decolonization through peregrination

On of my most beautiful and tranquil experiences in Mbandaka... a Pirogue ride on the mighty Congo river : ) 

Soil magic Nerd Alarm: this for all the garden lovers (who wish they hadn’t drop out of biology in 11thgrade) „Of course you have terrible soil problems in your country. What do you expect when you call it dirt” is my new favorite quote. However, my number one take-away from all my agricultural reading and Congo gardening project is: It’s all in the soil. Take away number two: Forget about composting elsewhere, pile it all on the bed – and call it mulching (Most of the following sophisticated-sounding data comes from ‘GAIA’S Garden by Toby Hemenway). Okay, so I was trying to understand what is going on in the soil, and how I can help my plants to become big and strong ... and bear delicious veggies for me. Here is what I learned. So... let’s start in the beginning. Soil is pretty much everything – it’s like our supermarkets, kitchens, roads and hospitals – it provides the plants everything it needs. Its m

Mildew on the zucchinis leaves... most of the fruits were yellow and eaten by another animals :  Lots of gombo/okra turned out great - but towards the end the leaves were eaten, yellow and sick Kohlrabi doing wonderful, as all the other cabbage as well Okra/Gombo - grew great, only at the end got a bit weak  Chilli peppers growing well - in the meantime they have turned red : )  The pepper - also liking the soil : ) and in the meantime the first yellow pepper in Mbandaka    Red Beans - Blauhilde - grain from germany, that is seemingly becoming tropicalized already Local corn: 2m; German corn: maybe 1m ... not everything grew this well. Our cucumber got attacked by aphids, mildew and white furry, minim animals, whos name I do not know. I had to completely remove them : /  The Milpa method of planting corn with beans

In my search for meaning (in life and the situation of Mbandaka), I have continued my reading-frenzy in the hope for finding (some) clarity. Maybe ‘A white man’s burden’ by Easterly should have been on the list – ideally prior to arriving in the DRC, as burdened I do feel indeed. Instead it was ‘Poor Economics’   by Banerjee and Duflo that shed some light on my ‘development dilemma’. Throughout the book the authors rely on a surfeit of empirical data to identify and evaluate aid strategies (backed by RCT - Randomized Control Trials). They juxtapose the two ideas of “aid will bring an end to the poverty trap" (embodied by the works of Jeffrey Sachs),    and “ aid tends to make people dependent and less capable to solve their problems” (best known support being the aforementioned William Easterly). The authors list instances where one or both or neither are true, all based on their ‘numbers’. Yet as my professor Dr. Jasny warned me many years ago “only believe the statistics