Over the Fence

‘Jimmy’ an old eastern european immigrant, who works the land right next door to me, sees me sitting having my early morning coffee. He says hello and gestures for me to come towards him. He leans to the ground with a knife in his hand, picks a pumpkin and a watermelon and give them to me. I thank him, go back to my coffee and start thinking about how nice it is to receive a neighbourly gift of fresh fruit and vegetables ‘over the fence’. 

I also start thinking about the story of inter-cultural food exchange over the fence that i wrote about long ago: Lebanese people passing Lebanese food to Anglo-neighbours, the power relations underlying the exchange, but also the potential for inter-cultural friendship and solidarity that this 'over the fence' relation gives rise to. 

This led me to further think about ‘over the fence’ and reciprocity: you’ve got to have the fence to go ‘over the fence’... My mind is racing as I am drinking my coffee: it’s not borders that are the problem but how we relate to the borders and to each other across borders. ‘Over the fence’ would be a good theme for a conference or a writing project, I think. i check google: many books titled ‘over the fence.’ There's even films exploring the tensions of 'over the fence' relations ....

Then Jimmy comes back towards me and says ‘here are some left over tomatoes. the birds ate everything’. i say ‘they do this every year. no? you need nets.’ He says: ‘there’s always some who find a way in and eat what you’ve planted. you have to live with it otherwise you go mad.’

I always knew that our ‘full proof borders’-obsessed government, and the people who vote them in, have gone mad in some way or another...