Project Update: Dental Bamtaare Tooro Demo Garden Underway!

Beds of okra with and without mulch

 It’s been a long time since I have written any thing lately, mainly because I have been so busy and also because I took a short wonderful vacation to Greece a couple months ago, but now is the time to rectify this. What have I been so busy with? The past two months I have dedicated a large portion of my time to officially starting the Dental Bamtaare TooroDemontration Garden that I have mention a couple times before.

In the past few weeks, me and my work partners have cleared the gardening space and double-dug and amended 22 gardening beds. We have planted a vegetable nursery with bitter tomato, tomato, egg plant, hot pepper, and lettuce and directly seeded cucumber, watermelon, okra, turnips, and mint. We also have a small section of the live fence installed (a fence make of closely spaced thorny trees to keep out animals).

What I am most excited about is the moringa bed that we planted and have already been able to harvest! Moringa is an extremely nutritious tree that produces leaves that can be eaten raw or made in to a powder as an additive to the normal food eaten here. It is drought tolerant and does well in even in this arid climate. The first thing people notice about the garden is the beautiful, lush moringa as it’s the greenest thing probably in my whole village. Right now, my moringa is hanging up to dry before I teach my work partners how to make the powder. You all should really look up this tree.

Moringa bed before harvest

Drying the moringa

Moringa bed after harvest

Turnips with and without compost 

Anyways, because the purpose of the garden is to demonstrate improved gardening techniques, the garden is designed in a way to clearly show side-by-side comparisons of a specific technique. For example, in the mulching demonstration, there are two beds of okra right next to each other, one that is mulched with grasses and weeds in order to keep in moisture and one that is not. It is clear from looking as the two beds side-by-side that the mulched bed retains more water  and thus has to be watered less frequently than the non-mulched bed. All of the beds in the garden are designed in this fashion to give examples of various techniques including double-digging and compost, spacing, staking certain vegetables like cucumbers and tomatoes, etc.

When Ramadan (the Islamic month of fasting) is over and the garden is looking pretty nice, we will have a large training where all of the presidents of the women’s gardens in Dental’s 29 partner villages will come to the garden and learn techniques to take back to their village. After the training, I will visit each garden to see which techniques the women have adopted and which techniques they have not in order to gauge how the successful the training is as well as what techniques are both feasible and culturally appropriate for time-constrained women.  

Cute baby because no post should be without

Hot Season Pictures

I haven't written anything for a long time mainly because I've been really busy with some projects that are starting up. I'll write more in detail about each of them soon, but for now enjoy these pictures.

This is only half of the camel spider I found in my room. I chopped it in half with a shovel  but it turns out it was still alive at this point and shortly jumped up into my face. 

My work partner Ousman Sy and his older brother sitting by the basin in our newly created  garden space learning about how to start a tree nursery

Ousman helping to double-dig garden beds 

The nursery beds for vegetables that have to be transplanted and a morning bed 

The beginnings of a live fence of trees to protect against the destructive forces of goats and children 

SAND STORM IS COMING! This was at my Pulaar tutors house. 

Another work partner of mine Salif Ba cutting up sticks to prop up some mosquito netting on the nursery beds we just seeded to protect them  from getting viruses. Right now we have tomato, bitter tomato, hot pepper, and eggplant in the nursery. 

Baby Ahmadou wearing my hat. The only reason he would let me hold him was because I distracted him with the hat. He is terrified of me. 

My host sister Kadiata trying to get Ahmadou to look at the camera. 

My fellow PCV and friend Erin teaching English to some kids in her village when I took a trip to see her and help with a small gardening project at her neighbors house 

Another sand storm approaches in Erin's village as we sit in her compound

My moringa bed has sprouted! 

Ahmadou again. He is not happy. 

Kids goofing around in my room

Me, my neighbor Houlay, and her sister's baby 

More kids in my room having a fun time and getting ready to color pictures for my wall

Ndiyam, or What's the Deal with Water?

Many people have asked me about the water situation in my area, seeing as I live in a desert and  am an agriculture volunteer. How does that work? My region, known as the Fouta, is indeed a desert; however, we are bordered by the Senegal River that branches out into several tributaries. Thus, while it only rains three months out of the year, those villages that are near a river have year round water access. Those villages that are not near a water sources have other means for accessing water.

Household Water

An old well that no one uses anymore 

In terms of water that is used by a household (drinking, batching, watching, cooking, etc), villages either have “robinets” (outside spigots), wells, or both. Women typically use ropes either with or without pulleys to lift water out of the well, which in my area are between 40 and 60 meters deep. Villages near rivers will tend to wash clothes and bathe in the river but usually will have a well or a robinet for drinking and cooking. Robinets in smaller villages and towns in the Fuuta are sometimes connected to “forages” or large towers that hold water that is pumped there from a nearby lake. Robinets can be powered by grid electricity or by solar panels.

In wealthier villages each family compound will have their own well or robinet. In less fortunate villages, several families will share a robinet or a well as is the case in my village. This practice poses several problems when there are cuts to robinet water. There are sometimes small arguments over who gets to fill up first and how much water each family is taking.

A forage that stores and pumps water to the robinet

 My village, for example, has a solar powered forage and robinet system. This means that on top of normal cuts to the water, there is no water when there are cloudy days or – as what happened a few days a go—a major sandstorm that blocks out the sun all day.  The months of December to February are usually overcast. During this time period, there can be cuts to the robinets for days at a time. When there is no water, my sisters take turns walking down the road to the nearest well and carry the water back on their heads.

Under sunny conditions, we usually have water between the hours of 11am to 12pm and 4pm to 5pm. Our family is lucky enough to have a robinet in our yard, so we tend to get first dibs over the other families. Once the water has been put into buckets and various other containers (plastic yellow vegetable oil containers are the most preferred), some is put into a clay pot which holds water for drinking. They rest of the containers are placed around the yard and in each building in the compound until they are needed.

A communal robinet with the yellow oil containers people use to store water

Agriculture

River irrigated agriculture on the far side of the bank

Villages who are situated along rivers strategically line up their fields along the banks of the river. Farmers then fill up buckets and watering cans from the river to water their fields. Sometimes, farmers have motor pumps that pump water from the river onto their friends when they are able to afford it or are given one – think farming collectives, political gifts from candidates, or NGO projects.

Villages who are not on a river, have two options: irrigated farming or rain fed farming. For rain fed farming, farmers are restricted to planting during the rainy season in July to early September. Typically, farmers who only plant in the rainy season farm field crops such as corn, beans, millet, sorghum, and rice. A farmer who only farms during the rainy season is at great risk of losing his or her crops if the rains are bad.

Rain-fed agriculture (a combination of beans and corn)

Other farmers are able to irrigate their crops by either relying on well or robinet water and hand watering or by using a canal-flood system. Farmers that water by hand are generally restricted in the size of their farming space unless they are able to hire people to water their fields for them. Additionally, most women’s gardens are hand watered by wells or robinets.

Taredji Canal 

Recently, there have been several large-scale irrigation projects in my region that have been funded by the government of Senegal, other international governments, and some NGOs. These groups hire foreign companies (especially from Portugal for some reason) to build large trenches and basins from rivers to nearby villages who do not have access to the river thus creating a large network of canals. Once villages have a canal, they place all of the farmland off of the canal, and then open gates to flood all of the fields at once. This means that all the farmers of the village have to plant things that require the same watering schedule. Canals enable famers in northern Senegal to grow year-round vegetables as well as rice, a staple in the Senegalese diet, without hand watering. My village operates on a canal irrigation system and is able to produce year-round vegetables and grains including onions, tomatoes, okra, and rice.

Overall, water is a scare resource in the Fouta. Those days with no water can be tough, but its more of an inconvenience in my town. Villagers have to walk far to go to the fields that are by the canal and cannot farm near their homes. My sisters and I have to walk to the well to get water on days that the robinet is cut. We are fortunate enough to have several sources of water and irrigated fields that other villages do not have.

Taredji irrigated fields on watering day

Project Update: Dental Bamtaare Tooro Demo Garden

I am in the process of starting a demonstration garden at the office space of my counterpart Kadiata Ba. She is the president of an organization called Dental Bamtaare Tooro which if Pulaar for Group for the Development of the Tooro (a region of northern Senegal where Taredji is located). Dental’s activities focus on the development of the Toroor region by focusing on women. They primarily operate a milk processing business (see more types of milk) but also host trainings in their 29 partner villages on Pulaar alphabetization, democracy and citizenship, animal husbandry, and now agriculture. With the help of Peace Corps/Senegal, we are building a garden to train women in the 29 villages Dental works with to do small-scale gardening.

So far, I have written a grant to get tools and fencing for the space, designed the garden space, and am now waiting on the money to arrive. In the mean time, I have started a tree nursery at my family’s compound. My host dad Ousman Ba also works at Dental and has a small section of fencing around a TV satellite for a TV that is broken in a house that has electricity that can only support one small light bulb. Because the trees have a very limited time frame for being seeded before the rainy season starts, it was important that we did not wait for the fencing to arrive before getting the trees going.

A majority of the trees will be used for a live fence: a fence made out of trees that is more reliable than “dead” fencing and cheaper if more labor-intensive. With the help of Peace Corps and Dental, I have chosen three different thorny species that can be pruned into a thorny hedge to keep out animals and children (both of which are my worst enemies when it comes to gardening).

In addition to the live fence, I am also including some small fruit trees and nitrogen-fixing trees for alley cropping, a practice of integrating trees between rows of planting in order to act as windbreaks, diversify your space, provide additional income, and/or improve the soil. For fruit trees, we are using papaya, guava, and pomegranate because they don’t take up very much space and start producing fruit quickly.

In total, we have about 300 trees that will be used for a 59x26 meter space. I have just seeded the nursery and will keep you updated on the progress of the garden. 

Project Update: Podor Hospital Garden

One of the projects I am working on is a hospital garden in the city of Podor (see more pictures of Podor), which is about 20 to 25 km from Taredji depending on who you ask and is right on the Senegal-Mauritania border. Podor is a much more metropolitan city than Taredji; there are fancy hotels, internet cafes, a small amount of mainly French tourists, paved sidewalks, restaurants and bars, an old colonial fort, and a big hospital. (Side note: If you ever want to check out the weather in my area, Podor is the only place nearby that you can find online)

The garden was started by another volunteer who used to live in Podor and has now completed his service. There are two full-time gardeners who run the project; I am only there for technical assistance and come out to the garden once a week to check things out. The vegetables that are grown here supplement the hospital food bill that is quite large due to the number of overnight patients. The garden is watered by hand from a water basin that is filled everyday by a motor pump from the river.

Right now is the end of the cold, dry season, which is the prime veggie-growing season in Senegal. By the end of March or so, we should have carrots, eggplant, tomatoes, lettuce, cabbage, bitter tomato, melons, and squash. I have been trying to work with the gardeners on better spacing techniques, the importance of weeding, composting, and planning for hot season gardening. Hot season gardening is something that not many people in my area do in my area because temperatures can get up to 140°F, but we are going to try to find crops that can withstand the heat including heat-tolerant lettuce varieties, tomatoes, hot pepper, and radish. We are also trying to incorporate more fruit trees into the space like papaya, guava, and pomegranate.

In the more distant future, we plan on potentially having some training sessions at the garden for interested gardeners in Podor as well as for some young men from the military compound nearby that want to start a garden of their own. Besides that, I hang around the garden, help out with weeding or other garden activities, play with our garden cat, and watch the comings and goings of the hospital. 

Bitter Tomato 

Some shabby looking moringa trees. The leaves are packed full of vitamins.   

Firewood

Today I went out to collect firewood with the young girls of my household and the surrounding neighbors. My family protested strongly at me participating in gathering wood because it is tiring, it hurts your body, the trees and thorns give you scratches, and it is a long walk in the sun with no water. Despite their objections, I decided to go anyways to see what this was all about.

Collecting firewood is a typical activity that many NGOs highlight as a household activity that school-aged girls are forced to do which limits the amount of time they have to study. There is a lot of NGO work done to improve cooking methods and fuel sources in order to cut back on this time girls spend away from the house (for PC/Senegal examples, see the rocket stove and paper briquettes). In my household at least, which is fairly progressive towards women, the girls only go out on the weekends or when they don’t have school. The girls I went with are between the ages of six and 12 and are in elementary or middle school.

The tree line 

They head out either in the mid-morning or mid-afternoon and walk out into the bush where there are more trees. The area around the village has long been cleared of dense vegetation, but it is only about a 10 to 15-minuet walk into a heavily forested area. There is a distinct visible line where the trees start compared to the sand dunes near the village. It was striking to see how clearly deforestation has shaped the landscape around Taredji.

On our way out, we spot a goat that has clearly been attacked and eaten by something. I am warned by one girl to run if I see a dog, because they eat people and goats. For some reason I still don’t understand, the girls laugh in disbelief when I say that I am able to run.

Jeri Bah collecting wood from the bushes 

Along the way to the forested area, the girls stop every now and then at a bush to see if it is dead and dry. Only dry branches can be used as firewood, and I was horrible at distinguishing the light yellow from the light brown branches. If there was a dead branch, the girl who found it would pull on it or step on it in any way possible until it broke off. This usually resulted in several minor scrapes and occasionally a fall into the sand when a branch unexpectedly snapped. This continued until we reach the tree line. As all of the trees in our region have thorny branches, I was told I was not allowed to collect wood from the trees and only the branches of the bushes. Of course the girls are adept at carefully picking of the thorny branches with only minor scratches from the thorns, while I sustained major cuts when I tried.  Each girl would gather her own branches and as the branches became too much to carry at one time, she would leave them in a pile for her to pick up on the way back and continue further out into the bush. All of the while, the girls are joking with each other and singing songs.

Jeri Bah, Ana Bah, and Mara Bah bundling their piles of wood

When the girls have collected enough wood, they return to all the piles they have made, break up the branches into manageable pieces, and use scraps of fabric to try them into bundles to make it easier to carry. These bundles are sometime larger than the girl herself. Then the girls take other strips of fabric or their skirts and wad them up into a ball, place it on their heads, fold their bodies in half so that their heads are upside down, and deftly flip the wood onto their heads as they stand up. Then we walk the rest of the way home and drop of the wood to the respective families.

All the girls carrying wood on their heads standing on sand dune

Some of the highlights of the trip were me trying to collect wood and failing, me trying to balance the wood on my head and failing, and the girls finding a dead lizard about 2 feet long. My family got a kick out of me going out and collecting firewood with the girls and how dirty and scratched up I got when I really didn’t collect much wood at all. While it was really fun for me, it was just another chore like washing the dishes or folding laundry. 

Us collecting wood and me looking ridiculous with 2 sticks on my head. 

Another attempt at the picture

A third attempt at the picture 

Girls Reproductive Health Talk

Disclaimer: This post is about an activity that I had no part in planning or organizing. All of the credit goes to my wonderful sitemate (fellow PC volunteer in Taredji) and his work at the local health post, the Dispensaire Donaye. I was a mere observer, and these are my observations.

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of attending a health talk that my sitemate planned. His hard work brought together 12 girls ages 12-17 to talk about reproductive health, sexuality, and women’s rights. These girls were chosen to attend because of a scholarship program that PC Senegal runs called the Michelle Sylvester Scholarship (MSS) Program. The girls are in the top of their respective classes and went through interviews to be chosen for the scholarship (I hope to continue my sitemate’s work with the scholarship program so expect future posts on this).

The sage-femme of the Dispensaire Donaye led the talk. My sitemate provided the talking points and some informative diagrams and statistics, while the sage-femme did most of the talking. The discussion included basic anatomy, STDs including AIDS, protection, abstinence, marriage, and financial independence. The girls were very engaged throughout and participated heavily in the discussion. What was most impressive, however, was the conclusion of the talk. Each of the girls decided of their own accord to be “ambassatrices” or female ambassadors to their school and spread this knowledge to all the girls at the Donaye College (middle school) and Lycee (high school). They took it upon themselves to organize, gather phone numbers, arrange with the sage-femme to meet again, and to formally talk to each grade level in turn.

After talking with my sitemate at the end of the discussion, we both agreed that it went surprisingly well. He was actually shocked at how responsive the girls were and how they organized. Here are some reasons we came up with as to why it was so successful:

1. The Sage-Femme

Bare with me this is the longest one. I promise the other reasons will be shorter.

Short story: When my sitemate first approached the sage-femme about the talk, she was mildly indifferent.

“Sure, sure. I’ll talk to them.” However, when my sitemate gave her the slides to reference and confirmed that she would help lead the talk, she told him that he should just lead the talk himself. At that point he was confused.

“You think they will actually listen and talk to me about this?” As a man in his 20’s, it seemed improbable that teenage girls would open up to him about sex.

The sage-femme responded, “Sure, why not?”

            “Because they are teenage girls?”  replied my sitemate.

“YOU WANT ME TO DO WHAT?! WHY WOULD THEY NEED TO KNOW THAT?”

Clearly, there had been a miscommunication about the age group of the attendees. This reaction from a sage-femme, a woman who sees a lot of teenage pregnancies and STDs, really surprised me. Even so, the sage-femme went on to lead the talk after some encouragement from my sitemate.

The sage-femme at the Dispensaire Donaye is a stern-looking woman with a strong speaking voice. She is the kind of woman who demands respect and inspires confidence (important to young girls who are nervous about talking about sex). She treated them like adults and also was very open to questions. She expected and demanded participation. The sage-femme knew exactly how to talk to these girls (in a way that me or my sitemate probably could not have done). Her presence was the most important reason for the success of the discussion.

The fact that the sage-femme was so reluctant then went on to give a great talk that the girls were very responsive to was extremely justifying to a self-doubting Peace Corps volunteer. What can I possibly do for this community with my limited knowledge of Senegalese culture, the language, and agriculture? Well, I can inspire others in the community to take action who otherwise would not have like my sitemate did with the sage-femme. Without his push, the sage-femme would have never felt compelled to talk to this age group about sex, an age group that is in the more dire need of information. Without my sitemate and the sage-femme, these girls and all of those they go on to instruct would never have gotten a formal sexual health education.

2. Girls as Leaders

Secondly, the girls themselves were already leaders in their communities to begin with. Through the MMS application process, they had already proven to be hard-working, driven, and intelligent. They are in the top of their classes despite cultural practice dictating that they do all of the housework that their male peers are spared.  While me and my sitemate were shocked that they began to plan out future talks all on their own, we probably shouldn’t have been. Because of their own initiative and drive, the girls took initiative on their own to organize themselves and continue talking about reproductive health.

3. Girls familiar with PC Sessions

The next reason for the success of this discussion is again related to the scholarship. As part of the MMS program, my sitemate and other volunteers in our area held sessions with them previously about women’s rights and the importance of the girls’ education. This is important for two reasons.

First, they were already familiar with the format of sessions and knew they would be expected to participate in an open discussion. This format is very different that what most young people would be familiar with in school. By having attending prior PC sessions, they were prepared to participate.

Second, having worked with each other in similar sessions before, the girls were comfortable talking about a potentially embarrassing topic. They girls had been give the chance to establish peer relations before the reproductive health talk and had credibility and confidence in each other, giving them the courage to speak their minds.

4. Size and Location

Finally, the size and location was perfectly chosen for this type of discussion. The Dispensaire Donaye is a small health post situated on a large piece of land surrounded by a fence. There are a couple of buildings where the nurses and doctors see patients, and there are also a few outdoor shade structures. One of these shade structure is where the meeting was held. By chance, the design of the structure allowed the girls to sit in a circle. Rather than being in a classroom where the instructor stands at the front of the room and everyone merely listens, sitting in circle outside further encouraged discussion and made the session seem less formal. Also, the size of the group was ideal for a small group discussion. With 12 girls, everyone was given a chance to speak, and the girls were not intimidated by having too few to or too many other girls listening to their experiences.

While I hate the use a buzzword, this is the type of project that is the definition of sustainability. My sitemate identified the natural leaders in the community (the sage-femme as well as the girls) and gave them an idea for a project. The rest was more or less carried out by locals. Hopefully, the sage-femme and the girls would attended the session will be inspired to continue talking to more young girls. All of this will happen without any more work by the Peace Corps Volunteer. And hopefully, I can figure out ways to make my own small projects in agriculture as sustainable and successful as this one.