School Gardens

Ever since I arrived at site I have wanted to start school gardens and in fact the directors of the schools have wanted to start them for years as well. What lacked were the motivation and the means. I provided the motivation and was trying to provide the means but since I have no budget and the only way for me to finance projects through the Peace Corps is by a system of asking family and friends for to donate money, the process of procuring the means was going to be a long one. However, in the absence of the community financing it, I was very much willing to do the work. In fact, as of last week I had done the work; I researched and wrote a proposal and secured a significant contribution from the community. However, as I was explaining again why it was going to take so long to get the money to Ball Oumar, the director of primary school 2, he said “Well, hang on, why don’t we try calling the Mayor and see if he will finance the fencing.” Which made me both a little pissed and very happy because this is what I had wanted to do when I first arrived at site, but was told was useless. A day later we had the fencing.

As much as it would be nice to leave products of my labors here, I would much prefer that those products were really the products of Mauritanian labors that I just happened to be a part of. I think I may have mentioned this in an earlier as my idea of “Jujitsu development” where I my role is more that of a catalyst than typical international (financial) aid. While I cannot claim full credit for the things ending up the way they did, due to some other factors the Mayor has started paying attention to the schools in a way that he was not when I first arrived at site, Ball has wanted to have a school garden more and longer than I have, and it was Ball who made the call, the two schools in which I work now have 50 meters of fencing each that they are already putting up. In the end I achieved the result I wanted and do not think it would have happened without me, but I am not sure how responsible I am for it. Oddly enough that right there is how I measure my success here.

Update: I have a tree nursery of a couple of hundred trees and 10 garden bed planted at one school and will be planting the tree nursery at the other this week.