the daily adventure • All in a day's work

All in a day’s work

Since February I have been working at Wits (official name: the University of the Witwatersrand), one of South Africa’s main universities. In the Wits School of Public Health a professor and former dentist became committed to health promotion, and then to food security, and eventually started the Siyakhana food garden, an organic urban garden in Johannesburg. The food grown in the garden is donated to local preschools and the garden is used for permaculture and garden training. Since the garden started 5 years ago, the project has expanded far beyond the confines of the original 2 acre site. Growing food has led to research and programs on food security, ecological health, and sustainability.

Through a contact of a former colleague I was introduced to the director of Siyakhana and have ended up there as a staff person. It’s a great fit for me, the work is very similar—sometimes uncannily so—to what I was doing in Los Angeles. Sometimes I am shocked by how similar our projects and tasks are to those in LA, and then sometimes the context of South Africa smacks me in the face and makes me feel like I am in an entirely different world. America has huge disparities in terms of food access, but they are nothing like what I have seen here in South Africa (which, I recently read is the country with the highest income disparity in the world. Yikes.)

So, this organization, city, and country are particularly good places to undertake this work. There is much to be done and many many things for me to learn, I feel like I am in the right place at the right time. And I feel especially fortunate to have found a stimulating job in my field, because, in my mind there is no more delicious field to work in than this one.

Here are some scenes from some work-related outings.

Growing Food