Paradise Garden Photos

Finally, as promised, here are some photos of the "paradise garden." It has been a real pleasure to work with these guys the past few months.

Right to left: Bassirou, Amadou, Thierno Mamadou

Thierno Mamadou's father started the garden and Bassirou is now the third generation to be working the land.

Avocado and banana trees!

When I first showed up to check out what I thought was going to be a small garden with a few struggling beds, this is what I was greeted with.

One of two natural springs that sit uphill from the garden and make all the magic possible.

The other spring. To water they just put a hose in the pool and let gravity do the rest. It's possible that there could be another spring fed garden in Senegal, but given the topography not very likely.

When I first came to the garden they asked, "We made the garden beds the size it said to in the book you gave us, we also put in the amount of manure it recommended, and planted the cabbage with the spacing listed. Did we do it right?" I have never heard of any gardener that worked with a PCV in either of the countries I served in who was able to see the value of a technique just from reading about it and then try it out. What's more, when I suggested that they mulch their beds, the immediately started to do so. I've recommended mulching to a dozen other gardeners, but none of them were willing to try it. They only water the mulched beds half as much now.

I rigged up this "surveying level" so we could determine the elevation drop from the springs to the center of the garden. I'm working with another US funded NGO called Africare to design a system of reservoirs that will be able to store more water than the current dirt basins and could even support a drip irrigation system.

Measuring the quantity of water that comes out of the source. By timing how long it took to fill up a 1.5 L water bottle we were able to determine that in a 24 hour period the two sources release over 10,000 L of water. When we did the calculation, Thierno and Bassirou couldn't believe it. Bassirou said he didn't sleep that night because he was thinking about all of the possibilities of what they could do with that much water. For perspective, half of the wells in the village are already dry and in order to water the other garden in town the women carry buckets of water on their heads from their homes to the garden, which is over half a kilometer away. That's why I call this garden a paradise.

Fofana, an employee of Africare, setting up the sign for a gardening training that Peace Corps, Africare, and Trees for the Future collaborated on. Over 60 people attended from 4 villages.

Starting the training.

The really cool thing about this training was that it wasn't just theoretical. The Thierno and Bassirou were already practicing many of the techniques we wanted to teach. We started the training by taking a stroll through the garden and asking to explain what the had done. Pictured here is an intensive Moringa bed. Moringa is a tree that produces delicious leaves that are essentially multivitamins. This is a method of cultivating Moringa as if it were a vegetable and not a tree to get a maximum about of leaf production. Thierno saw that I had a bed like this behind my hut and started this one all on his own.

The cabbages liked the mulch!

Explaining the benefits of mulching. I asked the crowd what was the most difficult part about gardening in Senegal. They all immediately responded that watering was the hardest and most time consuming. I then asked Thierno how often he watered his beds with mulch and the ones without. He responded that where there was mulch he only watered half as much and the ground was still wetter than the beds without mulch. There we audible gasps from the crowd. The crazy thing is that you can talk yourself hoarse saying things like this, but until the people see it practiced by one of their neighbors, they just won't try it. Now mulching is catching on like wildfire in Segou.

Karumba (in the green tshirt), an employee of Trees for the Future, leading a training on tree nurseries. We are fortunate to have him as a work partner as he understands gardening like we do, but speaks much better Pulaar, and Mandinka, and Bassari, and French.

Last time I was at the garden we turned the stream running from the spring into an automatically watered nursery for bamboo cuttings. Ask anyone and they will say that bamboo is getting harder to find these days, but not everyone is willing to do something about it.

I love these guys.