September has come and gone, which means we have now been in Senegal a full year. In some ways, it feels like just yesterday that we arrived in Thies for training, clean and energetic and excited about all of the possibilities that lay ahead. In other ways, it’s hard to imagine that our life has changed so drastically in the span of just one year. Every day, we speak a foreign language and comfortably live and function immersed in a culture that is very different from our own. Our beliefs and ideas have been challenged, and in some cases, they have shifted. We have new family and friends and pets that we love dearly. Whether we are in the mindset of the past year being a long one, or a short one, we can agree that it has been one of our best.
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| Twilight in the "front yard" |
In addition to the past year
having been a happy one, it’s also been productive! We have not only
successfully learned Wolof and integrated into our community, but also managed
to do some pretty cool agricultural work. What exactly have we accomplished,
you ask? Here’s a summary:
In our small 6m x 9m demo garden, we effectively grew seven types of trees, seven species of perennial crop, and ten
species (over 20 varieties) of annual crop. We have implemented several water harvesting techniques
(contour berm, french drain, use of robinet run-off, boomerang
berms, etc), conservation cultivation methods (zai holes, manure tea),
general gardening best practices (organic amendments, mulching, pepiñeering,
composting, using all the layers, etc), and many agroforestry technologies
(wind breaks, interspersed nitrogen fixing tree species, trees for dappled
shade, fruit trees, live fence posts, trees for animal fodder, etc). We are
currently giving away bundles of basil to lure people into the space to look
around, and it’s been a big hit! The purpose of creating the demo garden was to
(1) gain more credibility in our community, (2) to find motivated work
partners, (3) to inspire community members to garden, and (4) to find personal
gratification. So far, the demo garden has successfully accomplished goals 1
and 4. We’re hoping that as we move into the “cold season,” when people tend to
garden more (the weather is nicer and the field crops have been harvested, so
folks have time and money to spare), the demo garden will help us to find more
motivated work partners in Guinguineo (goal 2) and to inspire others to create
small, diversified gardens inside their compounds (goal 3).
Over the past 6 months, we conducted a series of trainings covering pepiñeering (creating a tree nursery),
outplanting, and long-term care and protection of live fencing tree species,
nitrogen fixing tree species, and fruit tree species, and improved ziziphus
grafting with my counterpart, Mackiny Tall, and our 3 work partners in the
village of Nguick. Here are the results: 4 pepiñeers created and maintained, 870 tree sacks filled, 616
viable seedlings germinated, 238
trees outplanted, and 820 seeds
direct seeded. These numbers are relatively small for Peace Corps standards,
but it’s a great start for a first year AgFo site like Guinguineo/Nguick, and we're proud of the progress we’ve made.
At the Master Farm in
Sakagne, Peter and I function mostly in an advisory role, helping Cheikh to set
goals and stay on track with his timeline and priorities. This season, Cheikh
has outplanted over 550 trees on his farm, with the help of Peter and me, some
community members, and his wives and children. In the past, tree survival rates
after one year have been dismal, but we’re hoping for an improvement this year.
We’re hoping to plan an Open Field Day, where community members can come see
the demonstrations and technologies in action at Cheikh’s farm, in December. Inshallah, it will come to fruition.
This month I had the opportunity to attend
a tree planting in our work zone-mate Tesia’s village (8 km away from
Guinguineo). The event was an impressive collaboration between a Peace Corps
volunteer (Tesia), CREATE! (an American NGO working near our area), and the local Guinguineo Eaux et
Forets (like the U.S. Forestry Service) office. We talked about proper
techniques for outplanting and caring for trees, and how to protect them until
they reach maturity. It was inspiring to collaborate with partner organizations
with similar goals, and I look forward to working with both CREATE! and Eaux et
Forets again in the future.
The rainy season has been such a huge
change, with plants blooming and occasional wildlife sightings (usually just
hedgehogs and monitor lizards). We’d been hearing whispers of turtles that can
be found in seasonal pools during this time of year, which seemed sort of
unbelievable given the utter lack of water in this area 9-10 months out of the
year. Because of this, I was fully expecting that these “turtles” people were
talking about were in fact terrestrial tortoises that were seen cooling off in
the shallow puddles, rather than actual aquatic turtles. After asking upwards
of 5 people a day whether they had seen a turtle lately (Peter was a little embarrassed
by this, and kept telling me people were going to think I was a weirdo…), I
finally hit the jackpot with a shy 6-year-old neighbor of Peter’s counterpart.
Bingo! Her family found the turtle in a puddle, and brought it home to keep it
in a dirty bucket of water for good luck, a common practice here in Senegal.
Another interesting aspect of
the rainy season has been the weather. Sure, it’s always exciting to witness a
big weather event (provided that it doesn’t seriously damage your property or
the infrastructure in your area). But in America, we always know it’s coming,
often days in advance. In most of Senegal, you don't know until you see it. Remember that crazy sand storm that descended upon us in
June? We didn’t know it was coming until we saw it rise up on the horizon. That’s the
way it is. One hour the sky can be cloudless (as it was
yesterday evening), and the next a huge storm rolls in, with thunder and
lighting and wind like you’ve never seen before. I think of it as a metaphor
for life in a developing country. Life is unpredictable, and you are at the
mercy of your surroundings. We have the luxury to be able to enjoy and appreciate this part of our Peace Corps service, being that it is so different from the informed and premeditated American lifestyle. However, it's important to understand that it is difficult and often dangerous for those for whom it is the reality every day.
We wrapped up September by
spending almost 2 weeks in Thies, helping to welcome and train the new Peace
Corps Senegal 2014 Agriculture Stage. They seem like a great group, and it was
an honor and a treat to be there for them for their first 10 days in Senegal.
They will spend the next 10 weeks learning the ins and outs of how things work
here in Senegal, in terms of Peace Corps administration, health, safety and
security, language, and agricultural techniques. It will be a difficult but
rewarding time, and I am excited for all that lies ahead for them. Their
arrival means that we are now transitioning into the role of the 2nd
year, or old, Ag Stage. I say transitioning, because the real 2nd
year/old Ag Stage is still here; they will head home in mid-November, after
they hand over their projects and responsibilities to the new Ag Stage, who
will replace them in their towns and villages.
In September:
1.
The biggest
challenge we faced: Being away from site for 2 weeks. Though it was rewarding
to help with training, meet the new Trainees, and reflect on how far we’ve
come, it’s hard to be away from site for so long. We’re now scrambling a bit to
get the garden back into ship shape, and to chip away at our long list of to
do’s- visiting fields and gardens of work partners, planning trainings, helping
on the Master Farm, etc. Upholding Peace Corps commitments at site and
elsewhere is a challenging balance to strike.
2.
The most exciting/best
experience: Seeing our garden, and more importantly the farmers’ fields,
finally blossom once the rains started in earnest in September.
3.
What we are most
grateful for: Our demo garden space. In addition to boosting our credibility
and confidence, tending to a beautiful green space that produces delicious
fruits and vegetables is one of the most rewarding experiences in life. We are
so grateful for our family’s support in converting the old trash pile to our
garden space!
4.
Language factoid
(by Peter): As in America, much of our laughter comes as a result of bodily
emissions. This corporeal phenomenon has perhaps an even larger presence in our
lives here due to the higher prevalence of GI tract issues. In America, farts are generally
referenced by using the word “fart” or simulating a fart noise with one’s
mouth. Here, creative onomatopoeia
wins the day. Even the “proper”
word for fart, doxot (pronounced
roughly “dough-hot,” with an aspirated h) sounds eerily similar to some styles
of the emission it describes.
Other onomatopoeic words are barrrrt
or parrrrrt (the repeated r meant to illustrate a very aggressively rolled
r, beautifully mimicking a drawn-out butt gun) or pohhhhhhhh (basically just a
p-sound followed by a slow exhale with one’s mouth in an O-shape, which
uncannily imitates a silent, or barely audible variety.)
Fart humor is
universal.
Things we’re looking forward
to in October:
- Tabaski, or Eid al-Adha
(Feast of the Sacrifice or Greater Eid), one of the biggest
Muslim religious holidays, which honors the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice his son Ishmael as an act of
obedience to God. God intervened to provide him with a sheep to sacrifice
instead, thus the tradition of sacrificing and eating a ram on Tabaski. Our
“big sister” Caitlin is coming home from Dakar for the celebration, which will
make it even sweeter!
- Harvesting even more
vegetables from our garden, inshallah!
We have more okra and greens than we can eat. We’re still waiting on the
tomatoes, cucumbers and melons.
- Lots of agriculture work:
leading a seed saving and treatment training in Guinguineo, a tree care and
maintenance training in a neighboring village, a cold season gardening training
with a local womens’ group, and lots of hours spent watering our garden now
that the rains have pretty much stopped.
- A celebration for our
Girls Camp and Michelle Sylvester Scholarship Program participants in Ndiago.
Jamm Rekk,
Kaitlin
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