Friday, August 27, 2010
P.S.
Forgot to mention what some of the pictures are - Djiby graduated high school and passed his big college entrance exam, so our household had a huge party for him (that they had to take out loans for...). Also, a village child brought me a baby bunny that he found in the field, and I had a pet for a few days, that I nursed with cow's milk. Then I came back one days and found him dead...
A Year In
[A year in Senegal, that is, not a year into my service. That won't be for another couple of months, just when I'm getting back from the States. Yes, I'm coming back for a bit at the end of September, and I apologize in advance for not being able to visit everybody, as much as I'd like to...]
A quick synopsis of July is that I spent a lot of time working on the garden at the Sare Bidji health post - planting tons of banana bulbs, seeding moringa, jatropha, baobab,leucena and pigeon pea trees, and outplanting a live fence of sisal around the gardening areas within the health posts walls (it's a pretty big area). The moringa is the miracle tree that I'm sure I've mentioned before - the dried powdered leaves are pretty much a multivitamin, and the seeds have many possibilities for food, oil, etc., although people here mostly just pick a handful of leaves as a last resort addition to flavorless meals, as they have a hint of horseradish. The jatropha is a folk antiseptic, but with real usefulness - I've seen them break off a young branch and dab the milky sap on babies' healing belly buttons. The baobab - that huge tree that is often used to symbolize Senegal or West Africa - has an odd fruit that people love which is high in vitamin C, and the powdered dried leaves are added for flavor in certain dishes.
There is a large section of the health post that I hope to next year use as a demonstration of field crop techniques, and in preparation I planted rows of leucena and pigeon pea to demonstrate alley cropping.
The sisal is a plant that looks kind of like an aloe, and gets huge with little spikes along its fronds (tentacles? leaves?) and makes a good living fence. Everybody in town wanted some of my sisal starts that I had in nursery after getting them near Thies. They only seed every 10 years, so it's hard to find for people.
The bananas I planted for obvious reasons - they're super easy to grow and everybody wants them, but no one seems to have them in my village, allegedly because they don't have a source of starts. This awesome guy from Sare Gagna offered to go to this place that I forget the name of, a ways from here, where everybody grows huge fields of bananas, and got me 30 starts, not expecting any payment. I payed him, and then Jason used his help too. Almost all of the 30 have come up now. It took a long time to dig 30 big holes and mix in compost, and although my 'counterpart' and another friend said they would help, they never showed up.
I had a frustrating week or so when first it looked like all the banana starts were rotten and only 2 or 3 would survive, and next, well-meaning citizens paid for a kid to rototill the entire field crop area where I had leucena and pidgeon pea coming up. They felt really bad, and I reseeded, and it's ok, but sloppier now. And finally the banana leaves are peeking out.
The end of July and all of August so far have been spent working, every morning and afternoon except for Fridays, in the rice 'faro' with my nene and Sadio and Wopa. (Demo just had her baby - a little boy named Nanaman after Nene's dead husband - but she's pretty lazy and probably wouldn't have worked much in the faro anyway.) First we hoed and weeded and seeded the nursery beds, and lately we've been rotating among hoeing, weeding, and pulling up and transplanting rice starts in the flooded faro. It's knee deep mud and water all day, and if we're hoeing, it's essentially head-to-toe mud and water, thanks to splattering. But I find the transplanting more physically tiring because of being in the bent-over position for so long. All in all, though, I've been enjoying labouring in the rice fields - it's basically just getting to play in the mud (and sometimes rain) all day.
The work is not fun and games for those (the majority of people, really) who are fasting for Ramadan. Ramadan started the same day we started going to the faro, and about 2/3 of the way through the men's heavy field work. The requirement is that all healthy, non-pregnant and non-breastfeeding persons must not eat or drink anything from dawn to dusk, every day for a month. This, or you're not a real Muslim. I, like every volunteer, find this very frustrating and obnoxious - to hear complaining all year about how much they are suffering (very little, for most people) and to be nagged for money for medicine and food, only to have them choose to wear out their bodies and/or do very little work, and spend more money than usual on after-dusk treats for a month out of the year... Yesterday I refused to give Djiby aspirin for his splitting headache, telling him that I wouldn't give medicine to fasters, as they knew what discomfort they were in for when they started fasting. I immediately felt very guilty and couldn't look him in the eye for the rest of the evening...but really, I still agree with myself. What's really amazing, and also entirely insane, is the people who fast like this and also work from dawn to dusk in the fields (without a lunch break, since they aren't eating). You have to admire it a little, but it also just makes you cringe.
I held an evening (after the 7:30 Break-fast meal) birthday party for Maimouna on the 22nd, which was a big hit, although it was lacking Maimouna's best friend and sister, Ellie, who's on vacation in Kolda with relatives. I baked cupcakes in the Kolda house, and even found sprinkles and birthday candles! They got soda too, and then the crowning event was playing with the little candles (this is not America, folks. Kids are perfectly welcome to play with fire - they learn pretty quickly what happens when they're not careful).
A quick synopsis of July is that I spent a lot of time working on the garden at the Sare Bidji health post - planting tons of banana bulbs, seeding moringa, jatropha, baobab,leucena and pigeon pea trees, and outplanting a live fence of sisal around the gardening areas within the health posts walls (it's a pretty big area). The moringa is the miracle tree that I'm sure I've mentioned before - the dried powdered leaves are pretty much a multivitamin, and the seeds have many possibilities for food, oil, etc., although people here mostly just pick a handful of leaves as a last resort addition to flavorless meals, as they have a hint of horseradish. The jatropha is a folk antiseptic, but with real usefulness - I've seen them break off a young branch and dab the milky sap on babies' healing belly buttons. The baobab - that huge tree that is often used to symbolize Senegal or West Africa - has an odd fruit that people love which is high in vitamin C, and the powdered dried leaves are added for flavor in certain dishes.
There is a large section of the health post that I hope to next year use as a demonstration of field crop techniques, and in preparation I planted rows of leucena and pigeon pea to demonstrate alley cropping.
The sisal is a plant that looks kind of like an aloe, and gets huge with little spikes along its fronds (tentacles? leaves?) and makes a good living fence. Everybody in town wanted some of my sisal starts that I had in nursery after getting them near Thies. They only seed every 10 years, so it's hard to find for people.
The bananas I planted for obvious reasons - they're super easy to grow and everybody wants them, but no one seems to have them in my village, allegedly because they don't have a source of starts. This awesome guy from Sare Gagna offered to go to this place that I forget the name of, a ways from here, where everybody grows huge fields of bananas, and got me 30 starts, not expecting any payment. I payed him, and then Jason used his help too. Almost all of the 30 have come up now. It took a long time to dig 30 big holes and mix in compost, and although my 'counterpart' and another friend said they would help, they never showed up.
I had a frustrating week or so when first it looked like all the banana starts were rotten and only 2 or 3 would survive, and next, well-meaning citizens paid for a kid to rototill the entire field crop area where I had leucena and pidgeon pea coming up. They felt really bad, and I reseeded, and it's ok, but sloppier now. And finally the banana leaves are peeking out.
The end of July and all of August so far have been spent working, every morning and afternoon except for Fridays, in the rice 'faro' with my nene and Sadio and Wopa. (Demo just had her baby - a little boy named Nanaman after Nene's dead husband - but she's pretty lazy and probably wouldn't have worked much in the faro anyway.) First we hoed and weeded and seeded the nursery beds, and lately we've been rotating among hoeing, weeding, and pulling up and transplanting rice starts in the flooded faro. It's knee deep mud and water all day, and if we're hoeing, it's essentially head-to-toe mud and water, thanks to splattering. But I find the transplanting more physically tiring because of being in the bent-over position for so long. All in all, though, I've been enjoying labouring in the rice fields - it's basically just getting to play in the mud (and sometimes rain) all day.
The work is not fun and games for those (the majority of people, really) who are fasting for Ramadan. Ramadan started the same day we started going to the faro, and about 2/3 of the way through the men's heavy field work. The requirement is that all healthy, non-pregnant and non-breastfeeding persons must not eat or drink anything from dawn to dusk, every day for a month. This, or you're not a real Muslim. I, like every volunteer, find this very frustrating and obnoxious - to hear complaining all year about how much they are suffering (very little, for most people) and to be nagged for money for medicine and food, only to have them choose to wear out their bodies and/or do very little work, and spend more money than usual on after-dusk treats for a month out of the year... Yesterday I refused to give Djiby aspirin for his splitting headache, telling him that I wouldn't give medicine to fasters, as they knew what discomfort they were in for when they started fasting. I immediately felt very guilty and couldn't look him in the eye for the rest of the evening...but really, I still agree with myself. What's really amazing, and also entirely insane, is the people who fast like this and also work from dawn to dusk in the fields (without a lunch break, since they aren't eating). You have to admire it a little, but it also just makes you cringe.
I held an evening (after the 7:30 Break-fast meal) birthday party for Maimouna on the 22nd, which was a big hit, although it was lacking Maimouna's best friend and sister, Ellie, who's on vacation in Kolda with relatives. I baked cupcakes in the Kolda house, and even found sprinkles and birthday candles! They got soda too, and then the crowning event was playing with the little candles (this is not America, folks. Kids are perfectly welcome to play with fire - they learn pretty quickly what happens when they're not careful).
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Miss Moneybags
Never before have I ridden my bike so much, nor spent so much money in such a short span of time as in these past few weeks. Since the money came in for the two projects, there hasn't been a 3-day period when I didn't go to Kolda, to meet up with Tumani to buy materials, or to buy things for our community garden, get receipts, etc. It was pretty fun, and very exhausting. But worth it, because now our village has an enviable garden, and Tumani's project is well off the ground and back in Shames' hands (as of today - he just got back to Senegal a few days ago).
I also finally held the belated permagarden training in our newly fenced garden, so it was probably a good thing I didn't try to do it somewhere else earlier. It was very chaotic, because we had around 40 villagers come, but now my plot in the garden is made into a pretty little permagarden. I also paid for lunch for essentially the entire village, and they were ecstatic. They can't stop thanking me, for lunch and for the garden fence. (They seem to tie for importance in their minds.)
The 15th, I think it was, was Ellie's birthday, so I threw her a birthday party of sorts in the village. She invited her friends, and I bought lunch and candy and soda. (They don't normally celebrate birthdays here, or even know when they are.)
I'm in Kolda for a few days now, trying to do my grant follow-up report and get some other things done. I've been a little sick the past few days, but feeling fine now.
Oh! How could I forget to mention - it has now rained twice in Sare Fode. Both times were quite stormy, with fast winds, thunder and lightning. My Nene is pretty scared of the wind, and also covers everything metal in the rooms with cloth, to keep away the lightning. She made me turn off my cell phone, and wouldn't let us turn on flashlights for very long either. My backyard fence fell down both times it stormed, and my bed got a little wet the first time, and then absolutely soaked the second time. I need to buy a new tarp to hang above my bed.
I also finally held the belated permagarden training in our newly fenced garden, so it was probably a good thing I didn't try to do it somewhere else earlier. It was very chaotic, because we had around 40 villagers come, but now my plot in the garden is made into a pretty little permagarden. I also paid for lunch for essentially the entire village, and they were ecstatic. They can't stop thanking me, for lunch and for the garden fence. (They seem to tie for importance in their minds.)
The 15th, I think it was, was Ellie's birthday, so I threw her a birthday party of sorts in the village. She invited her friends, and I bought lunch and candy and soda. (They don't normally celebrate birthdays here, or even know when they are.)
I'm in Kolda for a few days now, trying to do my grant follow-up report and get some other things done. I've been a little sick the past few days, but feeling fine now.
Oh! How could I forget to mention - it has now rained twice in Sare Fode. Both times were quite stormy, with fast winds, thunder and lightning. My Nene is pretty scared of the wind, and also covers everything metal in the rooms with cloth, to keep away the lightning. She made me turn off my cell phone, and wouldn't let us turn on flashlights for very long either. My backyard fence fell down both times it stormed, and my bed got a little wet the first time, and then absolutely soaked the second time. I need to buy a new tarp to hang above my bed.
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