The charity Seeds for Africa has started its first prison vegetable garden at Kabwe Prison in Zambia. There are 500 prisoners at Kabwe Prison and the prison garden will give them fresh vegetables to eat. More importantly, the prison staff hope that the garden will increase the prisoners´self-exteem.
The Kabwe Prison garden was inspired by Nelson Mandela who spent twenty-seven years in prison in South Africa. Gardening helped Mandela to increase his self-esteem.
´My garden was my way of escaping what surrounded us. I looked at all the empty space we had on the roof and how it got sun the whole day.
I decided I´d like to start a garden and after years of asking, I received permission. I asked for sixteen large oil drums and asked the staff to cut them in half for me. They then filled each half with soil, and created thirty-two giant flowerpots.
A garden was one of the few things in prison that I could control. It gave me the simple but important satisfaction of planting a seed, watching it grow, watering it and then harvestingit. It was a small taste of frreedom. In some ways, I saw the garden as being like my life. A leader must also look after his garden; he too, plants seeds and then watches, cultivates, and harvests the results.

Adapted from Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela In: Total English, Pre-Intermediate, Pearson Longman,2005
Last modified: Thursday, 23 June 2011, 12:21 PM