wife appears from the kitchen bringing welcoming kisses and a cassava bowl of freshly baked coconut bread. Pomme has been working in his garden – there is always something to do - and he takes a break to show me around. Seemingly endless rows of herbs and produce stretch up the hill beyond his home. We wander through raised vegetable beds with long rows of cabbages, carrots and chives and on to his medicinal beds where he grows plants specifically for ailments. He describes a ‘paracetamol’ plant, even an ‘aspirin’ plant; he has beds of comfrey which he uses to make a poultice for sprains, and wormwood for indigestion. I learn that strawberry leaves are good for an upset stomach, and that mangosteen skins make a therapeutic drink. Pomme’s collection of herbal plants is impressive and there seems to be a remedy for just about every malady imaginable. “They sometimes bring tourists, agriculturalists and even people from American pharmaceutical companies up here for tours of my garden, to learn about the plants I have here, the natural medicines, and to see how it is possible to live a very natural and uncomplicated life,” he says. “And I think they are always surprised by what they experience. It’s very different to life back home. I think this is the essence of Dominica.” Pomme grows food to eat and to sell. He has many different varieties of yam and has even piped spring water from a mountain stream to create a natural dasheen swamp. His collection of local and exotic fruit trees is impressive; he has a passion for growing and trying out species that are new to him; he has Mediterranean figs, even English apple and chestnut trees. At the back of the garden, close to the tree line, is a charcoal pit where he creates fuel for cooking. Pomme draws my attention to a large bed of young soya plants. “I started growing soya fairly recently,” he says.
“When it is ripe I bag it and then make milk from it by boiling it and squeezing it through a muslin cloth. It tastes good. And if I add a bit of lime to it, it solidifies and I have tofu. I just love tofu.” I love it too and find myself in awe of what he, his wife and two children manage to do here. His knowledge came from his mother and grandmother, and he is passing it on to his own children. But he is concerned that many of the younger generation of Dominicans are not interested in this way of living, in the natural environment or learning about the plants and their uses. “To many young Dominicans today, farming has become quite a dirty word, and it is something that some consider beneath them. It seems people would rather eat from tins and fried chicken containers and call it development. I find the world is complicated and difficult to understand in that regard. Many people are fat, obese, but they still eat all that stuff. I think they must be addicted to it because why else would they do it? It didn’t used to be this way. People farmed, they worked hard and they fed themselves. But something happened, I don’t know what it was. Ever since Hurricane David in 1979 people changed their priorities. They gave up on their gardens and went to the shop instead. It was easier. More convenient. But I think it made people lazy. I have a simple mantra: I eat what I grow and I grow what I eat. That’s it. And if that’s not what people consider development, well, I’m not really interested.” We take a rest on a wooden bench and I look around at the beauty of Pomme’s garden, pasture, and home. I have seen quite a number of simple, self-sufficient homesteads in Dominica. All are impressive and reflect their owners’ yearning for a less complicated and more independent way of living. After 38 years on this high ridge, however, Pomme has achieved completeness and he wants for nothing. The modern world can catch up with him any time it wants; in the meantime he will continue to cultivate his garden as a genuine man of the earth.
A Man Of The Earth
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