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.

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"!

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.

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.