WATER by Paula Hewitt Amram

Water

Water

By Paula Hewitt Amram In the 80s Raphael Santiago asked me to dig ponds with him after school in a community garden in the Lower East Side.

A few years later when he was 12 Raphael got me involved in this vacant lot with oil-contaminated soil that needed compost for bioremediation. We created tiny models of a compost heated greenhouse and then the real one.

In the early 90s Raphael’s best friend Nando Rodriguez joined us and created live compost recipes: “hotbox composting to me is creating a living environment for organisms to live, reproduce, and build a united community”. -Nando.

In the late 90s Nando, Raphael and I planted trees in schoolyards then patented the hotbox and built it with kids all over the city to heat greenhouses at Bro Sis and East Side and create compost to sequester carbon to help repair climate change.

At the turn of the century Nando, Raphael and I traveled with our extended families to places where farmers share seeds and repair intergenerational trauma with love and reparations.

Search “composting connects black and latinx youth to their roots”

Now in the 20s Raphael, Nando and I plant seeds together in community gardens while underground bioremediation relentlessly cleans the soil and groundwater.

Hysteria fear and anxiety are repaired by sweet mycelium stretching deep through the compost so the tree roots can communicate and weather threats of war and climate change on the front lines of repair