Wayne Weiseman spent the better part of the month of February, 2007 in the Kano region of Nigeria to share his permaculture experience and perspectives. While there he contracted malaria which turned the tables on him from being the one who came to give care, to the one who ended up receiving it. This article is Wayne's first-hand account of this amazing journey.

In February of 2007 I spent a month working with farming cooperatives in Kano State, Northern, Nigeria. Kano City, situated in the center of the state, is one of the most ancient cities in all of Africa. It lies on what has historically been an important trade center on the route from the Sahara into Sub-Saharan West Africa. Kano City is a sprawling spider web of five million people, predominately Moslem, and a mix of mud brick, corrugated tin and concrete buildings. Located within the Sahel Region, a transitional zone between desert and the tropics, along the equator, the wet season arrives in April for six months and gives way to six months of bone dry weather in October. The dry season blows in with the Harmattan, Saharan dusts raising a pink cloud at dawn above Kano State that leaves one searching for clean water to quench the thirst and a handy handkerchief for blowing the nose.

My work took me as far as the Niger border in the north and 100 kilometers east, west and south. An NGO, OIC International, based in Philadelphia, who has been working in Africa for thirty years, sent me to Nigeria to work with farming cooperatives. I provided training for 100 cooperative leaders in partnership with KNARDA, the Kano State Agricultural and Rural Development Authority. The focus was primarily on issues involving infrastructure, marketing, documentation and bookkeeping, and transporting crops fresh to market. But what surfaced were many questions about soil, irrigation, fertilizers, insect and weed pressure, vegetable and fruit varieties, primarily “farming” issues that are no different than we find anywhere else in the world.

	"Isn’t it time for all of us that dare to live by and into the essence of the ethics of Permaculture (care of people, care of earth, benevolent distribution of goods and services) that we step into the fire, the perpetual warmth that is life, and take risks to break the status quo?"
Wayne consulting with agricultural agents

Most of the farmers have had their land, in a continuous stream, handed down to them for thousands of years. They know every nook and cranny of this land. The techniques that they use are as close to a Permaculture sensibility as we might find anywhere, and give credence to what Bill Mollison has documented and written about in The Designer’s Manual.

Of particular interest is a system of irrigation known as Fadama. In the US our tendency is to create raised beds for our crops and plant at the top of the bed. In the Fadama system the planting is done in the depressions and the raised areas are used for walking. Swales, of course, come to mind. But the difference here is that we are not planting at the edge of the swales, but down in them. It is logical that we would plant in the depression. This is where the water goes: down. If you look at the photographs you will see the arrangement of the Fadama: cut in squares, water channeled into the squares through small openings that are sealed after the water is either pumped in from small tube wells or from rivers that have been dammed and channeled for irrigation.

Fadama plots following irrigation - bottoms are wet	Fadama plots with fresh growth

Nigeria is one of the most fertile countries that I have witnessed. The key here: just add water. During the dry months they are growing crops that we are very familiar with, including tomatoes, sweet and chile peppers, cabbage, watermelon, onion. The main constraint is that with all of this abundance the market is glutted and there is very little availability of appropriate technology for food preservation and extending the freshness of the crop.

Our training sessions were about identifying issues and constraints, and breaking the status quo in current farm theory and methodology in Nigeria. We also looked at how these cooperative leaders might interact with some of the elder farmers who knew Nigerian soils long before chemicals were introduced only twenty years ago. Bill Mollison’s Permaculture model is certainly built on the wisdom of indigenous culture plus more modern forms of appropriate technology. It is a hybrid system. We are not attempting to go back to the old ways. We are only looking back to bring the best of what was there forward into the present.

Dried food at a Nigerian market	Wayne with local farmers and agricultural agents

About midway through the month of February I went to sleep one night with severe chills and fever. I had contracted malaria. The story of this malaria episode may seem a bit out of place here, but the insights that I gained from going through this “old world” disease were astounding. Of course I was in Nigeria to try to get farmers to think out of the proverbial box, but what I ended up with was an intensity of burning inside that thrust me out of the box.

It is said that once one contracts malaria one always has it. It can rear its head whenever it pleases. I experienced this with a reoccurrence when I returned to the U.S., 106 degree temperature, severe bodily aches, intense chills and nausea, classic malaria symptoms. One million people a year die from this disease.

When the first episode began in Nigeria I was staying in a hotel with complete support from the NGO that sent me there, and the Agricultural Ministry of Kano State, called KNARDA. It was nothing for them to send a car for me that would take me to the recommended clinic where I would receive professional care. When back in the U.S., as I rolled over in bed, at arm’s length were all the homeopathic remedies, herbs and allopathic medicines I could ever need. The hospital was right around the corner.

Being knocked out with 106 degree temperature is not pleasant. You learn to moan exquisitely, but in the long run this does not help one iota. You feel as though you’d rather have your feet amputated then go through the gnawing pain that sticks in and between your toes and turns your Achilles tendon into taught rubber bands, ready to snap at any moment. And the chills keep on coming on for thirty, forty, fifty straight minutes. And you sweat abundantly and you are freezing beyond compare. The synchronicity is awesome. These opposites play into you like a ping pong ball frozen in air, a bit here on this side of the net and then a bit there on that side of the net. And Permaculture doesn’t mean a thing in the middle of all this. The word is too long. It grinds against your boiling psyche. It is all you can do to thrust it out of what is left of your brain.

So what do all these episodes of malaria have to do with the art of Permaculture, with zones and swales and sectors and slope and design and keyline systems? Why preface an article with the work one is doing and then veer off into the realm of exotic disease, fever, pain? Nigeria is an astounding country. It is rich in culture, language, colorful dress, history that spans millennia. There are farmers cultivating the same land that there fore fathers cultivated and there fore fathers before them cultivated. Why not stick to the topic?

When one is lying there incapacitated by illness none of this means a thing. It is all one can do to sit up, let alone explore the subtler nuances of a culture and its farming practices. One million people a year die from malaria. Without the basic necessities of life: food, clothing, shelter, healthcare, education and an environment free from fear, there is little chance that when illness descends on an individual, a family, a village, that all will not be lost. And it can happen so quickly. As I lay there in my characteristic moan, I could not help but think that there are folks that just can’t cut it, that the medicines to quell the disease are not at arm’s length as mine were, that children are suffering with pain and fever and there is no way out but in.

"106 degree temperature, severe bodily aches, intense chills and nausea... When one is lying there incapacitated by illness (permaculture and good works) don't mean a thing. The word is too long. It grinds against your boiling psyche. I could not help but think that there are folks that just can’t cut it, that the medicines to quell the disease are not at arm’s length as mine were, that children are suffering with pain and fever and there is no way out but in."

And it gets me thinking about why Permaculture? Why do I go around the world teaching, consulting, attempting to help people to cross the threshold of their habitual responses to life and work, to break through the programming? Illness will take you out. It will burn off the dross of years. It will supply all the carbon ash that one could possibly need for the microorganisms in their soils. Add a little nitrogen and we are on our way. When we teach Permaculture we must be adamant about getting up from the arm chair and doing the do. The intellectual morass that has descended on the Permaculture culture gets us no where. It does not address the constraints that people everywhere feel and live with every day of their existence. It does not put the basic necessities of life on the table. It does not build the table to put them on.

If we perceive illness in the proper vein we may see the light at the end of the proverbial tunnel. It harkens to us to help bring balance and healing into sick places, these same places that have been ransacked and neglected for so long. Illness is pervasive in the 21st century. Our air, water, food, built environment, our communities, marriages, families are no different than the forests and prairies that have been degraded almost beyond repair. Disease is non different whether it invades a body or a river. In essence we are floating down a river polluted with our own refuse, our wayward thoughts and attachments, our gold-digging and accumulated monetary wealth, if we can call it wealth. Isn’t it time for all of us that dare to live by and into the essence of the ethics of Permaculture, care of people, care of earth, benevolent distribution of goods and services, that we step into the fire, the perpetual warmth that is life, and take risks to break the status quo?