainable agriculture in this climate and showed us the "pizza oven" method of gardening, where the roof is used for access to the sun, but food is grown in light containers, even long plastic bags in which light bulbs are packaged in Brazil that can be found in the trash or on the streets, filled with dirt and with holes poked in the side for lettuces to grow out. This is where the "pizza oven" part comes in: the gardener, from a safe position off the roof, shovels the container garden on and off the roof to grow and then harvest. Another advantage to roof gardening (in addition to food production) is home insulation. As my niece, Lucille, just demonstrated in a science project completed Friday at our house, studies have shown that interiors with roof gardens can be up to 6 degrees cooler than those without, a significant difference in a hot climate where the poorest residents do not have access to air conditioning.

The community garden was a sacred space filled with possibilities of education, empowerment, spiritual and physical nourishment and beauty. We may stop recycling quite so many liter bottles at home -- what a great and versatile tool.