Sunday, December 28, 2008

Ala Fia: Christmas in Northern Togo

I'm having a wonderful time in Arwen's village. Everyone has been exceptionally welcoming to me, they've served special food for the holidays, and I've been able to observe Arwen doing her work and interacting with the people she's been living with for a year. We got in on Christmas eve, and early the next morning we got up, put on our complets, and went to church with her village counterpart. The church is a very basic cement box, with open grillwork for light and air, but inside I experienced one of the best Christmas masses I can think of. There was so much amazing music, from singers and a small group of musicians playing traditional instruments. The sermon was long, but very good, in both French and Kabye (the local language), all about hope, thankfulness and working for peace. Throughout the congregation, the feeling of sincere happiness was palpable. It was such a wonderful sensation, I felt swept up in it. At a certain moment, they had an offering, and invited people up according to the day of the week on which they were born, which apparantly holds great importance in this culture. There was dancing, greeting, and all around good spirits. Everyone was dressed well, and the women especially were striking in their beautiful complets, some with braids or wire head-dressed, most with shaved heads, which I think it a very attractive look.
Later, they served us "fufu", boiled yams pounded into a sticky paste, and served with sauce. The sauces are much spicier here, but bearable, and I like the taste of fufu! "Pate", which is a grainier dish made of ground corn, is not nearly as good. But so far what we've eaten has been pate (which is cheaper to make than fufu) with a sauce on the side. Then we ball up a bit of the starch and dip it into the sauce dish. Since it was a special occasion, we also had spaghetti, and once or twice a dish called "watchi", which is sticky rice and beans with hot tomato sauce. Since I arrived during the grande fete, we've had meat for several dishes, but Arwen says this is not common; she explained that usually they put leaves in the sauce to add nutrients and flavor. The area of the village is gorgeous. At the base of some low mountains, it it covered with trees of many kinds, including palm trees, which are particularly picturesque at the foot of the hills. A truly lovely spot.
I can't forget one thing that has marked my Christmas here: tchouk. "Tchouk" is a home-made alcohol, kind of like beer, but not really. They serve it in little calabash bowls. Arwen and I have been offered a lot of this! It's not bad, but after a couple calabashes I'm pretty done with tchouk. Anyway, Togo is so different from Senegal, and I am having a fantastic experience here.

Monday, December 22, 2008

I go to Togo!

At last, after ridiculous delays that pissed off an entire planeful of people headed to Abdijan or Lome, I got here. To be welcomed by Arwen looked gorgeous in her Togolese complet. It is beyond wonderful to be visiting such a good friend on her home turf! This is a quick blog. My first impressions from one afternoon in Lome: humidity, greenery, palm trees and grass everywhere. No horse or donkey carts, only lots and lots of motos. In the market, almost exclusively women selling their goods. Beautiful women with short-cropped hair, so practical in this hot climate, and really more attracive than mounds of fake-hair braids. And the colors that never get old. Wax-printed fabrics (called pagne here in Togo) in all shades and patterns, piles of jewelry, food, decorations, and lots of Christmas gifts! Yes, Christmas is coming, and people are buying their Santa hats in the Lome marche.

Friday, December 19, 2008

Making soap and seeing friends

Yesterday we finally got to do the soap-making seminar I've been planning for awhile! The girls' group in the village has been buying and selling soap for a couple months now, and I offered to pay for the trainer to come if they wanted to learn to do it all from scratch. They were delighted by the idea, so I found the trainer, set a date...and had to whange the date...had to change it again...saw no materials or preperation....was getting worried. But yesterday morning, they pulled it off. We picked up the trainers in the nearby town in a charette, and set up shop in the courtyard by my hut. The girls were put right to work with dull knives, making soap shavings, while the trainer explained the different kinds of soap they were going to learn. In the end, they did it two ways: making soap from scratch with lye, oil, and water; and also extending commercially-made soaps by melting them down and adding water with only a little lye. The extended soap is cheaper to do, but the lye-and-oil soap is more flexible and can be higher quality, depending on the oil. So, we had a fun day stirring pots of boiling soap foam, or beating the oily mixture into a thick batter, then pouring it into improvised moulds to set. The soap hardened enough by that afternoon to cut into bars. Then, I tried to explain to the girls how they should keep track of how much their ingrediants cost, in order to set a price for their soaps and make a profit. They had a really good time making the soap, and I they have a pretty good grasp of basic economics, so I'm looking forward to continuing this little project when I get back! Our next challenge is to find the perfect soap recipe for maximum profit and saleability.
But in the meantime, I'm going on vacation. This is the only big, out-of-Senegal trip I have planned, and I can't wait! I fly out to Togo on Sunday to meet up with my very good friend, Arwen, who I haven't seen for a year and who'se been serving in Togo since I arrived here in Senegal. Then, together we plan to travel up through Burkina Faso, through Mali, back into Senegal before she flies out again. It's gonna be great, right? And best of all, I'll get to be with a friend for Christmas.

Monday, December 15, 2008

Tabaski take two, weddings, and solar cooking

Last Tuesday was my second village Tabaski experience, and this year it was more fun, since I understood what was actually going on for the most part. The first day, I dressed up, covered my head, and went out with everyone to a shady spot behind an ancient tree. There, for probably an hour everyone prayed, led by three village notables who stood up front, their heads and shoulders covered by a cloth. I sat in theback with the women, as I usually do, and enjoyed the atmosphere of serenity. Once the prayres were over, we greeted each other with a "baalma ac", responded by saying "baalma ala", which means roughly, I think, an apology for anything one might have done wrong the previous year, and acceptance of the apology. Then a round of blessings for health and happiness. I also got plenty of blessings for my work, for going home safely to the USA, for having a husband and male children. Amen! Though I was sure to specify that I would like girl children first, anyway.
After prayers they killed the rams, which I managed to peek at this year. It is not so gruesome as one might think, but the blood does spurt everywhere, and the most disturbing part of it is probably the sheep's death twitches, though his throat is already cut. Anyway, meat is not for the squeamish. To butcher the rams they hang them up by the hind legs from a tree, peel off the skin (which they just discard; I would htink it could be used for something) and remove the entrails (which they do eat, after a thorough cleaning), then chop up the muscle meat. It's really interesting from an anatomical point of view, to see hoe the animal is put together in all it's layers. And of course, once the butchering is done, the cooking begins. This year, once again, I was put in charge of onions. I will probably smell like onions for weeks. But, they're supposed to repel flies, so I don't mind. The menu: day one - sauce with meat, onions, fried potatoes, macaroni, and lots of oil, sopped up with chunks of bread; day two - "cous cous", which is actually tiny vermicelli noodles, topped with meat and onion sauce; day three - mafe farine (a kind of tomato sauce thickened with flour) and meat, over white rice. Pretty tasty stuff.
One might think everyone was tired of meat after three days of eating sheep, but not so! The past several days have been full of celebrations, practically one a day. There was a good harvest this year, which means people have some money, and that has resulted in a lot of "noos" (fun times) in the village because of weddings. I've been to three in as many days! The young brides' husbands sent them beautiful new clothes of crinkly, shiny bazane, heavy with embroidery. They also sent mounds of food: onions, potatos, rice, vermicelli, chickens, and goats. And when there's meat and fancy clothes, there's a party! I've been in charge of the onions, as usual. But the result is that there have been a lot of oily, delicious meals lately in celebration of these weddings. None of the girls have left the village for their husbands' homes yet; this is one of the many steps that comes before that, involving giving of gifts, clothes, food, and other amenities. During these celebrations I have no idea what the men do. I never see them. But the women cook, and laugh, and dance, and talk long into the night.
Another thing I'm experimenting with is solar cooking. I brought a simple solar cooker with me, thanks to a neighbor, and last eyar kept it in my hut, telling people they could borrow it to try whenever they liked. But I noticed that once family asked more than all the rest, so after the rainy season I decided to outright give it to them. Then, because people are leary of risking their expensive food in a solar oven that, in their view, may or may not work, I decided to buy ingrediants every week or two to try cooking Senegalese food in a solar cooker. So far, with this family, we've tried mafe, white rice, and tchou. They were extremely dubious at first, but willing to try (it was my money, after all) and the results have been fairly good. Cooking rice without steaming it first was a big concern, but it turned out well, only we didn't put in enough water so it was a little crunchy. Both sauces, the mafe and the tchou, cooked perfectly in the heat of the sun, but they weren't ready in time for lunch, so only the children got to enjoy them with their late-afternoon half-meal before dinner. Still, everyone's interested in the solar cooker, and hopefully once they've seen it in action, they'll try it for their own cooking as well as mine.

Saturday, December 6, 2008

Pictures and stuff from Mom's visit

It's back to the village for me after Mom's wonderful visit. I'm still coming down from the high of great food, relaxing days, and of course having a friend around all the time. But now it's the season for threshing peanuts, and Tabaski is coming up again. Everybody's days are spent in the fields, holding huge bowls of peanuts and chaff high in the air and pouring them out so the grass blows away in the wind. People are shelling their peanuts, selling them to the boutique, and otherwise life is back to the way it was when I got here this time last year.
Tabaski is on Wednesday, and my counterpart just went to buy a sheep in Dinguraye. The moms have their hair braided, and tomorrow we plan to do henna on our hands and feet. Time for noos! Then, the girls' group has invited (well, I invited, on their behalf) a trainer to come teach them how to make soap in the village, so there's that to look forward to. Also, the books are definitely in circulation! I'm arranging to be availible two days a week for return/check-outs and the kids are loving it. Even though they can't read most of the English words, they can still enjoy the pictures and learn from them. So, things are going well here in the village.

And now, some photos from Mom's trip!


The best tea in Senegal on Ile de Goree. He also voted for Obama, as you may be able to see from the sticker.

This Aby makes much better bean sandwiches than I do!

A special treat for me was a two-hour horseback ride in the savannah around Toubab Dialaw. So wonderful! Thanks, Mom!

Mom enjoying a nap in one of our beachside hotels. This is the beautifully decorated Sobo-Bade, which reminds me of Hobbiton.

Our last name on a pirogue.

Walking with a tailor in his fabulous shirt, in Palmerin.

You can barely see her, but here is Mom in our awesome treehouse! The Lodge des Collines de Niassam was perhaps the best hotel I've ever been in.

Me buying vegetables from the same guy every week, at the louma in Nioro.

The family portrait.

Mom and I and all of our stuff in a charette to the village.

Me in a St. Louis cafe. Are we still in Senegal? It's hard to say in this picture!

Letters, visitors, and packages from home keep us Volunteers sane. Thank you, maman!!!!

Saturday, November 29, 2008

Things to be Thankful For

Mom and I were on Ile de Goree on Thursday when we encountered a Thanksgiving surprise: Jen and her parents were there as well! So we enjoyed a fantastic dinner together (seafood, not turkey, but it was delicious anyway!) They're just starting off their trip, where Mom and I are finishing up. I hope they enjoy it! We've had a truly amazing time. I attribute the luck we've had with travel to our gris-gris, specially selected to ease our voyage. Best 1500cfa I've spent in Kaolak for a long time! Don't leave home without one! Anyway, smooth travels and good times all round. Since we left the village, the primary focus of our trip has been food. I have eaten SO MUCH good food this past week! It's gonna be a long way to fall back to cere ak basi. But, I have a lot to do before going on my official month-long vacation to Togo, then Burkina Faso and Mali with my friend Arwen...I'm excited, but trying not to freak out too much prematurely! After waving goodbye to Keur Ali Gueye, Mom and I went to Palmerin, which was perhaps the most beautiful place I have been in Senegal yet. We stayed in a resort hotel which had built our room literally into a huge baobab tree. The trunk fomed one wall of the bathroom, there was a terrace for breakfast encircled by powerful branches, and the room was cradled high atop the thick trunk. Really, it was a stunning place, full of birds who landed on the lagoon, and other rooms tucked away in corners on the property. The food there was entirely haute cuisine. Wonderful creations using local ingrediants that were just delicious. Light lunches with plenty of vegetables, and perfectly prepared meat and fish. We did a kayak randonee in the mangroves, where we saw all sorts of beautiful birds; pelicans, flamingos, cormerants, and so many others that I don't even know the name of. Even if you're not a birdwatcher, Senegal forces you to appreciate the variety and beauty of birds - there are so many, such diverse shapes and colors, you can't help but notice them! My favorites are these birds that look like black starlings, until they turn to catch the light, and you realize that they are in fact shimmering blue, their feathers sparking as they fly off, when you notice that they also have a graceful long tale which only spreads completely when in flight.
We also had four relaxing days at the beach of Toubab Dialaw. Good food, a calm atmosphere, and the ever-present sound of waves rolling onto the Atlantic shore. Our hotel there was adorable, too; they had decorated it all with shells or smooth sea stones, with curving alleys and low thatched roofs. It looked like a Hobbit village! One day we walked all the way from Toubab Dialaw to Popenguine, which was pristine coast all the way to this town called Ndiayne, where all of a sudden we encountered children using the beach as a toilet and people dulping their garbage onto the sand, right next to the fishing pirogues waiting to head out to sea! Really gross. But, we survived the nastiness and made it to Popenguine, which is as gorgeous as ever. Still, if ever I appreciated the importance of lartines, it was on that beach of Ndiayne!
Then, a fabulous overnight on the Ile de Goree, doing the museums all the next day and wandering the island. It really is a lovely place, full of bright colors, cobbled streets, and billowing bougainvillea everywhere. Now we only have a day left before Mom flies home, and I return to eating millet daily. Last night, though, we went to a bar called Just4You and ende dup at a concert of Les Frères Guissé, who were AMAZING!!! They were really excellent. A unique sound, and they kept the crowd animated the whole time. What a treat.

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Mary Kay Comes to Senegal

Me and my two host moms showing off our new Mary Kay products. Don't they look pretty with their lipstick!

Mom's visit has been going so well so far, it's almost hard to believe! That last blog post was by her, of course, in case you thought I'd started talking about myself in third person. We started our trip in St. Louis, which was absolutely beautiful. Lots of old colonial buildings, fat horses pulling urban charettes, and three days of delicious food. We ate our money all right! And it tasted so good! Then, a trip to Kaolack (which was cleaner than usual, thank goodness. The sewage has begun to dry out not after the rainy season) to shop and hang out with the Volunteers, and then the highlight of the trip so far: Keur Ali Gueye. It has been such a full, happy week in the village! Everyone was beyond delighted to meet my mother, so welcoming and excited. She bought tea and sugar, which we distributed to every compound, so the whole village could partake in the fun, but also brought vermicelli and five fat chickens for a neighborhood feast of pasta with chicken-and-onion sauce. We ate well there too! The family really showed their culinary skills for the special guest. We've had chicken twice, a wonderful tomato mafe with fish balls, and vegetable-rich ceeb u jen all week. Plus, there has been work to do! I distributed about thirty books yesterday to kids who all crowded into my hut. I'd filled a trunk from the Bookmobile stash, to start a loaning library in the village, so people can get used to the idea. It was even more of a hit than I expected! Especially with the older kids, who were in competition for the few French books, which went especially quickly. But even the English ones with pretty pictures (and really, a picture is worth a thousand words, right?) went like hotcakes. I explained to everyone that the book is theirs to enjoy AND PROTECT for two weeks, and then they must return it and may choose another one. The test will be when I return, to see how many I get back. But they're out of my hut and into people's hands, which is the whole idea anyway. I've also been working with the girls' and women's groups, setting up a soap selling business. They want to make their own, so I found a trainer and set a date for after Tabaski, which hopefully she will keep. They know the materials they have to provide - cooking supplies, regular peanut soap, ash, neem, sticks for stirring, etc. - and I already bought the lye, which is sold in the Kaolack market. Mom and I also got gris-gris for safe travel there, which so far have served us well! No problems on the road to report, exept for dust.
Also, of course, the gifts from the USA. Each of the kids got something. One of the biggest hits was a little whirlagig flower on a stick, the kind that spins when you blow it. My host dad got a fancy Leatherman, which he will no doubt put to good use with all the repairs he does, and each of the host moms got a pretty beaded ring, and a Mary Kay lipstick. Everyone loved their gifts, and it gave me special pleasure to hand out the makeup, which my good friend in Seattle sells. Really, nothing brigthens a woman's face more than a little lipstick. Which is ironic since I haven't worn any for nearly a year! Maybe on Tabaski....
Wish us continued good luck and good travels, we're off to the beach before Mom heads home!

And a very important postscript: I see that more than a thousand dollars has already been donated to the latrine project! Thank you, thank you, THANK YOU everyone who has contributed!

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

She has a place in Africa

She has a place in Africa. My daughter. She has a place in Africa where everyone knows her name. The minute she opens her outside aluminum door the day begins with all its greetings - the coming and going of the children, the head of household, the neighbors. She then walks to greet the important people in the village - the Imam, the Chief, the oldest grandmother, the chief's 3 wives. Finally she can begin her day. No matter where she goes she is called to, "Abby-Gway!" "Abby-Gway!" As we walk down nearby roads, as we walk past huts, the well, as we walk through neighboring villages, they know her name. Abigail is frustrated by the relentless greetings, the time it takes to honor each household or individual with a greeting, sometimes even sit to repeat the salutatory exchange. A repartee of the same greetings/blessings and then the same questions about your health, family, did you sleep well, the weather - with a rote answer for each before gently moving on. A time honored way to show respect and community. She lives in a 10x10' hut, no electricity, no running water. It is the ultimate camping experience. Except that it is her place for 2 years. She has a comfortable bed, though, with the mandatory mosquito netting all-round, made from foam rubber. At the end of the day we are exhausted although it doesn't always seem like we've done too much. But the days are just packed! With greetings, drawing water from the well, maybe 2 hours in the fields schucking maize or cracking peanuts, then there might be wash to do, or a discussion with the older women about their soap business, the girls giggling about some teenage thing, a discussion about the midday meal - or you may begin helping with that: plucking a chicken, peeling the vegetables, washing the rice. Then the heat sets in; it's 2pm now. And November. And November is nothing compared to May. But you will see people lying down on mats now. Waiting for the meal to be ready. The sounds of schucking peanuts, or pestle hitting mortar, children laughing, children crying, children singing. There is always sound. She has this place in Africa.

Tuesday, November 4, 2008

A busy week

First of all, whoever gave that first 100 dollars towards constructing the latrines, thank you very, very much! You're awsome.

It has been a very busy week for me. Which feels good, but is also stressful! I've been running back and forth to Kaolack working on things for the Bookmobile. Our truck looks fantastic, but we are still trying to find financing and materials to install the shelving. I set a date to pick up some more books in Dakar in a couple days. I just bought ten big metal trunks to store books in, which the paticipating Peace Corps Volunteers will distribute in their villages. Now that we have those, the books can get out there even though the truck is not complete. Mme. Viola Vaughn was honored with a ceremony last week, celebrating her nomination as a 2008 CNN Hero. Kind of a big deal! The US Ambassador was there, as well as the Peace Corps Country Director, and many other important people - local and regional officials, work partners, media, etc. Two of my good friends brought their girls' groups, who are working in conjunction with 10,000 Girls. It was completely amazing to watch them speak in front of everyone, many as confident as any American kid used to public speaking, some shy but trying so hard and doing a fantastic job. This program really helps girls blossom. They have so much confidence and spunk! It's really quite wonderful. Yesterday I gave out the other Michelle Sylvester scholarship to the middle school girls who won in a nearby town. Everyone is so grateful for that, even though it is such a little thing; but it could make a big difference in a girl's success in school this year, now that she doesn't have to worry about finding money for supplies and inscription fees. I'm also working iwth a fledgling young women's group in the village, who is buying soap for 125cga in Kaolack, to resell for 150cfa, to get a small profit. Its good practice, but I found a lady who can train them to make the soap themselves from scratch, so I hope to hook them up sometime next month. Now I'm in Kaolack again, having to run around like crazy to get a few more things done before my Mom comes to visit. The entire village is ecstatic that she's going to spend several days there. It should be an adventure!

Friday, October 31, 2008

Latrines

There comes a time in many development workers' carreers when they start to ask for money. That time, for me, has come! After a series of meetings, talking with my counterpart, hashing out plans, writing a proposal, getting it signed and sent to Dakar for approval, at last my Peace Corps Partnership application is online. Here's the address:
https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.donors.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=685-108
Basically, a Peace Corps Partnership is a way for folks at home to donate money directly to a specific project. My proposal is for latrines. Here's how it happened: my counterpart came to me asking whether I may have an idea how to get funding for building latrines in the village. At the moment, very few families have a latrine in their compound. They simply go into the bush, usually at night. Just before the rainy season, my counterpart built a latrine behind his house. It's a very simple design: a hole in the ground, a hard-packed seat set over wooden poles, the top reinforced with the little cement leftover from patching my cracked hut walls. He's hoping it will last a couple seasons before collapsing under the rains. Meanwhile, the neighbors come over to our compound all the time to use it! They'd love to have latrines in their compounds, too. Behind every home is an open area where they tether the animals, maybe have a hutch for chickens or ducks - the perfect place to install a latrine. My counterpart was very excited when he heard about the possibility of a Peace Corps Partnership. If we collect the money, he will be in charge of organizing thirty families throughout the village to build their own latrines. Ideally this will happen right before the rainy season, when people have plenty of time to collect the sand, gravel, and water they need for construction, and to do the labor. My counterpart has the technical skills and the community connections to get it done; what the village needs is the money to buy enough cement and iron bars for thirty latrines to be built. With these materials, the latrines can be built well enough to last. One of the few families who has one built it this way, and they say their latrine has lasted over ten years! It's an instant imrovement to village health, especially for the children. And, as I've said before, there are a LOT of kids!
Any amount you can give would be a huge help. Whatever small things I manage to accomplish are tiny drops in the bucket of this village's development. Building latrines would be a splash!

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Peanuts, encore

The goat kids have taken to sleeping in the shade of my doorway. They don't move even when you step right over them!

Life has come more or less full circle for me. When I arrived we were deep into peanut season; now, again, life is full of peanuts! There are seriously mountains of peanut plants piled in peoples' compounds, or in the fields. Most of the day can be occupied sitting in front of one of these green hills, pulling out the plants one by one to strip them of their nuts. The other day I spent a total of six hours "xontent gerte" - that's pulling peanuts. It's calm, repetitive, brainless work that I find strangely soothing. For the most part, the millet harvest is done now. Charettes loaded with millet stalks now traipse into town; the stalks will become new fences before long. Behind my family's compound is an enormous stack of millet, as tall as I am! My host father says we'll eat it all, but it sure looks like a lot of millet to me. Still, I guess it does feed about twelve people, twice a day. The girls and young women get a workout pounding the grains into flour, sifting it, and going through all the other steps of preparing "cere", the grainy cereal we eat for dinner and breakfast. At first I hated the taste of millet cere, but it's growing on me. And I'm getting pretty tired of rice.
So, this past week I've been pulling peanuts mostly. But I took a day to harvest my sesame, which is ripe now. I had to cut it and stack it upright on a piece of cloth, because the little seed pods will burst open and spill sesame seeds everywhere. So, now they're mostly contained in a bucket and hopefully I won't lose too many. Yesterday, I biked to Taiba Niassene to give out the scholarship to the winning student from last year. The principal of the middle school was delighted that I came with prize money for a promising young girl, and she seemed equally pleased (though shy) to accept the 30,000cfa and her winner's certificate. To the three other finalists I gave a letter of recognition, that hopefully they can present later on to show that they were indeed one of the top four female students in their school (at least, according to me, who read their essays, teacher recommendations, and did an interview with each of them). I didn't know what else to say besides congratulations, and tried to emphasize that this scholarship is designed to reward girls who are serious in their studies, and to help those with limited means to continue their education; hopefully I managed to get some of that across in my mangled French/Wolof.

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Photos

Some photos for your enjoyment! Comments below each one.

Sometimes, you have to bail the boat so you don't sink in the mangroves.


Baby goats are the devil's children - they get through any fence and eat all your crops! If only they weren't so adorable.


This stuff is known to you as birdseed; to me it is dinner.


My host sister cutting millet in the field.


I snapped this picture of my neighbor as we went to the fields.


This is a whole lot of sweet potato, and some bissap, and a cashew tree and basil in a neighbor's garden.

Sunday, October 12, 2008

CNN Heroes

Here's a bit of exciting news! Viola Vaughn, the lady who runs the NGO "10,000 Girls" has been nominated as one of the top 10 Heroes by CNN. This is a HUGE deal, because now there will be a bigger feature on her and the program. If you forgot, 10,000 Girls is the program that hosted the girls' English/democracy camp. They're the organization I'm helping to start the Bookmobile. In my friend Kate's village, her girls' group started a huge bissap and cashew cultivation project, that will be linked to 10,000 Filles product transformation project in Kaolack, which will produce teas and other goods for export. Also, Mme. Viola runs an excellent program in the city of Kaolack that caters solely to girls who have been struggling in school, as well as a successful entrepeneurship program. In short, she's an amazing lady who has done an enormous amount of good throughout this region of Senegal. And now, there is a chance to help her out for free! You can vote for her on CNN.com. Thanksgiving, I believe, is the final announcement of the winning Hero for 2008. So if you think she deserves it (and I sure do!) check out her work and VOTE for Viola Vaughn!

Here's the address:

www.cnn.com/heroes

Monday, October 6, 2008

A village Korite, and the Harvest

Korite in Keur ALi Gueye was very different from the one I experienced in Thies. In the village, everything is so communal; there's not a party if tons of people don't show up. In Thies, I remember, my host family killed probably half a dozen chickens and cooked up huge plates of yassa - onion sauce - over rice, served with chicken meat, for the family and a few guests. For Korite in the village, they killed a cow and the various families all went to buy a couple kilos of beef. Then, we all cooked the same thing, like we did for Tabaski: a meat sauce, heavy with oil, made with onions, fried potato slices, macaroni, and seasoned with plenty of mustardand vinegar. The men went off, as they tend to do, to eat the meal together, and afterwards the women of the neighborhood gathered in a courtyard to share bowls of the sauce, to be sopped up with bread. Everything shared, everyone participating. For them, Koritewas also a day off, and the very next morning people were back to work, because now the harvest is really beginning.
Every day now there is some kind of work to do harvesting the crops. The past few mornings, after breakfast, I've headed out to my host family's enormous millet field to pick my way through the flattened stalks, searching out the candles and slicing them off with my new "goban" - my knife for cutting throughmillet stalks. It's quick work, once you get the hand of it, and we've managed to hack our way through maybe a quarter of the field in two days. The result is two huge stacks of millet, laid out on beds of dried leaves in the midst of the field, which will be gathered up later and stored in my backyard. It's really a lot of millet. Known to youas birdseed; known to me as dinner. Meanwhile, the peanuts are ripening quickly as well. I've made several trips back and forth to a couple peanut fields, to do my part in collecting them. The nuts are sold in big sacs, and the leaves are kept, too, to be dried into hay for horses during the coming dry season. When I filled my water bucket full of peanuts and had them counted out (measured by the comato can), I found I'd gathered 10 cans-full, which, being given 25cfa a can, came out to 250cfa. That's about 50cents! The next day I only filled seven cans, and made 125cfa. The peanut owners are insisting on paying me, just like everybody else, but while it's nice to be treated the same as everyone, I'd rather not take their money. Luckily they don't usually have it right away, as it comes in only after they've sold the crop, so maybe if I don't ever mention it again they'll forget the 250cfa... if not I'll have to spend it on tea and sugar to give right back to them.

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

More beans and millet

Beans are everywhere still, which delights me. Some farmers have started paying back the beans seed I gave them, which mostly performed well, so I bought an old oil jog which I cleaned and dried thoroughly. Now I'll stash the beans in there until next year so the bugs can't get in. Meanwhile, our millet is also ripe. People are heading out to their fields, which have gotten so tall the stalks have begun to fall over. Millet is a very satisfying crop to grow. From tiny seeds that become bright green, tender shoots of grass which you'd never believe will ever grow big enough to feed a sheep, much less a person, come these towering plants with many tillers, heavy with grain, soaring over peoples' heads as they walk along the muddy path through the fields. Now, it's all falling down, being ripped up by the roots and laid in orderly rows by the men and older boys, while everybody else comes along with a half-moon knife to slice off the candles and arrange them into stacks. So, the inevitable sounds of women and girls pounding millet are returning to the village. Tomorrow is Korite, celebrating the end of Ramadan, so soon we'll be working hard again and well-fed, so everyone will be happier. There will be some things to miss about the fasting month, however. Waking up before dawn to down a couple spoonfuls of funde is NOT one of them. But, sitting in the cooling evening, waiting for the call to prayer which announces the hour of breaking fast, then enjoying a hot mug of coffee, a cup of bissap, maybe a handful of bread, is very nice.
Just yesterday I went with everybody to a peanut field, one of the earliest to be harvested. It's quite an all-day affair! Almost all the women and children were there with buckets, pots, and bowls, which they filled with peanuts from enormous piles of uprooted plants. We pulled them up before settling down to "hontet", or snap off the peanuts from their stems. For a tomato pot full of these fresh peanuts, the field owners will pay 25cfa. So, it's a good way to earn a little extra money, and get some peanuts to take home too. My host sister pulled enough peanuts to buy herself a new pair of sandals for Korite; my little brother slacked off and only made enough for a lollipop. I didn't bring my own bucket, so I just helped whoever I was sitting with, so I'm not sure how many pots I had. Next time I plan to keep count and see how much my work is worth!

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

I love beans

Here is a funny picture of some Agriculture Volunteers, with a sign exemplifying our raison d'etre ici.

I've spent some very nice afternoons in the village, picking and shelling beans. There's beans all over the place! Black ones, red ones, speckled ones, white ones (which are the kind I distribute) and they all need to be shelled. It's easier to shell them if they're a little dry, but not TOO crunchy, and the beans inside are still moist but starting to harden. But, you get everything from shriveled, bone-dry pods to plump wet ones, and I love shelling them all. Finally, again, there is work to do with my hands! It's a fantastic feeling, to have a pile of beans before you, and work at it gradually until the job is done. The feeling of absolute finality is the reward, and it is wonderful. The beans themselves are tasty and now appearing more often in our meals, which I am delighted about. Perhaps the tastiest meal I've had with my village family was rice, lightly oiled, cooked with dried fish, beans, and a few vegetables. So yummy! And much healthier than plain rice.

Monday, September 15, 2008

Progress

At last, the bookmobile truck is nearly ready! After three months of stagnation (me going to see the mechanic; me seeing that no progress had been made on the truck whatsoever; me yelling at the mechanic; mechanic swearing he will start right away - this cycle repeated many times, to the point that everyone at the mechanic's garage knows my name) the truck has been mostly repaired. It's an old delivery vehicle that we are transforming into a moving library. So, sliding windows were installed up top to provide ventilation and light. Just recently they painted the truck bright red, with cheerful white lettering on the side: Book Mobile, it says, "Books for the Community", along with the 10,000 Girls website address and logo. On the reverse side we plan to put a quote: "Educate a girl - pathway to Paradise" in four different languages: Arabic, English, French, and Wolof. Hopefully that turns out well too. Then, just a few more mundane repairs to do, and the installment of shelves to store the books, and we are ready to hit the road!
This afternoon I am in Kaolack, with a script written in French and Wolof of the story "The Frog Prince". The Kaolack Volunteer has a weekly radio show, and this week I agreed to help him out. There have been a variety of topics: health/nutrition, American culture, local-language shoutouts (for those Pulaar and Serere minorities!) and, now, story hour. The story, in French, is followed by a summary in Wolof (I did my best, though I don't know how to translate concepts like "princess" oe "bad fairy" in that language...hopefully people don't get too confused), and encouraging people to seek out books on their own. Unfortunately, books are not readily availible. There are little "librairies" selling whatever random texts they may have come across. Also, deep in the Kaolack market there are vendors with tables of books for sale, everything from old school textbooks to American novels left behind by God-knows-who ages ago. However, these are often expensive, the selection sporadic, and not easy to come by. Some schools might have small libraries, and there is a collection as well at the Alliance Francaise. But, for most people, books are a rarity. Just this weekend, we spent two days doing an intensive cleaning of the house. We ended up culling all the magazines older than 2007, which made a huge stack outside our front door. Just last night, walking home after buying sandwiches, we passed by a group of maybe twenty young men engrossed in our old magazines. Every page was gone by morning. Reading is good!

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Fasting

Every morning one of the women knocks on my door before six, to wake me up for an early meal before dawn. We all stagger over to the bowl, half-asleep, and eat spoonfuls of watery millet porridge - "funde" - in the dark. The morning prayer usually comes around this time, too, which I usually don't get to hear because I'm asleep. I can't eat very much so early, so after a few bites I'm ready to go back to bed for an hour or so until the sun starts to rise over the top of my millet-stalk fence and people begin going about their day. Long gone are the days I used to recline in bed until ten on the weekends; now I'm up around seven, and if I'm feeling lazy I may stretch it ti seven thirty, but my "sleeping in" is not impressive. I feel like I should at least be up and about while little girls are already starting their morning by pounding millet into flour, women are pulling water, and people are busying themselves with chores. Anyway, after that pre-dawn breakfast there's nothing to eat until 7:30pm, when the prayer calls us again to break the fast. During the day no one eats or drinks anything. They even spit out their saliva so as not to swallow it. I do not do this. Instead I sustain myself with water when I feel thirsty, or a small candy to tide me over the hungry times, though of course I don't do that in front of anyone. Fasting isn't very hard at all when you drink, but I can't imagine how difficult it must be to have no water at all in your system. And I don't care to find out. Somehow, despite the fast, life goes on in the village. The women pull just as much water from the well, morning and afternoon (though how they're even moving beyond noon is beyond me), and people do light field work in the morning if there is any. But, things do move somewhat slower than usual. The daily market doesn't start now until 5pm, when it used to be going by 11, but no one starts cooking until late during Ramadan. On my last trip to Kaolack I bought a game they call "Lido", a four-color game with rules that I still find baffling. The version I got has pictures of Senegalese music stars, but there are also ones with soccer players or marabouts; there's a lot of variety. It is, incidentally, the only board game I've ever seen in Senegal. "Lido" gets a lof of action these days, as people finally have time to relax. Most of the farming is done; we're just waiting for harvestime. Beans are already ripe, and I've been collecting them from the various fields to weigh and calculate how productive that plot was. For the most part the beans produced high yields, and people are glad to have them now, when money is tight and they can add a nice protein boost to a rice-based meal. Plus they're delicious. Corn, too, is ripe. At the louma the streets are lined with corn, and kids strip the husks into threads to practice braiding. In the evening after breaking fast we've been roasting cobs on a charcoal brazier, until the kernels are black. The corn is not sweet or juicy like I'm used to at home, but it has a heavy, earthy flavor and a pleasing texture. I really enjoy nibbling on blackened corn before dinner. Our fast is broken with a cup of hot coffee or kinkiliba tea. My basil is a favorite with the neighborhood, because people like to mix it with the kinkiliba leaves when boiling the tea. It adds a nice aroma and you can really taste the basil. I give out a lot of basil leaves, and those who planted their own from my mother plant's cuttings are using it too. Along with our hot drink is bread, if the family can afford it, which is not usually. If there is, though, that's the first solid thing I've eaten since liquidy funde hours and hours before. Also, we get a cup of cool bissap juice. Then a little while after dinner is served, which is a rice dish, not millet cere as usual. So far the food has been very tasty, which is good news as it's the only meal of the day!
Ramadan could be an excruciatingly slow time of year for us Peace Corps Volunteers, but I managed to stay busy this week by finishing up the paintings at the school. Now each of the four classrooms has some colorful scenes, painted by myself and whatever kids I could round up. Besides the room with the maps, there is now a room painted with domestic animals, and two with scenes of village life and learning. Only a few touch-ups to go - I plan to paint a Senegal flag in each room, too - and we're done! The school looks great, and everyone who has peeked their heads in has been delighted. Hopefully the teachers like it too, when they come back for the start of school next month.

Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Ramadan, take two

A closeup of the sesame blossoms. Aren't they pretty?
I'm at the Nioro louma today with a sack of millet, which my host mom asked me to sell for her. Millet has not yet ripened, so it's last year's grain, which we're lucky to have plenty of. Prices should be pretty high anyway. With whatever money I get, she asked me to buy half a kilo of "gejj" - dessicated fish, usually on the bigger side, which have been split open and dried into thick slabs - and "ketchax", which are smaller fish, also dried and salted, but to a kind of flaky, oily consistancy. If I have any money leftover she wants some cloves to put in the coffee. Ramadan has come again, which means breaking fast in the evening. Nothing special happens to kick off the month. Last night the prayer went longer than usual, and people cooked a special dish after dinner, but that was it. This morning no breakfast, except for the kids. And no lunch. The big question on everyone's mind is whether or not I am fasting. And the answer is: kind of. I don't plan on eating anything all day, so I can break fast with the family at sundown. But, if I'm thirsty I'll drink. People kind of chuckle when I tell them this; it's not real fasting, they say, but they understand that Americans are pansies and don't really expect me to fast anyway. The fact that I am doing it at all is surprising and, I think, they appreciate it. But it will make for long days. No food or drink between sunup and sundown! Only no doubt I will cheat and have an occasional (okay, a frequent) piece of candy and a drink of lemonade in my hut. The crops are ripening, though, and some will be ready for harvest during the month. That will be exhausting.

Saturday, August 30, 2008

Why my blog is boring

I've realized that my blog entries have become less rich, less detailed and interesting lately; compared to how they were during training in Thies; or my first few months at site. The reason for this, I think, is that I"m used to it all. Riding along in a rickety white minivan, hurtling through potholes and getting out to push this questionable vehicle through the mud, is no longer a noteworthy event. I don't feel thrilled or overwhelmed as I navigate the narrow aisles of the weekly market, walking past ladies selling cheap jewelry or cosmetics; guys with tables loaded down with betteries, pens, and other miscellania; louma pharmacists vending dubious pills of unknown composition. I find myself - loaded down with several kilos of vegetables, beans, or perhaps some dried, salted fish - wandering in search of a beignet seller or a girl with a bowl of frozen bissap juice bags on her head. And this is normal. Passing carts pulled by bony horses, their tales rubbed raw from contact with the wooden boards, no longer shocks me as it used to. Stepping over piles of litter and dark puddles of unknown muck, while wearing flip-flops, is not a frightening activity. Herds of sheep or frolicking families of goats, ownerless cats or dogs, all picking their way through the garbage for a snack, is a daily sight. Even the bright colors have become second-nature to me. Shocking orange and pink print fabric, worn perhaps as a figure-hugging complet, blends in with the many other striking colors and scenery that I see, every day, every week. So, inevitably, I notice these thigns less. They cease to be noteworthy for me, and thus do not get mentioned in this blog, and therefore are not passed on to you all. In my head I know that the USA is not like this, and that even mundane aspects of my life here are meaningful for those who don't live them, but it is hard to remeber what is worth recording anymore. I get excited by flowering sesame plants, for God's sake! Tree saplings make me clap my hands and when I get greasy rice for lunch it is a big deal. I am pleased when it rains enough to fill my buckets so I don't have to pull water from the well. That's what the Peace Corps does to you. I have no perspective on the world anymore. Is this blog even interesting? I find ripening millet to be interesting! But as I said, I am so far gone now that I have forgotten what's worth writing down.

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Putting Keur Ali Gueye on the Map

My neighbor Wanna painting the names on the countries of the world.Last week Wanna came over to help me paint maps on the school walls. With the inevitable flock of children clustered around the door, studying our every move, we painted in all the colors of the countries of the world on one wall, a map of the African continent on another, and a large map of Senegal on a last wall. It was a fun project! Though not improved by the breathing in of paint fumes and the use of a mysterious mixing chemical, which may or may not have been turpentine. Anyway, the walls of the school look beautiful! We wrote out all the country names and labeled everything and, though there are some tiny inaccuracies (which we fixed as best we could, drawing lines and erasing borders) the whole ensemble is colorful and really exciting for the kids. They took off singing the Senegalese national anthem as we painted the country map, along with the occasional refrains of "We Shall Overcome", which I still hear often from my visitors' and my song teaching adventure. Now one whole room of the school is bright with maps that the children can study during their breaks, or during class, I hope. The plan is to use the remaining paint to put murals on the walls of the other classrooms. At the moment the school is very bland, so unlike what I remember from elementary school, with colorful posters, paintings, quotes, and art projects hanging everywhere. So murals will really improve the atmosphere.
And now, the millet is above my head! It's starting to produce "candles" - the long, thin heads of grain - though now they are in the flowering stage. It is a deep kind of contentment, walking next to a towering field of heavy-topped grass, hearing the wind rustle through the leaves, and know that this is our food. Corn is producing ears, though not ripe ones yet, and the beans are absolutely fantastic. People are already harvesting and eating some of the dried pods! I have on occasion pilfered a green pod, too. Tastes like fresh green beans. Though I am growing fond of the many ways Senegalese find to prepare black-eyed peas too. Also, two small cashew fields have been planted and are doing well, and one farmer (with my help, but only a LITTLE help!) has planted a live fence of thorny tree saplings around his orchard. Yay! That's EXACTLY what we want to see! The women are beginning to weed the bissap field, too, which will no doubt occupy our days for several months once it ripens, as it did when I first arrived in the village last November. And Ramadan is coming soon. When it arrives, I will have been here a year - a lunar year, since it started the day after I set foot into Senegal.

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

The Daily Grind

Farming goes on daily, which means lots of bending over at the waist for weeding. Just yesterday my host brothers and sisters and I finished up on my host dad's big peanut field, so they were feeling pretty good. I spent a blessedly cool afternoon weeding in a few other people's fields, just to keep busy. Though it's hard on the back, there is something inherently relaxing about monotonous physical labor; you can let your mind wander and you complete the repetitive task, row by row, back and forth across the field. I am getting better at it, my body slowly growing accustomed to straining different muscles, but I still lag far behind most everybody when we're farming. There have been three good rains this past week, so the soil is heavy and damp. The crops look really good for the most part. Some of the corn is stringy, because the soil is not rich enough to support it, and farmers didn't add fertilizer (probably most could not afford to buy it) but the peanuts are thick and growing taller - they are the priority crop in this area - and the millet is puffing out into thick, many-tillered bushes. Hard to believe just a few weeks ago it looked like tender blades of grass, scattered tenuously around a huge brown field. Now you can't see the ground in most places, for the concentration of sprawling millet leaves. Cowpeas are so far the most satisfying crop for me to watch. They're so quick to mature, one farmer already has green pods starting to develop! We'll be cooking beans in no time.

Monday, August 4, 2008

Contrast

Just for a bit of perspective: a photo of the same classic baobab tree,
in the rainy season and the dry.



Pretty crazy, huh? A little bit of water really awakens everything here! I've spent the last few days in the village working. Yesterday morning I bent over at the waist for three hours, weeding a peanut field. It was backbreaking work, and I am SO much slower than the local children, who toil seemingly tirelessly and thoroughly, though I'm sure their backs must ache just as much as mine. The peanuts are looking great now, sprouting lovely little yellow flowers, like mini snapdragons. Who knew peanuts looked like that? The day before yesterday my host father killed a big male duck, so I spent the morning plucking and cleaning it for lunch. If you'd asked me a year ago whether I could see myself ripping out feathers from a decapitated duck, moistened with hot water to loosen the follicles, and would be bloodying my hands holding it to be chopped into bowl-sized pieces, and savoring the taste of rich organ meat, I would been unable to imagine myself doing it. But now, that's a special event in my life. And duck for lunch makes for one happy family.

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Busy, busy, busy

Some photos:

A working mother taking a quick break from ploughing.

Introduction to a skit at the girls' camp.

One of the campers, reading on the dock. Beautiful area by the mangroves near Sokone.

Learning about Martin Luther King, Jr. His "I have a dream" speech was translated into French in these booklets, along with other information about the Civil Rights Movement. If you want to learn more about the program that put on this camp, go to 10,000 Girls' website: http://10000girls.org/

It's been a fabulously busy three days! The bus from Kolda dropped me off near
Kaymor, where I spent the night with Kate. We slept until 9:30, a ridiculously late time here in Senegal, but we were so tired after the Ag meetings! And sleeping in just one day is incredibly refreshing. The next morning I wrestled with vetiver grass, which was the reason I'd gone to Kaymor. Vetiver is a kind of grass that is very hardy, with a fragrant root system. It's supposed to work well when planted in water erosion sites, to catch the fleeing topsoil that would otherwise be washed away. It is, however, difficult to get out of the ground, as I discovered after sweating and hacking at the stuff with a machete. Still, I got enough to bring home to Keur Ali Gueye, and worked with a couple farmers transplanting it in their fields, perpendicular to the eroded ditches. They're flimsy little sticks now, but if all goes well they will plump up, spread out around the central piece, and inch'allah make an effective blockage that will make it so they can farm between the walls of vetiver, increasing the useful area of the field. That's the theory, anyway. The farmer who'se working on neem pesticide solution has kept it up, which is great, and his beans are bushy and green. Though I attribute that to his farming skills more than my neem solution. Tis also the season to outplant trees. I've gotten pretty militant about it, because the common refrain here is, "Later, later, we'll do it later," which gets me very worked up until I'm insisting, "No! Leegi LEEGI!" which means "now, RIGHT NOW!". It doesn't get me very far, though. However most of the vetiver got in the ground, and just yesterday I assisted at the planting of a twelve-tree cashew orchard. Not very big, but it looks so pretty and well-spaced. I hope they survive! At least better than the poor papayas. Probably five, maximum, have survived outplanting. The major killer being goats, of course. C'est la vie. My little test plot, however, looks fabulous. ECHO's basil and sesame seeds shot up and are growing nicely. Here's ECHO's website, too: http://echonet.org/ They're a great resource for us Agriculture Volunteers. For the moment that's all, but my goal before the end of the week is to outplant ALL my trees, and hopefully organize the two farmers who want live fences to drive charrettes to Eaux et Forets in Nioro to pick up their thorny species, and visit all the fields of Peace Corps ISRA seed. Can I do it? I think so! But I should really stop being so American. A "to-do" list, trying to check off things as they happen, can only end in tears here in Senegal.

Thursday, July 24, 2008

Democracy Camp & Ag Summit

It's been a busy couple of weeks! And I've only been able to spend one full day in my village since last Monday, because the activities have been taking place elsewhere. But my little demo plot is growing well, everything sprouted nicely, so I'm excited to get back to it. Visiting the fields is more fun now, too, because everyone is out there working most of the day. I'm learning to weed and thin with the "ngosi", a hand tool, which is laborious but effective. Finally, there is enough green material growing for animals to graze, so I hope our poor, bony horses start to fill out soon too. They're working just as hard as the people! Anyway, last Monday I took two girls from the village to Kaolack. The same program I'm working with on the bookmobile (10,000 filles) was putting on a five-day camp to discuss democracy, human rights, and gender equality. The camp was led entirely in English, by a group of college students from Goshan College. They did an awesome job! Though the village girls obviously don't speak English well (most not at all) we helped organize tables to mix them in with girls from Kaolack who did, and thus get the information translated. Kate and I were the two Peace Corps Volunteers there. Our role was to advise the students when they had questions about the activities they'd planned, and to be a translation resource if the girls had questions that needed answering in French or Wolof. The camp consisted of discussions, in which the girls participated fabulously well, and also games and activities. Some educational activities were writing mock political platforms (If I were President of Senegal...), and designing a flag representing democracy, and poetry writing on one of the Universal Human Rights (one girl wrote a stunning poem, in English, about how humanity transcends national boundries and differences in skin color; it was so good! Really blew me away.), and a collage project addressing stereotypes of women (these turned out amazing, too) there was also reading articles about Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr., and talks led by the very educated Mme. Vaughn (founder of the NGO) about what Islam teaches about gender equality. There were ice-breaking games, too, and possibly the highlight: group skits about womens' rights, all done in English, with the girls helping one another to understand. The skits turned out wonderfully! The girls really enjoyed it, and I could see them blossoming and gaining confidence each subsequent day of camp. It was a totally alien environment for so many of them, but they got so much out of it, really learned a huge amount, interacted with one another, and had a great time. One of the best things for me was Wednesday evening, when we built an American-style campfire. Somehow they'd found marshmallows in Kaolack, and bought butter cookies and chocolate spread. Thus, we introduced 30 Senegalese teenagers to the deliciousness of s'mores. Oh, they loved them! And I'm sure it was the first time any of them roasted a marshmallow over an open fire. After the gooey dessert, we had story time. Kate recited versions of "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" and "The Three Little Pigs", which I translated into (pretty awful) Wolof as "Fatou and the Three Hyenas" and "The Three Little Chickens and the Big, Bag Dog". I think my imperfect language skills made the girls laugh all the harder. The stories were acted out by the Goshan students, which was hilarious! Everyone had a marvelous time that night. In short, the camp was a huge success.
As I write this I am actually in Kolda, a city to the South of The Gambia. We just finished our last day of the Sustainable Agriculture Summit, which was a really useful three days of discussion about the agriculture program, reviewing the project plan and going over possible activities for the rainy season. Kolda is very different from the area I'm used to. It is lush and green, covered with trees, and the melodic sounds of the Pulaar language are more common here than Wolof. The huts in the surrounding villages are round, with thatch roofs reaching halfway down the sides, so they look like fat toadstools. I think it's adorable! And though corners are handy for propping up things like bookshelves and beds, I rather envy the Kolda Volunteers their novel circular huts. Going through The Gambia to get here was an interesting experience, too. It took around two hours, border to border, which included waiting for a ferry to carry us across the river. I had a tasty grilled chicken sandwich at the dock: grilled chicken, macaroni, fried potatoes, lettuce, tomato, and ground black pepper, all for only 500cfa. A marvelous treat for only "temere"!

Saturday, July 12, 2008

Farming

It's been a busy week! We had a couple good rains the past few days, which means more trips out into the fields. By now most of the crops are big enough that almost everybody has a role to play. The machines are still at work, troweling the ground to pull of stubborn weeds and cover seeds with dirt, but there is also work to be done by hand. In the morning, everybody who can hold a handhoe heads out into the fields to dig around each individual crop, row by row, raking away weeds and grass. I've managed a row or two, but it's an exhausting, tedious task; bent over at a 90-degree angle, scraping away in the soil. But, it's good to have things to do! After the first nice rain I finally seeded the test plot in my backyard. I planted mint in one of my tires, and also a plot of beans near my concrete douche, and also cabbage, onion, collard greens, beets, and bissap in my garden. Nothing has sprouted yet, and it maybe never will; I am not an experienced gardener. But I thought I might as well try. Out behind my house, in the area reserved for me by my counterpart, I am practicing a no-till farming technique. Only working the ground where I'm seeding is the idea, leaving all the rest at Nauture's mercy. So I have a few rows of beans, come corn in zai holes, and four short rows of sesame. The seeds came from ECHOnet, an excellent organization that is a resource for lots of agriculture Volunteers. Also, I transplanted some of their basil. Basil grows fabulously here! And it smells so good too. Now one of the test fields is being treated with neem-leaf solution as a pest repellent, twice a week, and we're going to thin the millet test plot tomorrow hopefully, so people can observe what thinning method produces best. Once the corn grows to knee-height we'll plant the cover crop, lablab bean, in-between rows. It's supposed to serve as a green manure and protect the soil, as well as supplying edible beans. We'll see how all that goes. But, meanwhile, the evenings are cool, the mornings dewey, and I'm enjoying my time walking to and from the fields.

Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Slowly, slowly

It's been a pretty dry week, though people are still seeding and working the ground. Now the crops must push up their tender sprouts through a crust of cracked, dry mud. About half of the farmers I'm working with have seeded their Peace Corps improved seed; one corn field is shooting up nicely, and the beans of course look great. They're easy to please. However right now it's mostly men and work animals in the fields. Only a few are big enough for the women and girls to go in with their hand tools to weed. So I mostly wander around, poke about in the dirt if there's something I can help with, and stare indulgently at the baby crops. I'm waiting for one more good rain to settle the soil, so I can seed my own little backyard garden and demonstration plot of zai holes, out behind my hut. But, there are things to do. Yesterday I accompanied my pilot farmer on the first neem solution application to his beans, and tomorrow we'll thin his corn. Soon, the women's group will plant their bissap field. My recently-seeded cashew pepiniere looks wonderful! They're really taking off, popping boldly up out of their little black polysacs. Around the first week of August they'll be ready to outplant, and I have several people interested. Of course, there was a lot of interest in the papayas, too, but after all were put in the ground, maybe only four or five have taken. One of the big problems is goats. Despite talking myself hoarse and giving suggestions for protecting the trees, they are very likely to be beaten by the sneaky goats. Goats are a depressing fact of life in Senegal.
One interesting thing that happened this week was a wedding. Earlier in the blog, I described the event where a young women left the village to go to her husband's house. Well, this is the flip side of that: a new bride coming into the village. She is the second wife of a man in my neighborhood, and it was very interesting to watch the ceremonies. I barely understand any of what's going on, but I do my best anyway. This time, the women got all dressed up accompanied the bride around the quartier to greet the imporant people. She had her head and face covered with a heavy, ribbon-embroidered cloth, which was held by the first wife, who led her new co-wife to and from the houses. Later, the women got to work cooking lunch and dinner. I contributed by chopping probably two dozen onions, which involved slicing my thumbs signifigantly, and my skin absorbing the scent of onions, which still hasn't worn off yet. But it was a tasty sauce! Meanwhile, the bride and the first wife were in another compound, getting dressed and made-up. We went there in the afternoon, where both women looked stunning, with elaborate hair and sparkling eyeshadow, wearing fantastic clothes. Then, the neighborhood women started singing as they escorted the two along the road, towards their house. It was a slow procession, but not serious; there is always a lot of joking, arguing and laughing in any village event. Coming to the husband's house (he, by the way, was somewhere else entirely during these whole proceedings; I have no idea what the men do on these occasions) there were clothes laid on the ground, which we walked on, as the bride was formally welcomed home. In the evening, of course, was dancing - my petit pagne is a celebity at such events, and I was forced to dance around a few times to show it off. The next day, the bride was led to the well (once again, with her face covered, guided by the first wife) to symbolically wash her laundry; the day after that (again dressed in her most beautiful clothes) she pounded millet. All daily activities in the village, made ceremonious because it's the first time she did them in Keur Ali Gueye.

Sunday, June 29, 2008

Wet

I awoke this morning to find that my village had become a swamp. To backtrack: since my last dramatic installment (the wind that blew my roof off, with enough rain to soak my bed but not penetrate far into the soil) there has been no rain to speak of. The fields waited, dry, and the men and boys returned to relaxing. There were many cloudy days, but no rain. Then finally, the day before yesterday, it happened. It was the late afternoon when the clouds started gathering in earnest, congealing into heavy, bruise-colored clumps low on the horizon. That day, the village children paraded through the streets, singing - so I was told - to bring on the rain. And it woked! At the beginning, there were only a few timid drops, and people went on with their chores, pounding millet and stripping nebedaye or baobab leaves for dinner as usual. But graually, the rain gathered force, until it came at last in an impressive waterfall that ran in thick rivers across the packed ground. Thunder and lightning added drama to the already-thrilling scene; the excitement in people's faces was contagious. Everyone grinning from ear to ear, whether they were dancing in the shower (like many of the giddy children did) or just sticking their heads out the door to watch the droplets fall from the straws of the roof. I stared out at my backyard, which gathered water at a surprising rate, washing swiftly over the grassless ground, over the flimsy green trunks of my recently-planted trees, and splitting to avoid my compost pile. After the main deluge had reduced to a tolerable trickle, I went outside to join the neighbors. Everyone was standing around on bits of high ground, watching the water run downstream towards the fields. My counterpart was so excited, he called me over and grabbed my arm to point out into a field behind the village, where we could see the sheen of water gathering. My host mom was laughing; many of the kids ran in wrapped in towels from where they had bathed in the downpour. Nothing but happiness all around. The frosting on the cake, for me, was yet to come. Only minutes afterward, the sun burst out from behind the westward clouds, creating an enormous, gorgeous rainbow in the east. It was a perfect arc, touching the ground on both sides, with all the colors bright and beautifully clear. One of the most flawless rainbows I have ever seen. The rain came again that evening, and the next day people headed out to the fields. I, too, went to work, visiting the nine farmers to whom I gave improved seed to test this season. I made sure to distribute the seeds last week, so everyone has what they're assigned, and they saw my germination tests so they know what to expect in that regard. Dotted all over the land were sillouettes of people, walking behind seeding or tilling machines, or urging on their work animals - horses, cows, and donkeys. I visited some of the fields that will be seeded with Peace Corps seed this year, so I can make notes about their performane during the coming season. But most people are busy with sowing peanuts at the moment, as that is their primary crop. Last night, then, came the real deluge. It rained so hard and so long, it filled up each of my buckets half-way! This also created huge expanses of standing water in the lower parts of the land, along the roads and in the depressions around trees. Walking out this morning, I heard the humming of frogs, who have appeared in legions overnight, and saw the puddles all around. Everywhere I walked were tiny, spring-green shoots pushing up through the wet sand. Birds fluttering and chirping everywhere! As I said, when I went out this morning, it was no longer into the dry Sahelian brush; it was a vertiable wetland. Now the real work starts for us all.

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Photos and friends

Note: these should really be looked at up bottom to top; they were added in reverse. Enjoy!
Hugging a majestic baobab tree in Toubakouta.

Heather and Adam enjoying the lunch they bought for the village. Noos yu bare! The goat was cute, and also delicious. Very oily meal; they used seven liters.Janet Lane comes to Senegal! Her new book, "Emerald Silk" was excellent. It has now joined the hallowed shelves of the much-frequented Kaolack house bookcase. Like to read much?My counterpart filling a shift in one of the village boutiques. I think it's time for me to display some images of a few of the fabulous people I work with. These are my two good friends Kate and Wanna, making lotion in my backyard:

Home is where the Hut is

It's funny, but actually I am more at home now in a village, carrying a bucket of water on my head, than I am in Dakar where there is television and restaurants open late. Coming back to the village after a long series of outside activities made me appreciate anew the unique place it is, and how lucky I am to be having this experience. There really is nothing else like it. As I walked the seven kilometers from Nioro to Keur Ali Gueye, I passed fields newly tilled, and the few patches of fallow land are covered in a fuzz of emerald grass. All these are signs that the rainy season has officially started. This was announced to me in a rather shocking way late Sunday night, when a storm of thunder, lightning, wind and rain began to rage. At first I felt cozy in my hut, but soon, I began to feel a dripping coldness, and realized that there was a huge leak in my thatch roof - right over my bed. The rain was really coming down, and the gale was blowing hard, so I really could do nothing but get up and watch my mattress become drenched by the steady stream of droplets from the ceiling. By the time it was over, there was only one relatively dry spot; the rest of the bed was completely saturated. As we discovered in the morning, the wind has blow off the top of my roof, creating a sizeable hole. So, we tied the straw down with ropes, and I bought some plastic lining that we'll install today. Hopefully that should keep me dry for the rest of the season.
The morning after that big storm, all the men and boys of the village gathered their seeding and tilling machines, hefted sacks of peanut seed onto carts, and hitched up all their horses and donkeys. All day there was a stream of the going to and from the fields, seeding this year's crop of peanuts. It's all done by manpower, with a significant contribution from the horses, cows, and donkeys. The village is pretty much cleared out by every male over the age of five until lunchtime, when they finally come home to rest in the heat of the afternoon. I have yet to try my hand at plowing or planting, as my time has been occupied in the village with a variety of little projects: visiting the gardens where two farmers want to install a live fence (we'll plant it after a few more good rains, inch'allah), monitoring my germination test (the millet came up fantastically well, the beans too; corn did fine but sorghum is pretty pathetic) and planting trees. With the help/hinderence of the inevitable mob of children, we have outplanted about ten papayas, a few nebedaye, some "dank" (a rather dry, bland, fibrous green fruit with a huge pit), and my host father wants to plant the jitropha along the side of his backyard field sometime soon. I have also put a tree every few meters along my own backyard fence which, when they grow big enough, can be used as posts to tie the fence to. At the moment people use dead wood, which often falls down, as we discovered during another windstorm. Two whole sides of my millet-stalk fence blew over that time. Also, the NGO Tostan is doing a project with twenty village women to start up a savings-and-loans club, so that is an exciting new thing to observe. As the rain arrives, too, so do the mosquitoes. Therefore, it's time to start combating the inevitable malaria. Several programs are in place to attempt to reduce cases of the disease: a group will come through the villages to spray rooms with insecticide that is supposed to last throughout the rainy season. Another group will hand out coupons for free mosquito nets to mothers of children under five, which they can pick up at Postes de Sante in surrounding towns. Hopefully I can also do a formation on making neem lotion, which acts as a repellent. In addition to that, I must soon distribute the improved seeds to my village's chosen farmers, and start monitoring their fields, as well as setting up demonstration plots of new techniques to try. So, there's plenty going on! Also, the bookmobile project is getting going. I have meetings coming up about that in the next few weeks as well. As soon as the rains come, so does the work! It feels really good to be back in the village, though. I missed it, and always come back with a really positive feeling. Everyone is excited to see me, and I them; for now, this place is my home.
My annoying foot infection came back once I returned, though, so I'm still treating that. However, having it means I got a great insider's experience of traditional healing practices. My host father was very concerned about it, so he first gave me a red, white, and black thread to tie around my ankle, "to help pull out the infection". This was followed by two mornings of murmuring, spitting, and waving his hand over the wound; also, chewing up "nettattue" (I have no idea what this is; they look like little brown seeds, and are used in cooking) and patting the slimy mixture around the spot, "to draw out the fluids", and finally drinking several rounds of tea made from a leaf he brought me from the bush. Anyway, thanks to those treatments, continued hot soaks and antibiotics, the thing seems to be on its way out finally. I won't be the one to say those healing efforts didn't help it along!