The new "stage" of Agriculture and Agroforestry volunteers have been in the country for a month. The veteran volunteers from last year are all starting to go home. (Well, not all of them. A fair number are sticking around to help with trainings, work on special projects, etc for the next 6 months to a year.) Do you remember that moment in high school when you realized other people were looking up to you? That you were the one with all the answers? I'm supposed to be that person here, now. Crazy!
Really, what I have done for the last year is just learn. I have learned the Wolof language (not well...but...), I have learned about the culture. I have learned how to grow things like sorghum, millet, cassava.
However, I have not learned how to be creative and come up with ideas for blog posts. Forgive me.
At a suggestion from my sister, some details about different projects in Senegal:
- There is a volunteer in my region who has acquired funding to build a seed-storage warehouse. This will make it easier for farmers to save their own seed. Seed can be expensive. And, if kept in the home, the risk of insect or rodent damage is pretty high. Not to mention that it is also easier to just eat that seed when other food runs short. This warehouse project has also facilitated some community-building work. There is now an organization of farmers who will use this building. They have already participated in group trainings. With this warehouse bringing them together, it will be easier for them to use each other as resources, learn what other farmers are doing, etc.
- Another project is planting "intensive beds" of Moringa olifera at schools and throughout a community. Moringa is a fast growing tree. The leaves are excellent nutrition (ie: if Popeye had eaten moringa instead of spinach, Bruno never would have even thought of looking at Sweetpea). Fully grown, moringa trees can be used for fuel wood because they coppice easily. They can also be used for live fence posts. However, the goal for an intensive bed is to plant a whole bunch of moringa really close together (ie: 10 cm spacing) and harvest the leaves every two months. This means that when the trees are as high as your waist, you are cutting them down to your knees.
- School gardens. There is a group of volunteers who are putting together an educational curriculum to be used in conjunction with a school garden. This way, teachers can take their math and science classes outside. The students can learn how agriculture is really something that needs some basic education in order to be effective and profitable. A few goals here 1) increase adolescent nutrition by having fresh fruits and vegetables available at school 2) teach the children techniques and technologies that they can pass along to their parents 3) make the education applicable for what many of these students will be doing for the rest of their lives.
- Master Farmer Program. There are 15-20 Master Farmers throughout Senegal. This is a pilot program. Peace Corps received funding eartagged for food security and created this project. We have selected qualified, respected farmers strategically located across the country. We fenced a hectare of their property, brought water to it (a spigot or a well), and made them give us free rein. :) The goal is to create demonstrations that the Master Farmer can disseminate to his colleagues. We are showing the importance of timely thinning/weeding, different fertilizer efficacies, the power of mulching, etc. In my Master Farmer's field, we have corn, millet, beans, hot pepper, eggplant, and rice. He has also planted the beginnings of a "live fence" (primarily thorny trees are trimmed short to make them bush out, then grow tall to keep all kinds of animals out) all around the inside of the fencing. And he has planted guava, lime, orange, mango, cashew, lucaena, and moringa within the field. Next week, for the first time, we will host a "field day". Approximately 100 farmers and NGO workers will come visit his field. He will explain why the technologies and techniques displayed work well (and, since they are demonstration plots, one can visibly SEE how they worked better than the traditional methods). Hopefully his friends and neighbors will take this information and put it into use in their own fields. Farmers teaching farmers is more effective than little white girl teaching farmers. ;)
- Universal Nut Sheller. Women here spend hours on end shelling peanuts. Literally, until their fingers bleed, all day, every day, from mid-November until the end of February. We are promoting a new type of manually operated machine that shells peanuts 41 times faster than a woman can by hand. That's right. In one hour, this machine can shell 50 kilos. And it would take 41 women to shell that same amount in that same time. If peanuts are shelled faster, that means that women have more time. More time to do things like garden. :) The machine is also very economical and an entire village can buy one, use it communally, and pay it off in no time at all.
- Some other random programs: fruit dryers (mango season is just so short...), potato fields (potatoes here are kind of tempermental), compressed fuel sources (using leaves and paper to make briquettes for cooking instead of using wood or charcoal), building wells and latrines (for increased sanitation)....
We are all over here in Senegal, saving trees and hugging babies...or saving babies and hugging trees... :) As we like to say, "Developing the s*#t out of Senegal!"
One year down, one to go.