The Great Escape

Written 11/29

Fresh food is rare here. We occasionally get things from the school garden, which is always a welcome change from the “mixed vegetables” that are indistinguishable from each other when they come out of the can. We also brought some seeds for a few spices, hoping to grow some in our house. About 3 weeks ago, we asked for and received a little soil from the school’s garden so that we could try growing these spices. It quickly became apparent that we needed more soil. We tried to dilute the soil with a few rocks, but that plan has not worked very well, since only our basil has sprouted so far. Our chive, oregano, and jalepeño pots have only grass growing out of them. We need to ask for more soil, if for no other reason than to spread out our basil sprouts.

Asking for things is never easy to do here, since people can be hard to find, and there’s always the language barrier to deal with. (The garden is fenced in and locked all the time, so we can’t just go help ourselves.) A couple days ago, however, I noticed that they were planting a few things just outside of the administration building. They had dug three trenches in the gravel four feet long, filled them with soil, and were putting seedlings of some sort in them. My first thought, of course, was “ah-ha! Soil!” and I told Morgan that we should go steal some of the soil there. Unfortunately, the admistration building is the hub of the campus and there are always people around it. If we were to take any soil, we’d have to do some sort of trick like they did in The Great Escape, where we have secret compartments in our pant legs that we can fill. Except it would be the reverse of what they did. Over the next few weeks, we could occasionally walk in front of the building, casually pretend to tie our shoes, and surreptitiously stuff a little bit of soil into our pant legs. Gradually, we could build up enough soil to have an entire garden of our own on the porch of our apartment. The plan is flawless.