Generose Ntaconayi Gize pauses a moment from using her hoe to vigorously stab the ground around a plant with toothy leaves and little white blossoms.
She looks up at Jeff Ringger with a wide smile.
“My fries, here,” she says, going back to her hoeing. “My fries!”
Ringger smiles back. “French fries,” he says by way of explanation. “She makes the best french fries. Nothing like french fries at Generose’s house.”
The two are standing on a recent evening in the middle of three acres of planted sweet corn, beans, squash, tomatoes, peppers and – Generose’s favorite – potatoes. In the past, the fields along Tillman Road on Fort Wayne’s southeast side would be lush with soybeans about this time of year.
But this year, the ground is producing food for some of Fort Wayne’s refugee families – food grown by the refugees themselves.
Generose is a native of Africa. Near her, Henriette Kanawero and her husband, Milenge Mboboshi, from the Kinshasa region of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, who fled about nine years ago when their country dissolved in conflict, are watering tomatoes. Other nearby plots are tended by refugees from Myanmar, formerly known as Burma.
The ground they are working is owned by the neighboring Fellowship Missionary Church, but it’s clear the refugees are bonding with their new land by tilling its soil, says Ringger, who coordinates the garden project. Fellowship’s is one of two Fort Wayne efforts to encourage refugees to garden. The other is next to the recently opened Refugee Resource Center, 2826 S. Calhoun St. It is part of the Food for the Fort Community agriculture program.
Ringger says Fellowship’s project began last year when a few African refugees tended a small plot. This year, church officials decided that instead of renting about five acres of its property to local farmers Rick and Dave Hartman, they would devote it to a larger garden for refugees.
The church has a number of African and Burmese families as members and has had programs helping Burmese refugees learn English, Ringger says.
The Hartmans agreed to mechanically till the ground for free and Ball Seed Co. donated some of the seed. Ken Hensch of Hensch Bros. Aesthetic Plants and Flowers in Fort Wayne agreed to start the seed in his company’s greenhouses.
Ringger helped arrange for water tanks to be brought to the site for irrigation, and church members donated used gardening tools and supplies.
Ringger says the refugees decided to grow many American staples – plus a few exotics from their homelands.
Mboboshi, 30, is hand-watering a favorite plant noted for its greens. He calls it linga-linga. Ringger says he’s heard it called pigweed by Americans, but he’s not sure of its proper name.
Asked how the Africans got the plant’s seeds, Mboboshi, who was a small-scale farmer in Congo, smiles.
“It grows here! You see it here a lot. But you don’t eat it,” he says, shaking his head in disbelief. “This is an expensive vegetable in our country.”
Linga-linga, he says, can be mixed with “anything. You can cook it with meat, or boil it with salt and oil and peppers or spices. You can mix it with anything.”
Ringger says he has heard that African refugees have been known to gather the plant from yards and roadsides because it’s considered such a delicacy.
The project’s Burmese gardeners, Ringger says, have their own favorites.
They like cucumbers, tomatoes and hot chiles for making curries. They grow some gourds for medicinal properties and to use in sacred ceremonies.
They also grow another plant, roselle, for its greens.
Refugee gardener Austin, 40, who like many Burmese refugees goes by only one name, says roselle is used in soup.
The plant is a member of the hibiscus family, and it is known as chin buang in Myanmar, according to information from Purdue University. The green is used as a spicy version of spinach. The plant also can be made into a tea and is believed to have medicinal properties.
At the refugee center’s garden, Chan Hmaine Aung, self-sufficiency coordinator, explains more about roselle, which is included in the majority of the 27 raised beds claimed by individual families.
“All the families love the roselle,” he says, explaining the leaf can be fried in oil with dried shrimp and onion and spice powder for a main dish.
At a nearby grocery that caters to the refugees, “They sell one pound for $3 and it is only for the summer. In the wintertime, (it is) one pound for $5,” he says. “Too expensive.”
Families also favor bok choy, kale, tomatoes, Asian eggplant and chiles, plus watercress, a grass-like green used in soup, says Aung, who helps the center’s gardening coordinator Ahr Yu.
Aung says area master gardeners and Ricky Kemery, horticulture educator with the Purdue Cooperative Extension on the campus of Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne, provided advice about fertilizer and pest control to help the refugee center’s garden succeed.
But growing favored vegetables hasn’t always been easy for the Burmese.
The climate in their homeland is tropical and rainy, and people who farm there are used to working in paddies, Aung says.
“Here, it is dry,” he says. “Water is a problem.”
Bok choy didn’t do well because the plants matured before they became big enough, he says.
He adds that Asian “white carrots” (actually a radish) the refugees tried couldn’t penetrate the heavy clay soil well enough, even in a raised bed. They grow to be more than a foot long in Burma, he says.
Still, the families are hoping they will be able to sell some of their crops, Aung says.
At Fellowship’s garden, Austin, originally from Yangon, says he’s pretty sure there will be enough corn to sell. Some of the fruits of the garden have been enjoyed by participating families already. About 80 people have helped with the garden.
“We picked 10 pounds of tomatoes this week,” Austin says. “They were ripe already. We share and eat them. Very good!”
rsalter@jg.net
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