Working with Constraints

The well we hope to repair in Diam Diam Saly

In an effort to stay somewhat sane or occupied during the dry, hot season, I decided to take on a small well reparation project in a village nearby. Each rainy season, runoff contaminates the well in Diam Diam Saly (approximately one kilometer away from my site) to the point where its water is undrinkable. Living in a desert with no water...don't ask me how they do it. So, with a little help from the folks at Water Charity, we have begun the process of collecting materials for reinforcing the well. This past Wednesday our efforts began with a trip to Koungheul and a few important lessons were learned. After waking up at 4:30 am, I waited by the front of our compound under the moonlight, listening to the booming population of donkeys and waiting for the call to prayer. Five o'clock passed, then six o'clock, and I finally dragged my droopy self back into bed. At approximately eight o'clock the horse-drawn carriage arrived...first lesson, something I should have hammered into my head in September of 2011, nothing happens on time. The two hour ride into Koungheul under the blistering sun was...fun. After arriving, we proceeded to purchase 2,200 kilograms of cement, or 2.2 tons, along with a few other accessories. This would be carried back to the village through sheer horse power, the kind fed by peanut hay. Envisioning that this could end in some issues particularly with my level of exhaustion, I decided to catch a car back to village. I waited for the car for approximately 6 hours. Don't worry, during those six hours I was invited to attend a naming ceremony by a friend who lives in Koungheul, this is how Senegal works. You never know where your going to go, who you'll spend the day with, what you'll eat or experience. The ceremony certainly occupied me during those hours. After the car finally filled (a small Peugot pickup stuffed with approximately 20 people, 14 in the back, 2 in the front and the remaining 4 on top), I arrived home at about 6 pm, exhausted, popped in for a bucket shower and collapsed into bed before the sun went down. The carriage driver called me at about 10 o'clock to say they had broken down on the way home... second lesson, rickety carriages are not meant to carry that much cement. I believe they made it home at around midnight, a long day. It's often funny for me to imagine how little time a task such as this may have taken in the states, one hour? maybe two? maybe even just a few-minute call to the local store to deliver the cement? who knows, but here, we are living with constraints. Anyway, the reparation stage of the well is about to begin, as quickly as possible, before the rains hit, so be looking for updates.

I also have posted a couple of pictures of a wedding I attended recently. A good friend of mine from village (Mati Gueye) moved into her husbands house this past month in a village nearby and was thrown a large ceremony with lots of rice! She is the man's second wife and he was absolutely beaming, as I'm sure they all are (not pictured).

Also, checkout my photobucket for a few more photos from these past few months (http://s1197.photobucket.com/user/katierichards0/slideshow/The%20Hot%20Season%20Begins) Hope all is well in the states and heating up (I'll send some your way!)!

Mati (center) and her "wujju" or first wife (right) being driven to
their husband (not pictured) by my host father (left) on his
motorcycle.

Mati preparing for the ceremony. 

Katie, the Senegalese Kind

I have been back in village for the past three weeks now and am jumping into the swing of things. Of particular interest, this past week, I completed a malaria education program at my elementary school. (This past rainy season and even until recently, I was shocked by the amount of malaria present simply in my own family compound...my 12-year old sister contracted malaria twice during the rainy season and the small 6-month-old just recovered this past week). The program, known as "Nightwatch," is six days long and occurs after school. Each day the kids learn various things about malaria, including how it is transmitted, what are the symptoms, what to do when you contract it, how to prevent it etc. The program specifically focuses on mosquito nets and the vital role they play in preventing malaria throughout the entire year. The exciting part is that the program culminates in a short test followed by a fun activity on the last day. Each student was given a small flag (that I had made by a tailor in Kounghuel) and some fun markers. They were instructed to close their eyes and imagine what they wanted to be when they grew up....teachers, doctors, jounalists and even the president of Senegal showed up. Kids wrote their dreams on these flags and decorated them with great colors. All the flags were hung up in the classroom, though in about a weeks time each student will take home their flag. The hope is that they will hang the flags inside their mosquito net and each night be reminded that sleeping with their net will protect their dreams by keeping them healthy/malaria free.

I also have some other exciting news. In early January, I decided to attend a naming ceremony (occurs a week after the baby is born and announces his/her name) for a good friend who had her first girl on December 29th, 2012. I became close with this family during the past rainy season as they are of pulaar descent, care for multiple herds of cattle and have copious amounts of fresh milk during the farming season (delicious with millet couscous). I would often spend many a morning at their compound filling up on milk and millet and passing out for a cat nap on their floor. Their house is always bustling with tons of adults and children though most all speak solely Pulaar and therefore we find it very difficult to chat. Maam Diara (the new baby's mother) however, speaks fluent wolof, so I was always partial to passing out on her floor with a belly full of milk.

The morning of the naming ceremony, I arrived at the compound early to witness the naming of the baby (the head is shaved, a goat is slaughtered and the name is announced). I first greeted Maam Diara, who was done-up with braids and hair extensions, and then moved on to visit with her family that had traveled in for the occasion. They were quite rambunctious and enjoyed joking with the Toubab, saying I'd be the baby's namesake. Once Maam Diara and Mumadou (the baby's father) were dressed up, the baby was carried off with the women of the family, the mother and I. We all sat on beds in a small thatched roofed hut and watched as one of the baby's relatives shaved its head and placed the hair in a small bowl with water, cotton and some bark (I'm sure all symbolizing something). At one point a small wisp of hair was carried away with the wind and 3 elderly ladies chased after it ouside trying to distinguish it from goat and sheep hair (not sure what is done with the bowl of hair later but is was clear that every bit of hair needed to be included). Outside the men were busy praying and slaughtering the goat to be eaten for lunch. After the whole process, the name was announced by the father, and one woman of the family relayed the name into our room...she announced that they would be naming the baby after...Fatou Sarr....my stomach dropped , Fatou Sarr is my name... All the women looked up, fixed on me, smiling. One asked my American name as that should be the true name of the baby, Katie Richards. Maam Diara and her relatives were not joking, I am now the namesake of a beautiful baby girl in the village next door, Baby Katie (pronunciation still remains a bit difficult among the family), the Senegalese kind...

Both photos of Baby Katie and the malaria program should be added soon, so keep your eyes peeled. These next couple of weeks I look forward to touring Senegal with my parents and taking them all the way to my humble hut in the bush! They should be updating photos of their trip as well, and when I get a chance I'll let you know where to find them.

Love.

America Fresh

I have just returned from a quick three-week trip stateside. The goals of the trip were to see as much family and friends as possible as well as to fatten up a bit before going back into hiding in the Senegalese bush. As my host family and village like to tell me frequently, I returned home to breast feed at my mother’s side (sorry for the visual). Upon returning, it appears the trip was a success. Even three weeks since my re-entry into the country, I am still receiving comments like “wow, you are looking chunkier these days” or “your skin is so vibrant now” (all a result of eating American foods in wide varieties and failing to be exposed to the sun on a daily basis). Overall, the trip was amazing. It was wonderful to see family and friends and even more so to realize the support that I have from everyone. I am so lucky and must thank you all so much.



FMNR in action! (No age limit)



Saliou, a farmer from my village



Now in Senegal, I have begun my second year as a Peace Corps Volunteer…also known as…time to hunker down. The days are quickly passing and the project ideas, continuously popping into my head. Most recently, I attended a week-long training in the city of Thies. This training invited approximately forty Master Farmers from all across the country, including two from my village in particular. I’m not sure if I have introduced this program yet on my blog but it is something that I have worked extremely closely with in the past year. The Master Farmer Program chooses respected and experienced farmers in communities all across the country, primarily in rural areas where farming is the main source of income for the majority of families. Peace Corps brings these farmers to our training center in Thies and teaches them numerous farming, gardening and agroforestry techniques (farmers will usually attend at least one training per year). All techniques hope to improve the current farming/gardening practices in Senegal by stressing the improvement of soil structures, since most have been ravaged from years of farming (fertilizer abuse) and deforestation. Overall, we, as volunteers, then work to help these farmers bring these techniques back to their respective communities and demonstrate them in an enclosed space. One highlight of this training was two days spent at a local reforestation project which introduced to both me and my master farmers a technique known as Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR). In an effort to reverse desertification, FMNR teaches farmers to utilize and care for naturally occurring trees within their fields, as opposed to clearing them each start of the raining season (resulting in multiple issues including erosion and decreased soil quality). Fostering the natural growth of trees throughout a field can increase a farmer’s or gardener’s overall yield through increased soil fertility, water infiltration and retention, biodiversity or even shade (something we all love here in Senegal).



more pruning...



After this training and a small break for Christmas, I cannot wait to jump back into things in village. This past month, villagers have finished harvesting their peanuts and due to a particularly rain-filled rainy season harvests are proving prosperous and pockets slightly happier. They are now amidst the home-improvement season, as field crop stalks (millet, corn, sorghum) are abundant and being used to replace old, falling fences and dead weeds are being collected for roofing materials. As for me, aside from plans to continue extending some great techniques like FMNR at the Master Farm, I have hopes to start a small school garden at the elementary school (including not only nutritional vegetables but just plain pretty flowers…fun for the kiddies). I have also recently received funds to start a women’s garden in a village approximately two kilometers away from my site. This group of women have been struggling to garden in both the rainy and dry season as they lack a properly protected space to do so (with goats, sheep, cows, horses, donkeys and chickens running rampant, you can imagine it’s nearly impossible). Their efforts during the rainy season, as well, have been confined to seasonal ponds, however, when large rainstorms hit these efforts are often destroyed by flooding. So, let’s hope all goes well!

Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!



Saliou, Omar and I at the end of the
 training this past week.



Korite

   

All the kids!

My mother, Fatouxadi
and her youngest, Sulemon.

Khadi Sarr (the second wife)
and her first child, Ibrahima
(now 4 months)

The boys!

Just the lovely ladies...

This past Monday was the celebration of Korite, or the end of Ramadan. Everyone in my family wore their best outfits for the occasion and cooked up a nice lunch of goat meat, potatoes, onions and macaroni (all in a sauce, a good change of a pace!). Here are a few pictures of the occasion!

Are you hungry?

Here we are now in the midst of the rainy season and the month of Ramadan (started on the 19th of July and will culminate in the holiday of Korite on the 18th of August). This past month has just allowed me to fully realize the work ethic of the villagers and their general ability to survive dire conditions. On a typical day of Ramadan, most (sadly including pregnant and nursing women within my village though luckily excluding children) wake up around 4:30 or 5 am before the sunrise. At this time they eat a small meal and drink a ton of water in preparation for the days work. From this early morning meal until sunset there is no eating or drinking any substance. With this in mind, these villagers are now spending entire days in fields as the farming season is now fully upon us. Beautiful green fields have sprouted up but are also filled with weeds that could impinge on crops and threaten yields. Men are in charge of weeding in between crop lines with a machine pulled by cows, one horse or a donkey. Women, children and men (once finished with the previous job) are then bent over with small handheld hoes that remove weeds within the endless lines of peanuts, millet, corn, beans or sorghum (primarily peanuts and millet for my particular village). I, personally, have made multiple trips out to the fields with my family and other community groups and I can safely say this is some of the most back-breaking/blister generating work I've ever done (and I am drinking plenty of water and arguably/ironically eating twice as much food during this past month as I ever have in Senegal). I am ashamed to say that the nine-year-old boy within my compound is better at this than I am...On top of all this, despite the fact that we are in the rainy season, the days are still extremely hot, reaching temps of at least 90 degrees and high humidity. One can only imagine how tired and dehydrated these people become spending the whole day, between the hours of 7 am and 6 pm in the fields. Many often tell me that if they return home in the middle of the day all there is to think about is that glass of water or that bowl of rice that you're missing for lunch. So, needless to say, this past month has made for a fairly lonely village. When they finally return home, most shower and quietly wait for break fast, which comes around 7:30 pm. Families, if the funds are available, will break fast with a small amount of bread, coffee and occasionally dates as a special treat. In my particular household, we eat lunch (as they have just pushed this meal from midday to sunset) around 8:30 pm. This, as usual, is a rice dish with some sort of sauce. This time of year is characterized as the "hunger season." The money from the last crop/the last time my family got a cash influx of any sort has now fully run out, having been finished off on buying as good quality seed as possible and fertilizer for this year's fields. Overall, just imagine, fasting is now combined with extremely difficult labor in full sunshine in Africa and very little nutritious food to help you through it. No one said it was easy.  

My front door.

The view from my room to the compound...
filled with water.

Where my toilet used to exist...

I also wanted to mention that this rainy season is a completely new experience for me (may seem like an obvious statement..). For some reason, when villagers had previously mentioned that Allah would soon be bringing rain, I imagined continuously drizzly Northwest days spent inside and simply could not wait for a reminder of home. This is not the case. The rains here exhibit themselves in a drastically different fashion and come with a variety of fun/interesting side effects. Most often or at least most recently, rains come at night and therefore do not provide too much relief from the sunshine. Villagers know when they are about to arrive because of extremely hot temperatures, a lack of any wind (meaning lots of sweat) and a ton of lightning on the horizon. When the lightning and deafening thunder passes over the vill, it ushers in torrential down pours that can cause serious damage to houses, fields, or anything! Houses, some constructed of only sand, simply fall over, roofs fall in, pit toilets collapse, seeds wash off of fields, roads wash out (making it very difficult to leave ones rural village in search of icecream...). As an example, a few days ago, we experienced a rain of 60 mm in one evening. Both doors to my small abode were filled with puddles and I was confined to my room for the night. I fell asleep early but was awoken by an abrupt crash. I ventured out of my room to find that my luxurious, personal, bathroom was now fully covered with a wall from the adjacent building of the house (luckily no collapsing of any sort occurred and a simple moving of bricks should do the trick...). In addition, this new moisture also brings new biodiversity and huge amounts of beautiful greenery. My room has now seen mushrooms, molds, snails, bats, toads and amazing amounts of flies. 

A mushroom in my room
(photo requested by my father)

Overall, I am enjoying this change of pace. I am learning a lot about subsistence farming lifestyles and how I may potentially help in my second year of Peace Corps service. Work has been a difficult area for me, but as the Wolofs always say, "Ndank Ndank mooy japp ngolo ci ney." or "slowly you will catch the monkey in the bush." 

Currently, I do not have my computer with me and am therefore unable to upload photos but this will hopefully happen within the next month.

Hope summer fun is continuing in America! Love.

Things are Changing!

The rains have arrived! And so have a lot of other perks and pitfalls that accompany them! Check out a few photos I just uploaded of the now rain-inundated Sali.

http://s1197.photobucket.com/albums/aa428/katierichards0/Sali/

Rain Waiting

Hello all! Here in Senegal, things are about to change drastically, everyone has their eyes glued to the sky…waiting for rain. The other night after dinner (around 10 pm), as I sat outside and continued to sweat, a good friend informed me that Allah is in the process of “cooking water.” Essentially meaning, it is necessary for it to get extremely hot, so that we can get consistent rains during the next few months. So, recently, temperatures have been getting higher and higher….or…are at least feeling higher and higher (reaching around 110 degrees). Needless to say, 90% of the day, my hand is extended with a small handheld fan (non-electric, energy-consuming).

Aside from sweating, the work pace is also starting to pick up for the villagers of Sali. In the past few months, in preparation for the rains, all the men of the village have been waking up early and spending most days in the fields. Their field preparation involves cleaning up last year’s left over field crop residues, cutting down any new bushes or weeds, raking all this into piles and burning it up! As you might imagine, in an area that has not seen a significant amount of moisture in more than 9 months, this preparation process leads to lots and lots of bush fires. Villagers are often very careful to wait until dawn or dusk when the wind subsides, but with so many of them, there is no avoiding it. As a result, the bush surrounding my village is suffering some severe damage from generations and generations of this same process. The fires have also been known to make their way into villages (believed to be the work of a genie according to many) which can become extremely devastating very quickly with roofs of houses made of dried weeds, fences/walls made of dried millet stalks and the only water source coming from wells with pulleys and buckets to pull the water. Luckily, my village only had a small fire incident this year and no one was hurt.

In the region of Kaffrine, meteorologists predict that the first large rain of the season should occur between June 18^th and 23^rd  (defined by 20 millimeters at least). Farmers here rely on this. When seeding (primarily peanuts, millet, corn, sorghum and beans), they eagerly await enough rain to keep the soil moist for a few days, enough to get their seeds to germinate. If it does not rain again within a week or so of that first rain, their entire crop could dry up under the midday sun. If they wait too long, however, until the rains are consistent, they may not have enough time for their crop to fully mature during the season. A delicate balance! Just to give you an idea of the importance riding on this rainy season, these crops are the primary source of income for villagers, and currently the cash from the previous crop, 9 months ago, is running dry….and the food running bland (also, add to this that the last rainy season was marked by very few rains and many had poor crops or little money). Most are very anxious.

             In addition, just outside of the village, things are on the move for the nomadic pulaar people. These people make a living with extremely large herds of cows, sheep and goats. As the rains get closer and closer, they are now headed north. I did not understand this phenomenon at first, but then someone explained that clearly, if all these herds were in the fields during seeding time, any brand new baby field crops would be eaten up! Therefore, recently, large charettes pulled by multiple donkeys (sometimes up to five!) piled with every one of their possessions have been parading through the village. And to think, I thought we were living the hard life in rural Senegal, these people are yet another step down (or up?)…

As for me, with the changing seasons, my work is picking up. As a “sustainable agriculture extension agent,” I am responsible for extending improved seed varieties to motivated farmers in the village. Once extended, I follow the seeds, visit the farms weekly and provide small pointers on how to get a better crop (what the heck do I know!!??). So, my life for the next few months will involve a lot of walking, looking at fields and trying to get farmers to think I know what I’m talking about. We’ll see how it goes!
Lastly, check out some new photos on photobucket (sorry there are not too many!).

http://s1197.photobucket.com/albums/aa428/katierichards0/Sali/

Until next time! Love!