Bountiful Harvest

Micah wrote this as his reflection for last week, and it does a good job of summing up his time here this summer. We'll miss you!

-Gina

Last Sunday feels like tomorrow, this week went by so fast.

It's been a great first week with Tyler, Iskashitaa's new summer intern, who's incredibly hard-working and inquisitive.  Among other things Tyler helped with—like cleaning the heck out of the kitchen!—he and I visited the Iskashitaa plots at the U of A Unity Garden yesterday, and Tuesday he helped me unload all 75-or-so blocks of coconut coir to a temporary spot near the compost (which was waaaaaay faster than when I loaded them by myself).

It was a busy, exhausting week, but full of many tiny accomplishments.  With Cadie McCarthy and Barbara's help, we drafted interview questions to gather narrative data from refugees about how Iskashitaa has impacted their food security.  I scheduled interviews with a few refugees to get the project started.

Yesterday was also my very last harvest with Iskashitaa (at least for a little while).  But in the helter-skelter haywire norm of harvests, I hardly had a breath to notice.  In the odd quiet of what was probably my last redistribution run, though, I did.

Most refugees were at work midday, when I had time to drive Sevilles and grapefruit around in the White Whale van.  At Navajo, I only ran into Sabir (who's harvested tomatoes with Iskashitaa) and his friend, Adam; I ran through every other name I knew, but no one was there.  Oasis was even more deserted: Hya Hya—our trusty liason to gather folks—was away, and so were all the others I knew.  I met Fatoumah from Somalia, and Satya (her daughter?), to whom I gave a harvesting flyer and convinced to try cooking with Sevilles.

I visited Faeza's home, too, where her husband Jibril greeted me to gladly take heaps of Sevilles. We shared some laughs while feeding the naranjah into bags, and carried it all to their door.  I took my time closing up the van to head off, and was surprised to see Dahlia, their daughter, when I came back around the van.  She'd been waiting patiently in the sun for me to finish, holding two different cans of soda: "You can take one or both, but it's a very hot day and we're very grateful to you."

The little things are humongo.

Micah Hadley

Iskashitaa Harvesting Intern