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

People

I suppose this entry will be about the month of July because, well, I haven't written much about the month and now it's almost over. How time flies here when you're having fun! Heck, even if you're not having fun, you look back and realize how quickly it is all passing.

I have discovered that the 4th of July in Kedougou is quite well known throughout the country to all Senegal Peace Corps Volunteers. It's the party, and I must say, we had quite a party at our regional house. The planning started months in advance with budget planning, job designation and activity ideas. We anticipated about 80 people and lot and behold, about 80 people showed up,not including local friends that came. Kedougou is one of the more exotic regions in the country so volunteers often like to come here to get their "nature fix," by biking to waterfalls or going to a part of the Gambia river where there are hippos. Then there is your floating down the river to the local hotel to get your warthog sandwich, which is becoming a Kedougou norm. Anyway, a lot of region exploring went on but everyone was at the party for the day of the party. On the day of the party the Peace Corps had an activity that involved the locals, to help promote and educate the people about what the peace corps is and teach them a bit about our country. We did a 4k run around the city! The run was open to all and organized by two volunteers in Kedougou, Alan and Thomas. The radio advertised it, the pooliticians reglated it. There was a tent and Djs and American music, free cold water, chairs, registration, and for those not running, games with prizes. It was a blast! I think about 80 people ran, inclusing about 15 volunteers and the entire Kedougou police and Military forces. Holy crap those guys are in amazing shape. Anyway, the volunteer that got 1st place among volunteers got 18th place amongst the whole group. Which is still pretty darn fast considering that the 2nd place volunteer got like 32nd place.

The party was fun as well and included a lot of music, food, games and even fireworks! The African touch happenened just after it got dark when I line of traditionally dressed Basari warriors came parading through the back door in a straight line, doing their warrior dance and hooting and hollering. All the Americans gathered up to watch, and danced as well and we were delighted when the end of the line came around, to see an old lady about 5 feet tall taking up the tail end of the line, just dancing away.

Ok, on to the next thing. After the party I went back to my village, but not alone! I brought Phil with me. I know you must be asking yourself, "Who is Phil?" Well, Phil is Phil! Phil is a guy who is in Senegal doing research for the Fulbright institute on the politics of gold mining in Senegal. He lives in Dakar but travels all around talking to gold miners of all levels of gold mining, and organizations and companies and stuff. I guess that kind of explains it. Well Phil has been to my village before to look at the gold mining that it going on. I know I've written about it before. It's a really small scale, under the table artisan gold mine, and now that it's farming season, there are only about 5 miners working on the mountain. Phil is doing a lot of work with my gold miners and if I tried to explain what kind of work he was doing it would just confuse you all, so if you want to know about it just call my cell phone and be prepared for hours of super exciting and quite philosophical conversation. But really, what he is doing it pretty darn cool and I can't wait to see how all his research mixes together. The gold miners in my village definitely love him, thats for sure. Here is a picture taken by phil of Tuncara. This man not only gold mines, but he also farms, has a young orchard, and is our village's only baker. He is one of the best multi-taskers I've ever known, and he does all of his tasks well.

There are also, don't forget, 6 French people in my village. They were getting pretty settled, well, as settled as you can get on a three week stay in a relatively remote African village. There was daily play day still, and random adventures. They also did another malaria skit mixed with a dance party with music. It was basically the same play but this time it was bigger and better. This time they had a microphone, a much bigger crowd, and all the enders there to support them, they had several doctors to share their knowledge, and even personal testimonies from the locals! I did a project with the French people as well. We put some money and effort together to make a large batch of Neem Lotion. Neem lotion is a locally produced lotion made from the leaf of a local tree that naturally repels mosquitoes. Yay! We spent a long time circline the village and handing out the lotion and explaining its purpose to the locals. The locals loved the lotion and I've been trying to find a way to get the women's group to start making the lotion to sell, because people loved it.
Ok, so more stuff happened but lets move on

Phil went home, the French people went home, and then I went back to Kedougou to take part in a big project that was going on in Kedougou. The Kedougou volunteers had teamed up with an organization called Netlife, who was planning on distributing about 14,000 mosquito nets to every single bed in the region of Saaraya, which is a HUGE region just beside Kedougou. Netlife bought the nets and got them here but asked for our help in distributing them because of our experience in communicating with the locals and our knowledge of how to get around. Well, one of the volunteers took charge of organizing the whole thing. That is Matt. Boy did he work hard! Then he needed our help for three weeks in the actual distribution. Volunteers worked for from a few days to all three weeks. I worked for about 8 days.

I had no idea what I was getting into when I signed up for this! What an amazing experience! Both good and bad, fun and stressful, and it was all rapid fire and non stop adventure. I don't care to give all the details, but here are some experiences that just stand out.

A couple of fun crazy people. Crazy people are everywhere in ever culture, but these two I'm going to mention.
In Saaraya, the regional capital (it's a big village, not even a city), there is a young man who doesn't speak and spends all day walking around with a radio, walking up to people, and cracking their knuckles, both on fingers and toes. He just walks up to you, sticks his hand out like he wants to shake it, then takes your hand with both ofhis hands and cracks each one of your knuckles, then he takes the other hand and does it as well. If you are sitting, he will then move on to your feet and crack those too, but it's not as common because he usually encounters people who are standing. At first it's a bit strange but then you see him walk over tto a group of people who live in the city, and it seems as if they almost wait in line to get their knuckles cracked by him. Then there are those who simply refuse to give their hand to him when he puts his hand out, so he calmly moves on to the next person. So, Saaraya has its own knuckle cracking man. He came up to me twice and I only let him crack my knuckles once. I'm not really into that... haha.

Then there was the crazy guy of one of the villages we went to to distruibute. He was probably about 40 years old. Well I was in a room full of mosquito nets and he was excited to get his mosquito net so he kept coming into the room with the nets and doing little solo improv skits. He was a karate man, a bronco rider from a rodeo, a hunter in the forest, and someone who accidentally sat on a porcupine. He was very animated and loud with all his skits. He always gathered quite an audience and everyone always burst out laughing when he did a skit and he gave them all high-fives. The man who was helping me translate, who lived in the village said that this man was off his rocker, yet harmless.

Off-road adventuring! People in American pay loads of money to explore the wilderness in a 4x4. Imagine doing it for free with a local ambulance driver from dawn to dusk. And this off roading was nothing like... well, off roading. I guess it was. Sometimes we were driving on roads meant only for bikes. So basically we were trudging through 2-3ft tall grass and mud, weaving through trees and bushes, seeing only thick, dense, neon green forest from every angle, listening to the driver tell stories about what you should and shouldn't do when you come into contact with a lion. We passed so many river crossings that seemed unpassable at first that by the time we were done, we didn't even take a second glance at the seemingly unpassable parts. Our driver's name was Gouda, like the cheese. He was a, and I quote, "fucking badass." that man can drive!

Well, we did get stuck in the mud once. I was laying in the back of the vehicle, exhausted, on bags and bags of empty mosquito net bags with six live chickens tied up beside me protesting at every bump when suddenly I realized that we were no longer going forward and the tires under me were only spinning. Then we stopped and I hear those words you ever want to hear from your badass driver, the one who can drive through anything,. "Oo,o, c'est grave." or "This is not good." So what to do when stuck in the mud in the middle of nowhere with no cars within probably 75 miles, no cell phone signal, and no tools to get the car unstuck? Is it the end of the world? Heck no! All we needed was man power, and we weren't too far from a village full of men made of pure muscle that we just gave a bunch of mosquito nets to. So we sent a message to the village via someone we found on a motorcycle, and about 10 men came running to the rescue, faster than any tow-truck would ever have gotten to someone broken down on an American highway. They looked at the situation, had a brief huddle, gave the words and every man scattered into the forest like lions! They scattered and disappeared amongst the trees. They all came back at the same time loaded with huge tree branches covered with leaves. They dug the excess mud out from under the car in a second, and put the branches in the tracks to give the tired something to grab. Then they did another huddle, and Hut, hut! They all, single file, walked briskly in a straight line, forward on the trail. Five minutes later they came back with rocks, and big ones. 3 or 4 piled on their heads or cupped in their shirts. They put the rocks under the tires to give the tires something to sit on. Then they all got behind the car and pushed as it tried to go forward. No luck but a bit of movement. They readjusted the rocks and sticks and this time told the car to go backwards as they pushed. And let me tell you, 10 African men can push hard. The car moved more, but didn't get unstuck. They adjusted the rocks one more time. Got behind the car, told it to go, and pushed. The car leaped out of the mud and went zooming on forward as the locals jumps in the air and clapped, hooting and hollering with joy. Then they thanked us for the nets and started walking back to their village, covered from head to toe with mud.

People. We dealt with lots of people who have a very, very different perspective than us, and a very different way of thinking than us. Sometimes, when your head is full of the technicallities of the job you are trying to do, it's hard to remember that the locals really have no idea what you are doing for them, other than giving them a present. We got so many "gimme, gimme, gimme!" attitudes. We had so many frustrated people amongst the excitement. It really was up to us to organize the people and teach them what we were actually doing for them. It took a few villages until we started knowing how to get the people into a mindset of what we were actually trying to do for them, other than give them a present. Each village was different. Some were big and some were absoutely tiny and completely isolated. I distributed alone in a village of 83 people, 6 households. Nobody in the entire village had every gone to school. There was no school in the village. Of all the people, one man spoke a little bit of Pular (in this region the language is Malinke, not Pular), and one man spoke a little bit of French that he learned because he picked it up by visiting the neighboring village. In other words, he is a genius that never went to school a day in his life. Many of the villages had absolutely no medicine of any kind. Luckily every village had a motorcycle though, and it could be used in case of emergency. Unless, of course, it rains a lot and that motorcycle can't cross the river, which tends to be the case a lot in the rainy season.
Well, I think this is long enough. Even though there was so much more!

Oh and all these pictures are borrowed. I should have my new camera soon though.
Until next time!

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.