Monday, March 26, 2012
A Crazy Two Months
It’s very weird seeing them go since first of all, I’ve only had the opportunity to know them for six months and secondly because they’ve been the mama and papa bears—the most seasoned of all of us, the most integrated, and the best to answer my questions about everything ranging from Wolof vocab to where to get the best food in Dakar. Looks like when May rolls around, I’ll be graduating from ‘fetus’ status to elementary school. My apologies for being so terrible at updating my blog. February through March was non-stop madness and life will continue to be that way until the end of April when tree nurseries are finished. But the good thing is, now I have a lot to write about :)Trainings for Everyone
I spent the first half of February in Thies at the training center, learning everything about pruning, seed collection and processing, and a variety of other things that will definitely prove useful in my two years as an agroforestry volunteer. It was great to finally get some technical training under my belt and it was just in time to start tree nurseries the next month.
The day our training finished, Bonnie and I hopped in a sept place and rode six hours to our office in Linguere to prepare for our week long Moringa tourney. For future reference, tourney refers to multiple day trainings where we go to different villages to teach about subjects related to health, environmental education, agriculture, etc. We decided to visit 14 villages in our region to talk about the miracle tree-Moringa. The day before our tourney started, we were all busy perfecting our dances and skits, preparing our talks and painting visual aids. As the resident artist in my region (which is quite laughable since before Senegal my artwork was strictly doodles), I was in charge of designing all of the aids. It actually turned out to be a lot of fun and I ended up drawing pictures on how to cultivate the tree, how to make powder from its leaves and the nutritional content contained in the leaves, all on white sheets of fabric.
Each day we visited two to three villages and were gone from 8am to 6 or 7 at night. Long days but the tourney was by far my favorite thing I have done in country so far. On the first day, I woke up early to make my lunch: delicious tapalapa bread (soft village bread that resembles a baguette) stuffed with salad I had made the night before. Finding something to wrap my sandwich in was the hardest part—I settled on old newspaper. Bright and early, ten of us packed into the bed of the pickup...some sitting on the edges of the back, others curled up on the floor, but all of us wrapped tightly in scarves and sweatshirts to keep out the chilly wind.
Packed in with shovels, picks, mats, and our lunches we wrapped about Senegal and sang random songs as loudly as possible to distract ourselves from the cold. And as we had an out of towner with us (a volunteer from the North), we made sure to point out every single camel we passed (even though he has plenty of camels where he lives).
Here’s a little background about Moringa-it’s a non-native tree that grows extremely well in Senegal since its drought resistant and can grow in almost any type of soil (one of the few trees that actually thrives in my region). The tree is great for planting in fields as it is nitrogen fixing and can be used in live fencing, wind breaks and other agroforestry technologies. Most importantly, Moringa leaves are incredibly nutritious. To name a few, gram for gram Moringa leaves have equal calcium to 4 glasses of milk and has the same amount of vitamin C as four oranges. Moringa has the same amount of protein as one egg and the potassium of three bananas. As fruit and vegetables aren’t always easily accessible in Senegal, the point of our tourney was to promote the propogation of these trees. We taught villagers how to make powder out of the leaves which can be mixed in with any kind of food (even morning coffee) as it’s tasteless. (Reminds me a little bit of a Metamucil commercial).
The tourney was incredibly gratifying—seeing villagers laugh at our crazy skits and dances and seeing how interested they were when they asked all kinds of great questions. We started out our talks with skits about picky eaters who didn’t want to eat their vegetables, a mother who had a malnourished child, guys who didn’t have the energy to dance…until they ate some moringa, and ladies at the market selling fried dough rolled in moringa powder. It’s so funny seeing what Senegalese find humor in—the parts they found funniest involved a volunteer having farting problems and a woman crying about her malnourished child. Interesting. I think they found the malnourishment part so funny because they think it’s hilarious when we know
random Wolof and Pulaar words. After theater I led a discussion on how to cultivate Moringa
through tree nurseries or direct seeding. The first day was definitely a bit terrifying since it was my first experience with public speaking in another language. Surprisingly I managed to get everything out that I wanted to say and by the end of the tourney I felt completely confident
in what I was saying and it actually flowed! The best part of our talk was our beautifully choreographed dance (thank you Jenn and Fae). To the background music of Shakira’s ‘Waka Waka’ we incorporated all of Senegal’s favorite dances and added a little bit of American flare.
During our dance we sang:
“
Xam ngeen sap sap. Xam ngeen Nebedye.
Sap Sap
Neerxna, Nebedaye Neerxna. Neerxna tropp pur wergu yarum.”
[You all know Sap Sap. You all know Nebedaye. Sap Sap is delicious, Nebedaye is
delicious. Very delicious for
nutrition.]
For weeks after having the Moringa talk in our village, people in my village would chant “Sap Sap Sap Sap” every time they saw me and everyone-men, women and children have all been asking me for Moringa seeds and powder. It’s so exciting to get people interested and on board with something you are trying to promote. Overall our tourney was a success and I can’t wait until our next ones this summer—one focused on gardening which I will hopefully be organizing and another on proper hygiene.
A Tree for Everyone
For our first tree nursery I decided that I wanted 200 tree sacks filled in the women’s garden
closest to my house. So after visiting the president of the group three times to make sure she and the other women would be there, and after talking to as many women as I could, I managed to get almost all of the women to come to tree nursery day (although all of them were at least 45 minutes late…there is no such thing as being on time here). While me, Jenn and Fae dug and prepared the bed we had women sitting around pans full of manure and sand, filling tree
sacks. Surprisingly, they were all very happy to help and for the most part, did a good job. I think part of the reason that they worked so hard was due to the fact that we promised singing and dancing when we were finished. So as promised, we started out with our ‘Waka Waka’ song and dance and amazingly, all the women started jumping in. It all digressed into my women reproducing all of the skits that we had done during our Moringa talk. I was so happy that I almost cried—the fact that they had paid that close of attention and had loved our talk so much
was inspiring.
The next day we enlisted the help of some random boys to help us carry our super heavy bags of manure to the other women’s garden a little farther into my village. These women were also fantastic and filled tree sacks with smiles and no complaints (except for the 5 minute fit about how they wanted fruit trees—which don’t really stand a chance in our climate). After filling 200 more sacks, we celebrated again with singing, dancing and skits.
Finally on the last day of tree nurseries, we traveled to the next village over, Medina to work with the Marabout’s son Assane and his helpers. While we managed to fill close to 300 sacks, this day was by far the most stressful of the three. As Assane had to keep leaving for two hour prayers and we didn’t have a steady base of helpers, it became very frustrating at times trying to monitor of team of young kids. Thankfully we managed to get everything we wanted finished and we were treated to sodas, two lunches and couscous with sugary milk for dinner—almost worth the nine hour crazy work day.
From Thiamene, we left for Jenn’s village of Mboula, a two hour car ride into the bush. Bush cars are basically large pick-up trucks with wood planks latched to the back to use as benches. The only way for us to get to four of the villages in our region is to take one of these cars-hanging off
the sides of trucks, ducking thorny tree branches and squinting our eyes against sand and stray pebbles that shoot up from the tires. In Mboula we worked with Jenn’s womens group, and just as in my village, the women were all fantastic and willing to help. In a couple hours we managed to fill 100 tree sacks in a beautifully dug bed. On the non tree sacking days we created visual aids, skits and talks about nutrition to present to middle school students in her village. The talk was a hit and all of the kids were eager to answer our questions and ask some of their own, and most of laughed at our attempted humor. The best part was that they really seemed to understand what we were teaching them (success for us as sometimes our Wolof can be hard for them to understand) and after we were done, the teachers reviewed everything we said while using our visual aids. Just like the Moringa tourney, it was so gratifying being able to teach village kids something new, as well as give them a break from their usual lessons.
After Mboula we jumped back on the bush car and headed to Fae’s village—Mboulekeh. Fae decided that she wanted a 1000 tree project at the high school to be her big goal for her service so we arrived with a lot on our plate. After having gone through the process twice by that point, we kind of knew what we were doing and Mboulekeh turned out to be a lot easier than either Thiamene or Mboula. The first few days we collected our poop which turned out to be a piece
of cake since we found a compound that exclusively kept cows. We were able to go into the pen and shovel up the soil which was 99% stepped on and powdered poop. Such a time saver-thank you fat cows! We had planned on filling tree sacks to take four days in village, but with a lot of
help from students and teachers we were able to fill 600 sacks on the first day and last 400 on the second day. For the most part the teachers were fantastic at organizing the students into teams of mixing the manure with water and filling tree sacks and in no time we had 5
tree nurseries filled. The best part was coming back to the high school after lunch on the first day. The three of us had decided to get the rest of our beds dug (The most labor intensive part) early so that we wouldn’t have to rush. After a nap and a walk in terrible heat, none of us really felt like picking up shovels, so when we arrived and saw Fae’s brother, a teacher and another high school student with two beds dug, we were absolutely ecstatic.
Lessons learned from my first tree nurseries: 1. Make sure
to find a house that has manure already pounded 2. If that can’t be found, soak
poop in water the night before…makes it a hell of a lot easier to pound 3. Make
sure to have a solid base of workers to help with filling sacks 3. Get the
digging and prep done early so you don’t have to rush 4. Bring lots and lots of
cold water
Ba Beneen Yoon Super Stagers (Until Next Time)
After a month spent in village, we finally arrived in Linguere ready to die for a couple days with movies, food and some much needed wine sacks. While nice to finally relax, there was a bit of a somber mood in the house as we were having a party to say goodbye to four volunteers leaving for home.
Luckily the day of the party, all four seniors were out of the house finishing up an AIDS project they had been working on so we had full secrecy to make our feast. We decided on onion rings, fried peppers, stuffed peppers, hummus, macaroni salad, bean dip, cakes, alphabet pretzels and pickles—all homemade. We had enough food to feed an army (luckily we are one).
With the help of Jenn and Fae, I designed fabric posters featuring camels eating yogurt trees (which we all signed), in celebration of our regional rap “Yogurt Camels” to the beat of “Black and Yellow”. We spent the night eating delicious food, drinking gissap (gin mixed with bissap juice…which we also made ourselves), playing trivia and other games and watching videos of our four fabulous senior volunteers. There were contests to decide who had the longest tongue, African dancing, an hour of time where we all got sick, and amazing Queso dip which the missionaries brought over. I still can’t believe that four of our group is already leaving and that six newbies will be here in a month! Kim, Emily, Ann Marie and Justin have been like mama and papa bears to the Linguere region and they’ve been our go to’s for all our questions and our roll models in how to be completely integrated and successful as a volunteer. It’s sad and scary to say goodbye but I’m ready to become a mama bear for another new volunteer.
When I return to village tomorrow I’ll have 1,000 tree sacks left to fill before I retreat to mini America again for my birthday on the 4th and this time I feel relaxed and confident that I can get it all done. April will be just as crazy as February and March but I like it better that way. I
like being busy and getting work done and it certainly makes the time fly by. To give you an idea of what my schedule is like in Senegal, here is what my next couple months look like:
March 27th-April 3rd: Fill 100 more tree sacks in women’s garden #1, 250 more in Medina and 750 at the health post in Thiamene
April 4th: head to Linguere simply so I can spend my birthday watching movies, skyping and
eating good food
April 5th: Help with a large garden/farming training at the field in Linguere
April 6th: Head out into the bush to Yang Yang for the delivery of a brand new ambulance to the health post
April 7th-9th: Back to Linguere to celebrate my birthday with other volunteers and prepare for
meetings. Leave for Thies at midnight on the 9th
April 10th-14th: In Thies for my agroforestry summit (all agfo volunteers get together for a conference at the training center)
April 14th: Head back to Linguere for a party for the new volunteers visiting their permanent homes for the first time
April 15th-the end of the month: Seed all 2,000 tree sacks in the four tree nurseries and start planning what the hell I’m going to do for the hot season months (when it gets in the 130s everyday :)
Here are some highlights from the months of Febraury and March:
· Driving a half an hour into the bush to find a random tree in the middle of nowhere to have a picnic under. All 14 of us camped out with our assorted lunches of boiled eggs, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, salads, cliff bars…
· During this picnic-going on a quest to knock down boabob fruit so Jono could try it for the first time (this involved me getting on his shoulders and whacking at the fruit)
· Singing “Ain’t no Mountain High” at the top of our lungs while sitting on the back of the pickup truck as we rolled into the city of Dahra early in the morning
· My baby brothers Ouismane and Ahmed rocking some broken shades
· Getting to lunch bowl early in Jenn’s village…realizing it was rice and chicken…silently and spontaneously dancing at our luck
· In one month having sphaghetti four times, countless boissons and fatayas and plenty of bissap juice
· Getting completely and irreversibly hooked on True Blood and GLEE (we made it through all four seasons of True Blood in about 10 days).
· My little brother Ada Sow repeatedly saying my cats name—Issa Sow with the cutest high pitched voice ever.
· Making Tubab gris-gris. Gris-gris is jewelry that a religious leader has blessed to ward off anything from jumping snakes to knife attacks. We decided to braid fabric together to wear
as anklets. Mine wards off scorpions (Fae got stung by one in my village), Fae’s wards of sumpo canja-a particularly disgusting Senegalese dish, and Jenn’s wards of bugs of all kinds.
· Riding a camel in my backyard!
· Seeing dogs in holes on our permaculture field trip
Love you all, thanks for reading, talk to y’all soon!
Cheers,
Tubab Erin