Plant Organic Fruit Trees with African Farmers

We spent two days this week in the mountains of Ourika Valley on vast plots of land. On Tuesday, we were more engaged with the tree planting team, and I genuinely felt I was helping further HAF’s mission, but Monday presented me with an invaluable learning experience.

Abdeljalil introduced us to the farmers working in the area and informed us that we would learn about the specific irrigation practice used on the plot of land and how fruit-bearing carob trees are produced. This was my first in-person exposure to farming, a vocation I knew required diligence and dedication, but the level of precision I saw on Monday’s trip amazed me. 

When we reached the top of the hill where the trees were being planted, the terrain was rocky and dry, so the young carob and almond trees were hidden from my sight. It took the trained eye of the community partner to point out the holes with saplings in them, waiting to be watered and grafted. The farmer squatted down next to a carob tree and explained that it had grown for about three years without any fruit, an indicator that the plant was male.

He then pulled out some branches cut from a female tree and a clunky handheld tool. At first glance, it reminded me of a can-opener, but I soon realized the purpose of the device. I squatted down in the dirt to get a better view, disregarding the cleanliness of the slacks I carefully laid out the night before.

I noticed how the device pierced the plant as the cut was made and asked to take pictures of the tool to understand how it worked. I was enthralled as he removed a triangular piece of the branch then made a corresponding incision was made on a branch of the plant in the ground. The cuts were clean, and everyone in my group audibly “WOWWW”ed when he put and taped the two parts together; they fit like puzzle pieces. 

When I first heard that we were grafting trees, my mind went back to my medical summer camp during high school when I learned about various surgical techniques and practiced dissecting pigs. Most people would say that being a surgeon is a job that requires more skill and attention than farming, and before this trip, I would have, too. However, the day in Ourika Valley opened my eyes to how trivial of a comparison this is.

Surgery or farming? Spending the day in an operating room or in the intense Moroccan heat? Instead, it is more productive to consider the similarities between the occupations. Both require a skill set of physical stamina, attention to detail, long-term planning, and adaptability. A field of trees could flourish despite inadequate environmental conditions. A patient having undergone multiple unsuccessful surgeries could make a shocking recovery.

Both rely heavily on careful forethought and monitoring of their practice but have elements of chance – or possibly miracles. 

I’ve spent the majority of my life in an academic bubble. While eternally grateful for the gift of a formal education from primary school to university (and graduate school, Inshallah), I’ve realized that I comparatively have much less knowledge of life outside the classroom. Besides limiting the breadth of information I have access to, not having these experiences also prevents me from making connections between ideas and practices that span across different spheres of life.

Despite learning about how plants can be manipulated to produce fruit in my introductory biology class, I would not have made the connection to surgery without examining the shears and seeing the care the farmer took when he placed the two branches together. Perhaps the most important similarity between these two fields is the ultimate goal to serve their community.

While there are practical differences between these two fields, this is a unifying and leveling idea. Everything else falls away when you realize sustaining life is at the center of farming and surgery. Keeping this simple fact in mind will be crucial to grounding myself as I pursue a career in medicine by emphasizing that I should not value my hard work over someone else who is working towards a similar goal of serving those we care about.

There is a great horror and a curse that can sometimes overwhelm me while doing development work. It was maybe at its greatest when HAF visited Al Haouz province to plant trees with the community members: the beginning of a project to plant eighty thousand olive, carob, and almond trees, and water them all with solar-powered pumps. Halfway through the day, I stepped back from the work and just stood there and stared. It was a shadeless hillside over the valley that was all rock and dirt. The forty or fifty volunteers and community members were toiling against this landscape like a colony of little ants in the dust under the cruel and indifferent eye of the sun. 

Back home, in Charlottesville, Virginia, it often feels like the sun is angry, like it is a malignant force attacking everything beneath it, but in Morocco, the sun is not even angry. It simply hangs fixedly overhead, a flat disc in a sky the color of shattered glass. There is no thought of resistance because it entirely dominates. All that can be done is to obey. And in the middle of that field, after planting trees for several hours, I was overwhelmed with anxiety over such a powerful force. 

I looked out and thought about how long it would take to plant eighty thousand trees, and how it can take fifteen years for a carob tree to bear fruit, and how the global temperature is rising by something like two degrees Celsius, and rising and rising ever-faster, and I wondered with alarm what this hillside would even look like in fifteen years. Would it provide shade and comfort and protection? Would it be a paradise of carob and olive and almond? In fifteen years, would there be children running between the trunks?

Or would it be a landscape still dominated by the sun? Would the trees wither and die from drought? How could a sapling that could fit easily in the palm of my hand — and be crushed in it — even hope to survive in this landscape? Would they be beaten down and dried out until only those that clung to the uphill shadows remained? Would not just the trees but even the shade be eradicated? Alone away from the tree planting, I had to suppress my nausea at the prospect.

I was reminded of a biblical passage: “Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 2: 11).

I was reminded that this problem is not new, though it is so daunting that it feels insurmountable and world-ending to everyone who comes across it. It is the meaninglessness of building sand castles at the beach, knowing that the tide may come and wash it away. It is the meaninglessness that frightened even wise King Solomon in Ecclesiastes. Trying to make the world a little better can feel meaningless in the face of challenges that are monstrously crawling closer. The horror of development work is that you can work from dawn to dusk in the field trying to improve the world, only for this work to be erased as if by the spirit of some vengeful god. 

Yet, alone there away from the tree planting site in Al Haouz, I found strength. I thought about the generations of authors who have written about meaninglessness. I remembered the Book of Ecclesiastes, I remembered the Buddhist texts I’ve read, and I remembered The Myth of Sisyphus, who is perpetually rolling that rock up that hill. Even more importantly, I considered my own experience in Morocco.

I thought about the people I've met, the ones who live every day working tirelessly (through pain and resistance and doubt) in projects like this. I thought about those workers and volunteers and community members who will not bow even to the power of the sun, who stand up with pick and shovel and sapling and work every day. 

These trees are not immortal, and this project will face numerous and overwhelming challenges in the future. We do not work to shape the earth for all of eternity. We do not work for some timeless monument; we work because the work is good. If there is even a tiny chance that these trees can improve people’s lives, that in a generation from now there will be children running in the shade of the forest we have planted, then we must work. In fact, we must not just work; we must travail.