Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Trainings and Other Less Industrious Pursuits

Well, it's been a little while, because it seemed like nothing much was going on, but now that I look back, there's actually a lot to write about. Back in January, just about a week after I got back to site from my bout of diarrhea after New Year's, my household and I hosted Natalie, Shames, and Samba for a couple-day-long language re-training, which turned out to be mostly hanging-out and chatting in Pulaar. We also rode bikes over to Sare Gagna to see Shames' potato patch, which is doing quite well, and which he can talk about for hours if you let him.
With that out of the way, I just had a couple of weeks before leaving for IST (In-Service Training, where I am now), so I tried to do as much as possible. Daouda had fenced in the garden while I was sick, so I prepared a nursery bed of lettuce and three big outplanting beds, dug pits and started composting, and planted some tomato starts that had been raised in the Sare Bidji garden. My cabbages are starting to form heads in that garden now, and they're so pretty! I fertilized those, and my tomatoes in my backyard with homemade fertilizer ('manure tea' is what we call it here :) and of course, now that I'm gone, they're probably ripe. The tomatoes were producing like crazy when I left!
The other thing I wanted to get done before I headed off for a month was hold a meeting to give people a better idea of what I came to do, and what 'agroforestry' could potentially do. It was kind of an ordeal to hold such a big meeting, because I invited one person from each household in Sare Fode and Sare Bidji, plus a few other people who are acquaintances from other villages, and provided lunch afterwards (a must, according to my Nene). Daouda and I rode to Kolda and brought everything back for the cooks. But it turned out to be quite a success, in my opinion, with around 45 people in attendance. A couple of awesome, educated guys who happened to come were a huge help in translating my broken Pulaar into concepts that people ended up getting really excited about! I asked them to come find me at my hut to tell me what sorts of projects they were interested in before I left for IST, and about 20 individuals did come and gave me really specific project ideas. I was surprised to discover a widespread interest in palm trees, whether for oil, coconut, or dates. There were people interested in fodder trees, live fences, and interplanting trees in their field crops too. So I went away feeling very optimistic, and with specific information to ask for during training.

I left a couple of days early for IST with Shames, Maya, Natalie, and a few other Kolda folks who were going to take the SAT in Dakar. (By the way, Jason's been gone for a month in the States for health issues. Poor guy. But he's back as of a few days ago!) I hung out in Mbour, visiting my pre-service training host family, which was pretty fun, and they were so pleased. From there, I went to Dakar for a night, and got a ride back to Thies in the PC buses for two days of USAID food-security initiative training. This involved creating 'perma-gardens', for maximum cultivation of small, home garden plots that are enriched with a lot of organic matter, charcoal and ash, and dug very deeply with trenches and mounds for efficient use of water.
Next, we all went to Dakar for WAIST (West African Invitational Softball Tournament), which is three days of debaucherous amateur softball, and is attended by volunteers from Mali, Senegal and the Gambia, as well as ex-pats and other Americans and Senegalese softball teams too. There's a pool at the club, hotdogs, beer, ice cream....and we were all assigned homestays at beautiful homes of Americans living in Dakar. Obviously it was a very pleasant couple of days, although mine was dampened by the fact that my giardia came back for a second round and I was really sick for a couple of days. But I'm all better again.
So, to bring you up to today, now we've got two more weeks of technical agroforestry training at the center in Thies, which has been very useful and interesting so far. I'm looking forward to getting a lot of questions answered and gaining a lot of knowledge. We have Senegalese homestay families here in Thies, and mine is a very wealthy family with a large house, running shower, electricity and television. We don't spend much time there, but they're very hospitable and kind.
Sorry for so much all at once, but I hope your curiosity is somewhat satisfied now!