August in Review

Girls Camp was the shining star of August. It was a great success, and Peter and I feel very grateful to have been a part of the experience. For a week, 36 teenaged girls from the Kaolack Region learned about identity, health, environment, gender, and future, through a combination of activities and discussions. The girls listened, discussed, played, crafted, acted, swam, laughed, and cried.  We hope that they will remember the things they learned, the insights they gained, and the friends they made.

We would like to personally thank those of you who financially supported camp: the Hammersley family, the Fritsche family, the San Fran Maeders, Julie and Chris Bering, Kathleen Rey, the Watts family, Schwinn and Wonder, Laurie Lachowitzer, Reverend Molly Gordon, Phyllis Keyser, The Schmaltz Family, and Tammy Jones. I know there were many others who wanted to donate, but could not, once we met our fundraising goal. Thanks to you all, from the bottom of our hearts! Your support means the world to us. You made camp a reality. Keep your eyes peeled for a personal thank you from the girls in the mail.

Check out this touching video about Kaolack Girls Camp, created by our ever-talented ancienne, Caitlin Healy:

Ami Diom, Ndack Tine, and Ndiate Ba, the three girls we brought from the Guinguinéo Department, thrived at camp. We plan to hold a small gathering for them and their families in October, where we will show this film, and discuss what the camp experience means to each of them and how they see it impacting their life.

We volunteers don’t have time to lament camp being over, though, as we’ve already starting planning for next year!

In agriculture news, rainy season has arrived with a vengeance! The crops are happy for now, although there are doubts as to whether the rains will continue on long enough for the corn, millet, sorghum and rice to mature. If the rain stops too long before harvest time, it will be a serious problem. For now, everyone is just watching, waiting, and hoping.

We’ve been savoring the occasional cloudy day, when the cloud cover keeps the heat at bay and we can work in the garden from morning until evening. Things are happening in there; things are growing. Including the weeds, which I am convinced love the rain most of all! The corn failed, as did some of the peas and beans, so we have re-seeded melon, squash, cucumbers, and more beans. The bissap (like edible hibiscus) and okra are relatively happy, as are most of the trees, but the basil is truly the star of our garden! We seeded three varieties, Greek Basil, Sweet Basil, and Napoletan Basil, all of which are thriving! If anyone feels compelled to send us a care package, we could use the remaining pesto ingredients: nuts and parmesan cheese!

We plan to have a cold season garden after the rains end, beginning in November, but those plants will have to be watered from our faucet, which is expensive and has all manner of plant-killing chemicals in it, including chlorine, fluorine, and salt in excess. Thus, this is our big chance to grow things, when water is free, clean, abundant, and falling from the sky! We hope that come September, there will be enough to see in the garden that we can start inviting people to come see our work, so they can gain confidence in our abilities, and find inspiration and confidence for agriculture work of their own.

Perhaps even more exciting than seeing our garden boom and bloom, is the training work we’ve been able to squeeze in during August. Since there isn’t much gardening happening around town as a result of the grasshopper infestation and late rains, we’ve been focusing most of our energy supporting agroforestry work. We held a formacion (a training, or workshop) at our Master Farm in Sakagne to outline the difference in outplanting and caring for thorny live fencing tree species, Nitrogen-fixing tree species like moringa and leucaena, and fruit trees like cashew and mango. What made this training so successful was that it brought together my 4 dedicated work partners from Nguick, our Master Farmer (who is supposed to be demonstrating the technologies we extend and serving as a resource for area farmers), some Sakagne community members, and the Director of Eaux et Forets (EEF, the Senegalese equivalent of the Forestry Service). I technically led the training, but it was very collaborative and all parties in attendance offered much clarification (regarding my Wolof, and some technical information) and insight (regarding what has and hasn’t worked for those involved in the discussion). It was a day of successfully facilitating the flow of ideas between us, a local Peace Corps rep (our Master Farmer), my work partners, and a Director of a Government organization. So cool! Plus, after we were finished talking, we outplanted almost 300 trees for the Master Farm’s live fence. What a day!  

In the midst of everything, we managed to squeeze in a big day of summer cleaning. We usually spend 3-5 solid hours every week cleaning (mostly sweeping and wiping down surfaces to limit dust, and scrubbing down the bathroom), but our little apartment was in need of a deep clean. We hauled out many heaping dustpans of dirt, knocked down several termite tunnels on the walls, and even washed our “couch” slipcovers and bed net! It’s just so hard to keep this place clean when we don’t have real glass windows, only janky old metal shutters to keep the dust and sand out. That’s why Senegalese women usually sweep and mop their entire houses twice daily. Oy!

Another major component of August has been our sector-specific Summits. For my AgroForestry summit, I traveled to the region of Kaffrine, where we spent 2 days brushing up on our technical skills, learning new agfo techniques, and sharing information. It was inspirational to hear about others’ successes, and informative to discuss challenges and failures. I left summit feeling energized and effective.

As I type, Peter is in Thies at his Urban Agriculture Summit. I miss him here in Guinguinéo, but I’ve had plenty of work (in Nguick, in the garden, and on the computer), lots of pets and children, and a big storm that wreaked havoc on the garden and the house to keep me busy. There’s never a dull moment here in Senegal!

Oh yeah, and we now have a second cat. She showed up at our house one day in June as a kitten, and was unusually friendly and interested in humans. We fed her occasional scraps and started letting her in our house to hang out, but Baay was not happy about her presence. She was a little too comfortable hanging around the lunch bowl, meowing and rubbing up against humans indiscriminately, a big no-no in Wolof culture. Apparently some people think that if a cat’s tail touches you, it will steal your leer, which in this context translates basically to “religious clarity” and reminded me most of something like “chi” in eastern religions.  This would not go down well with the kind of high-powered, religious and superstitious lunch guests Baay often hosts, he assured us. Aaand, she may have had diarrhea (or sharted, if we’re being technical) on our Grandmother’s bed and on a pile of her clothes, and on the mosquito net in the family room of the main house, as a result of some trouble with intestinal worms. Oops. Shortly thereafter, she disappeared, and we though she had succumbed to her parasites and died. We offered the kids 100 cfa (about $0.25) to find her, dead or alive, to no avail.

Almost a month later, she waltzed back into the compound one day, very much alive! We’re pretty certain that Baay paid someone to bring her far away after the poop incidents, but we figured nothing good would come of trying to confirm our suspicions. Baay was unhappy about her return, but said we could keep her as long as we took care of her intestinal issues and took responsibility for her as our pet like Happy Cat, and trained her not to come in the main house (He still thinks HC’s good behavior is a result of successful cat training…). We agreed, hoping that new kitty would also learn to gravitate more toward our apartment and stop creeping around the main house, once she learned where the food and snuggles were. It worked, and that’s how Greta came to be.  We’re done, though. No more pets!

Finally, an Ebola update: there is one confirmed case in Senegal, and Peace Corps is working with the Embassy to monitor the situation. The message we received is that Peace Corps has no plans to consolidate and/or evacuate us at this time, as Senegal’s health care system is much better prepared to effectively handle Ebola than the other affected countries. There may be other cases, but they are not expecting an outbreak. We’re receiving real time text updates as the situation evolves, and Peace Corps will post any relevant messages on the Peace Corps/Senegal website. 

Yaay and Baay made lakh ak soow, millet cereal and sweet yogurt, for our family and our surrounding neighbors this morning, as a sort of alms or offering. Baay prayed that Allah will keep us and our community safe from Ebola. We’re happy and healthy here in Guinguinéo, so please don’t worry on our behalf.  Instead, send your positive energy to those who are directly affected by this horrible virus.

In August:

1.     The biggest challenge we faced: The number of daylight hours. There just isn’t enough time these days! There is endless work to be done- outplanting trees in Nguick and at the Master Farm, working in the garden and around the compound on various plantings, traveling for various Peace Corps activities, working on the computer to keep up with emails, wrap up this year’s Girls Camp and start planning next year’s event, and complete our Volunteer Reporting Forms for this quarter. Phew!

2.     The most exciting/best experience: Feeling the synergy at Girls Camp. So powerful!

3.     What we are most grateful for:  Our fellow PCVs, who are always collaborating successfully to make events like Girls Camp and Summits so successful.

4.     Language factoid:  Waccu means to throw up in Wolof. It sounds like a sneeze, Ah-choo, but with a W on the front. It’s not to be confused with wacc (without the u), which means to go down, or to be finished.

Weer wi weesu amoon nanu benn muus bu feebar.  Xooleen li mu waccu!  Kan moo begg a lekk espaget?

Last month we had a sick cat.  Look what she threw up!  Who wants to eat spaghetti?

Things we’re looking forward to in September:

- A site visit from the AgFo bosses, to check in on our work, gauge our progress, and help reinforce technical information with our work partners.

- Wrapping up tree planting work in Nguick, and around our compound, and tallying the final numbers for how many trees we, and our work partners, have planted.

- Harvesting vegetables from our garden, inshallah!

- Welcoming the new September 2014 Peace Corps Senegal Agriculture Stage, who flies in on September 21! Peter and I will literally be there to welcome them at the airport, and to support them and Peace Corps staff during their first 10 days of training in Thies.

Jamm Rekk,

Kaitlin