Ma Comes to Visit the Little Hut

Djiby (2nd from left) and his roommates at Dakar University
where mom and I went to visit him. He finished his first year
and goes home to Kolda in August. 

Garbage lined avenues of Kolda -
Mom seemed to think this was picture-
worthy... I'd forgotten what an eyesore
it is, since I haven't seen a trash can in
about a year.
Left: Mom and I got a ride out to S. Fode

The event of May was - my mom came to visit Senegal!!! It was an extraordinarily smooth trip (yes, mom, that really was smooth, by West African standards), and I am really proud of her for not only making her first extra-American voyage, but for making it in Senegal. She escaped the two and a half weeks here unscathed, with not a digestive tract illness or heat stroke to speak of, which is pretty shocking.  She learned to say 'jam tan' and 'jaraama' and a few other Pulaar words, and the village folks are still talking about her dancing. (For the record, they still talk about Ian's too.)

The welcoming committee, complete with bowl-banging.

Mom got on a bike for the first time in several decades, and performed like a champion, making it to Kolda and back, and out to see several other villages that I work in. On the last day, I realized she'd been in first gear the entire time.

Mom filled a few tree sacs at Toumani's Master
Farm for a live fencing nursery(retiring to the hammock
 a few minutes later, after which she proclaimed that
Senegal was much nicer than America...)

Sadiouma can't remember the name 'puzzle', but he has
become a pro since mom introduced the kids to the idea
for the first time. The adults enjoy them too.

Ansata chuckles as Mom tries to
pull water in the garden.

Mom and all the kids.

Mafe Gerte (peanut sauce) and
untu (fish balls) - mom and I concur
on our favorite village meal.

Ta-da - the toilet. Mom was a great sport
about the discomforts of life here.

Demo with Na, and Wopa with Diatou, ready to head to a wedding!

Me and my moms - Mom in the outfit I had tailored for her, and Nene in the outfit that Mom had made for her.

Trying her hand at laundry.  The problem wasn't the
laundry itself, but the reaching the ground.

Mom dancing with baby Diatou at the wedding. 

Sunset over the rice faro.

Aliou and I and his new baby doll from Mom.
He went to spend a few weeks with his
grandma in Kolda and wouldn't leave
the doll behind. Aliou is the most tempting
child for me to bring home, as I completely
adore him, and if he were only an orphan
or in real need I think I really might adopt him.

On the way home we spent more time
at hotels, in pools, on boats, and
being more touristy in general.

In Thies, Mom finished a classic Peace Corps favorite - a 'Chicken Dibi' plate of half a roasted chicken, fries,
and salad - and then finished what was left of mine. Not a utensil was resorted to. (There aren't any.)

We went to mass at Keur Moussa
(house of Moussa), a monastery near Thies
that manages acres of fruit orchards,
and produces goat cheese, wines, jams, and
music recordings.

The monastery creates both beautiful koras (a traditional
instrument like a cross between a harp and a guitar) and
beautiful kora music during mass. Here the monks are
tuning the koras in preparation for the mass we attended.

The chapel at Keur Moussa, with beautiful paintings of Bible stories on the back wall.  I loved how in each scene, Mary was obvious because of her bright garment, which looks like it's made out of West African fabric.

On her last day, we took the boat out to Goree Island, a place of retention and disembarkation for slaves during the height of the slave trade. It is now a beautiful town of well-kept up colonial buildings, lovely beaches, and art and craft vendors.

The dark history of the island remains palpable in places like the 'house of slaves', a museum of preserved slave-holding quarters, like this prison-like basement. It was really creepy.

Little Hut in Connemara

On a hike in the Connemara National Park in Ireland
Me, Kelly, Cara, and Mandy (Kelly's sis)

I just got back from a two week vacation to Galway, Ireland with two of my coworkers, Kelly and Cara. We needed an escape from 115 F weather, and Kelly was meeting her sister, who has been studying abroad in Galway, and her parents who rented us all a cottage in Connemara.

Beautiful Moroccan pottery

Rule of thumb: ask the patisserie
owner his favorites, then get those

On the way to Ireland, we had a 12 hour layover in Casablanca, Morocco, and managed to run around town a little. We had just enough time to take the train into Casablanca, see the market,














and buy several kilos of delicious and unpronounceable Moroccan pastries.
They lasted us almost the entire rest of the trip.

Kids were sailing little boats on
the Luxembourg garden pond

From Morocco, we headed to Paris for two days.  We were almost disappointed by the heat and lovely weather, but the flowers were all blooming and people were all out in the parks, so it was a wonderful atmosphere.

We wandered all over Paris on foot, stopping frequently in cafes, and for a picnic.

Nicolas and I (Elliot peeking behind)

The highlight of the Paris leg of the trip was that I got to see my friend Nicolas.  We had studied together in Northern Ireland and I spend Christmas with him and his family in France that year.  Nico's a very charming guy with perfect English, and we had a thoroughly enjoyable dinner with him and another friend of his whom I'd met before.  

Galway waterfront

Finally, we made it to Galway, where Kelly was reunited with her sister Mandy. 

We stayed with her the first few nights in Galway city until Diane and Ed Henkler arrived and swept us away to a cottage right up the path from the bridge that's in the film The Quiet Man.

It was a little ironic that we went all that way only to find ourselves staying in a stone cottage thatched with grass...but it was completely modern inside, and we finally got the chilly weather we'd been craving.

The Connemara countryside around us was rugged, really rocky and boggy, but dotted with tons of lakes.  It was really beautiful. Cara and I hiked up behind our cottage, and even up high on the hill the ground was completely waterlogged.

Thatching the roof next to our cottage

There were sheep everywhere, and horses.  One day Kelly and Cara, who both used to ride horses, went out on a trail ride with some ponies from a nearby farm.  Ed was a champion, and drove us all over successfully, despite being on the wrong side of the road. We went to see the Kylemore Abbey, a castle built by the nobility and taken

Kylemore Abbey

by refugee French nuns later. There was a very regal walled garden, and a small chapel as well. 

These are the Cliffs of Insanity
in The Princess Bride!

We also went to see the Cliffs of Moher, but weren't able to get a very good view because the fog rolled in.  They're still impressive, though. We also took a gorgeous hike in the Connemara National Park.  It was very barren of trees, but beautiful.

We went out to hear Irish music and see some Irish dancing, we ate 

                           bagels and cream cheese that Diane brought us from America, we went shopping at the mall, and finally we went to Dublin for two days, where we saw some movies and had high tea at a hotel, and did not pay $14 to go inside a church. 

Finally, Kelly and I headed home, leaving Cara for an extra week with her friend who lives in Dublin. But the adventures weren't over yet. Herb and Gerda, distant German relatives of Kelly's, met us at the airport in Frankfurt, where we had a short layover, and bought us lunch. They were very interesting and fun, and we got to have weisswurst and pretzels and Hefeweizen in Germany.

But even then the country hopping continued - our last layover was 5 hours in Lisbon, Portugal, and we managed to spend 2 1/2 of those exploring downtown. Portugal is a really pretty city, I thought.  We saw enough palm trees to remind us of where we were headed back to, but we ate enough pastries and pizza to forget again. To top the whole trip off, as we were waiting for the bus back to the airport, we met a group of Senegalese guys who work in Lisbon, after we thought we heard them speaking Wolof.

There was some really impressive street art on apartment
buildings in downtown Lisbon. 

The sky was really interesting
while we were there.
I loved the yellow buildings.

Fritter and WAIST the hours...

Kolda's WAIST team - 'Space Corps'
Avatars, storm troopers, Jedi, Lady Gaga....you name it

I just got back from a simultaneously fun, crazy, exhausting, and productive several weeks in Dakar. First on the agenda was to take the GRE. Predictably, I did well on the English and essay sections, and terribly on the math ones.  I had the company of a few other peace corps volunteers, both for study sessions and at the actual test, which was nice.

Next came the agroforestry summit, in Thies.  We got to see a fish farm and a chicken farm, learn about fruit tree pests and trench some young mango plants to be grafted next season for the master farmers. We also exchanged seeds, which is always to be looked forward to.  I got a huge rice sack full of sisal starts for the Kolda region, which I'd been hoping for since last year.  Sisal is such an easy and great live fencing shrub; everyone's been asking for it, because there's no seed source near here that I'm aware of.

From Thies we all got PC vehicle ride to Dakar for a day of inter-regional and other non-governmental organizations networking with volunteers.  It didn't really turn out to be very useful for me, personally.  We got to meet several new Kolda volunteers, though, who have been relocated from Niger after the program was shut down there.  Minnie and Dan - agfo and health, respectively, I believe - are awesome, and we all think our region's volunteer group just keeps getting better and better (and bigger and bigger).

Palpatine and Vader are just like the rest of us, really

Leia up to bat

Han, Leia, Obi-wan, Yoda, and...
somehow Vader snuck into the Good Guys photo

Finally, after this networking day came the event that we daydream about all year - the West African invitational softball tournament (forgive me if I explained all about WAIST last year already). Volunteers from Senegal, the Gambia, Mali, Cape Verde, and Niger, as well as American expat and Senegalese leagues came together for three days of softball. Some teams are competetive; some are complete slapstick spectacles of rowdy indifference to the rules. Each team comes up with a theme and dresses up for games, so as you can imagine, attempts at outrageous costumery are often more spirited than shows of athletic ability.  When we're not playing, we're enjoying American food and beer, and generally having a great time in the pool and on the dance floor (there's a party at a different venue every night).

Kolda won two games - two more than our region has ever won in the history of being a region!

I've spent the past few days recuperating in the Kolda house, and getting some agfo seed collection and other work done. It's nice to be back in a city where I can bike everywhere, or pay a $1 cab fare, unlike Dakar's outrageous traffic and prices. The only downside is the 100F-106F weather....it was still nice and cool in Dakar.  But good to be home!

Shelling moringa oleifera seed at the Kolda house

 

....2011 has begun!

Usman the Guinean, left us after
he got paid for his peanuts.  He
says he'll move back permanently with
his wife in a few months! We hope so!

It's been a lazy few weeks in Sare Fode, just watering the garden and studying for the GRE.  It's this time of year that makes me appreciate Senegal and this job - not terribly hot, but hot enough you can grow anything you want to; and since it's not the main agroforestry season, and it's always culturally acceptable here to lay around all day, I get to do a few hours' work in the morning and evening, and then lounge about and read all day.  When else will I ever have such an awesome job!?  At least that's one way to look at it.

Regional strategy 'retreat'

There have been a few events to break up the monotony of watering and GRE prep - our region had a 'regional strategy' planning meeting recently, where we shared what we're all working on, and what our goals are, as work sectors and as a region. I stayed after that to write a grant proposal for a palm reforestation project in a 10 kilometer stretch of seasonal floodplain in our rural community.  This will hopefully be an inter-regional cooperative project, taking place during the rainy season, and resulting in several thousand improved variety of oil palms being replanted.

See the couple lonely palms?  This will all be replanted,
inchallah.

Working in Tumani's garden

A week or so later, Massaly (my supervisor, and the pilot farmer project administrator) came down to Tumani's demonstration site in Sare Gagna for a workday, in which we dug improved beds and outplanted all of Tumani's nursery starts in companion planting formations.  There were around 10-15 people there, volunteers and local villagers, and we all worked pretty much straight from 9:30-5:30 or so.  It was an incredibly productive and fun day.

Nene and I watched from the village

It's the dry season, and people are also burning their fields - a combination which often leads to bush fires, like the one we had a couple of weeks ago.  It got so close to our village that everyone, men and women alike were rushing out with buckets of water.  It turned and went off towards Kolda, but was a little nerve wracking for a few minutes.



I'd like to make a request of anyone who is thinking about sending me anything, or doing anything to help me out here - instead, I'd love any donation, however small, to Jessie Seiler's Peace Corps Partnership grant for library books for Senegalese schools.  Sare Bidji will receive a portion of those books.  Thank you! :)
The link is: https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=685-164