12. What's going on?

My last couple of posts here have been more about ideas and history than daily life, so I guess that I want to just have a nice simple post about what I have been doing here.

But there are so many things that I could say that I don't know where to start...

A friend of mine recently summarized his life in 3 sentences, and I thought it was great, so I will follow his model, and go from there.

I eat with my (right) hand and live in a house made of mud, grass and bamboo. It's always hot and I am almost always hungry. I plant trees and give people seeds.

And a good life it is.

Here we are leaving Kedougou

One of the coolest things I did (somewhat) recently was bike to Kolda with my friends Ian and Anna at the end of April to go to our Ag Summit (A meeting with everyone in the sector). 

Which is about the hottest time of year. It was usually beautiful, often challenging, and totally refreshing.

This was our route:

Approaching the Park

That splotch of green on the map that we passed through there is the Niokolo Koba National Park. That was probably the hardest, and most beautiful part of the trip. Late April is the peak of the hot dry season, and so we spaced broke the riding up with mid-day rest stops in whatever patches of shade we could find along the road. However, many animals tend to do the same thing. On one such stop, we were flanked by a large, squawking troop of baboons, and on another, a warthog ran off with my pannier (bike bag). I recovered the bag after chasing the warthog into the forest. 







But it was all worth it, when we got into Kolda, we threw a big party, and cooked up a close relative of the warthog:

It was good

And… it has started to rain! Which is a huge relief after 6 months of total, utter dryness. The change has been swift and it feels like a whole different planet. It has quickly become very green and humid here. It is beautiful.

However, when it starts raining a lot my normal route to Kedougou city floods, because I have to cross this creek along the way: (It gets much larger than this)

My rubicon, if you will

Mamadou working on the bridge

The only other option, without having to backtrack something like 10 km, is the stick bridge mentioned/pictured in my Dar Salaam post… Which also floods in heavy rains, and gets  washed out.

So, my village decided to build a bigger, stronger bridge that would still be crossable in high water. And one week everyone just got together and built the thing. Simple as that.






Now, if this new bridge holds, people will be able to get to Kedougou in about 1/3^rd of the time it would have taken them during any other rainy season. 

The new bridge

I also went to this thing called ‘Bassari Initiation’ recently, which is a ceremonial rite of passage undergone by boys who are coming of age in the Bassari community, which is a minority, mostly non-Islamised cultural group. Every Bassari village has their own initiation ceremony each year. We attended the one in Etyalo, which is the largest Bassari village in Senegal. (At about 1500 people)

First the boys had to march in a circle for hours on end one evening, while everyone around them got drunk on palm wine and mead and taunted them. Then they had to spend a night in the bush (It poured rained for hours). Then, early in the morning, the boys had to wrestle against these guys.

Needless to say, only two boys out of the group of 40 or so won. Each of these victories elicited ecstatic celebration. The wrestling is a very secretive event for the Bassari. It takes place in a small clearing removed from the rest of the village and ceremony. Only men are allowed to attend, and they do not allow any photos to be taken, at all. 

What else is new…? It is bush fruit season! Which rocks. Kids come in from all over the bush with different goodies that they are only too eager to share.

The long pods are called Netto. That’s actually Parkia Biglobosa (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkia_biglobosa) The big round orange fruits are called Saba (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saba_senegalensis) and the little grape guys are known as dembo. (Don’t know what it’s called on the Internet)

They are all pretty good. Saba is probably the best. It is like a sour Warhead. Remember those? Unless you let it get nice and ripe, in which case the sour gives way to the sweet.

It is a good life indeed. A great one even.

Often times I am struck by just how good it is.

For one thing, I love my work. It is interesting, challenging, and, I want to believe (with conscious naiveté), meaningful. I feel as though I am really starting to be able to help people help themselves.

 Right now, I have a few projects going on.

One is planting a live fence in the Master Farm. Live fencing, in my opinion, is about as good as it gets as an Ag volunteer. It addresses what is perhaps the single biggest issue with agriculture here; cows and goats eating your crops; in a way that lasts for a very long time, and can have other benefits too.

Basically, live fencing is planting certain species, generally trees, close enough together that they form an impenetrable barrier. Usually you do this directly behind a pre-existing fence made from non-living materials (metal or wood). As the dead fence inevitably falls into disrepair, the live fence grows into maturity, and only gets stronger and more impenetrable over the years. Live fences are a lot of work to establish though, and you have to know how to grow the right kind of trees, and grow them correctly, by pruning to encourage lateral growth. I have mostly been planting acacias, which are thorny, drought resistant, and nitrogen fixing.

When you have an established live fence around your field, it means that you don’t have to cut down trees from the bush every year to repair your dead-wood fence. Which is great news! Additionally, you can, in many cases, coppice the live fencing to harvest pole wood, harvest its fruits, and enjoy its quality as a wind/fire break.

So live fencing is really cool.

And obviously the goal is not just that I go and establish a bunch of live fencing, but that I create ‘demonstrations,’ so that the residents of Dar Salaam can dig it—see how effective and smart this technique is—and go about establishing their own.

But I have noticed that the Master Farm is not really on peoples’ radar so far. It is a little ways outside of the village, across a big rice field. It seems to me that when people are busy all day around the house, mosque, or their own fields in town, they just aren’t inclined to go snooping around the mysterious tract of land where the toubab works all day, way across the rice fields.

So, I decided to check out the real estate market near the center of the village in order to create a demo space that people would actually see. By this I mean that I asked around about an empty slice of land in an area near some women’s gardens. I learned that two women own the space. They are basically my (host) aunts, so I asked them what they were going to do with it, if they wanted to fence it in, or what. They basically said that if I wanted to fence in the whole thing, I could use half of it, and they would use the other half. It’s a rather big space, with very good soil, so I gladly agreed.

Cool!

Turns out building a fence is a lot of work! Especially when it includes going out into the bush, cutting all of the poles you need, (by coppicing—don’t worry) and returning the next day with kids and a donkey cart to bring them back.

Gathering gravel with my host brother Bassirou to bury the fence poles with more stability

But I must say. It is awesome. Especially because I now have a real taste for how hard these people work fencing in massive areas to grow corn, beans, peanuts and stuff. I also think that it has helped with my ‘credibility,’ to have people walk by all the time and see me hard at work.

Not that I think that everyone in Dar Salaam should bear witness to everything I do, but having some exposure is definitely part of what my job is about.

Here it is in progress:

Soon to be an Eden-like garden

My hope is to establish something of a ‘perma-garden’— basically, stuff that I won’t have to water every single day during the dry season, (hopefully only 1-2 times a week) but will still produce. I think it would be cool to show people that there are other possibilities than watering your lettuce and mint morning and night all dry season.  The garden will include lots of fruit trees, especially ones that are as yet underutilized in DS, chaya, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cnidoscolus_aconitifolius Not to be confused with chia) moringa and sweet potato. Maybe I’ll try some beans. We’ll see.

But my biggest project right now involves bamboo, deforestation, and the future of Kédougou.

It all started a couple months ago when a couple friends visited Kedougou. They wanted to see my site, but did not have bikes. So we decided to walk from Kedougou. The women of my village do this walk, about 8-9 km each way, multiple times a week. But they are smart about it, and leave at dawn, the coolest time of the day. (When the mercury might fall to a brisk 82 degrees.)

Meanwhile, We managed to time it so that we made the walk right around noon, when the exposed, sandy trails were blisteringly hot. We quickly drank all of our water. Luckily the route passes through a village called Sithou Roudji (Pulaar for 'founded and settled'), which is about halfway between my village and Kedougou.

We wandered at random into a compound, begging sheepishly for water and a seat in the shade, and as is usually the case in the 'Pays de Terranga' (Senegal's nickname: land of hospitality), we were graciously welcomed. A man led us to a bench under a mango tree, and kids retrieved cups of water out of a ceramic pot, known as a landé, which, if kept in the shade, keeps water surprisingly cool even on the hottest days.

As I regained my wits, chatting pleasantly with the residents of the household into which we had just blundered, I noticed carpentry tools and a half built table under a nearby mango tree. It was made out of bamboo. I went over to check it out, and was impressed by it's strength and beauty the moment I felt it. Bamboo carpentry. Very cool.

The carpenter came over to introduce himself. Mamadou Sow. His French was perfect, and he immediately impressed me as a very earnest and intelligent man. I had to leave soon after with my friends to continue our walk, but my hut was severely lacking furniture, so I knew I'd be back soon.

So from then on I began stopping regularly on my trips to and from Kédougou, to chat, and discuss getting some furniture made.

My first impressions of Mamadou were quickly re-affirmed, and even surpassed. Every time I passed through Sinthou Roudji he was working; either on bamboo furniture, in his fields, or more often than not, helping someone else in the village with some of their work. I ordered a desk and chair, and we began having extended conversations about bamboo in Kédougou.

Bamboo is an essential, and ubiquitous component of life in Kedougou. It is used for everything. Fences, roofs, shade structures, tools, furniture, bridges, etc. In fact, it is so ubiquitous that goes basically unnoticed. That is until it started to disappear.

Until as recently as 10-15 years ago, bamboo could be found in great abundance no more than a kilometer or two outside of Kedougou City. But the city’s rapid growth has quickly increased demand for the stuff, and suddenly, the only dependable place to get bamboo is down near Segou, along the Guinean border, a 60 km round trip from Kedougou.

The result is that the price of Bamboo has gone from 250 CFA (50 cents) for a pack of 20 poles around the turn of the century, to 2500 CFA (5 bucks) today. This represents a huge cost farmers, who are thus forced to either pay, or make a 60 km round trip every time they want to build a fence or a roof.

During one of our conversations Mamadou produced a few academic articles about bamboo in Africa that he had printed off of the Internet, and then gave me a copy of a paper that he had been working on about the issue of bamboo depletion in Kédougou specifically. He gets straight to the point. This is the main argument:

"La bamboo est une plante d'une fort tenacité. Cependant, au present, il manque profondement d'une system de gestion. Celle-ci peux expliquer son raréfaction rapid dans la region de Kédougou."

Bamboo is a very tenacious plant, but presently it lacks any system of management whatsoever. This can explain its rapid rarefaction in the region.

Mamadou

And indeed, bamboo is very mismanaged here. I am tempted to say that it is perfectly mismanaged.

First, people cut all of the poles (known as 'culms') off of an individual plant, often in one fell swoop. Normally the plant would be fine. Mature bamboo plants form a large rhizome just below the surface, which is full of energy and ready to send up new shoots. (Hops are another example of a plant that grows from a rhizome.)

However, young, new shoots are un-lignified and tender, and are choice dining for cows and other ruminants, which, in Kédougou are only fenced out of certain fields, rather than corralled into specific place.

So cows roam all through the bush, and will return to the same bamboo plant, eating all of its new growths until the plant has died.

Another big issue is fire. More people in Kedougou has led to more cutting of the forest, and mismanagement of the land, which leads to higher rates of wildfire. Bamboo does not do well in fire, especially if the plant is already stressed for water, as is often the case during the dry season. Together, these factors; people, cows and fire, have devastated Bamboo stands here.

So Mamadou and I talked about all of these issues, and I began to realize; Woah, this is a big deal. This is something that really matters. This affects a lot of people.

Then Mamadou dropped the kicker.

He is a life long resident of Sinthou Roudji, and after years of appeals/requests to the local authorities, he has come to own, officially, 5 hectares of land next to the Gambia River that his family has de-facto owned for years.  And wants to use it, in whatever capacity possible, to grow bamboo in order to meet the needs of local farmers, and foster more bamboo artisans like himself in the Kedougou area.

Well, that sounds like a plan, I thought. And since that moment, the work has just taken off.

It is a complicated ambition. One thing that I have been trying to figure out is what exactly this thing would look like, the design. I’ve begun using the term ‘bamboo woodlot’ but I’m still not sure exactly how it will look.

But this is the coolest part of the whole project—nobody has done this before!

Obviously there is information out there, about bamboo cultivation in other parts of Africa, and other places with similar climates, species of bamboo, etc but nobody has done it here yet.

What we do know is that the bamboo will need to be fenced in, or at least protected in some form, and that it will need to be irrigated during the first dry season while it establishes it’s rhizome.

A big part of the project so far has been working through the bureaucracy of the Senegalese governing apparatuses to get recognition, support, and (hopefully) technical assistance. (The money will all come from US government grants…) Mamadou and I have been running around to different agencies and offices in town to get our project on the radar, and make us eligible for small business assistance type stuff. So far he has been an excellent work partner, better than I could have imagined.

The meetings have been, for me, a wonderful review of French administrative bureaucratic vocabulary, and a lesson in business skills, of a sort. Also, I must say, doing business in a town the size of Kédougou is pretty cool. I am literally getting to know an entire cadre of functionnaires, and so far they are all really into the idea.

One agency in particular— Eaux et Forets— is particularly grateful for this project. Eaux et Forets, meaning waters and forests, is pretty much the Department of Natural Resources of Senegal, except federal. And broke.

It just so happens that they have a law on the books that states that harvesting bamboo in the bush is illegal. But it is never enforced. For one thing they lack the capacity, and for another, are you really going to tell a peasant that he can’t do what he needs to do to build a fence this year?

But if some kind of woodlot model emerged, and people began cultivating enough bamboo to meet their needs in a sustainable fashion, enforcement of this law might become feasible, and the wild lands would be spared.

And this would work out well for everyone involved, including me, and the Peace Corps, because it just so happens that working with the host country’s government agencies to help accomplish their development goals is exactly what the Peace Corps was founded to do. How about that!

So… we will see what happens. This has all happened very quickly so far and I would hate to get ahead of myself. But, as it is, things seem to be falling into place, and I have yet to have anyone tell me it is a bad idea. Interestingly, the biggest roadblock thus far has been getting technical feedback from my advisors with the Peace Corps. They are yet to give me any advice, whatsoever so far. Obstacles come from unexpected places when doing work in a country like this.

At times like these I take recourse in a saying about work that is ubiquitous across all languages and cultures in Senegal: Little by little. Or as we say in Jaxanké; Dondiŋ dondiŋ. Pulaar: Seeδa seeδa. Wolof:  Ndank ndank. And of course, in French: Petit à petit.  

Anyway, I’ll keep you updated!