Growing farmers

Effort puts refugees in touch with the soil — for income and better food Oda Hakorimana sprinkles carrot seeds in the furrow of her garden plot. At her side is a bucket of dirt and dozens of spinach, lettuce and radish seed packets. An ambulance siren sounds as she clears a rock from the vegetable bed. This is her second plot in the Seventh Street Community Garden. Her first garden, just a few feet away, already has yielded a crop. And she wants more. Among her packets of seeds is one for pansies. "This is flower," says Peter Thiong, the man who gave her the plot. "Flower," Hakorimana says with a smile. "I waiting you get another (plot); I can have a garden with flower." Thiong laughs. Hakorimana is one of his better farmers. In her native Burundi, she says, she employed 30 people on a seven-hectare (17.3-acre) farm. "I will... [read full story]