A sunflower bows its head in the rain next to a few stalks of old corn. The community garden is wet and overgrown with weeds, now that autumn is settling in. It sits in the middle of Wedgewood Village, a low income apartment complex in Columbus, Ohio, that houses a mix of Kenyan, South African, and Somali immigrants.
It wasn’t always a garden. The land used to be the complex swimming pool. But Betula Musa’s Muslim faith would never allow her to swim in public. And she knew her African neighbors would welcome the opportunity to work the ground with their hands to grow vegetables like back in their home countries. So she led the effort to transform the pool into gardens.
Now, she’s trying to transform her neighbors into voters. Musa joins three other women, going door to door registering new voters. Musa is the youngest. At age 17, the Kenyan cannot vote in this election.