5 months left.... part 4 ( July )

And the last installment for the time being!

July!!
The 4th of July was kinda like a descending of every volunteer in the country to our regional house for a big ass party. I think in the end we ended up with like 90 odd folk there. It was a good time for sure! In the morning we had the race outside the community radio in the center of town. As was the case in the previous 2 years we had done the race, the military and the firefighters were the guys who were kicking ass and taking names! I had Ian and frank be the master of ceremony for the race, announcing the race start and handing out the awards at the end. I was the first volunteer to finish, but no where near the top 5! After the race we had to take down the tent, load up the speakers and chairs, and take everythign back to the regional house for the party.

I was helping organize everything from the tents to the pigs we cooked. The pigs were really good. There is a volunteer here that is from Hawaii and i guess that pig roasts are something that him and his buddies do quite frequently there. Now weve done pig roasts before but this was a new way to do it! Usually we just dig a big hole get a fire going and throw the pig on a metal sheet or some kind of prop and cover it with a sheet and keep it wet and cook it for hours on end. This way that CJ wanted to do was a little different. Same big hole for the pig, then pile it full of logs and then top it off with big rocks and light it on fire. The idea being the rocks get red hot and stay hot for a long time. Once its burned down theres coals and red hot rocks sitting in there. For the pigs, you take some of the smaller rocks that are now red hot and put them inside the stomach and sow up the pig so it starts to cook from the inside. Then you put the pig in banana leaves. wrap it up nice and tight and wrap it in chicken wire so that you can get the pig in and out of the hole. Put the pig in the hole on top of the red hot rocks and then burry it. Once the pit is almost all the way buried, you put a tarp down as the last insulation layer and finish burring. Then you let it cook for a day. By the next day the ground was hot above the pits where the pigs were! I was a little skeptical but it worked beautifully! The pigs we cooked were delicious, the meat literally was falling off the bones. And they were still piping hot when we undid the banana leaves and looked delicious. Lets just say I was happy i was one of the cooks and got to nibble on the meat as we were preparing ( i use that term loosely as we were just pulling the meat off the pigs!). The timing of the pigs getting done and the barbecue pork being done was a little off and i was running the show on the barbecue. Only bad part was the rain that decided to roll in right when we were about done with the barbecue, BUT not done! So it was trying frantically to get the pork done while rain is falling on the grill cover. everything got done, but it was a little ify there for a second if it had in fact kept on raining. Luckily for us, it didn't and our party kept rolling. there was a impromptu dance party in the middle of the rain storm though, that was pretty sweet to see. Patrick dancing away while waving a giant american flag over his head. What a beautiful site! Lucky for me cause i got a little too drunk and passed out pretty much right after that for about 4hrs! Yea so that last sentance pretty much sums up the theme of the party, i think we had something like 40 cases of beer, a case of gin, and a case of the finest Vin Rouge de Table that senegal can produce! A dance party that lasted till the wee hours of the morning and a shit ton of fireworks, even if CJ tried to blow himself up by holding onto a big rocket and getting showered in sparks. All in all I think we did America proud, good food, good friends, and a shit ton of booze! I had a great time!

After the 4th there was a great deal of things going on. We remeasured the plots for Beans and rice as some of the stakes that marked the plots had been knocked over and were a little lopsided. Once we had the plots reremasured, we got started actually plowing and seeding. I left to head out to Saraya then on a bike trip. I was going out to Missirah Dantila via Saraya and then coming back into Kédougou the next day via Dimboli. It was a nice trip, I had the beautiful new road that goes all the way to Saraya and then the ride to Dantila from there is really beautiful as well. I was delayed most of the morning I was going to head out, because it rained all morning. When I did finally take off around 1, I made good time and was in Saraya by 4:00. It had stayed overcast the whole day so i was able to make good time getting there. I stopped in and saw kates new place in Saraya. It was lucky that I stopped by as I was able to meet her host brother that was doing malinke rap! Real funny and kate had her computer with her and turned on garage band for him. It was so funny. After filling up my water and the little rap session i got to watch, i was back on the road by 4:45.

The next leg of the trip was to Nafadji and then heading further south and to the final destination for the day, Missirah Dantila. When I got to Nafadji I was quite hungry and feeling a little tired so decided to stop and get a biscrem and get recharged for the last leg of the day. I think at that point I was at 90km total for the day. That just left the the last 20km to Dantila. They didnt have biscrem, so i had to get these 100cfa (about 25cents) bags of cookies. They were great! Its amazing how just eating a little of food can recharge you for bike riding or running for a long distance! So after that I was feeling good and really enjoyed the last leg to Dantila. It is really pretty along the road. You start to see the mountains in guinea a lot clearer and the forest around that area is very green this time if year and very spectacular. I made it to Missirah Dantila right before dark and found Ian, the new volunteer there, waiting for me at the health post with his counterpart. Ian's from Georgia and went to Emory for his undergrad. Small world. I spent the night there and we both took off the next morning for kédougou via dimboli. The ride was fun, we both ended up getting lost at the beginning and found small children in the middle of the woods on peoples fields to take us back to the main road. It was funny that we both got lost at just about the same time really close to each other. Once we were back onto the main road it was smooth sailing from there. We made it to dimboli by late morning and got to watch the end of Ben and Eric's Neem lotion demonstration. As it was getting hot and because I really wanted to get back before it was scorching hot so took off with out them. Made good time getting in and was enjoying cold water sitting on the porch when they rolled in.

When I came back after the bike trip and made it out to Dindefelo next, Mumanie, Balla, and Djiby Sy (the guys helping me with the field out there) had run out of the seed I had given them and hadn't called me to tell me. I had just biked out there and had planed on continuing out to Franks site of Matacossi via the road to Eric's site Pelel. Since I had already packed my things for that trip and was planning on camping out at the waterfall inglee the next night while inbetween the two sites I decided to camp out there anyway and deal with the seed issue the next day. I figured that the best option was to head in the next day via Thiokoye (thats the road town that is like 3k from Matacossi) and then get the seeds on transport out to Dindefelo.

Inglee was fun. Eric and Frank actually decided to join me for the day, as they are only about 15km away and can easily make it a day trip. We had a good time, we went swimming in the falls and the multiple pools there. While we were all hanging out there we thought it would be a great place to have a party. We decided to organize a trip out there for the day after the house meeting, which is the 13th. It should be a really good time. Frank had bought a sleeping mat and stayed at the falls with me. Eric had to get back as we had had a meeting with the man in charge of eh case de santé in the next village over and decided eric would do a Neem leaf demonstration out there that afternoon. Frank and I made a fire and cooked up a nice dinner of pasta, and then crashed. Earlier before Frank had arrived, I made a little lean-to and covered it in the plastic that i had brought with me. Frank just had the mat that he brought. Of course it rained! We had to rush into the lean-to plastic tent to stay dry. It actually worked quite well surprisingly.

We woke up and ate the fonio we had cooked the night before only with milk and sugar and then took off for Thiokoye. The ride was nice, took a few pics and have the entire route saved on my GPS now as well. En route we stopped at a small village where my host sister lives. Ive known that she lives there but never had stopped to say hi when going to Inglee. She was happy to see us and wanted us to stay for lunch. Have to love senegalese hospitality. After crossing the river to get to Thiokoye, Frank and I went our separate ways. From the junction of the main road back into Kédougou is about 30km. I made it about 10km and my tire went flat. Of course my patch kit is empty and the glue that i had was all dried up! So I have to empty out my bag on the side of the road to get the spare tube that i had brought with me. This was a good reminder as to why you need to check your bike fixing materials BEFORE you take off on a bike trip! Luckily i did have the spare and got the flat fixed pretty quick. I did get some great pics of all my crap spread out on the side of the road. A guy also decided to come by and just stare at me trying to fix my bike. Not really in the mood to talk to this guy as i was busy i very briefly greet him. He stands around a while and then asks how i broke my bike as he knew that white peoples bikes dont break! I just kinda looked at him and said we'll what does it look like im doing right now! It was kinda funny. When i did get back i got those seeds on some transport for dindefelo.

Arfang came and visited the master farmer site again. This time he was helping mark out where the fruit trees were going to go in the field. There were Walking Tree kids there at the same time and they were able to assist in the digging of the holes for the fruit trees. some of the trees will be inside the demo plots for this year but it should be ok. The demo plots were coming along as well at this point. The conservation corn plots were growing quite nicely and just needed weeding and a little maintenance. The bean plots that had been planted with my high tech system of a rope with knots tied into it, looked beautiful! The seeds that i had sent out with transport though, looked awful. Mumine planted those and didn't know what the large scale organization of the demo plots was. So he just planted willy nilly and fucked up the layout and spacing for the rows and alleys. That was really frustrating seeing that sitting literally right next to a absolutely beautiful plot of beans that was done correctly. We just need to roll with the punches, its not like i didn't do everything to get them to understand what we are doing there! And the kicker is that the other two guys there completely understand what we are doing, so that makes it more frustrating! Oh well, the rice demo is coming along, just need more time to have the rice get large enough to weed and thin.

I was actually just out there a week or so ago for weeding and thinning of the plants in the bean and corn plots. They all looked good and will be doing a great deal better after the weeding they received. Hassana was in Dindefelo for that, making sure that everything was going well before he takes off for the States. When he went into Kédougou to take off to Dakar and then on to America, i went with him to finalize the details for the Grafting Trainings that we will be doing in the region this year. I had to meet with Demba Samoura who is the trainer that we have used for the past 3 or 4 years for these types of trainings. We were basically finalizing the dates and locations that we are doing this year. All of these trainings will be taking place over the next two weeks.

I think it was around this time that I decided to get a haircut and was talked into/thought it a good idea to get a mohawk. So Eric helped me cut off most of my hair and i now have a mohawk that people here in Senegal love! I've even gotten free beer out of it. Well that might have more to do with the fact that Blandine is usually drunk when i'm bringing back empties, and i'm the only one who brings back empties! Either way she said it was cause of the hair, so I'm happy with the results! Oh and people call me David Villa now, its great. I've gone from David Beckham to Messi to David Villa now, thats the progression i go through! More importantly, all white people look the same!

Right after this, a few folk were looking to go on a little two day trip up to Sokone and i decided that i would tag along. Great little trip, I got to see a bunch of guys i hadnt seen in a year or so. Solomon, Amadou, Moses, and Ibrihima. Great guys and really nice. We camped out on the beach and just chilled out for the two days. I got to go fishing with those guys and we caught a good amount of fish that we then ended up cooking and eating. This was just a drop of the hat decision to go back to kaolack region but was a great time! We only had slight trouble with the transport. We ended up broken down 30 km outside of kédougou at 6am and were stuck till 8 and then didn't get rolling till 930. After that it was smooth sailing though. coming back we just had a slow 7place but made decent time.

I also helped CJ make the radio then as well. We did a plug for the grafting trainings and then did a new segment called Joueugol ballon Juma, or for the non pulaars out there, football fridays. It was basically CJ and I bullshitting about all things soccer for about 20min in pulaar. It was great! We ragged on El Haji Diouf for a good chunk of it and then gave a little run down of who has signed who this offseason and all the goings on in the world of football. We think we have a decent blueprint for future segments as well. We put that radio show on at 1730 and then around 1930 i went to get some dinner. I sat down at the spaghetti shack that I go to a lot and greeted everyone only to have some of the guys there immediately ask me if i was guy who did the radio that day! They loved it! They were saying how important it was to have stuff like that on the radio. Great little confidence boost that! My pulaar sucks but the way that i learned it was bullshitting with my brothers about soccer so this was basically how i learned my pulaar!! I think the segment will be making a reappearance in the near future!

I think that that actually catches me up to August! Im going to try and write more for the last few months ive got here and take as many pictures as i can. Need to try and savour these last few months left in senegal, as writing this has reminded me of all the little things you forget about as time moves on. So hopefully more entries and pictures will follow.