Community garden gives taste of home to resettled Burundians

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Community garden gives taste of home to resettled Burundians

Mother Nature Network
September 3rd, 2010

Credit: NatalieMaynor/Creative Commons

Many of the two dozen women harvesting squash and tomatoes in a small urban garden near Atlanta have farming in their genes. But their lives, and their crops, have changed dramatically since they left central Africa.

For more than two generations, families who had fled the horrors of ethnic conflict in Burundi were stuck in makeshift camps, with nowhere to settle and no way to return to their homes. Thousands died, and hundreds of thousands became refugees in Tanzania and Kenya.

Three years ago, the United Nations resettled some Burundian families in the Atlanta area. Their small apartments and strenuous jobs in north Georgia chicken processing plants have little in common with their agrarian roots. After lengthy work hours, many longed for some small touch of their former homeland.

“These women couldn’t imagine being anything but farmers. So imagine living here in a strip mall corridor,” says Susan Pavlin of Refugee Family Services. Seasoned in both refugee issues and the sustainable food movement, she helped create something familiar for them: a community garden.

“It’s an opportunity to build on cultural traditions, pass down farming knowledge to a new generation, and also address some food security issues,” says Pavlin, project manager of the garden.

Developers of East Decatur Station provided the 3/4-acre garden plot in the city of Decatur, where the new residents broke ground in the spring of this year. Soon the land was covered with green beans, zucchini, tomatoes, okra, basil and corn. Some local farmers have donated seeds, and the women are trying to use as many organic practices as possible.

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