The interim between the incredibly fun, but exhausting
Fritsche Family visit, and the impending influx of Hammersleys, instead of
being restful and rejuvenating, has been quite the opposite. It feels as if we’ve been going non-stop for months. In a good way, though…I guess?
After we saw the visitors onto their plane, we took an extra
day in Dakar. We did a lot of catching
up on computer work, a little relaxing, a little fancy food eating, and a
little shopping around for where we plan to stay in Dakar with the HamFam. We settled on Maison Abaka in Ngor. It’s totally charming and even has a hotel
dog, two hotel cats, and a hotel pelican.
The pelican wasn’t super-great, as it seemed to have clipped flight
feathers to prevent it from leaving, which is depressing, and it just pooped
little fishy puddles everywhere. Also it
was aggressive. All in all, though,
totally charming and comfortable place.
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| Kait relaxes with the delightful cat at Maison Abaka, as we relax post-Fritsches. |
After returning home to Guinguinéo, to the excited yipping
and jumping of pet and sibling alike, we were immediately in the final stretch
of planning for our Open Field Day with our Master Farmer, Cheikh Gaye. Since the final go-ahead still hung in the
balance, pending a positive site-visit from a member of the Peace Corps
technical team (who would say, “this field warrants a Field Day,” or “This
field does not warrant a Field Day.”) we were hesitant to put too much planning
in at the early stage, but we still needed to make sure Cheikh was staying on
top of his responsibilities. Before the final “Yes or No” site visit, we
were invited to visit my second wife’s village and spent a few days with Arame
Gueye (née Kathryn Harrawood). You know,
of the Ngar Gueye, Gueyes. (because the
village is called Ngar Gueye, and she’s kind of a big deal there) Also joining us was our other sitemate, Tesia
Eisenberg (aka Penda Sereer, to differentiate her from Kait, aka Penda
Wolof). It was a really fun time, and
was the first time in a while that Kait and I experienced the quieter, darker
at night, and generally slower pace of life of the rural PCV. It’s not to say that they don’t have tons of
stuff going on (Kathryn was in the middle of a latrine project so people were
continually coming into her compound to take their allotment of bricks and we
toured around to inspect all the in-progress latrines) but rather that there
aren’t any metal saws, or car horns, or bright lights and music late into the
night. You can see stars in the
sky! However, we’re fully aware that
grass is always greener on the other side, and I think that rural allure might
lose some of its luster once my iPod died and I really wanted something cold to
drink. All things considered, it was
great to have a change in perspective for a few days.
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| Work Zone Party in Ngar Gueye |
As we hung in Field-Day-or-No-Field-Day limbo, we also found
some time to get back into the garden.
We had grandiose plans to experiment with well water and faucet water to
see how bad the faucet water actually is for plants, especially plants in the
nursery. These plans were going well
(pun?), with marked results in favor of well water. Our citrus tree was growing leaves like crazy
and even blossoming where before it had only grown a small handful of
leaves. The well water half of our nursery
was producing seedlings like gangbusters.
All our plans came to a slightly screeching halt when our well water
delivery guy decided we could go a couple weeks without his services… without
telling us. Apparently the well pump
broke, and took a while to fix. Also, Lady Obama killed our flourishing citrus
tree in protest of our Ngar trip, by using it to get into a tug-of-war contest
with Mother Earth. (Mother Earth won,
but the “rope” lost way worse than Lady)
Also, almost everything we outplanted survived about two days and then
died horribly. This means no heirloom
tomatoes for us this season; it’s devastating. We think it was a combination of
the shock of removal from the relatively shady nursery into the hot sun and the
changeover to harsh faucet water from sweet well water that had such
catastrophic results on our garden. At
least the trees are still there, and the aloe, and the basil re-seeded itself. It’s still way better than when it was a
rubble and trash pile.
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| Making moves in the garden. Top right is our well water vs. faucet water experiement in our nursery. Unfortunately, well water is well better. |
Speaking of pets, and the adorable, not at all annoying,
things that they do… Greta the Cat’s
pregnant. She was really, really in heat
when the Fritsches were in Guinguinéo.
She spent hours “presenting” with her front end crouched low, and her
back end raised up, kinda gyrating her cat hips. Super gross.
But, surprising to nobody at all, the male cats all over the compound
were quite interested, and they accomplished their biological imperative,
despite all the shooing we did. We now
have a fat, little, water-balloon-bellied, nipple monster. We’re concerned because she’s still so
small. Apparently feral animals reach
sexual maturity significantly earlier than domestic ones, which makes perfect
sense genetic selection-wise. She’s due
right around now (end of February) and we’re not sure how it will go, or what
we’ll do with the kittens. Maybe some of
the new health PCVs coming soon will be in the market! Maybe we’ll have to take them to the market
and leave them, and with them, a little piece of our souls. We’re just hoping that the local vet will be
able to find the time to spay her before it happens again.
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| Petstravaganza |
Speaking of animals that our vet hasn’t yet had time to
spay… Lady Obama. She’s still able to
reproduce, and since she now comes and goes at will, we’re a little terrified
she’s going to go into heat again and come home with a precious little bundle
(or seven precious little bundles) from the dog stork. This little hellion has been giving us
nothing but trouble over the past month.
She has learned to jump over a head-height cement wall into our
neighbor’s compound, (more like Lady Jackie Chan) where she harasses their
ducks, and then runs out their front door to go into the street and harass
goats and stuff. This obnoxious behavior
came to a head a few weeks ago when we went into our back yard, and saw on her
shredded toys/shoes/fabric/bones/fur pile where she makes her lair, a mostly
dead duck. Not cool, Lady Obama. After ushering the duck along its way to the
Great Pond in the Sky, several neighborly apologies, and a little financial
compensation, our neighbors don’t hate us anymore, but they’re not our biggest
fans. In response to her destructive
walkabouts, I’ve created a formidable doggy penitentiary. Eight foot tall chainlink walls, big sheet metal
door, nice dog house in the middle.
Creating something out of things readily available in our town (chicken
wire, rebar, wire, branches, etc) that’s legitimately dog-proof, is reeeeeally
challenging. Lady Pen version 3.0 was
our final model, with a more reinforced door.
It now keeps her contained during the night, however, she still manages
to slink off during the afternoons or after we let her out in the morning. We got Lady largely to show Senegalese people
that dogs can be loving, positive, well-behaved pets, and she has served the
opposite purpose, perpetually confirming every Senegalese dog stereotype. Love that Lady!
Near the end of January, we were visited by Arfang Sadio,
one of the Peace Corps Agriculture Programing & Technical Assistants. We went together to the master farm and did a
tour of the field awaiting with bated breath the final word as to whether we
would be hosting an open field day in ten short days.
OH MY GAAWD! He said
YESSSS!
His actual words were something closer to, “Although there
are many areas still in need of improvement, and the percentage of the hectare
plot that’s under cultivation isn’t really where we would like it to be… Let’s
do this thing!” Regardless of reservations,
the game was afoot. We spent the next
ten days going back and forth between Saxañ and Guinguinéo. We worked in Cheikh’s field to have it in
tip-top shape for the OFD (raking leaves, gathering plastic, weeding and
mulching beds, pruning horribly thorny trees, etc, etc, etc). We arranged for a big tent, chairs, and floor
mats to be brought to the farm. We
bought food for 100ish people and brought it out to Saxañ.
We practiced the talking points of the field tour, so Cheikh made sure
to discuss each technique one can observe in his field. We made rounds in Guinguinéo to invite all of
our work partners as well as all the local officials (mayor, prefect, adjoint
prefect, minister d’élevage, Senegal Department de Development Rurale Director,
Eaux et Forêts Director etc). That week
and a half period, though easily synopsized in a blog entry, was possibly the
most non-stop stretch of work we’ve had yet.
It was absolutely exhausting.
However, when February 3rd rolled around, we were confident
everything was in place and nothing would go wrong... Right off the bat, the early morning bread
delivery that was supposed to arrive in Saxañ by 4am, was forgotten and
undelivered by 6:30am, and the two charettes we requested to bring us and some
stuff out to Saxañ didn’t show up. Fun
start to the day! Anyway, we got that
all sorted out and arrived at the field with a few minutes to spare before
people were scheduled to start arriving. In terms of the events of the day, the plan
was to serve breakfast from 9am to 10am and then have opening words from both
Cheikh and Massaly (my boss and the director of PC’s agriculture program). People were trickling in until around 10:45,
so we got started with the actual program only about an hour late (i.e. “on-time”
in Senegal.)
Everything after that point went pretty smoothly. We took a tour of the field, stopping at
various pre-determined waypoints for Cheikh to explain various gardening
techniques. He did pretty well with the
agree-upon talking points, and anything that he missed/forgot we were able to
quickly remind him about through leading questions. After the field tour, we divided into three
breakout groups to rotate between stations and get the participants more hands
on learning of some improved techniques.
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| Cheikh leads a tour of the field on our Open Field Day. |
The first station was led by Kait, along with Arfang Sadio,
of Peace Corps, and Moussa Ndiaye, of Create.
They taught people how to make two kinds of natural pest control
solutions: one using leaves of the Neem tree to create an organic broad-spectrum pesticide for
leaf-eating insects, and the other using leaves of the pufton tree to create a
pesticide that kills termites and other root-eating insects by watering it into
the soil. Very good skills to have here,
where severe pest infestations are the norm, chemical pesticides are expensive,
and people don’t understand that produce must be withheld for a certain period
after spraying before harvesting. Free,
safe, easy, and effective solutions to our pest struggles are key.
 |
| Kait, Arfang (from Peace Corps) and Moussa Ndiaye (from Create!) explain how to make organic pest control solutions. |
The second breakout group was led by Cherif Djitte (the AgroForestry
Program/Technical Assistant) and revolved around proper tree pruning
techniques. One of the main legs of the
agfo PCVs’ work is to encourage and facilitate installation of live fencing. With the free range livestock model in
Senegal, an errant herd of goats or cows can destroy a field a couple
hours. Unfortunately, fencing is also
really expensive. This leaves live
fencing, with thorny acacia species as a pretty solid option. However, they need to be pruned aggressively
so they are taught to group outward instead of upward. He also taught pruning techniques for Farmer Managed NaturalRegeneration, where naturally occurring beneficial trees are protected
and pruned to grow upward and out of harms way quickly. Both of these techniques are crucial in the
battle to prevent the Sahel from becoming the Sahara.
I led the third breakout group, or at least introduced it
and then let the wonderful Youssoupha Boye take it over with his decades of
agricultural knowledge. We discussed the
technique of Zai holes in which small holes are dug and amended in a way that
captures water and increases fertility all the while decreasing the amount of
work per plant over a traditional garden bed system. It’s a great technique in our area, where
gardening practices that break up dry, impacted soils while also conserving
water are incredible valuable.
After each breakout group rotated to every station, we all
combined again into a large group for the question and answer session, in which
farmers asked the incredibly knowledgeable Peace Corps tech team specific
questions about their specific struggles.
To me, this was the most rewarding part of the day, in which local
farmers connected directly with officials from various government offices
(SDDR, Eaux et Forêts, etc) as well as Create!, and Peace Corps (in addition to
the Tech Team we also invited five other PCVs).
The amount of knowledge being swapped and discussed was very
impressive. Once the Q&A was over,
we all ate a delicious lunch of meat and rice, which was prepared by the women
of Saxañ.
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| Lunch and Q&A Session after our Field Tour |
I got a ride home from Massaly and Youssoupha after lunch
was over, while my champion of a wife stayed behind and supervised the return
of the rented tent and chairs. On the
way home I was on the receiving end of some really encouraging feedback,
positive reinforcement, and compliments.
It was unfortunate that Kait wasn’t there too, to bask in the glory, as
her ease with event logistics carried all the weight through the home stretch. We were happy it was over, but even happier
it went so well, with so many farmers and growers taught applicable skills and
so many people seeking knowledge connected with knowledgeable people and
organizations.
With the exhaustion and elation of the complete OFD weighing
heavily upon us… we got a week of rest and totally recuperaHAHAHAHAHA! Couldn’t even get though that sentence
without text-laughing because it’s so very untrue. It was kind of true for me, but not at all
for Kait. She’s the co-coordinator of
something called the Peer Support Network (PSN). She hasn’t really blogged about it that much
(if at all) but it’s been taking up a large chunk of her time and energy for the
past year. PSN is a group of PC Senegal volunteers formally trained to coach
and support their peers. These Peer Support Contacts are available 24/7 (via
phone), and anything discussed is confidential. Since Peace Corps is an inherently stressful
job, PSN serves as another layer in the volunteer support system. She’ll hopefully take some time in a future
blog to discuss this aspect of her service at greater length.
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| Peer Support Crew, as of Spring 2015! |
Over the past week we’ve been in Dakar for the annual West
Africa International Softball Tournament (WAIST). It’s a fun weekend where PCVs are paired up
with American ex-pats to have a comfy, clean homestay while everyone has a
blast playing intermural sports and socializing. We were super-lucky this year and were linked
up with a WONDERFUL family. They’re a
frisbee couple (so obviously they’re the bees knees) who both work in the
Embassy and have two delightful little boys and a super-sweet dog (also a
street dog, but well-behaved unlike our monsterbeast). They were incredibly generous with us. Sharing with us freely their home, shower
with hot water, beers, cheese, bacon, puppy snuggles, and interesting
conversations. We were having such a
good time over the weekend, that we were beside ourselves when they invited us
to stay several days longer as we went through our mid-service medical exam (instead
of having to go to the less-than-sparkling Dakar Peace Corps house). So three nights became six nights and we all
became friends! We hope to be able to
come back to Dakar for a frisbee tournament in April, and they plan to swing
through Guinguinéo next time they’re on their way through. Total jackpot and highlight of the blogging
period.
Also fun at WAIST was the actual sport playing. Last year everyone played softball, which is
fun, but as a person who never really played bat sports, I was glad that this
year they opened it up to way more different sports. It was like competitive, adult, a la carte
recess. It was awesome. We obliterated
two teams at flag football (even though the opposition kept picking up ringers
from other regions as it became clear they were in trouble) and took down a
third at kickball. That left us
undefeated going into the finals, which unfortunately, was required to be
softball… Spoiler alert: We got dominated like the main character from
50 Shade of Gray, which is to say,
quite thoroughly. We could have taken
them in flag football though. Chumps.
After WAIST we stayed with our homestay and had our
mid-service medical exam. We’re both
healthy! And have no cavities! Yaaay!
Biggest Challenge:
Prepping for the open field day.
It was SO. MUCH. WORK. There were times when we wanted to kill each
other. There were times we wanted to
kill Cheikh. There were times we
wouldn’t have been totally upset if Arfang had said the field didn’t warrant an
OFD. But with all the hard stuff behind
us, we’re glad to have done it.
Most Exciting/Best Experience: Successfully pulling off the open field
day. Putting it behind us was great not only
in the fact that it was really stressful and a heap of work and we just wanted
to get it over with, but also that it went pretty well. All of our bosses were effusively
complimentary about how the day went, and how it was an obvious reflection of
all the hard work and planning that went into it on our part. These were words of congratulations coming
from people who are typically very slow to compliment, which made us feel all
the better for all the work we put in.
Thing We’re Most Grateful For: We are definitely most
grateful for our wonderful Dakar host family.
They made us feel completely at home, except at a home that’s really
nice and has a better stocked pantry, freezer, and beer fridge than seems
possible. As an added bonus, the whole
family was a pleasure to spend time with.
Made us both miss big family dinners around a table… passing around
platters of chicken, roasted veggies, and salad. All in all, it was a great, great time, and
we are both so grateful for it.
“Grateful” means “counting down the days until we’ll next have an excuse
to go back.” Right?
Next month (half February and half March?) we’re looking
forward to:
Sue and Phil and Annah and Will! The Hammersleys do Senegal!
Hopefully some things maturing in our garden.
Kittens? (looking
forward to, or dreading, not quite sure)
The arrival of Schwinn and Wonder, our next guests.
Jamm ak Xewel,
Peter/Idrissa
