Monday, May 3, 2010

Hello American subscribers and surfers!

How about this dreaded hot and dry month of April in Senegal? That month that, when thoughts of the painful heat with no air conditioned room to escape to except for the atm stand in the bank in town arrive, you can't help but cringe no matter what time of year it is.
Well, guess what? April is over and I don't even remember how hot it was. I was too busy having fun playing with the people!



This month I learned a lot of things, and perhaps I even got some things done. If I had to chose a theme or two for the month, first, facilitating things. Second, fun random stuff, like marching in a parade, climbing a couple of mountains to visit Bedik villages, and an overnight trek to a waterfall. That is basically what I did all month. I ate lots and lots of mangoes, and I facilitated a lot of stuff, and I had fun. How did this come all about? Well, I will try to explain it to you in the most entertaining and comprehensible fashion that I can.


Marching, marching, marching.

Well it just so happens that the 4th of April is Senegal's Independence day. Isn't that just lovely? So in Kedougou they had a nice parade where everyone who was any sort of group was to come dressed up and march in a colorful parade. The length of the march? About a block and a half!
Well, as I recall, for our American Independence day the Peace Corps had a big party and Senegal was invited, so this year Senegal invited the Peace Corps to take part in their celebration by marching in their parade as well. Seven of us complied.
It was fun. We got to stand around for a few hours watching people stand around for a few hours.



We goofed off and took pictures and had lots of people take pictures of us. Yes, we were the only white people to be seen. There was a moment where a man walked up to us and just took a several minute long video on his phone of us standing there and doing nothing.



Of all the people dressed all fancily, I don't see what our sensitive to the sun pale skin and ridiculously casual dress gives to entertain that the group of scantily dressed cheerleaders a few feet away from us did not give.



And so we marched. Behind a group of people wearing fruits and vegetables and in front of scantily dressed dancing women. We had no float, no sign, just a giant pictures of Barack Obama's face that we decided to bring the last second. It was nice. It gave the people something to shout at us rather than “tubab!”



It was nice. We got to be on television. We got a couple of nicely wrapped photos of us marching that a bystander took and printed out for it. All in all it was a good experience.


Garden group evolution/ Learning to facilitate stuff.

Well, gardening season is over. The women are exhausted from watering every day and so all the tomato plants were drying up. The materials that they have been scrounging and saving their pennies for for so long were just sitting in a shed getting covered in dust. The wind was flying through the grillage fence and rogue straw was getting caught in the links. My groups were forgetting how fun it is to work together and create. Something had to change!

How about some new knowledge? How about a composting formation? Hmmm hold on, I've never made a compost pile myself. I've never gathered people together and taught a new technology. Heck, I've never done much actual teaching in my village at all. I needed some help.
I called a friend of the Peace Corps and a great business man named Hassana. I also asked my friend Alan to help. I figured that if three minds were put together, we could teach my villagers how to compost and maybe teach me how to teach.. Not only was Hassana and Alan's knowledge and encouragement important to me, but I also wanted Hassana to meet the villagers to whom he supplied many wonderful garden materials, and I kinda of wanted them to meet him as well. Hassana is one of the leading agriculture and garden suppliers in the region of Kedougou. What a guy.

Boy was I nervous. I don't know why. But it worked really well. I had been talking the formation up for several weeks before it happened. The villagers had no idea what I was talking about when I tried to explain compost. They just knew they were going to learn to do something that healed sick dirt.
There was an underlying strategy to all of this as well. My garden groups were starting to hibernate. They had never really been able to show off all the fancy materials that they had gained for their village. And another point, my three garden groups had never done any sort of project together. They had always been more competitive, and just about never went to the other gardens to see their progress. So, for the first time, I brought my three groups together. I brought 4 people (2 men 2 women) officially from each group,and allowed anyone else who was interested to attend. We got a lot more attendees that I had planned!

The day of the actual formation was great. I had told all the group members to meet me at my house. We got all our wheelbarrows, picks, shovels and rakes and at 8:30 in the morning we literally had a parade through the village pushing out loud wheelbarrows that echoed so much, every single household we walked by ran outside to see what the ruckus was. It was awesome.



We ended up at the garden plot of Nikolas, who was the farthest from my house. We had all gotten there before Hassana and Alan arrived, so I explained what we needed to do before they arrived and the men immediately started to get to work on the shade structure while the women and I took the wheelbarrows and started gathering decomposable trash.



Then my guests arrived on their motorcycle. What an entrance! There were greetings all around, and then Hassana proceeded to explain in amazing Pular, why compost was great, and how to do it. Then we split into three grous and gathered materials: green leaves, dry leaves, trash, and cow poop.



When it was all gathered, Hassana and Alan explained in detail the proceess of making the pile, how and why it would decompose, and how to take care of it. A lot of people were asking questions, and we answered them all to the best of our ability. We made the pile, everyone thanked each other, and Hassana and Alan returned to Kedougou.






It's been about 4 weeks since the pile was made. It is turned every week, and every week it has looked more and more like beautiful soil. Here is a pic of the second turning.


I trained my own counterparts.

So, most volunteers have counterparts. A counterpart is a fellow villager that knows the real purpose of PCV's and helps them to facilitate things and organize and communicate with the people. Crap, I had never had that at all. And above all that, tree season is coming. I want to teach people how to plant trees but there are way too many people out there who just don't understand the way I say things. Believe me I have tried and I always end up completely frustrated.
Got a problem? Fix it.
I've been in my village for nearly a year and a half. I know the people pretty well. There are these two guys that I am working pretty extensively with in tree planting, and I decided to ask them if they wouldn't mind helping me to organize people throughout the village and help me to talk to the people until they understand why it is good to plant trees and why I am really there. They were very eager to help me.

One is Numusara. You probably know him

The other is Issa. He is younger and has recently spent 5 years in Lybia working in amazing farms and gardens. He wishes to replicate it in his village where his family is. This man is a man with ambition and intelligence.


So I made dates with these two guys to teach them what I knew. The first day we sat in an empty hut and I just explained to them the problems that I had been having with people not understanding what I want from them. “Why do I want people to plant trees?” was what I asked them. “Do I want them to plant them because I want them to work for me, or do I want them to plant them so they can have a knew knowledge that can perhaps benefit their lives later on?” “If I give someone any tree sacks or trees, is it because I am giving them a gift that they can throw out the window and brag to their friends about or am I giving them an opportunity to give something to themselves that they can keep for the rest of their lives?” “People just get so excited that they are planting trees because I am their boss. What will be there when I leave? Me, or the trees?” Basically, the three of us had a lot of brainstorming about why I was there. Fortunately, they really got it after only a few minutes, and they started telling me about the false concepts that villagers have about PC volunteers as well.
After that was cleared up, I taught them about all of the possible things that you can do with trees. I showed them photos from my tree manuals, and showed them all the different kinds of seeds that I had. Being the biggest tree enthusiasts in my village, they both were absolutely fascinated by all of this information, especially the photos of different kinds of live fences, alley cropping, and contour planting. They were absolutely fascinated to find out that there are trees that work as fertilizer that can increase corn and peanut yields during farming season. After that I just sit there and listened to them tell me all the tree projects that we could organize throughout the village.

The next step was to teach them how to teach people how to make tree nurseries. So, we went to Issa's field and had a very through tree nursery training session. We talked about the different kinds of tree nurseries and the positive and negative aspects of them. We talked about what trees are planted at what times, with what depth and what spacing. We talked about soil quality, and the ratio of poop to dirt mixture. We basically talked a lot and did a lot of work. Some members of my garden groups had heard about the training and attended it as well. It was a good time. So, now I have helpers. Lets play!



Formations and meetings galore!

I had gotten my first formation jitters over with. So I have three groups that are ready to work together. I have three fenced in areas that need some attention. I have materials and I have helpers. It's like I'm in my own African playground. And it just so happens that this week, I was not alone. I had two American study abroad students who were shadowing me for a few days in the village. It was great! They helped motivate my villagers and made the whole experiences a lot more fun.

So we had three tree nursery formations in my three garden groups. Anyone was welcome to come, man and woman, and everyone was required to do physical labor. Each formation was different but good in it's own way. Numusara and Issa were there for every single one, and each morning of the formation I had one of them walking on each side of me, and they actually did most of the talking, I just directed the smaller details and worked with the people who were working. Each formation had talks about what trees were available to plant and what purpose and benefit each tree served. We made several tree nursery plots, both types, in the fenced in area that were to be used, some for private use by garden members, and other pots to be used to planting around the garden fence, and inside the garden.
The formations included a lot of digging, searching for good soil, cow manure, putting dirt in sacks, planting and watering. We also explained to those who were not in the garden group, how they could make their own nurseries in their backyards and that Issa or I would be able to supply sacks and seeds.

gathering poop


mixing poop and dirt


more poop


putting dirt in sacks


planting bareroot beds




All in all it was successful.

Since then I have had requests for about a couple of other tree nurseryy formations by villagers, and we also have plans to do more composting groups work with other garden groups. And we are talking up our rainy season gardens as well. :)

Meetings. Lots and lots of meetings going on all the time. Numusara and Issa go to all of them. Actually another thing interesting has happened with meetings. The three presidents of the three garden groups are starting to work together, and now all three presidents go to every single meeting, no matter for which group the meeting is. They often talk during them meeting as well saying what kind of projects are going on in their group and how it could be implemented into this group. All is going well.

Well meetings. I was recently aproved to dig three more wells in my village for three more groups. There have been meetings out the wazoo for that, and as of now I have 5 Bedik villagers digging and making cement linings on 4 wells from sun rise to sun set. But this story will be in the upcoming blog.

Leisure time.

It's not all work and no fun in my village. I have been hanging out a lot with my sister, dalanda. There were a couple of days in the afternoon where we would sit in the field behind the house under a mango tree, make tea, eat mangoes and just talk about life while the kids were playing around us. Those are fun times. My two study abroad students got to do that with us once. That was a fun time as well. Those are some of my favorite moments in the village.

We had a presidential candidate, Macky Sall, come and visit out village for about 20 minutes. I do believe that was the craziest thing I have ever seen in my village as long as I had been there. A truck came with giant speakers and played loud dance music that could be heard throughout the entire village. Every woman who was cooking lunch at that time walked out off their kitcken and started dancing right where they stood. I know, I saw this in several houses and couldn't help but laugh. Then the word spread that everyone needed to gather and run down the road and make a ruckus when Macky Sall came around the ben, and escort him all the way to the giant Mango tree that he would park under. They did this. I have never seen so many of my villagers in one place as long as I have been there. And they were al parading around and shouting Oui Macky! Like he was a soccer star. Or a presidential candidat. Macky had a lot of escorts. Most of them talked to me, asking why the heck there was a white person in a village in the middle of nowhere. It was funny...




Then everyone crowded under the giant mango tree and listened to motivational political inspirational speeches, and several villagers gave tear worthy speeches about how they love Macky and how much his visit was appreciated by them.
Then Macky gave a speech and donated 50,000cfa (about 100 dollars) to the village. Then they left.




I realize that this blog is rediculously long. But I'm not finished.
I went on a couple of adventures. The first one was with my two study abroad students, Elise and Joana.

We got a ride by my favorite chauffeur, Bruno, to two mountains, each of which we climbed on foot with a French woman named Fabienne. The first mountain we climbed was to go to a vlilage named Iwol, which is known for having the largest baobab tree in the region.






Bediks are amazing people. They are one of the most unique parts of Senegal, and there are my neighbors. I think this is cool. There are about 8,000 of them in existence. They are Christian Animists and wear large amounts of handmade jewlery and have things going through their noses. The mountain top villages have become quite toursisty and on top we were greeted by many artisinal jewlery ladies. This is my heaven. I bought lots of stuff from all the ladies and they all went crazy trying to get something of their sold. They were yelling and screaming and having tantrums and the whole time I was just laughing and picking out what I wanted. Elise and Joana went through the same thing but I don't know if they appreciated their agression as much as I did. Haha!



The second village was Angel. I've been there before and I was excted to go back. It is one of the most picturesque villages I have ever seen.





We were bombarded by jewlery women there as well. Boy did I get some cool stuff.


Segou Waterfal trip.

So I went on an overnight camping trip with my friends Alan and Meg. We biked to Segou.



Then walked for an hour or two along a river in a beautiful jungley
Insert walking photos







area until we got to a trickling waterfall.



The whole thing was beautiful and we had a lot of fun.
We had a nap, explored a bit, made a wonderful dinner, chat, read, and then went to sleep. Jest before sleeping we noticed that there were a lot of ants starting to emerge from their houses, and they were acting strange.
I awoke with a start at about 11:30 pm when my skin was crawling. As soon as I moved, every single ant that was on my body bit me. Ouch! That was about 30. On my arms, in my pants, under my shirt. Everywhere. Thank GOD these were little tiny black ants and their bite was nothing more than an aggravating pinch that couldn't even break the skin. Still, how annoying was that! I leapt up shouting cuss words and frantically brushed all of those crazy little guys off of me. I shined my flashlight onto my bed to find the whole thing covered with ants, and all of my possessions beside me to be even more covered with ants. It was strange as I had absolutely no food anywhere on me. The ants seemed to have gone insane.

It was pitch dark outside. I shined my light along the terrain. Hundreds of shiny eyes caught the glow of the light and looked straight back at me. All of those eyes were spiders that were as big as my hand. 10 inch millipedes were also crawling everywhere.
We were definitely not alone.
For some reason I made my way toward the waterfall carrying my bed with me. I was in a groggy state of mind. I walked carefully around the spiders and found that everywhere I stepped when I walked was accompanied by tickley feelings which were followed by several pinchy feelings of biting ants. What is up with these ants!? I started literally hopping toward the waterfall shouting along the way. I passed a few rather gruesome sites. We had a large zip lock bag with empty sardine cans laying in my path. The bag was swollen with thousand upon thousands of black ands crawling franctically all over each other. I had never seen anything like it. I also walked by some random scattered posessions of my fellow campers. A shirt here, a shoe there. For some reason there was also a large concentration of ants all over them. I stared at a shoe for a little while. I looked at the ants crawling over it so frantically, like they were looking for something. I gave the shoe a little tap. Every single ant on that shoe immediately bared down on the shoe and bit it. Ants don't act like this. Something was driving them crazy.
I reached the waterfall only to find ants going all the way up to it. The only place where there were no ants was under the flowing water, and that was wet and cold. Can't sleep in the wet and cold. I climbed up onto the ridge behind the waterfall. It was a bit dryer there but there were spiderwebs as big as a motorcycle and the spiders were out and sitting proudly on them waiting for anything to touch their webs. No thank you.
I went and woke my camp mates. The ants had not reached them yet. They got up to assess the situation and it included a lot of cussing, slapping off biting ants, and many many minutes of getting thousands and thousands of ants out of our backpacks, shoes, socks, and all other materials. They were even between the pages of my book. I had to put my shoes on knowing their was probably still ants in them, and sure enough, got bit several more times.
There was no way we could have stay there. It was now after midnight and we were hiking with most of our gear (we had to leave some behind, too many ants and we were stressed) back towards where we left out bikes. What fun hiking in the middle of the night in the African wilderness. Especially when most of the time there were chimpanzees or baboons, or some large ape, barking angrily at you from directly above your head, for we were disturbing their peaceful, ant-less sleep.
We made it to our bikes with no problems. It was actually a fun hike. There we found open spaces and a lot less insects. We were pretty tired, so we tucked ourselves up for some sleep.

Then it rained. All night. And it was windy. And there were chimpanzees screaming their heads off on top of some mountain and the sound echoed so much you could feel the vibrations of it in your very bones.
I think I might have slept, a little bit. I definitely shivered some too.


We woke the next morning and felt like frozen zombies. But it was peaceful.



We had a lovely bike ride back to Kedougou.

Another volunteer had just been to that waterfall a few days before us, and he had no insect problems. He also said that the very day that he left the waterfall the villagers burned all around the trail and waterfall. Poor ants, their homes must have been burned and those who managed to flee went straight to water, where fire can't go. No wonder there were so many ants, and no wonder they were so upset.

Once again, fire causes insects to put a damper on Sheila's camping trips.
But it was all in all, great fun.


Next months topic, wells! Some travel in Senegal and, I'm going to go on vacation soon! To America! It's been so long since I've had a nice haircut and slept a night without being waken up by some bug crawling on me. Should be a great adventure!