I don't want to be a snitch, but it was somebody on this bus.

31 March 2009

Tree Grafting!


Greetings again everyone! Well, my friend Maggie did it! She put on an amazing teaching session for Kolda Region villagers to come learn about tree grafting and basic tree pepinere techniques.

The formation was held in a village called Keur Bombey (or Cuer, not sure which language it's in) which happens to be the home of a GIANT banana plantation. The plantation is run by a man know as the Banana Baron. Seriously.

The story goes as such, we headed out in two sept-places to Bombey. No one really 100% on where it actually is, me hoping and praying my two villagers made it on their own.

Long story short, no car break downs and we found it. A tractor arrived to take the bunch of happy villagers ready to learn to the actual village.

The afternoon of the first day was spent touring the enormous place and hanging out with everyone.

Day two was the big day. After breakfast we headed over to the school to learn proper pepinere techniques. It was quite fun watching a bunch of dressed up people digging in manure. After that we moved on to tree grafting which is what this image is showing. The woman is the woman I'm named after in my village, Woppa. S
he's the president of our women's group and neat woman all around.

After our learning sessions we had wonderful lunch prepared by
the ladies of the village. Good ol' maffe gerte. Of course, I didn't eat with a spoon. I like to be culturally sensitive, aka, I didn't bring one.
In the end it was a great success. We even had a little certificate ceremony at the end for each of the participants. Let me tell you, they were all really, REALLY happy to get one of those.


16 March 2009

Dry Season Gardening

The hot, dry season is here and you know what that means? Gardening!

Down by the farrow (the bog where we harvest rice after the rains) has become dry enough to set up gardens for the next few months. They grow all sorts of things; lettuce, cabbage, bitter tomatoes, regular tomatoes, okra, carrots, onions and more!

Every one in my village has a little plot down in this space. Every morning someone, usually a woman, goes out and waters. This involves dunking a bucket into a big hole and walking the bucket where the plants are. Not the greatest, but it works.

In the early evening everyone, including myself, heads down to water and gather treats for dinner. I don't show up there to "work." I don't water, I don't weed. Some people may call that lazy, but I'm here for other reasons. I come to learn. Just by hanging out with my villagers in their gardens, taking pictures, asking questions and usually getting a few snacks out of it is work enough.

The next step is how to make this space more useful year round. My friend, Demba (in the picture, on the right) Wants to set up permanent wells just outside of the gardens and big cement basins in the gardens to hold water so it would be easier, and in turn, a more effective and productive practice.

We'll see what we can do about that!

09 March 2009

The Well!


Alrighty friends, my project is underway.

Here's what's going on: We're building a space for a garden a minute walk from the village. It's going to have a real chain link fence and a well inside so we don't have to do extra walking!

Currently, my villagers have a garden, but it's a good 40 minute walk into the bush and has HORRIBLE bamboo fencing that needs to be replaced every year and is easily trampled by sheep, goats, cows and mbambas...whatever those are.

After this garden space gets up and running I want to start a little garden space near the current well (near my house) for a kids garden. It'll be nice to teach them basic gardening practices and have a space for me (and future volunteers) to grow a few snacks.

So, here's the well so far! More to come!



It's really really exciting.

01 March 2009

Baptism

Here's Papa, offering me a cookie.
















Sali's the one in the middle. With all the make up.









Here we go again...

Ok, so if you're reading this you probably have received my mass emails and I'm going to assume you kind of know what's going on.

Here's the deal, I'm really going to try my darndest to keep this blog thing up now. This is going to be geared towards my two teacher friends, Grant and Jared (thanks for enriching America's youth) and the Salina Rotary Club.

I was totally against this idea (blogging) for the first six months but now that I'm settled and actually have projects in the work I'll talk about them here!

This is also a place I can do a better job of displaying photos. I know how annoying it is to get enormous photos in your email, but I'll still send out the ones I consider to be gems.

Boring stuff is over!

On to fun!