42. Photosynthesis

When I was twelve, plants and their products, (with a few exceptions), did not impress me: I hated beans and greens; I ignored flowers in bowers; I avoided rooms with blooms. Gardens were for playing in.

I liked climbable trees, apples, and piles of dead leaves. I was an Autumnal Boy.

It was my lovely wife who first pointed out Spring. She did so during ‘country walks’, an activity utterly foreign to someone who had grown up on the streets and spaces of South East London. Country Walks, (in case you are not familiar with the concept), are where you deliberately set off on foot to where there are no pavements, no shops, no ball games, and no listless gangs of youths; and you keep going until you get back to where you started. They are not, however, totally pointless, if your wife or girlfriend is a lover of nature, as every so often she will delightedly point at a darting flash of colour above a bubbling beck, and say, “Ooh look!! A lesser-spotted dog-eagle!!” Or will tiptoe up to a fragrant cluster of common-goat’s-frog pygmy-orchid, and ecstatically point out a painted-tortoise-brim fritillary caught in the very act of dipping its nose into the nectar.  

(You may think that these species-names are exotic, but that is what she told you they were called, and you believed her. When your wife-to-be recognises that you know nothing of birds, plants, butterflies, or Spring, she is at liberty to invent exotic names for anything you might encounter: “Don’t tread on that! It’s marsh-toadflax-lady’s-beard-wort!” etc.)

Marsh-toadflax-lady’s-beard-wort

Inevitably, these experiences enhance the mystique, both of your loved one, and of her colourful world. And so it is, forty-odd years later, that I also have learned to rejoice in the glorious reincarnation wrought by Spring.

In February, the earth is brown; the air is grey, wet and cold. Then, impossibly, Mother Earth rolls up her sleeves and gets to work. Leaves poke out from the ground; buds peep out from the twigs; funds pop out from the bank account. (It’s not all good.) Then one day, at a pre-arranged dawn signal before the humans are awake, yellow banks of daffodils surreptitiously rush in and swap places with their unripe brothers and sisters. The first bank to burn bright yellow sends a signal to the next, like a Gondor beacon sending a message to Rohan. Within a week or two, every roadside is sprinkled with yellow. Other flowers, embarrassed to have been pre-empted by the daffs yet again, then start falling over themselves to burst into blossom, and to paint the countryside and gardens a riot of colour.

What, you might be asking, has this got to do with forming women’s groups in rural Tanzania, (with a few to reducing tragic death)? Good point. Well, the answer is this: Photosynthesis. When a gardener gets out her spade and fork in March to encourage Spring to get things moving, she is not relying only on her own efforts, but also on some immense and unseen power which she hopes to harness. She does a bit of spadework. She adds some lowly compost. She maybe sews a frugal seedling or two.

(In our garden, she would have to add a few other tasks:

•  Raking up a five-foot snow-drift of leaves which have blown into the corner of the patio, obscuring the garden table and chairs; which left you, throughout winter, with a nameless horror that there might still be a guest from your autumn barbecue lost underneath;

• removing the from the ‘lawn’: the children’s broken bike; the deflated football; your grandson’s special stick; your other grandson's special stick; a random broken piece of plastic; your best gardening glove, (the other one of which you will find after you have thrown this one away); a garden chair with three legs; and a non-matching garden chair leg. All of which you’ve been meaning to deal with since September.

Other tasks include:

•  putting down some lawn seed for the pigeons;

• pulling up the clumps of the particularly hardy variety of grass that grows everywhere except the 'lawn'; and, finally

• giving the weeds their own space, in the hope that this might appease them.)

Anyway, these pre-Spring tasks achieved, the gardener then steps back and waits. Invisibly, Light checks with Heat to see if Heat is ready. Heat has a word with Water. When the Three of them are set, the seemingly magical transformation sets in. Goodness pumps into root and leaf; strong and good things grow; fruit develops.

In Nature, photosynthesis is at the heart of the annual extravaganza: making life from light itself. Seeing how photosynthesis helps turn the brown earth into flower and fruit and fertility, made me think about other examples of where goodness materialises as a result of harnessing the power that was always there: community spirit in a crisis; charity efforts that blossom unexpectedly; youth and sport leaders bringing out the best in youngsters; friends rallying round a friend in need; and, on a big scale, (one for ageing hippies like me), when the Vietnam war looked like going on for ever, 'Make Love Not War' stopped it. The right people plus the right conditions, and good things happen.

In the past, when charities 'did things' to disadvantaged communities, they were surprised when progress slowly got clogged and static. They did not understand the need to mobilise the energy and determination of those they were trying to help. Tushikamane represents a better way of working, whereby the actual starting point is such community mobilisation and empowerment. The right people plus the right conditions, and solutions emerge.

In Tushikamane, Eleven women's groups have begun the process of harnessing this hidden potential:

We now have eleven seedlings, one in each of eleven isolated hamlets in rural Tunguli and Msamvu. By July, we hope that all eleven will be strong, hardy and deeply rooted, ready to produce good fruit. The gardeners are working hard, and, so far, the response is heartening. 

There is a power all around us, without which nothing can be. When the right circumstances come together, the power is harnessed. Whether you believe this to be the Power of God or the Power of Nature or the Power within us, the reality is that there is much good waiting to be unleashed; waiting for the circumstances; waiting to make new harmonies.

Waiting for Spring.

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