It is my second day at Ukukhanya Pre-primary School. It is Thursday around 10H30 in the morning and one of our sessions with community participants is underway. Umakhulu Nondlela Mbanjwa, who is 76 years old, working on one of the plots that is close to the school gate. She is digging the soil over. I am just watching; I have not asked anything, when she says to me: “Ndilungisa umhlaba ndizokwazi uqalisa ukulima.” (I’m preparing the soil so that I can start planting). Although she is busy talking to me, she has not stopped working and is looking down concentrating on what she is doing. She asks if I can do what she is doing.

At this point, she stops putting her foot on the fork, pushing it into the soil and pulling it back up, and turning the fork over to pat and break up the lumps of soil. I look at her and start laughing inside at the question, “If I can do what she was doing - digging? ” I then smile and say yes. In my mind I am thinking, if she can do it what will make me unable to do the same thing? Besides she is a granny and most likely I can do it faster than she can. This digging work is basic.

She gives me the fork and I do exactly what I was watching her do for almost 5 minutes. I put the fork on the soil, lift my left foot and put it on the fork to enable the sharp ends of the fork to go straight into the soil, allowing me to lift the fork back up and start patting and loosening the soil like she was doing. As I am doing this, I realising that I have difficulty in copying this action. She looks at me and starts laughing. At that moment I feel a little bit embarrassed by all this. How could it be? What am I doing wrong? This is just not possible. I have all these questions stirring in my head.

Nolutho, who is one of our community educators, looks at me and also starts laughing. Umakhulu Nondlela comes closer to me and stands behind me and says “Mntanam, yiza! Ndiku fundise ba lento yenziwa jani. ” (My child, come here. Let me teach you how this is done). I immediately stop trying to dig and just hold the fork in my hands. She is standing behind me and pulls my upper body towards her. I try to assist this process by leaning back, assuming that is what she wants.

She says, NO! Wait for me to tell you what to do. I do as she tells me and start to relax my body, allowing her to take full control of my body physically. She shows me step by step by moving my body forward and backwards - how I need to put my foot on the fork, the hand coordination for controlling the fork, and the right moment for me to push the fork into the soil and to pull it back up again and do the patting and loosening of the lumps of soil. I finally get it and she also nods her head repeatedly, giving me an indication that she now approves of my digging. I continue doing the digging and she says, “See you can do it!” We start digging together.

At this moment working with uMakhulu felt easy - easy in the sense that there was no tension between us; everything was just flowing together. Somehow this was amazing to me because I assumed the age difference between us would affect our working together.

I have never taken gardening seriously in my life and always thought gardening is a stress-free work -there is not much to it. However, I felt educated by uMakhulu that all work has its own processes, even gardening. With the gardening experience, I used not only my mind, but the strength of my body to get the work done. We often fail to notice how mind and body always work together. Physical labour also requires human beings to use their mind in doing their work and getting it done. Cleary this experience and its lessons introduced me to a new environment of working and to me, the way it happened was unusual and unexpected.