It's Farmin time!

Ahhhh life in an African village... It's wonderful!

Before going back to my village I spent the night with another volunteer named Hayes, in her village. Hayes is my closest neighbor, only about 20 Kilometers from my village. There I negotiated transport for my cement and then, before bed, we watched "Twilight" on her laptop! Hayes lives in a village that is smaller than mine but due to its location, it is more developed. It has power in the evenings and a middle school and cars and robinets (a robinet is a water source that works like a faucet, while a forage works like a pump and a well works like... a well.). Anyway, the fact that I saw that movie was great because I've been a fan since day one. I read that book while I was studying abroad in France.

So I just got back from spending a lovely two weeks in my village. There's nothing quite like a moment in time where your whole family is getting along, people say that you speak good Pular, and when you actually take peoples humor as jokes rather than insults. Yes, if all these things are happening you cant help but have a wonderful time. Oh, and nature always helps too, right? Things are growing! Everyone can feel the season changing and everyone loves it! The signs of seasons changing here are so different than any season changes in America. Here, the first sign is the cows. What a relief the rain brings for cows, and due to that, everyone! When it rains, cows can drink in natural puddles. If they are drinking far away from us they don't come and wait by the forage. That means people don't spend hours a day watering the cows, which means the forage, our main water source, is much less crowded! Also, with the rains, comes grass. Cows love grass, so they stop trumping through house compounds trying to steal last bits of corn from pots and pans, and they stop nosing around and trying to eat whatever they can get from us. Now we just don't see cows. Well, not very often. No more animals invading our living room is a great thing! Of course this doesn't take into mind chickens, who just live here. Man those things are annoying as heck. Imagine 8 people gathered around a bowl of rice and baby chickens weaving under your feet picking up what you drop. Aahh!!

Farming is the biggest change. I finally get to see the men work. Oh my goodness! Ok, I'm being sarcastic, but then again I'm not. Me and the women in the village joke around about it all the time. The men are finally doing something instead of sitting around and drinking tea all day. Hehe. Anyway, Everyone is out and about these days preparing their fields, and first and foremost, planting their corn. The farming methods here are quite old fashioned. The most high tech farming that is available in my village is a little metal plow drug by two cows. Here is a pic!
My family doesn't have cows. If you don't have a cow, you've got to either swoon someone into letting you borrow theirs, or... find another way. I helped my brother Omar plant his field of corn without plowing it first. With that, you just take to the field a dabo (the most used farming tool) and seeds, and a rope. You use the rope as a guide for a straight line, and you plant , bent over, digging a little hole and putting the seed in.

I did this for hours with my family. It is hard work! The problem is, that there is grass and weeds also growing over the whole field. In order to get rid of that my brother bought herbicide. My mom also has a field, right outside of our compound. She got rid of the weeds for that by waiting for the corn to sprout, then taking her dabo and spending hours each day scraping the weeds by hand. All people working with a dabo works completely bent over. It is literally back breaking work. I did it for like 45 minutes and was out cold. So, farming is starting! Volunteers said that it's naïve of me to what to learn about farming by helping my family with it. It's true that I am not a professional farmer. But the way I see it, if I'm to really learn about a culture I've got to get my hands dirty, right? And I'm still new and leaning, so learn I shall. Now I can walk out to the fields that I helped plant and look at their progress with a special understanding of how it was made.

Ok, other happenings. Random but interesting. There are now 6 French medical students that are living in my village for the next month. They all come from Paris, and are in either their second or third year of med school. They are between 20 and 22 years old. 2 men and 4 women. So, suddenly I have become not the only, but one of 7 tubabs living in my village! They have been here for over a week now and I have been having a lot of fun with them. 7 tubabs can definitely light up a village more than one! They are like a burst of culture for these people and everyone, especially the kids, love them! They have a play time almost every afternoon just playing games with the kids. They have done a play as well about how malaria is caught.

These guys came right as the mosquito season started, so they are working with malaria prevention things. I find being in their presence very interesting because they had absolutely no cultural training before they arrived. Fresh meat? Yes! Seeing how they reacted to what I see as normal aspects of daily life make me realize how much I have "integrated" over these past 10 months. Anyway, one of the things I end up being for the new guys is a tour guide. Daily life can be boring living in a village when you don't know what is going on, so I have offered nature hikes. We have already gone to the top of a mountain, where we ran into two bee hives and a snake, and got lost on the way back because I couldn't see the mountains (my vantage points) because of the new leaves in the trees. It was fun though and nobody was hurt!
Oh and just a random note about Malaria. It's everywhere here man. My little 6 year old brother just got it. He is very sick but got on meds and got better fast. My sister had it in the dry season. I asked my sister how many times she has had it since she was born, and she said somewhere around 30 times. Malaria here is seen a lot differently than it is in America. It's still seen as a scary illness though. My sis said she is afraid of it, even though it is so common. It is true that if not treated, it can kill you quickly. Luckily I am on meds that will prevent me from getting it. I also do the most I can to avoid mosquitos.

So just recently I also went on another biking adventure. This time I went to Mako (again) with Hayes to meet some friends to give a biking tour to. I swear I live in one of the prettiest parts of the country (biased? Maybe..).

The biking trip to Mako from my village is absoutely breathtaking, and once again, some of its charm is those little villages you stop at and find people sitting over their breakfast porridge, who, when you arrive, look up at you and smile. They never quite know what to say to a tubab that just shows up in their rather isolated village. Then when you greet them in their language,their smiles get even bigger. It's almost priceless. Then you ask for directions and they gladly hop up and accompany you to the proper road, and you say your thank yous, exchange names and go on your way and say, "until next time!" Anyway, Here are some pics of that trip!
There was a moment on the trip where I slammed on my breaks in the middle of the woods and jumped off my bike and ran towards a tree. Why? Laare! There is a local fruit that is in season but it's hard to find in my village because people go out and collect it and sell it to a big truck that sends it to cities to be sold! Well there are wild laare bushes all over in the forest, and I knew I was far enough from a village for their to be some fruit on the tree. Sure enough, it was full of it! How great is is to be able to eat local fruits in the middle of the woods on a long bike ride. We also came across several trees with another edible local fruit. I forgot the name, but it reminds me of kinda a "sweet avocado." I took a pic. Here.

So... that was my two weeks. I had some questions asked now that I will answer. What is a pepeniere? I guess I didn't explain that. A pepeniere is a tree nursery. It's a bunch of sacks that you fill with dirt and then you put seeds in, and the trees go. We make pepenieres to give trees a head start. We plant the pepenieres in the dry season and water them every day. Then when the rainy season comes the trees are big enough and they will have a head start so when the rain comes the tree will grow a lot more. Here is a picture of Alan with one of my pepenieres in my backyard. And here is my school pepeniere as well.

You can also make a garden pepeniere, which is like a nursery that you plant a bunch of seeds and when the plant gets bigger you plant in a bigger plot with more spacing. It saves on watering, which is important in places without running water. Here is Alan with one of the pepenieres in my backyard

Also, what is a douche! I said that people are making douches. I realize that I didn't explain what that is. I know in French is means shower. Or a faucet that cleans … well.. I dont know. But not here in Africa. In Africa a douche is the hole in the ground that you use to go to the bathroom. Every household in a village should have a douche because it stops people from pooping in the forest which gets people sick, especially when it rains and the water flushes it all over the place. Pooing in a hole is good. The hole is dug about 3-4 meters deep, 1.5 meters by 1.5 meters in size, then lined with iron and cement with just an opening at the top.

So thats all... The 4th of July is coming, by the way. The Kedougou regional house is known for having the biggest party where volunteers come from all over the country. That should be fine. I signed up to be a bartender.
Well, thats it! Oh and a picture for the road, a giant Fromagio tree. I talked a bit about them in my last blog, so I thought I'd share a picture.