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

I'm a Traveling Mu(ral)sician

In keeping with my trend of painting a mural on anything that stands still long enough, I recently just wrapped up two more projects with volunteers in different villages. This past week Jen, Mollie and I spent a day in Fasstoucouleur beautifying Ndeye Ba's boutique. Mollie has been working with Ndeye over the past year on accounting and helping her get a $50 loan to increase her inventory. She is the only boutique in town so in order to encourage people to "buy local" instead of shopping at the boutiques in Keur Socce we thought it would be nice to ramp up the visual appeal of her shop. Her previously plain gray cinder block window is now visible from down the street, and don't that coffee cup just make you want to buy some Nescafe?

All the basics; Vitalait, Nescafe, Tea, Bread,
Butter, Biscuits, Macaroni, Potatoes, Onions,
MSG Cubes...

Since the kids cant reach the window most of them come
to the door for their candy

Issatou Ba with her tomar (namesake)

Today I returned from Koungheul where I was following up and putting the finishing touches on a rather ambitious mural project to beautify the house where the wolof reading and writing class and the handicapped women's group meet. Ryan originally organized the project as a way to occupy two study abroad students who were visiting his village for a week, and since we had so much man-power it quickly grew from one mural to six. Mollie and I traveled down last month to get them started, and with the help of the two students, 4 volunteers and several of the handicapped women we made quick work of a wolof alphabet, two maps and two health-themed murals over the course of two days. On this last trip back I painted a third health mural about sleeping under mosquito nets and Ryan filled in all of the food groups on the nutritional pyramid. You could tell the handicapped women were really proud of their work, and the drab white room has been transformed by an explosion of color.

Proudly displaying the finished product

My newest foray into the world of health murals...
sleep under your mosquito net!

The full room, from left to right:
Hand washing, mosquito net, nutrition pyramid, senegal map, africa map,
wolof alphabet

Climbing the Water Tower

 

 

Here are a few shots from the top of the forage (water tower) in my road town, Keur Socce. This is where the water that comes from the robinet in our village originates. Water is pumped up from the ground, stored in this massive tank and piped out to most villages within a 25 kilometer radius. Robinet water costs about 5cfa ($.01) per bucket which for most people in villages is a pretty expensive way to fulfill the daily water needs for a family of 30, but it can save women several hours a day which they would have spent pulling water at the well. Unfortunately for us the water from our forage is too salty, so my sisters and I still have to trek out to the well every evening for an hour or so to pull water for drinking, cooking and gardening. Still, its convenient to be able to just walk 20 feet from my hut, turn a tap and fill up a bucket for a nice cold bucket bath at the end of the day.

From the top of the tower you can see all the way to Kaolack 20k to the North, my village to the West, Peter and Jens villages in the East and Jessica's village 18k to the South. The village in the panoramic shot is Keur Socce, where I go to buy food or catch a car to the city. Its pretty obvious where the village ends and the fields begin, because they have been entirely cleared of trees in order to plant more millet, peanuts and corn.

  

And on the 10th Day the PCVs Rested

It only took God 6 days to create the earth...we managed to do it in 9. Granted its a much more scaled down version, but I think it's pretty impressive none the less. Jen, Peter and I have been meeting on weekends and school holidays to paint this map on the back wall of the classroom in Fasstoucouleur. I'm ashamed to realize I didn't know nearly as much about geography as I thought I did (guess I should have paid more attention to those map quizzes in high school). This month we're going to get started on another one in the classroom in my village and then later do a third in Peter's village. Maybe by the time we finish I'll have a better grasp of this planet we live on.

Gone Fishin'

This weekend I took a quick two day trip to Popenguine to go fishing with some of my fellow volunteers from Kolda, Thies and Dakar regions. The eight of us rented out a pirogue and spent 5 hours Saturday morning zipping up and down the coast catching fish and then rented a beach house for $10 a person and spent the afternoon attempting to clean our catch. We ended up with about 20 medium sized fish and by the time they were all cleaned (we eventually enlisted the help of some professionals) we had been drinking and snacking all day and weren't really hungry, so we saved them for the morning and made a delicious chowder for breakfast.

Rolling the big heavy wooden pirogue out to sea with the help of two
logs and the "old french man and the sea"

Our fearless captain

One of the many fish Cara caught

About the least complicated way to catch fish there is...
bait two hooks, tie them to the same line and dangle it
over the side of the boat. When you feel a nibble, yank!

Our boat had several rather large leaks and had to be
continuously bailed. Even with the bucket brigade at
work the fish we caught spent most of the trip swimming
around our feet

Catch of the Day

Cleaning fish with butter knives requires a lot of concentration

Uninvited Dinner Guests

Sure sign of the hot season: the scorpions are back! My mom stunned these two within the span of our 10 minute dinner.(One of them ran right between my legs). She impaled them and hung them on the fence as a warning to the other scorpions...my theory is their screams of pain just attract more.