We were starting to finish the construction phase of the garden in the Lang’ata Women’s Prison.

When the women arrived that morning, they marched straight over to collect their gumboots. The boots had been provided by Lishe Grow for everyone participating in the project – purchased by Stella and me after what was probably the most memorable shopping trip of the fellowship. Carrying fourteen pairs of gumboots through a busy shopping mall certainly attracted more than a few curious looks.

Now those same boots were lined up outside the garden, already coated in a fine layer of dust.

The vegetables grown here will help supplement meals inside the prison. Ugali, sukuma wiki, and beans are staples for lunch and dinner, but the garden will introduce greater variety and improve access to fresh produce. It will be especially meaningful for the young children who live in the prison alongside their mothers until they reach four years old, helping improve nutrition during some of the most important years of their development.

If the garden eventually produces more than the prison can use, the surplus can be sold. Half of the income will return to the prison, while the other half will go intoa fund managed for the women participating in the project. That money can help them buy necessities, snacks from the prison canteen, ingredients to prepare meals when family members visit, or even contribute toward legal expenses for those serving longer sentences.

Perhaps what struck me most was hearing that this would be the first garden the women of Lang’ata could truly call their own. One of the women serving a life sentence volunteered to oversee the project, and she would be teaching new participants as they joined the program and ensuring the knowledge continued long after our training was complete. That, to me, felt like real ownership.

As I stood watching them work, my eyes drifted back to the gumboots. Only a week earlier, they had been spotless, probably stacked neatly on a shelf in the shoe shop. Now they were dusty and covered in soil.

The boots had found their purpose.

And so had the garden.