It takes a good nose

courtney3769
Aug 9
2 min read

She's almost blind and can no longer work the land, but she is a guru of sorts. Before we load up donkeys with thousands of baby trees and send them up bare mountainsides to be planted and survive on their own, we talk to her and others like her, because they have the instincts that people who live close to the earth have always had to rely on. They have a nose for the kind of rain that keeps the ground moist for the weeks it takes plants to put down roots. We listen carefully to what they say, knowing that it is not how many we plant but how many survive that counts, for rescuing land and the families who farm it. Last month on that account we didn't plant a single tree, and good thing, rain never came and the ground baked hard. Instead we carved a mile of terraces into steep hillsides to prevent soil erosion when the rains return. We also buried African yams three feet deep in the ground, where they will wait until they feel moisture around them before sprouting and pushing their shoots up through the soil to find the sun. When they get there, little trees will be waiting for them to grow up together. It's all about timing.

Speaking of which, this time last week I asked the staff to send me a photo of some children where we are working to put in this [article]. What I got though was not the photo I was expecting of two or three kids. With news traveling faster on a Haitian footpath than Facebook, the entire mountainside found out about my request and within hours children were streaming out of little daub-and-wattle houses in clean clothes still stiff from drying in the sun to have their picture taken. Sixty-three children and their mothers showed up for a photo of friendship that all of us can keep in our mental wallets. Without words it says, our children are our treasure, please help them thrive. That's why we are there. Little trees and little people growing up together and making things better.