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.

Village Hoppping

Well I almost didn't write a blog for these last two weeks for two reasons. One: I don't have any photos, and two: I just did a whole bunch of work stuff. Work? Blah! Who wants to hear about work? Work sucks! It's boring just babbline about your days at work, right?

Maybe, maybe not. Might as well give it a try. Perhaps it's good to remember that my daily life is drastically different from most of yours. I'll try to keep that in mind when writing this. Here, life is just becoming... daily. Let me know if this is boring. I suppose it seems so to me because it's just stuff that needs to be done, and often it's hot outside and I want to go in the shade and relax!

So I met a guy in my village while I was chatting with a friend. My friend and I were having a discussion about why I am not here to hand over free success to the people, without them doing anything. He wanted me to give the village forages and supplies, and he wanted me to give him 500,000cfa. I definitely won this argument by telling him that I am here to help people learn to help themselves. I told him that I am here to work with those who have worked hard, and are still working but not had the means to succeed. Anyway, I met this guy, as I said at the beginning of this paragraph. He was sitting beside us, listening. He was from a village called Gingara about 10 kilometers from mine. He told me he had a banana garden and was having problems with water, and asked if I could help him. We chatted for a while and I said I would go look at his field. So, a few days later I biked out to his village to look at his field. I must say, biking to a village you have never really been to is kinda a unique experience. Here you show up, a lone white person in a village of about 100 pretty isolated people. I can only imagine what goes through these people's heads. All the stereotypes they associate with us just jump right out. I was suddenly surrounded by women who were chatting with me in Pular, asking me who I was and where I came from, and one lady ran to get a rather strange looking clay bead necklace to sell to me. Of course they all burst out laughing several times when I said joke in Pular. The funny thing is, in this village, Pular isn't their first language. This village was a Bedik village. The Bediks live close in hand with the Pular's. The Bediks, in general, are Christian and the Pulars are Muslims. Quite often the Bediks live on the tops of mountains, which I think I've said before. But this particular village was just beside a nice bunch of mountains. Anyway, I asked where my guy lived, whos name was Samuel. Samuel speaks great French and Pular, as well as Bedik. Samuel is his village's Caticist, which is the man who brings people to prayer. Perhaps he is the equivalant to a village preist. Anyway, walked through his fields and discussed what he has been trying to to and what his problems were. Together we came up with the best possible solution to his problem. Now it is my job to go do some research and we will meet again soon to discuss how we will go about the project. That same day, after I went to his village, I went to another village close by. Thiokethian (choke-eh-chan). I have a friend I met in my village that really wanted me to visit her, so I did. Her name is Woori (woo-ree) I just kinda trinkled my way into this village as well, and asked about 5 people how to get to get house, which was the village chiefs house. Woori was thrilled to see me and, seeing how dirty and tired I was, immediately brought me water to shower with, and lent me some of her clean clothes while she washed mine. Then she fed me and mad eme lay down while she proceeded to sit over me and fan me, constantly talking about how glad she was that I came. I'm tellin ya, African hospitality... you can't beat it. While I had originally planned only to stay for a few hours, Woori talked me into spending the rest of the day and thenight there. I really didn't see much of a choice in it, because they killed a chicken for me. Anyway, I had a lot of fun getting to know about the village and the family. I went home the next morning and my sister proceeded to stand over me, yelling at me saying that she was up all night worrying that I was lost and alone in the woods, because I had told her I would be home that previos day. Oops.

A couple of days later, another volunteer, named Matt, came to visit me in my village. Together we traveled to five other villages in one day, actively looking for mango enthusiasts. Matt helped me out with really pushing to find the best farmers. His Pular is a lot better than mine, and he isn't afraid to use it! With Matt we would just arrive at a village, ask for the village chief, and then introduce ourselves, state out purpose and ask to see the best fields and meet the best mango farmers. The first two villages were really cute, quaint villages surrounded by mountains. One village was called Hamadi Heri and the other was called Ndaniaell. In Ndaniell Matt and I left our bikes at the house of a man we had just met (a perfectly nomral thing in Arican culture) and we were lead up a steep, rocky, mountain trail to our next destination. It was a lovely hike, it reminded me of hiking in the mountains at home in Colorado. The only difference was.. well, all of the vegetation and palm trees, and the oasis we stumbled apon that was a secret hiding place for crocs and chimpanzees, one of the last water sources in the dryest part of the year, aka now! It was beautiful. Anyway, we kept climbing and reached a city called Ethies (Eh-chess). Ethies has to be just about the most beautiful city I have ever seen so far in my time here. The houses mixed with the trees in complete harmony, unlike most villages that just kinda chop their way through the trees and stick a village there. Then, scattered throughout the village were some of the biggest Fromagio trees I've ever seen. Basically, they are really beautiful, giant trees. Can't explain them.. just can't. We sat under the tree and were served lunch (nice!) and watched a very old man make a metal hair braider thing while beside him a small black and white kitten scaled the protruding roots of the giant tree. There was one moment in time where the old man looked up and found him self face to face, eye to eye with the kitten, which stopped to look back at him. The old man smiled, and the kitten seemed to smile back. It just a nice moment.
Anyway, Matt and I, after a short break, went down one mountain and up the next to another village called Kessema. There we met up with the village chief who led us around for the next couple hours all over the mountain, showing us water sources, mango orchards in yet another village, called, Angusaka, and finally, he showed us some ancient caves, hidden in the forest just outside of the village. Apparently they were caves that the women and children of the mountain villages hid during war. The chief also told us stories about a woman who was fleeing from soldiers of war and was beheaded and her and her child were turned to stone, and the stone is still on the mountain trail and where the head is supposed to be there is a huge baobab tree. Matt and I saw that rock on our hike down the mountain (sorry, no camera, but it was amazing!). The day was very tiring, but more than worth it. The soil on the top of the mountains is some of the most beautiul, fertil soil I have ever seen. On the mountain villages they already have corn and peanuts 6 inches tall while in my village they haven't even started planting. There was a mango orchard there that has the biggest mango trees I have ever seen, and a banana garden!

So after that adventure I made my way back to Kedougou. There I went to yet another village. I went to Pondala, the village of a fellow agroforestry volunteer named Andy. Together one day he and I went to a roadside village called Diakhaba that "loves to build fences by cutting down trees." There we measured 30ish farms for a big live fence planting project set for July. This project is just the first step in finding a way to fence the entire city without cutting down trees. a fence made from dead wood only lasts a few years. Each fence takes hundreds of adult trees. Not good! Anywy measuring all those farms took a whole day, and a lot of walking in the sun, and it exhausted me, but I learned a lot by working with Andy! The next day we spent in his village and I got to see his tree pepeniere, and we discussed a lot about what kinds of projects he has been doing for his service. :)

Now I am back in Kedougou and waiting for cement to take back to my village so we can make some last minute douches before the rainy season kicks into full gear.

Ha, and today I "accidently" bought an Egret at the market for a dollar that some lady had captured. I set him free, but got a pic.

Fire and Rain Daze

I am here when I am online. This is the computer that my brother bought and sent to me. Thanks, Sean. Life savor! That is a nice restaurant across the street. Unfortunately, no goats in the road at this time.

Blog time! Another blog of what seems to me to be a babble of complete randomness. These days I just take a seat in a hammock at the regional house every two or three weeks with my laptop, and write whatever comes into my head about what possibly could have happened since the last blog that I can tell about without really confusing or freaking anybody out. Haha. One example, no, I did not get eaten by hyenas and half the village is not giving me endless shit for being a crazy tubab.

Well lets see. Ive been spending 7-10 days in my village and then going somewhere else for two or three days. I went to the Basari festival for a day and a night, which was cool. We got to be tourists for a little bit. Unfortunately, my camera broke (just stopped working) so ictures are limited now. I ordered a new one but that could take well over a couple months to actually get into my hands. Ohhhhh Africa.

Every time I come into the Kedougou house I am greeted by one or two volunteers that also just got in. After a certain amount of isolation it's always nice to ask, "how are things going at site?" I greeted a volunteer this morning, who was just in his village for about 8 days and asked that question, which really, depending on what mood you are, can be a great or ridiculous question. His answer was:

"Well, lets see, We just got electricity in my village, and there are classes going on for how to build tractors, and now we are working on some new irrigation systems. And u?" And of course I replied, "Well we just finished our last household robinet (a water spicket), so now all houses have running water, and we are working hard on the barbed wire fencing project to enclose each individual farming plot.

Of course we are being sarcastic. Thats what stereotypical development is, right? But really, development just aint all peas and carrots. not when you start with a village that has just about nothing. So, when asked that question, it's hard to say what is really going on in your mind, like "well, nobody is really ever at the school to work on the pepeniere," or"Ive been trying to explain the basics of grafting to people but every word that comes out of my mouth must be Chinese," or, I just feel like people want to talk to me about development because they want to see how good my Pular is, but they never actually do anything."

And it's true. It's not always easy to be a PCV. Some days you will find nothing but failure and do nothing but discover new obstacles. Then you will go into your room for a day or two and wonder what you are doing here, and maybe even shed a tear. Then you will think of Abe Lincoln and how he failed so many times and then became this really famous guy so you think, "ok, failure isn't the end of the world."

Then when you are moping in your yard just starting to drink your powdered milk coffee drink, a man comes and pounds on your door, and (all of this is completely hypothetical, by the way), and asks, angrily, where the heck you've been, that he keeps coming over but you haven't been there and he wants you to look at his mangos and talk about oranges. So you go on over, leaving your coffee behind because you feel bad, and are tired of sitting around anyway, and end up biking out to his field. There you find your purpose. A man who is a step above the rest, who has all his stuff together, has been working his butt off for years on a goal and been through failure after failure and has come to me for help. You see the efforts of his labors in his fields, his dead banana plants, dried up garden lots, young mango trees beautifully spaced, but half died of thirst. Heck, he even planted a live fence. What he needs, you are there for. Who he is, you are there for. It's almost like PC fate! What he seeks to get and what you seek to do are hand in hand! And so with all the failures comes a little light.

Antics. Life. Work. Well, one day I was bored in my village. Imagine that. Just sitting around my compound. My neene (mom), started talking frantically about a fire and something about someones house being on fire. So she yelled at her daughter to get some water and off she went. Me, being bored, decided to tag along. Neene had 10 liters of water on her head and was walking really fast, stopping ever couple of minutes because her flip flop came apart. I would pick it up for her and put it back together and off we would go again. We walked up to the fire with my snapping photos (camera not yet broken). No house was on fire. But someone was burning brush in their field and the wild carried it and it got out of control. That happens all the time here, really. So people were all over, local fire fighters, smacking the fire with leafy branches, and woman after woman arriving with water, handing it over to the men who sprinkled it on the borders of the flames. Low and behold, they put the fire out. It was a fun sight to see. I only really told this story because I have pics :)

Then, after we got home, I invited my mom to go shoe shopping. I bought her some shoes and Nicolas, the shop man said that god will reward me for being so good to my mother.

There is a mountain I climb. It takes about 1 hour to get from my house to the top. Hendu always comes with me. The first time I climbed the mountain I had to carry him halfway because he was so small and didn't have enough energy. Now he is bigger and can make the whole trip. It is because of my nature adventures that the village thinks I'm a crazy tubab. Why would someone wander into the forest with a book instead of a machete? There is no recreation for villagers. Anyway, I do a lot of exploring and find some amazing places, and trees, and rocks. The land here is beautiful! I watched the sunset from my mosquito-net hammock (thanks, Mom) from the top of the mountain, eating cashew chicken curry (thanks, Aunt Debbie), listening to the BBC with Hendu laying under me.

Another day I was sitting on top of the mountain, texting my friend watching a forest fire in a neighboring village consume hundreds of acres of forest. Silly farmer, setting fire in such windy conditions. I drew a baobab and read Barack Obamas book.
Yeah, so the seasons are changing! It's spring in America, a transitional season, and it's the beginning of the rainy season here, and the end of the hot dry season. The first rain came on the 12th of may and it was torrential! I have never ever seen rain like that in real life. What an opening storm to the new season. It started with wind that could knock over a sleeping cow. And did not allow you to keep your eyes open. It ripped straw off of poorly thatched roofs. Then the rain fell, hard. It flowed and pooled in not so good places and all the men came out with their tools to dig drainage paths because houses (outdoor livingrooms) were flooding. Me, I was in my room that day watching. Thunder and lightning everywhere. Hendu was terrified and laid by my open door, curled up in a ball, shivering. Got a pic of this!

So the rain will come slowly. The heat will decline slowly. It hasn't rained like that since, just little storms here and there. It's still hot but now it is humid soout sweat doesn't get evaporated. We all smell reallybad now and sweat 24 hours a day. You can shower and dry off and immedialtely start sweating again. It's pretty gross. But one adjusts...

Farmers are sweeping and burning rubbish in their fields to prepare for planting. I'm looking forward to seeing the most primitive farming around. People hand dig and plant their fields, protect them from animals by spending all day in their fields shoeing them away, and then they harvest the food all by themselves, by hand. How fun.

Oh yeah and here is some pics of the inside of my hut. I had requests for these. You know, my hut is tiny. Im pretty sure there isn't a volunteers with a hut smaller than mine. Yet, everyone who has seen it says that it is lovely. It's funny. I'm known in American to have too much stuff and in turn I become a messy slob with things all over the place. Im not like that here. You go into my hut and think I have nothing. Nothing is really on the floor, and I have no shelves. I have very few clothes hung on a line above head level. Really, this cleanliness was an accident. I hate mice in my room. Every place that everything it has the underlying philosophy of keeping mice out of my room. They have nowhere to hide. :) So, on the floor is a bed, a table, a chair, a trunk and a suitcase. That is all.

And my backyard :)

Thats all for now.

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. :)

Mango Fun

Well it seems as though a couple of weeks have passed since I have last written. It seems to me, in a way, more like a year. Spending quality time being the only tubab in your village is almost like living in another world. I walked into the PC house in Kedougou today and another volunteer said hello today and I shouted happily, "Oh my God, English! I feel like I've forgotten what it is like!" In the next few hours several ice cream cones entered my mouth while three languages exited. Pular, French, and English. These people here are now probably some of the only people in the world who can understand my melange of languages! It's pretty cool.

Mangos! It's mango season here and that is what people do. Mangos. They take mangos off the tree and eat them. With all the mango trees around and the hundreds and hundreds of mangos on each tree, you would think there would be too much for 900 people. But no, certainly not. if 900 people want to eat about 5 mangos a day, that adds up! It's the starving season here and mangos are quite a treat! There are pretty much no veggies in my village these days, and no other kinds of fruit. Never. No meat really either. It's corn, rice, peanuts and jumbo. Maybe an onion here and there. Oh, and mangos. Lots of mangos. I eat about 4 or 5 a day. Don't ask about my bowel movements. I'm working on that. Oh, and bofore coming here, I think I ate about 3 whole mangos in my life. Mangos are yummy! I look forward to my 5 a day. And to make food more interesting here I have been upping my Vitacafe (a powdered sweeted milk coffee instant drink, yucky in usa but lovely in my village) to about 2 a day. Yes. And my gas has run out so Dalanda, my sister will wake me up in the morning and give me hot water from the water she is heating for breakfast. My sis btw, is still great! She is exhausted every day from being the only one that works. We are working on this issue...

Oh have I mentioned that the starving season is well on it's way. When we are having the corn couscous with sauce, it's been difficult for the locals to find what to put in the sauce. Now a days they are getting leaves off of trees. Yes. Which reminds me,one day about 7 kids climbed up a tree just outside of my compound and picked all the leaves off. They had just recently sprouted (it'sone of those rare trees that have leaves in the dry season). It was quite a speticle, kids throwing leaves down to women waiting and the bottom and running to get the leaves before another woman, or a cow, got there first. Here is a pic :) Notice how high up those kids are! Oh, and the leaves are yummy, btw. Much better than salty onion water without leaves.

My garden is still almost like my child and it is tucked firmly under my wing. The blistering heat, which easily reaches 130 in the sun (it was actually measured 142 in the sun yesterday), is detrimental for the cold loving cabbage that is flourishing in my garden due to my constant surveylance of my make shift shade structure. The sun has managed to fry a couple cabbage plants on the edge of my shade structure, but the others are all beautiful! Unfortunately, I didn't take a pic. I will next time. Who wants to see a bunch of cabbage anyway?

Cabbage is the only vegetable I have in my garden. The others have been toasted or pulled and eaten. Don't get me wrong though, there are other things sprouting: Trees, of course! My pepeniere has begun sprouting and it's perdy. Thats all I have to say about that.

So I've been kicking myself into gear and I had the chief of the village call a town meeting. Nobody showed up. What a damper, eh? Perhaps it's because they called for it to be at 10:00 in the evening and people were eating, sleeping, or drinking tea! Heck, I wanted to get out of there to pull water. Yes, I have been pushed to pull water at night now because of all the issues of people throughout the day. There have been several issues at the forage and I've been having fun with it. On days that I get bored in my hut I will go out and interview villagers about the water problem. It's kinda like I'm in a mystery novel. It's hard to explain this, so I will stop. Needless to say, there is a water problem in my village which makes my job rather difficult. Maybe I can help do something about the water problem?

In the meantime, pulling water at night is great because African women, or people that pull water, are afraid of the dark. There is no one there at night except the occasional man and his bike and bidons. They are all super nice. The night water pulling crew are now buddies.

Oh, and here is just one example of why it's not very fun to pull water during the day. People waiting in line while people are pumping non stop trying to water their cows. It's the Thiabedji equivalent to a Los Angeles rush hour. Very stressful. I've witnessed several physical fights that have come out of this issue. Oh and I finally got a pic of the forage. This is kinda a medium amount of people. There are cows waiting but most aren't in the shot.

There is a red chicken that hangs out in my compound that can fly. She flies into my garden and digs up my stuff so she can lay in the damp dirt because it's cool. I have turned that chickens life into a living hell because she killed several of my veggies and completely terminated a eucalyptus germination bed that I have been watering for 2 weeks. Everyone within 1000 feet of me knew I had it in for that chicken. The chicken knew I had it in for the chicken. Every time she saw me she would give me her upset "squawk squawk!" before tucking her tail-feathers and running, even before I started chasing her. Haha, I got many hysterical laughters thrown my way as I circled my compound swinging a huge bamboo stick and chucking rocks with my other stick, shouting curse words in Pular. They would ask me what veggies she destroyed now and I would tell them. After about 4 days of this I stopped seeing the chicken altogether. A couple days later I saw her at a different neighbors house. I saw her from quite a distance away but still when she saw me she freaked out. Hehe. She knows better now!

Hehe, so you guys still think I had a meeting in which nobody showed up. Don't worry! There was another one the next afternoon and lots of people showed up and the meeting lasted over an hour! We discussed trees, trees and trees! Then we discussed douches. I am going to continue with a douche project the the volunteer before me was working on. The village was happy to hear that. After my meeting I had a lot of potential farmers to work with, and a lot of excitement to start making pepenieres! I also visited the best "tree field" in my village. The only bananas and the only successful mango orchard in my village. It was very interesting! Bananas need a lot of water to grow and this man did it! His field just happened to be by a river with a part tucked under for flooding for the rainy season, so voila, water!

Here are the bananas. Actually kinda dry now because there is no water. :P

Water in Pular is Ndiem. Cool huh? Ndiem is very important and very hard to come by. Sorry I'm talking nonsense, I'm kind of sleepy.

The puppy is good. I don't know if I mentioned it but he is the puppy of Aggie, the family's dog that came from a volunteer that lived in my village about 3 years ago. She has about two litters a year. Hendu is now the last puppy around. The last girl was lucky, just as I was handing her over to my brother who was going to go strangle her in the forest (we had no choice, no one wanted her), a man said he would take her. He made me name her, I called her jack because it was the only thing I could think of that he could pronounce. Here is a pick of Jack on her day of reckoning. She is lovely.

Anyway, my pup! He seems to have brains. He is growing. I've been bonding with my kids a lot. I realize that before coming here I had pretty much no experience with kids. In American I went to a kid's 1 year old birthday party and had no idea how to treat a baby. Now I play with my 1 year old sister, Fatu, all the time. We are like best buds! I've become my own self proclaimed professional at getting my 4 year old sister, Dienaba, to stop crying. I like to make faces at my 6 year old brother, Usuman, while we are eating. It makes him laugh.

Here is Aggie, Dienaba, and Fatu. Dienaba was messing with Aggie putting lolly pop sticks between her toes. Aggie is very patient with the kids but when they start poking her or hitting her with sticks she will growl at them and My sis will hear and tell the kids, "Achu bareru!" or "Stop dog!" (stop messing with the dog)

Im getting tired of eating rice and corn and peanuts all the time. I don't tell my family this because it would hurt their feelings. The starving season is only beginning and my family has no money. Yay! I've lost lots of weight. It's cool. I'm helping my family out a lot. They are my family, after all. My brother sent me about one billion drink mix things. Thank you, brother, my sugar is set. Sleping outside is great. My whole fam sleeps outside. There isn't a huge bug problem because it's the dry season and a lot of flying insects die. Oh, here is my sis and 2 of her kids sleeping outside. I opened my door and had to take a pic.

Ok, closing thought! I came back to Kedougou yesterday with the auto Lumo, or the market bus. Every wednesday an african bus thing caled an alhum takes a bunch of supplies to restock the boutiques. It also takes people. Then it drives back the same day. The ride is 2 dollars. So I hitched a ride yesterday, sitting snuggles up with African women all sittingon sacks of corn. I will be spending the next week in Kedougou, and we are going to a nearby small city called Makko for work purposes. A regional strategy meetting/regional getaway. I will take the car back to my village the following wednesday. Im taking the car because it would be hard to carry a 120lb sack of rice, a queen sized foam matress, 50ish oranges, a propane gas thing, and myself back to my village on a bike.

So a picture. Our auto Lumo got a flat tire about halfway home. This is never a big deal, btw, flat tires just haappen. So we all got off while they fixed it and I was bored so I just started taking pics and then made someone take a picture of my andd got several people to be in it with me. So here is the pic. It was taken yesterday, so it's new. yay!

The Heat is On

It's April, and for us Senegalese Peace Corps Volunteers that means its hot outside! I believe that it gets up to 130 degrees Fahrenheit in some places. I don't know how hot it gets in my village because I don't have a thermometer but when lunch is over but during the day time its hard to do much its so hot. The whole village does pretty much nothing between noon and 5:00pm. A couple of days ago after lunch I wanted to lay down. Its supposed to be a few degrees cooler in the hut so I put my plastic mat thing on the floor and laid on it and just stared at the ceiling as sweat dripped down my whole body. You have to lay carefully as well, if you have any part of your skin touching any other skin its a sweat trap, so you have to really spread out. I have a bed with a mattress but it is a heat trap and I haven't even laid on it once in a couple of weeks. Anyway after laying for about 20 minutes staring blankly and occasionally shoeing my dog away, who was curious as to why I was on the floor, I gave up trying to sleep and went back outside to sit with my sis and a bunch of other people who were braiding each other. As it turned out it was cooler outside, but only because there was a breeze. If there is no wind it is a lot hotter outside.
At night my sleep schedule is strange. After dinner I lay on a bamboo table with my sis and a kid or two and we kinda chat 9:30 then we go pull water. We have oved to pulling water at night because there are less people. Then we lay back down and fall asleep until about midnight. Then something wakes me up and I go and sleep in my backyard for the rest of the night. It gets cool and pleasant at night. I love sleeping outside. I sleepon a fold out cot. I can basically sleep on any surface now. hard serfices are no problem. Heck, yesterday I took a nap in a pile of leaves behind a rock.
The hot weather doesn't always stop me. A couple of days ago I put on my gardening hat and sunglasses and a and built a bamboo and mosquito net shade structure for my future Chinese cabbage plot. (pictured without net)

It took a good few hours of working in the hottest part of the day. My mom came up to me when I was done and told me that I shouldn't be working in the sun, that it would hurt my body. Oh well. So yeah, I have a cabbage and tomato pepeniere just because. We had planted cabbage several times and something kept eating it so I made a mosquito net cover for it and tried again. Here is my baby cabbage. Perdy, isnt it?

There is regular cabbage which might die in the heat, and there is Chinese cabbage which is supposed to be more heat tolerant. I plan on giving them both shade and when it grows I bet I can get my mom to sell it in our weekly market. Then I will let the family fight over who gets to spend the money. Argh. Oh and then there is the possibility that the heat could kill it anyway, or something else. Oh well.
So April is a special month for us Agroforestry volunteers because that is the time that most of the tree pepineres are started. I started by making my own this week, just because. I got sand (I could write a novel on my sand collecting experiences, but this is all you get), and manure, and mixed it together. I dug a hole. Then it was time to fill the tree sacks so I told my mom one morning, who was sitting around munching on a green mango, that I needed some children to put dirt in bags for me. She called over my little 6 year old brother, spouted off some rapid Pular to him and off he went. He returned with about 15 kids from ages 2-11. They filled about 150 sacks in about 20 minutes. It was an amazing sight. They were all so happy to go into the Tubabs garden area and work for her. They all worked at their own pace, some filling up sacks quickly with no problem and then there was the 2 year old who came up to me crying with an empty sack in his hand. I would help him open the sack, show him how to put dirt in it and he would approach me 5 minutes later with a sack about 25% full. That was pretty darn cute. Here is a pic of the kids filling pots. The little boy standing in the light blue is the 2 year old.

After all the sacks were filled and we moved them into the hole I dug I gave each kid a nice piece of tattoo soccer chewing gum and we had a tattoo chewing gum party. The big kids helped the little kids put their tattoos on and I helped as well. It was a fun day.

So soon hopefully the pepineres will be sprouting up all over the village. Im hoping to do a few large projects and several small ones in my first year. Oh, and I dont think I mentioned this but a couple of weeks ago we had an agroforestry conference where all the Senegal agfo volunteers came together in Kedougou and we all talked about our experiences and got to discuss work and ask questions and we got seeds. It was really helpful.
Life in the village is... happening. It's hot. I've gone on nature adventures (pictured below) a couple of times to get some time away from "o haali tun," (He was just joking) and "a fenay" (You're lying).

My sister keeps reminding me that it's all part of the culture. Still it can be tiring when people constantly try to chose your future husband and when every other word out of their mouth is them asking you for something, including the shirt off your own back. It seems sometimes as if the conversation never goes beyond any of that, which makes one occasionally wonder what worth they are to the villagers. I take my sisters words to heart though and I realize that I'm still adjusting to a new culture, and in turn I am finding out more about myself in seeing how I deal with cultural clashes. Other than wanting time to myself here and there, I generally take it pretty well. It helps to see things from their side as well. Perhaps they don't quite know what to say to a stranger and that is the easiest thing to say. Like when someone is really tall, people tend to say, "Hey, you are really tall."

Just for the record, here is an example of words I hear lots and lots and lots and lots..
I like your panya, give it to me. Give me your shirt. Hi Dienaba (me). How is your garden? When the carrots are ready will you give me some? Oh and some salad seeds to? Good morning. No, I didn't eat breakfast (lie). Can you give me something to eat? Bring me some American food from your room. I had another man try to physically drag me ino my room so I would give him some American food from it ( and no, people don't know I have food in there, they assume). Give me a mango. Help me find a white wife. Marry me. Marry my friend. I twisted my wrist, will you give me a bandage? Give me a stuffed animal. Give me a radio. Let me use your phone. I'm leaving town, give me a present. Hey what are you doing? Watering your garden? Thats nice, can I borrow your knife? Can you give me some soap? When you go to Kedougou, bring me back some phone credit. Yes, I know I can buy it here but I don't have any money and I need to make a call. Buy me an MP3 player. Let me use your knife so I can protect myself. And the list goes on. About 9 out of 10 interactions sometimes it seems starts with "give me this." One of my friends every time I see him, augments what he asks for. The last time it was 500,000francs. I realize that people are joking. But often times they aren't as well. I give all sorts of answers, some work, some don't. I walked by a group of old men one day and one of them shouted me me, "Hey! I want a white wife and I want her to come live here and give me 8 children!" I replied by saying, "That is wonderful, I want 500 million francs and 700 cows and 200 sheep." Then I would look to the man sitting next to him and ask, "And you? What do you want?"

On another note, it's great having a dog. Well it has been great. Though when people see him walking with me down the street they tell me "Hey, give me your dog." Thats awesome because people here don't even like dogs that much. Raising a dog in my village will be a fun experience. He eats rice and peanut butter and corn and beans instead of dog food. He has no fences and leashes don't exist. He is covered in fleas and ticks (I take them off every day but they keep getting back on him). He has no vaccinations, he has all his dew claws and there is no spaying and neutering here, it just doesn't exist. I'm the only one who touches my dog. I always wash my hands afterwards. So far he knows only me and everyone else is a stranger. I think it's a good way for him to start out. He is starting to follow me places like to the store or the health clinic. He is good at walking with me. He gets let out of my yard in the evening and early morning and then he often finds something dead to eat to feed is need for protein. So far he is a good dog. I would say he is only about 9 weeks old right now. This is Fatu, my baby sis and Hendu in my hut.

Thats all for now.