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. She'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.
3 comments:
the senegalese love their certificates, don't they?!
i hope one day i can meet the banana baron personally. he sounds like a legend.
Jess, it looks like you're having an awesome time! I really hope that sometime this summer I can come for a visit, that would be amazing.
I wanna eat with my hands! Keep putting up pictures, I like them. In a creepy way. :)
grouse 3, over and out.
what a positive development for these folks - the follow through will be really important in order to start a permanent improvement. congratulations on the progress to date. keep it up!
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