So while there are only 5 months left in my peace corps service, i havent updated in the last 7 or so months. Whoops. Oh well, not sure if i can really give a recap of what all has gone on in that time period but ill give it a try in installments of 2 months!
January
So lets start at January then. We had our regional retreat in mako at the beginning of the month where we talked about regional strategy and all the projects everyone had going on. I was able to present the idea that Ian Kate and myself had come up with regarding the regional agroforestry strategy. The basic idea is for a network of farmers throughout the region that act as relais for information sharing and demonstration fields. I think that it could have a interesting affect on the region in the cataloging of work partners and retention of institutional knowledge. We'll see how it has faired after this first pepinere season.
We also had the Ambasadpr visit the region during january to inspect some of the US government funded projects that are present here in the community. As it happened, Hassana was having a baptism for his baby girl at the same time as the ambassadors visit. With Hassanas father being the director of Peace Corps Senegal and a good friend of Mrs. Bernicats, Chris invited her to attend. It was an interesting affair, TV cameras filmed the whole event with Mrs. Bernicats entourage running her time meticulously, or at least trying to in the face of typical african delays. A few days later when she was about done with her trip, she invited a few of the volunteers to dinner with her at the Bedik, the nice hotel she was staying at. Dinner was nice, Mrs. Bernicat is a very down to earth person and very friendly. She even stopped by the night after that before she left to see the Peace Corps house and to attend one of the pizza nights that David threw at his house behind the CTC.
Megs came to visit toward the end of the month as well. We biked to Segou and Dindefelo, spending a few days out there. I was called back to Kédougou to meet with an Oromine guy (Oromine is one of the big gold mining companies that operates in the area around Sabodala in the north of the region). He has a interesting plan to reforest some of the areas that are going to be disturbed by the mining. It is an interesting plan and my counterpart from Trees for the Future was assisting them in the creation of a large scale tree nursery for their reforestation efforts.
February
In February, I was able to move around the region a little bit more than I usually do. I was able to go out to Salemata and kick it with steve, Ian, and tatiana for a day in Salemata. Ian and Steve were having a bunch of stuff delivered out to their sites via camion, so i decided to hop in and roll out with them. It was just Ian, myself, a guy from Ians village we picked up along the way and the driver al the way to Diarra Pont about 60 odd km away. We dropped off Ians stuff in Diarra Pont and met up with Steve there. From there we all rolled out to Steve's site of Kirkeressi to drop off Steve's stuff. We got into Kirkeressi after dark and we were all ready to go to bed. The next day we ended up drinking a lot, starting off with a bottle of gin in village before coming in to see the lummo (Senegalese market days). While sitting in one of the campament in town, Chez Gilberts, we enjoyed some lovely 'Le Pichet" wine. While there, two french tourists came in and had lunch. They showed up in this little Peugeot thing that looked way out of place in Salemata. They told us that they were going to Ethiolo and we all kinda looked at each other and then told them that they wouldnt be able to make it there in that car. They said they were going to try anyway. I remember driving out there for Tatiana's instal and how crazy the ride was! Sliding all over the place, really steep hills with not much of a road going up it. All that being in a Peace Corps land cruiser! No chance that thing was getting out there! We stayed there till evening time and Tatiana took off to go back to Ethiolo. Ian Steve and I had a very interesting but very delicious dinner at Chez Gilberts. I can now boast of having eaten porcupine! We had it with a nice onion sauce and spaghetti. Ian and I had a fun night time blast back to Diarra Pont after having drank all day and eaten a delicious dinner. It was a lot of fun if not really tiring!
Waking up in Diarra Pont and listening to Fac Alliance on Ians casset player as we made a avacado tree nursery in his back yard was pretty fun! Fac Alliance is a band from Guinea that sings in Pulaar, so all the vilages in Kédougou that speak Pulaar, love it. When we were heading to the edge of the village to head off for teh rest of out day, Ian stopped by to great one of his work partners. We arrive in the compound and say "As-Salamu Alaykum" to no response. The guys son also comes into the compound and tells us that his dad is in the back yard of his hut with his wife. We go back there and he is hunched over cutting something up. Ian and I greet him and his wife, seeing that he is cutting up some kind of goat. Ian and Momadou talk a little and then Momadou gives Ian a bunch of this meat. The description of the meat is as 'mbaywa ladde' which means sheep of the forest. So to us white people, that means bushbuck. We both kinda look at each other and then decide to go back to Ians hut. We cut up the meat and then marinate it in honey and cut up onions that Ian had in his hut. We then finally took off for the rest of our day.
After leaving Ian and I went to check out a site that the volunteers in the area thought might make a good new site for a volunteer. It was not too far from Ians site but it did look quite nice! Picturesque village sitting on the lower slope on the eat side of a beautiful little valley with a seasonal stream in the middle of the little valley.. Evidently there is a guy there that would make a great counterpart for a volunteer as well. Evidently the guy is a rockstar when it comes to learning new techniques and is really motivated to go forward. Only bad part is two fold, there was a problem with the water situation in that most of the wells in town went dry by the end of the dry season. Second part is that the rockstar counterpart has had some horrible luck with just about everything. Children getting sick, family members dying, just problem after problem. We went and checked out the gardening area next to the stream bed and saw the types of vegetables that they were growing. When we went to leave, the chef de village gave us a small bag of onions that the women's group had produced from the garden.
After checking out that site, Ian and I then went to Tatiana's site of Ethiolo. Ian was helping Tatiana and her village with a reforestation project for the community forest that sits on the hills next to the Basari's village. It was a fun morning. We ended up with several hundred tree sacs filled and two large bare root beds created. It was a very nice fenced in garden where we made the tree nurseries. It was the first time i had been to Ethiolo for a extended period of time in almost 2years! Its an interesting town because they are so used to white people. It makes for an interesting atmosphere. And then they are Basari and therefore christian and drink. It makes for a very fun time.
When I got back into Kédougou with Ian, I had to get in touch with my counterpart about the upcoming Trees for the Future/Peace Corps agroforestry informational tourney. Before we came in, Ian and I had planned on going out to check out a artisanal mining camp that isn't too far away from his site, but Ian hurt his hand and we had to go in to have that checked out. The tourney with Karumba was the first of three installments where Karumba came out and instructed. It was the start of the Kédougou regional agroforestry plan. The first was a informational meeting in villages where volunteers were located, where all the different agroforestry technologies are being explained. Overall the first part of the program was quite a success. A great deal of people were in attendance and many said they would come back for the technical installment later in the month
The second leg of the plan was for tree nursery creation. Karumba went around and held demonstrations on how to make a tree nursery and how to properly pretreat the seeds. Overall there were less people at this second meeting as the idea was to wean off the people that weren't really interested in the project. We even held a few seed collecting days in different areas of the region. I have a weird eye these days when it comes to IDing trees while i'm out and about on my bike. It only took 3 years to acquire but now im pretty good at IDing the trees that we use! I had been noticing some of the trees that we use the most in live fencing and other agroforestry technologies around and decided to start mapping them out and make a plan for seed collection. We ended up having two big seed collection days, one out by Franks site for Acacia nilotica and then one out near KC's site for Acacia senegal. Frank and bunch of the guys who were going to be creating pepineres this year came out and helped us collect the seeds in mbanding. It was a good time and we collected lots of seed pods at both the collection days.
Towards the end of the month, we had several things going on inside of Peace Corps Senegal. There was the Agroforestry summit in Thies plus WAIST and I believe also a all volunteer conference. The Ag/Fo summit was wonderfully placed to straddle my one year anniversary with meg and a agfo summit was really the last place i was looking to be for that! Alas I had to present the kédougou regional agroforesry plan to the assembled volunteers and then left for Dakar afterwards! Before leaving I had to sort out the tree sac order that the region of kédougou put together for the coming tree nursery season. There was a few issues with the collaboration with trees for the future and Peace Corps just buying them all the stuff they needed for their projects. While the trees for the future program here in senegal is very intertwined with the Peace Corps program, this still left a bad feeling in several peoples mouths. Everything was resolved though and all our tree sacs were ordered.
In Dakar Meg and I went out to the french cultural center for valentines day and all of our other usual haunts. Between nice cream, the point de almadies, and chez lucha, we ate very well and had a very good time. As WASIT was happening then as well we were able to stay at our home stay with two very nice friends of the PCMO Dr. Ullie. They were a Dutch and German couple that work for the german development agency. Very nice people and very hospitable. Now, what to say about WASIT. For those of you who dont know what WAIST is, it stands for West African Invitational Softball Tournament. Basically its a release valve for all volunteers to go up to dakar and have a good time with all the other volunteers in the country as well as the other neighboring Peace Corps countries. It turns into a big shit show and is an absolute blast! Kegougou always plays with the region to the north of us as we are both sparsely populated with volunteers. We always don a uniform/costume that is ridiculous and this year was no exception! We were Peace 'Cops and Robbers'. It was a blast. Meg and I went trawling through the fukiji for a costume for me and came up trumps! I found a cabbie hat that said fashion police on it and from there took the Cop angle to that of a Lt. Dangle fashion cop type person. It was alot of fun. Meg was Yoda as Kolda was Space Corps, anything to do with star wars and movies like that. Somehow i ended up being the captain for the team, i think because no one else wanted to do it! So i got to 'pick' our roster, which basically consisted of before the game starting, forfeiting and then yelling out random names for random positions on the field. It was a riotously good time. Cape Verde and Mali PCV's made the games we played against them a blast as well.
Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on how you look at it, of the tree days of WAIST, i think Meg and I only made it out in the evening once! I ended up drinking too much and passing out to recover and rally only to pass out for 4 hours! by that time we just stayed in! The one night that we did go out, we had dinner with our home stay family which was very nice and we learned a little about their family. After dinner we went to the american club where the event for the evening was being held. It was a good time and most of the guys from my stage ended up getting thrown into the pool. That sounds nice and all, but it was fucken cold! OK so not american cold, but senegal cold WITH a sea breeze. So i had to borrow mika's spare pants and shirt that he happened to have with him. Hes kinda a small guy and i was very surprised that I could wear his clothes!
So thats the update for January and February minus my x-mas and new years trip. Im holding the notes from that so i WILL write that up soon. Now onto March and April....
