A wealth of traditional knowledge...

Many students had learned about plants from their parents and grandparents. Even some very young students could tell me the local names of the plants and give me recipes for the various parts of the plant such as this dasheen which has edible leaves and roots. They knew medicinal plants as well as plants good for eating. The traditional cocoa and coffee-growing that took place in this area did not devastate the landscape, because those crops love tall trees to shade them, and tolerate a healthy undergrowth.

The original plantation workers grew their food-plants beneath the cocoa and coffee that they were hired to tend. The result, many years after the plantations stopped producing commercially, is a land-base wealthy with nutritious growth and game animals, gracefully hovering between a cultivated and a "wild" state.