Straw Fun

Africa! I love it yet I hate it. It's like living anywhere I suppose. My last two weeks were filled with frustration, new levels of realization, and then reconciliation, and I'm back into my comfort zone and realized that the whole time I never really stopped progressing. Neat huh?
I left my village for a week to attend several meetings with all the volunteers of my region. We had a day long meeting with the volunteers and representatives from other development organizations. We talked about the roles of volunteers and what we could do to help these organizations and what they could do to help us. Basically we talked about how we could all work together to make a bigger difference. I thought the meeting went well and hope we can have more. This meeting seemed like just the ice breaker for me, but it definitely got me thinking in a new direction.

After that we rented a bus and drove to Makko, a hip little road side town about 30 minutes away that sits on the river and is known for it's nice riverside campements (an affican village version of a hotel), and its hippos. We had a two day all day meeting there and on our breaks we would go to the river and watch the hippos.

I ended up going back to my village a week after leaving it. I didn't ride my bike this time around. I instead took the "auto lumo," the bus that goes to re stock the stores. The driver, named Ibu, is my buddy now as I have been taking the car a lot. I've put sacks of rice on the car, taken my dog on it, my bike,and now I've put a queen sized mattress on it, so the car has become a valuable tool for me. Ibu (short for Ibrahim) is a great driver. He takes responsibility for every detail of his weekly trip He makes sure that his helpers are loading it properly so nothing breaks, then before leaving he makes everyone inside move up to give everyone else room. Then before he takes off, he does a head count to make sure the amount of tickets purchased match the amount of people. Well, last Wednesday, when I was heading out to my village, Ibu refused to put a sack of rice on the car for me because he insisted that car was full. I thought about trying to argue with him (its the African way), but he has been so nice to me I just let it go. It was hard not to argue because my family has literally no food. I just asked nicely a couple more times to no avail. Well, after we got to my village with no rice, my brother said he would bike to Kedougou the next day to bring the rice (that is 120 lb sack on the back of a wobbly African bike, that is how bad he needed the rice). I felt bad once again. Then, to my surprise, Ibrihima called me to him before returning to town and told me he would be back the next day with a load of rice, and offered to bring a sack for me. I was so happy! So was my brother :) So, my family got their rice and I maintained my good relationship with my auto lumo driver.

So, I had been away from my village for a week. Omar, my brother was the one who takes care of my garden when I'm gone. Well thankfully he watered while I was gone, but unfortunately my dog missed me, and kept breaking into my garden and sleeping in the cabbage, and he broke it all. Apon hearing the news and standing over my broken cabbage, I let out a big sigh and just walked away. A couple of days later I pulled it up and tossed it over the fence. Gardening in Africa is hard. If I were there every day then perhaps I could prevent most of the mishaps that happen in gardens. But so far, every time I leave something ruins something. But! The good part, I water less now! I'm tired of pulling water! Now I only have to pull 80 liters a day instead of 120. I have 2 tree nurseries and two seedbeds of trees now, that is all I water. The thing with my tree nurseries, toads have moved in and sleep between the sacks during the day and emerge during the night and dig into the cool dirt in the sacks, while in the meantime digging up the seeds and preventing germination. I go toad hunting every night now. I get 5 or 6 toads a day, I grab those bastards by the head so they don't pee on me and I throw them like a baseball, as far as I can into the corn field. It's quite a sight. Their arms and legs flailing in the air followed by the distinct "plop" sound they make when hitting the ground.

This week in my village I've been giving out tons of sacks for people to plant trees. I brought about 2300 sacks and I'm almost out. Most people take about 25 sacks with the plan to plant one cord (fourth of a hectre) of mangos. I've also head several kids and a couple of old women ask for between 3 and 6 sacks. I have a feeling that those mango trees will be the best taken care of. There are a couple of farmers that I am working extensively with, and I am looking forward to seeing the progress of our work. One farmer is the towns only baker, who has shown his dedication both in his words and by showing what he has already done with his field. The other farmer is the banana/mango orchard guy who has the nicest field in my village. I am doing live fence projects with both of them, which is planting hundreds of small trees around the border which will grow into a barrier to stop animals from entering. I am also working with our school, which has turned out to be really fun. The director of the school is really motivated and excited about planting trees in the school grounds, and also excited about a cold season garden for later this year. We are planning a tree nursery of between 600-800 trees. It's neat because I get to design it from scratch. There are 4 classes of about 30 students who will be participating. I've made it so each kid will get about 3 trees to take home, a mango, a nebadie, and perhaps a cashew tree (maybe other options), then there will be a school pepeniere of several species which will be planted around the school grounds.

Being poor is hard. Not having food is hard. Not having work coordinated and shared is hard. My family is feeling the affects of these hardships, and in turn, I am. We are working through these issues slowly, and I am lucky to have a family that readily communicates with me.

This week I got my roof re-thatched! It's the American equivalent of getting new shingles. This event has been months in the making. Roofs of village huts are made with straw and last about 4 years. My straw has been on for 5 years now, so it was overdue. My brother did the job for me with some helpers. One of the helpers was my 15 yearold brother, Soulai. I don't know if I've said much about Soulai, but he is a character. He is your typical 15 year old high school student. He thinks he is the king of the world and the ultimate cool. He even started his own rap group and they are known, worshiped and mocked throughout my village. The group is called "group happiness." There went from being 4 members to 8. My brother is the self proclaimed leader. You should see what they wear! Jeans cut and frayed at the end. Pants with one leg rolled up sagging down to show bright yellow boxers. All kinds of accessories, hats and broken sunglasses. Blue army vests over red shirt and yellow basketball shorts. It's great. Often when they are at my house (they go to school in a neighboring village, and come home when there is no school), the group sits under the mango tree behind my compound and drink tea and joke around. One day they asked me to do a photo shoot. And so here I present, Group Happiness! Oh, and by the way, they have no songs yet. I'm supposed to write one for them in English.

Group Happiness is great. They are good in the fact that they joke around and have fun, bad in the way that they think they are better than everyone. My brother asked them to help with getting my straw ready for my roof one day. They worked hard! It was sweet. I took pics.
The actual application of the straw only took about 5 hours and was done by about 6 men. They worked for tea and lunch. I bought them a delicious lunch, Yassa! It's an onion/oil/mustard/vinegar sauce put over rice. It's usually only served in cities because the ingredients are expensive. It was a fun day! Here are some re thatching pictures.

The mango orchard! Mangos are becoming scarce in the village because people have eaten them all. So my mom sent my sister and me to the mango orchard where we paid 200cfa (about 50 cents) for a bucket full of mangos. The boys that hang out in the orchard collected the money and climbed the trees to get us ripe mangos. It was fun! And the mangos from this orchard are some of the best in the village. There is nothing quite like wandering through the tall trees and picking off a mango of your choice and eating it while gathering others to take home.

The mango boys are shy. I got a pic of them though after we were done gathering. Here they are.


Oh and I keep forgetting to mention. There is an organization called Sodafitex that is giving literacy classes to adults in villages. It is absoutely amazing and one of the few opportunities for village women to improve their education. There are about 25 students, 23 women and 2 men. They are learning to read and write in their native language, Pular. This is great because formal education is done solely in French, so they never really learn to read or write in their own language. The class goes on for a 3 hour period 4 days a week. The fact that these 23 women can leave their household duties for 3 hours 4 days a week is amazing. My sister struggles very hard those 4 days every week to get her work done and go to class. I am so proud of every woman who attends. I go to the class whenever I am in town, which is a lot. I am a welcome member of the class, and for me, it can become an amazing phonetics class. The classroom was hand made by bamboo fence with a straw shade structire, and the desks are made of sticks. Each student gets a free notebook, pen, pencil, reading and math book, and a little blackboard. What a great opportunity to learn. Everyone works together in the class and has a great time. Here is a pic of what I see in the class, I have a seat in the back.

So I'm in Kedougou today. I wasn't planning on coming in for another week or so but here I am! Hayes, a volunteer in a village about 12 miles from me came to visit me, and then we rode our bikes to Makko 37 kilometers away to visit a campement. Hayes works with campements. The bike ride to Makko was absoutely amazing and left both me and Hayes thrilled. It reminded me of biking through mountains in Colorado. We wove and navigated through mountain paths and there was a nice breeze, lots of trees, and no one else around. After spending the day in the campement talking with the locals about "left" and "right" Muslims, and then eating lunch and diving into the Gambia river with 10 local boys and a German man, we rode our bikes 45 Kilometers on the main road back to Kedougou. That means we rode about 82k in one day. Hayes and I both wanted to die after that. We got home after dark and ate, then passed out.

Today I slept until 9:30am. I usually can never manage to sleep after 8:00. Ha! Now here I am writing this blog, and now I am going to post it. :)