The beginning of the end

As I near the end of my service, it is the little things that are making the deepest impact on me.

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When I biked home to village the other afternoon, I went through 3 villages in 5 kilometers. In each village, the children came running out screaming, "Ouly! Ouly! Ouly! Ana waa ker? Ana waa ker?" (My local name, repetitively, and "How is the family" repetitively). The old men sitting underneath of the trees said, "Ouly! Cisse! Ana sa njatige? Kii, dafa bon!" (My local first and last name, "How is your boss? He's awful!") I arrived home with my cheeks hurting from smiling and laughing for so long. It is fun to be famous. The sun was setting and the green fields were reflecting golden. Life is good.

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I got in to a sept-place (public transport for rich people between large cities) the other day. I greeted everyone in Wolof. No one seemed too impressed. It started to get a bit stuffy, so I pulled out my locally-made fan. As soon as I started fanning myself, the man sitting next to me asked where I learned Wolof. I told him in Thies. And he said, "Corps de la Paix!" and asked where I lived. I told him south of Kaffrine and the young man sitting in front of us whipped around and said, "Where?" I explained where I lived and that I had lived there for 2 years and that I was helping farmers. But the young man from Kaffrine couldn't grasp that I wasn't a tourist. So the man sitting next to me explained it to him, with my help, for the next 45 minutes. To sum up, "She is a volunteer, she doesn't get paid to be here. She doesn't give money, she gives knowledge. She is an American and Americans are curious. So she has come here to learn all about Senegalese people. She has studied the language and the culture. She lives in the village with a family. She eats what they eat and she does what they do. If they go pick peanuts, she goes and picks peanuts, if they go weed a field, she goes and weeds the field. She is part of a family here. When she goes back to America, she will tell everyone about Senegal." (Repeat 12 times with slight variations)

And then he says to me, in English, "It is the American way, no?"

A lasting difference...

All Peace Corps Volunteers hope and pray that something they do will last beyond their time. We don't necessarily hope that a structure we helped create still stands in 20 years. We typically hope that one single person uses some knowledge gained from us in 20 years.

We had a Sustainable Agriculture summit a few weeks ago. We have one of these every 6 months, typically in different areas around the country. This last summit, we were in Tambacounda, a far outpost in eastern Senegal. We had a field trip on the last day to visit the Master Farmer's farm not far out of town. The night before the field trip, Massaly, our director, called the volunteer living out there and asked if she had another garden we could tour. She said yes.

Massaly had never toured this garden, never heard of this man. We walked into his walled garden area and were completely blown away. He had an orchard of mangoes and citrus. There was heavy mulching under the trees and alley crops of cucumber and melon between the trees. He had conducted a small experiment for himself and discovered that the trees with vegetables grown between them in the off-season had a higher survival rate and more vigorous growth than the trees with no alley cropping of vegetables. He was using improved technologies, like a generator and pump at his well. He had also purchased a drip irrigation system to use for his vegetables in the dry season. Massaly couldn't get over how beautiful this field was. He kept asking questions. Come to find out this man has 3 other hectare-sized fields just like this one.

Finally, Massaly asked him where he first learned the mulching and alley cropping technologies.

Apparently there was a volunteer placed in a nearby village in 1993. She was the one who mentioned these techniques to the farmer and helped him out.

Massaly wrote down her years of service, her Senegalese name, and the village she was posted to.

He's going to try to contact her and let her know the difference she has made in this one man's life and his livelihood.

One person. And now he's a very successful farmer and well-respected and listened to in the community.

One person is all the PCV has to reach, that person can reach the rest.