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In the coming months, MCC LACA is republishing stories from the Life Stories project produced by seeders from the MCC Bolivia program. The Life Stories project is an attempt to show how the reflective peacebuilding of seeders has taken shape in unique relationships with people in Bolivian communities. The range of personalities of both seeders and their interviewees shows how reflective peacebuilding can vary enormously. The hope of this project is that, through intentional engagement between the seeders and the project participants, a larger story of mutual transformation will emerge.
Elysha Roeper, from Belleville, Ontario and the Bethel United Gospel Church in Kingston, Ontario, served in El Alto, Bolivia with Foundation Community and Action (FCA) as part of the Seed II program with MCC Bolivia.
There is a joke in the office of Fundación Comunidad y Axión (FCA) that Vicki is a mother of four: three human children and one with four adobe walls, a yellow roof, and filled to the brim with vegetables. She is the proud mother of a greenhouse, or huerta, in El Alto, Bolivia. This is no easy task in El Alto. At over 4000m above sea level and home to a cold, dry climate that is dried further by the burning Andean sun, cultivation and production of vegetables is often a fruitless venture. With a huerta, a small urban greenhouse, however, it is possible. That Vicki is a mother of four is just a joke, but if actions tell us anything, it’s not that far from the truth. Huertas have been a part of Vicki’s life for the last ten years.
Photo: Anna Vogt
Vicki has been at FCA for about six years and is a delight to work with. Her easy, fun manner makes everyone comfortable and every day genuinely enjoyable. Her life has not always been easy, however. She grew up with nine brothers and sisters but because of a lightning strike, illness, and malnutrition she is left with four. Life was also difficult at times because of low incomes and the difficulty of finding healthy food in El Alto.
“I remember sometimes we would have to go to the store and borrow seven potatoes and promise to pay the next week because we didn’t have enough money to buy that week,” Vicki tells me. Many people in El Alto refer to their own “pueblo”: the place where they were raised or where their family comes from. This is the place they often return to on holidays or just to visit. Vicki was born in El Alto and has no pueblo as her father left his pueblo to come to El Alto, and, as an orphan he had no land to give his children. Vicki has always missed this sense of home and belonging that the pueblo can give. Because of this, her interest in urban gardening began to grow. How could she keep what happened to her brothers and sisters from happening to her young family? How could she create her own ‘pueblo’ in her home in the city?
Vicki started planting and planting in her own backyard but struggled to make things grow. She had no idea why. Looking for answers, she finally heard of FCA and attended a few workshops about planting and gardening, hosted by both FCA and the municipal government. The workshops were very technical and there were a lot of words she didn’t know, so she would write them down in her notebook to look up in the dictionary when she got home. After a time, FCA launched their first huerta project and, because of Vicky’s interest and dedication to learning, FCA selected her to be part of that group.
Photo: Anna Vogt
The first year with the huerta was a steep learning curve but she started understanding why the vegetables she had planted on her own had struggled so much. Naturally occurring soil that is in El Alto is quite salty and not suited to many types of produce. Through the workshops she learned how to mix soil that was rich and nutritive and in a few short years her huerta was flourishing. For three years Vicki attended every workshop she could with FCA and it was obvious to the staff that she was becoming somewhat of an expert in agriculture, FCA invited Vicki to become a ‘tecnico’ for FCA. In this role she would use her practical knowledge to support other families in the process of learning about their own huertas. “At the beginning I felt very timid; I didn’t feel qualified and sometimes agriculture students would come and try to correct me but after a year working with the families I lost my fear and realized that the textbooks weren’t always right. The students stopped trying to correct me and started asking me questions.” Vicki shares.
Vicki started as a woman struggling to grow vegetables in soil that she didn’t know how to mix, to a woman correcting the textbooks of Agriculture Students. Nowadays, Vicki comes to the office with an enormous bag overflowing with huge vegetables, enough to feed five families for a week. There are stalks of chard longer than an adult arm, big enough to be seriously used as umbrellas for anyone unlucky enough to be caught in a rain storm in El Alto. Her expertise in urban agriculture is recognized by the families that FCA works with but more than that she is known as a delightful teacher. The workshops she runs are full of laughter and examples that are relevant to the lives of the families. “Would you throw your son in the garbage if he was sick? Of course not! So go pull those lettuce plants out of the trash!” Many women in El Alto carry their babies tied in blankets that are called aguallos on their backs and Vicki uses this to teach about planting. “If you had triplets would you put all three in the same aguallo? No! They would fight all the time and be very unhappy! Don’t put three cucumber plants in the same hole!” The jokes help the women she teaches remember her lessons and also put them at ease with her. It is hard to not find her joy contagious—especially when she has many funny stories to tell.
Photo: Anna Vogt
Her family is just as taken with their garden as she is; her youngest son was barely walking when the huerta was built and has grown up only knowing life with a huerta. Recently Vicki thought about moving to a sector of El Alto that is at a lower altitude and thus a bit warmer and her children were horrified “But mom, how are we going to bring the huerta? How can we live without the huerta?” To Vicki and her family, her garden is not just made up of vegetables. It’s filled with a sense of home. The elusive sense of belonging that a pueblo can give is found in the connections that the family has built in and around the huerta. Vicki has become more independent, more confident, and has seen the same in her children. Her husband, who was initially opposed to the huerta now is completely supportive and now refuses to eat tortillas that aren’t made with spinach, or chard, from their huerta because he finds them so much tastier than the food they were eating before. After living through her youth watching her siblings fall ill and her parents struggle to feed their ten children, Vicki can ensure the health and wellness of her own children through her hard work and care for her huerta. Vicki has made her pueblo, and its fruits are delicious.