School Garden

O bugaanga daam a koy no kop ale kaa waaraa naay o ndong o ndong.

If you want to catch a monkey in the forest you have to walk slowly.

This Seereer proverb is so fitting for describing work in Senegal. Nothing happens quickly. Projects take time. Big projects take even more time. If you want something done well, expect to do a lot of waiting. At the end of January I submitted a grant application to USAID for fencing and tools to start a garden at our school. We received funding at the end of February and began purchasing supplies. It took nearly the entire month of March for the fencing to be installed, and after that a two-week surprise school vacation put the project on hold. Patience is key when working in this country. So now, three months after the official start of the project, we are finally beginning to garden. I suppose all good things come to those who wait.

Machete: the Senegalese equivalent to WD-40  or duct tape.
Fixes any problem, anywhere, anytime.

Last week I stopped by the school to discuss a timeline for the next couple of weeks. We needed to begin planning and digging garden beds, fill sacks for our tree nursery and start a vegetable pepiniere. I expected to come away with a vague idea of when these things would be done. Instead, I witnessed an entire class of  11-13 years olds mobilized into an army of shovel, rake and machete wielding gardeners. In the span of one morning (when they should have been memorizing their textbooks), the oldest students measured and double dug eight 1x3 meter garden beds and committed to planting a tree nursery the very next day. The monkey has yet to be caught, but I think we've got him cornered up a tree.

Our school director handing out tree sacks to enthusiastic students

The next morning, during their lunch break, the entire student body showed up to help fill sacks for the tree nursery. Everyone from the oldest class down to the five year olds participated; some were sifting sand, others hauled buckets of water, and everyone pitching in to fill up the bags. The kids' enthusiasm was inspiring. Watching them get so excited about manual labor in the hot African sun made me realize just how little hands-on learning kids get to participate in. The Senegalese education system is largely based on rote memorization. Kids recite their lessons in class, copy them down in their notebooks, read and re-read them at home and then are expected to regurgitate them word-for-word on the next exam. Having this garden will give kids an opportunity to get out of the classroom, apply some of their math and science lessons in real world situations and develop some practical skills in gardening.

Filling the tree sacks with a manure/sand mixture

In the afternoon we came back and planted over 200 trees in the nursery. Moringa, Leucena, Cashew, Papaya and Flamboyant. Inshallah these trees will be ready for outplanting in several months, just as the rainy season is beginning. Each student will be given their own tree to "adopt" and plant somewhere on school grounds along with a meter of chicken wire to protect it from the goats and cows. Hopefully in several years our currently barren schoolyard will be green and shady, and the students will have a sense of pride and ownership in the beautification of their school.

Using multiplication to figure out the number of tree sacks filled