Still Here

Ok so I just spent a bunch of time in my village and a whole lot of stuff happened. Actually, I wasn't planning on coming back to town for another couple of weeks but I was drawn here by electricity. In other words, I needed to charge my phone, upload my pictures and catch up on blogs!

I must announce, I got my new camera! I've been taking tons of pictures, of course, so expect me to post a lot! Here are some just for fun.

Farming

So I guess the themes of this two and a half weeks would be work and fun. It seems like it would be an easy thing to split work from fun. You know, when are you doing your job and when are you not doing anything? Even when you are wandering around your village doing nothing it still seems like you are doing something. Just having a two minute conversation on the road with someone can cause quite an exchange of culture, which is part of my job here. Then there are those days when I don't really leave the compound but end up working harder than most days. I've been helping out as much as I can in the house as well as in the fields in my spare time. In other words, I'm staying busy!
Ok, so I guess I'll talking Agroforestry stuff. That will be work.
Two things went on recently. August is here, so it's the month of tree planting, and also, on the 5th of August I had a grafting formation in my village. I'll start with the grafting formation. For those of you who don't know, mangos are big here in senegal. There are two kinds of mangos, local, small, sweet mangos that are everywhere, and then there are giant mangos. They ripen at different times, and the giant/grafted mangos make a lot more money for people than small mangos do. So, in order to get a good grafted mango tree you need to be able to do this very specific little technologocal thing called grafting. That is where you take one young local mango tree, a tree that is a year or two old, and you combine it with a grafted mango tree. This means that you combine two trees and get the best of both trees. Local mango trees have roots that better withstand the dry season, while the grafted mango trees give bigger fruits that ripen at a different time, keeping the flow of mangoes coming. If you learn this technology of combining two trees, which is just simple yet specific information that just about no villagers know, you can graft a tree really easily. So the formation was meant for a small number of people from several different villages. We ended up having about 12 people from 8 different villages. My sister made lunch for them all and throughout the whole formation I ended up biking back and forth regulating any technical problems, aka supplies. I thought the formation would be easy but boy was I wrong! finding all the people and explaining to the hundreds of other peo[people that they couldn't come was quite a task. There were some negative quirks on the day of the formation as well, like locals inviting themselves to the formation after I had already refused many people who had asked to come in my village. Argh!
Photos of the formation: Here we all are in a meeting talking about what grafting is. We got a local grafting expert to bethe formation teacher. It was Peace Corps who just organized it all.

Here they are learning how to graft a tree. First they watch and listen, then they do it themselves! Very hands on lessons.

Oh, and I did another hike to the mountain top villages. This time I was accompanied by my 15 year old brother, Soulaiman, and Phil. Here are some photos!


So, other than that, it's tree planting time! Along with that I feel I should introduce yet another group of French people that have come to give a helping hand to my village. This time there are five, and like before, it is great not being the only tubab in the village! This group's main focus was AIDS and education. They did causeries on AIDS, and spent a lot of time with the local youth of Thiabedji doing exchanges of cultures. I loved watching the eyes light up in the villagers when they learned something new, like how they dance in Paris! Anyway, one of the the first things I did with our visitors was plant some trees in the village health center. groforestry and

health come together! that was fun.

As for the rest of the tree planting, it is underway and I think I will talk about it more in my next blog.
So, what did I do for fun? Well the thing that comes to mind first probably wouldn't be considered fun, but it was! I farmed a lot. These days that consists of weeding acres and acres of land with a little tool called a keri, by hand.. Sometimes I did 4 hour stretches. It hurts your back a lot to bend over and you always end up drenched in sweat and covered in dirt. But it's great, really! There was a cultivating party at my house recently. A group of girls got together and weeded my family's field in exchange for a feast and a dance party that lasted until 4:00am! This has to have been one of my favorite days in Thiabedji! During the day I was going back and forth between watching the gals (and some guys as well) working and the field and back to home where there was a team of some great women preparing food for some 60 people! And it was all centered around my sister, Dalanda. My family explained to me that every year the girls pick a woman in the village who they love, and the work/food and party exchange takes place. Omar, my sisters wife, killed our only sheep for this party. It was big! Here are some of the happenings in the field:

And at home, the preparing of the meal.

Then the meal was taken to the field.

One of the French students had a birthday and as a surprise, they had rented a car that was to take them all to the famous waterfall in dindefello. Well, lucky me, I got invited to come along! In truth, I have been a bit ashamed that I haven't been to this waterfall yet. I feel like I am the only volunteer in my region that hasn't been there. Until now! We took a 2.5 hour ride on a really rought road to get there, walked 20 minutes to the waterfall, and then just relaxed, had a picnic, swam, and made tea m it was time to go. Haha. the tea at the waterfall was a bit of a stretch. Two locals friends of ours from the village were also invited and they brought a cot, a propane tank, and all the fixings to make ataaya (tea). It was hilarious to see all these white people there in their swimsuits with backpacks, sitting on rocks, and then there was, at the head of the river going away from the waterfall, my two buddies on their cot cookin up tea in their city clothes. I got a picture of this, which in my opinion, is priceless!
Waterfall pics as well :)

Lots of fun things happened, really. I got to show the French visitors some of my favoirite quaint mango orchards. We all farmed my sister's field together. There were soccer games and other nighttime parties. Most of all I've just been having a lot of fun spending time with my ssister and the French students, and all our friends!
Well, thats all for now. Until next time