Serving Boone, Blowing Rock, Banner Elk, and other towns of the North Carolina High Country
Founded 05-05-05

Planting Vegetables in the Congo

Story by Lois Carol Wheatley

They met at a shelter for battered women in Charlotte. Following that introduction, Marilyn Uhl of Mountain City legally adopted Riziki Mastaki of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

“She was 17, but when she was 14 her parents had married her off to a guy who was 42,” Uhl said.

Uhl’s new daughter yearned to go home again, even if just for a visit, but Uhl strongly advised against it. There were civil wars all through the region as well as the very real possibility she might not be able to get back into the States. Uhl advised her to get her citizenship first, a process that took about seven years. Mastaki became a citizen in December.

“I have a teaching job so I have the summer off,” Uhl said, “and we both kind of got the idea to go back home and start a gardening project.”

Their last letter from the Congo planted the seeds of that idea. Mastaki’s mother wrote that she fully expected, by the time the letter arrived, that she, her husband or some of the 11 kids would be dead.

“They had only a cup of tea for each kid for three days. They had no money coming in. They had nothing to expect, nothing to wait on and no help coming,” Uhl said.

The two women wired money to the family and ran through a few other schemes to help out with various crises, until at last they hit on a more long-term solution. Seed Programs, Inc., affiliated with the Rotary Club, runs a worldwide seed distribution program that they could take to the Congo in a box.

“We get 14 packs of seeds per garden and there are 100 gardens in a box,” Uhl said. “Each garden under normal circumstances is supposed to feed four to ten people, so this one box could affect up to a thousand people.”

Seed Programs, Inc. got its start with a Rotarian who was a retired executive of a large seed company. He had managed seed inventories and knew that hundreds of pounds of good quality vegetable seeds were destroyed each year. He realized the cost of shipping would be negligible and recognized the potential to save lives.

In 1998, the program launched with shipments of seeds to 11 Caribbean and Latin American nations. The Peace Corps pitched in with training and hands-on assistance, as did Partners of Americas, the largest volunteer organization in the western hemisphere.

Over the last seven years, Seed Programs, Inc. has provided seed assortments for more than 800,000 gardens worldwide. The organization solicits seeds from large commercial companies, repackages them, prints instructions in multiple languages on the garden packets and makes them available at a low cost to a variety of humanitarian organizations. Simple gardening books and other training materials are included with each seed shipment.

According to a video furnished by the Rotary Club, 100 packets of tomato seeds weigh half a pound and can produce more than one ton of fresh tomatoes. The project also builds a community’s self esteem by allowing poverty-stricken regions to take pride in being responsible for its own food security.

“The ripple effect of these contributions from Rotary is felt throughout the hemisphere,” the video says.

“Our goal is to plant 40 family gardens in 60 days,” Uhl said, and added that she plans to stay considerably longer than that—a year or maybe two, and repeating the process as many times as possible.

Samaritan’s Purse is backing her up, kicking in $3,500 to buy a hoe and a rake for each of the families in her adoptive daughter’s village.

As for the social unrest in that entire geographic vicinity, she said it’s not as bad as it was. Additionally, she and Mastaki will be among family, friends and neighbors.

“I’ll have 200 people who are going to watch out for me and not let me get into trouble,” she said.

Airfare, passports, vaccinations, visas, medical insurance, and land travel from the airport remain a concern. Send donations to Marilyn Uhl c/o Faith Gardens, 168 Cressview Road, Mountain City, TN 37683. For more info about the project, contact Uhl at 423-727-8816 or uhlm@jocoed.k12tn.net.