Whew!

What a whirlwind the last few weeks have been. Here is the rundown:

- Hurrying up to finish thatching the roof of the restaurant before

- The American Ambassador came! and

- Installing a rope pump before

- The national Senegalese TV channel came to film! and

- Landscaping the ecolodge before

- The Peace Corps Senegal Director visited the ecolodge!

- All of this not mention finding a garden that legitimately qualifies as paradise just outside of Segou!

With all of that going on I’m not even sure where to start!

About a month ago I was chatting with our director and he mentioned that RTS, the national TV station, was going to be producing an hour long special on Peace Corps Senegal for the 50^th anniversary of the Peace Corps. Our director was a volunteer in Dindefello, the village just past mine, 20 years ago so they were already planning on filming there. They were also planning on filming the rope pump project that another volunteer is working on. So said, “Hey, we’re going to be installing a rope pump out in the ecolodge, why don’t you come out and film the two projects on your way out to Dindefello?” They agreed and scheduled us into the Ambassador’s visit.

In preparation for the Ambassador, RTS, and our director, my counterparts and I have been working like crazy to polish off the ecolodge the last few weeks: nailing together the bamboo frame for the roof, climbing up into trees to trim branches that were in the way of the view of the valley, clearing brush, arranging for over 300 rolls of thatching for the roof, and clearing the paths in the ecolodge. In the end we didn’t quite get the roof finished before the big wig circus arrived, but perhaps that was better because we were able to show the project as a work in progress. During the RTS visit on Wednesday I got a few photos, but during the Ambassador’s visit on Thursday and our director’s visit on Saturday I was so busy showing them around I didn’t get any photos. Fortunately the Ambassador’s press secretary has offered to share all of her photos. When I get them I’ll put them up.

It’s really great having the restaurant in place. One of the key ideas that we changed from the previous attempts at building an ecolodge was that we were going to build it in an area where the restaurant would have a great view. This is an idea that often lacking in tourist lodges in Senegal. One lodge in Dindefello actually went so far as to put the toilets right in between the restaurant and a beautiful view of the surrounding cliffs! Being able to sit under the nearly complete roof of the restaurant and look out over the valley and our work is a wonderful feeling. Also, once we get the floor poured, we can begin to advertise the ecolodge as being open. We were hoping to be at this point three months ago, but well, it just didn’t happen.

All three visits went well. The folks from RTS had never been to Segou before and were really impressed with the beauty of the area. They filmed the installation of the rope pump and a bit of the Ambassador’s visit, which was quite short. She was only in Segou for about 30 minutes and I struggled to share the history of the project, talk about the work we were currently doing, what was planned for the future and still have time to introduce her to people from our community. It seemed as if it was over just as quickly as it started. Still she was very impressed and appreciative of the work we were doing. Our director’s visit was also brief but equally great. Twenty years ago he started the first tourism lodge in Dindefello. The lodge still exists today but has suffered from many problems of mismanagement stemming from the fact that the whole community owns it and the management gets changed by political whim, not based on the long term interest of the lodge or the community. It was partly from the example of the lodge started by our director that we decided to make the ecolodge in Segou privately owned. When he was visiting, our director said in hindsight he wished he had done the same think in Dindefello. Granted we benefited from his experience, but its not too shabby when your boss says you did a better job than he did!

Now that the parade of big wigs is over, we are going to sit down and plan out the rest of the work that needs to be done to finish the ecolodge while we wait for the funding to arrive. Peace Corps has all of it, but it takes at least a month for them to get it to the volunteers. This delay is huge inconvenience and inexcusable, but there is nothing we can do except wait.

Paradise Found

Almost ever since I arrived in Segou, this guy Thierno Mamadou Diallo has been asking for my help with this, that, and the other thing. I’m sorry to say that I brushed him off a lot at first. It’s often very difficult to tell the difference between someone who is sincerely asking for help and someone just looking for a handout. I was also plenty busy with the ecolodge. However it slowly dawned on me that he was serious and, more importantly, motivated. Whenever I was around he would lecture whoever else was present about how Americans don’t like to give money but they like to teach people how to do things and how much better that is that just giving money. Essentially, he completely understood what PCVs come here to do. So I started hanging out with him and his family. They are the bread bakers in town and for the longest time I thought that baking was their main occupation. I was very wrong.

Lately I have been visiting their mud oven occasionally to chat with them and teach them how to make different kinds of bread. They were really excited about corn bread because they grow corn, but they can’t grow wheat here. Cutting the bread with corn could significantly reduce their costs. While I was working with them on that they kept repeatedly asking me to visit their garden. I always told them I would when I had the time but never made it a priority. I had always pictured their garden as a normal village garden. That they would have a few beds in a fenced in area near their house and that their ambition to grow a lot of vegetables would be limited by the difficultly of having to pull water out of a well. This was part of the reason I never took a serious interest in it. This was a big mistake.

I remember now that Thierno Mamadou was very interested in an intensive Moringa garden bed I made behind my hut. Moringa is a “miracle” tree that has leaves that are so nutritious they are basically multivitamins. It will also grow well in dry conditions. Even though it’s a tree if you plant the seeds close together and keep cutting the trunks back you can grow them like they were a vegetable. This allows one to keep harvesting the leaves almost indefinitely. I also remember that he had been asking me for a while for a book in French on gardening. I finally found the book for him shortly before I visited their garden.

One day last week Bassirou, Thierno Mamadou’s son, and I set off to finally go take a look at their garden. I was surprised to learn that it was not right next to their house. Then I was surprised to learn that it was not even in the village. I was even more surprised to learn that it was not just outside the village. We had been walking for about twenty minutes when all the sudden a valley opened up below us and I saw a HUGE garden full of mango, banana, papaya, orange, lime, and avocado trees. Not to mention the well laid out garden beds. Before I even stepped foot into the garden I could tell it was the best garden I have seen in the area. However there were bigger surprises to come.

Once we climbed over the fence Bassirou immediately took me to the garden beds and showed me how he planted the cabbage and onions. “We used the recommended spacing from the book you gave us. Did we do it right?” he said. I was floored. Disseminating information is normally very difficult. Culturally Senegalese don’t like to share information and they are therefore wary of anything anyone tells them. They also don’t like to try anything new. PCVs often give crystal clear trainings on why certain gardening techniques are better, including physical evidence, and still people will stick to their current way of doing things. What Bassirou and his father had just done was to read something in a book and follow it exactly without anyone proving to them that it was really going to work. Moreover, they also put in the recommended amount of manure into the beds before they started planting, which they read about in the book. When I read the book I didn’t even notice it said that! The next surprise came when I was looking around and saw a perfect intensive Moringa bed. Thierno Mamadou had seen what I had done and copied it on his own. When I told a fellow volunteer about this she started beating her head because she is currently trying everything she can think of to get at least one person in her village to make an intensive Moringa bed. The surprises weren’t over yet though. Turning around I noticed that there was a hose with water running out of it sitting on the ground. I hadn’t noticed it at first because it was so impossible that it could be there. I knew they did not have enough money for a deep bore well and motor pump or even to pay for the gas if it already existed. I quickly followed the hose up the hill until I found what it was attached to: nothing. They just had it sitting in the pool of water created by a natural spring. Since the spring was up the hill from the garden, all they had to do was stick the end of a hose in it and they could water their whole garden! At this point my mind was exploding with the possibilities of what the could do with their garden. However the mental hyperventilation really started when Bassirou said, “Oh yeah, we have two springs like this.” For those of you following along at home, you have to keep in mind that it only rains from May to September here, so gardening during the rest of the year requires watering by hand every day and with the exception of Thierno Mamadou’s garden, that means pulling water out of a well do to so. Having water that naturally runs out the end of a hose here is paradise.

I’m kicking myself now for not going to see their garden earlier. If I had I would have spent A LOT of time there working with them instead of laying in my hammock reading when I didn’t have anything going on at the ecolodge. It’s really nice to be working in the dirt and growing things again. Safe to say from now on, I’ll be there a lot.

So you want to join the Peace Corps?

This video is pretty hilarious and pretty accurate, although it might not be as funny to those who haven't lived it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-wDq17zyN0

The EPA has set GHG regulations

Dear Members of Congress,

This is how the government works: You create the laws and the executive branch enacts them. If you fail to create better laws because you refuse to work together, guess what, the executive branch will still enact the other laws you created. This is not news, you had plenty of warning, and you have no reason to cry foul. You fake injury worse than a European soccer player.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/31/science/earth/31epa.html?_r=1&hp

Good work EPA!

Fully Funded!

I woke up this morning and was surprised to see that we'd received all of the funding we needed for the Segou Ecolodge!

I can't say how happy I am to be finished fundraising and how appreciative my counterparts are to have this support. When I told them we had the funding they launched into a series of praises that would inflate the head of even the humblest person. I don't yet have the list of everyone who donated, but when I do I am planning on getting a plaque made with your names on it to be permanently installed at the ecolodge. Thank you again to everyone who made this possible through donations or through spreading the word! Your charity to the people of Ségou and support of my efforts is appreciated beyond measure.

And now that we have the funding, it's time for me to fulfill my end of the bargain and to get to work...

14 more guests!

A few weeks ago 14 Spanish primatologists stayed at the ecolodge for a few nights. While they were not the first guests, they were the first “real tourists.” The other people who have stayed thus far have all been PCVs or study abroad students. So it was exciting to see what foreigners would think of the ecolodge. They were generally appreciative of our efforts and were pleasantly surprised by a few details; having enough towels for everyone and that we did not block the view with a building. These are two considerations that are often not taken into account by other lodges in the area.

However the really great moment came after the tourists left and we were calculating the profit for the first time. We’ve settled on keeping 35% of the profits for reinvesting in the ecolodge, 15% going to the village, and the rest being divided up between the owners and staff. It’s exciting to know that after our first guests we already have $120.00 set aside to reinvest in the ecolodge. That was a big problem with their previous attempts to run a tourist lodge, they didn’t save enough money for upkeep. When I told the village chief about the money the village was getting he said, “Great! We can use that to restart the village fund for medicine and hospital visits.” The money will be kept in reserve to loan to people who are sick but to not have available cash to pay for medicine or doctor’s visits. It was always the intent that something like this would happen, but actually seeing a profitable business that I helped to start provide social security and development funds to the village made me into one big warm fuzzy. The last exciting thing to happen was when we were talking about how much the staff would get of the profits. Months ago they “hired” their staff by having them submit written applications on scraps of paper. The understanding was that the staff would lend a hand in the construction and then share in the profits afterwards. However, they only occasionally showed up when they were called upon. For that reason, when we were discussing how much they would make for the two days the tourists were here my counterparts said, “Well, we’ll give them a little this time but we’ll also tell them that if they don’t shape up and start helping out we will just hire new staff.” This probably seems completely logical and not a big deal, but you have to understand that the last attempts at a tourist lodge were all communally owned which meant that if someone was not doing their job it was very difficult to replace them. For that and other reasons we decided to make the ecolodge privately owned. I never expected to see the benefits of that decision so clearly. We might just be getting this thing right this time!

Merry Christmas!

Samalé, Amadou, and Boubacar at the ecolodge.

The new restaurant is in the background.

Dear Family and Friends,

It’s December 19th and a warm sunny day in Senegal, or as my friend Groff who recently visited said, “Yet another warm sunny day in Africa.” Which is to say that nine months of the year here are nothing but warm (hot) and sunny (blistering). Anyway, it’s nearly Christmas and we’re into the cool season with temperatures reaching below 70 degrees F! This will be my third consecutive Christmas in West Africa and my last. I have enjoyed, and do enjoy, my time over here, but I’m already overdue to come home. Normally I would have been home, or at least left West Africa, in August, but as you know I have decided to extend to see the construction of the Segou Ecolodge through to the end. When I signed up for the Peace Corps I did so with the intent of having an accomplishment that I could point to for the rest of my life where I could say that I did that for those people and it benefited them in this way; the that is building an ecolodge, the those are the three villagers that will own it, the people who will work there, and the entire village, the this is creating the first registered business in a village that can not employ it’s own highschool graduates, a business that aims to achieve the triple bottom line of sustainability, a business that will give 15% of it profits back to the community to use as it chooses. As much as I would like to be home already, I think you can understand why it’s hard to leave a project like that unfinished just because an arbitrary period of time has passed. (The full discloser is that I could have easily been replaced by another volunteer in August, but I selfishly wanted the satisfaction of completing the project myself.) So I am still here. Here, but over the experience of being here.

They say that you can’t know your own culture until you experience another one. I have found that to be true in so many ways I can’t begin to list them. While most of the exoticness of West Africa has faded away, I still acknowledge and appreciate it. All the same, it no longer compares to what it would be like to be back home in my own culture. I have a feeling this experience will make me want to continue doing extended international stints throughout my life, although not this long and not for a while. I am ready to come home and just live my own life. Maybe not every volunteer feels this way, but doing the work I do I often find myself trying to live other people’s lives in order to learn and to teach; fasting during Ramadan to show solidarity and appreciate why no work will be done that month or trying to understand why many of the effective ways of gardening that are practiced in America are not used here. Fasting is interesting, but not that fun and I can’t wait to have my own garden again in an area where there are no goats and chickens. I call on all of you to eat as many chickens as you can out of vengeance for all of the gardens they have scratched up this past year in Senegal. When I was home in May for three weeks I counted that at least 34 chickens died for my consumption, even with the most efficient distribution of parts. As a new year’s resolution, I challenge you to declare war on all things fowl.

“Rizzo this is Louise.” “Yeah, I know, we’ve met.” (The Muppets Christmas Carol) As much as I prefer dead chickens to live ones, I guess any chicken that The Great Gonzo vouches for is ok. Which brings me back to Christmas and it’s true meaning, as expounded upon by Muppets, Peanuts, claymations, and other cartoon characters. (I pity anybody who claims that their favorite Christmas movie is one that has a human cast for they must have had sad, boring, and unimaginative formative years.) For me, Christmas is about coming together and sharing your love and joy for each other. Sure a bit of that cozy Christmas feeling comes from snuggling up on a snowy day, drinking hot chocolate by a fire, and a bit of rum in your eggnog. However, for me those feelings are all tied to the spirit of giving, loving, and showing that you care. In fact, the whole Christmas atmosphere, all the decorations, and all the parties serve to build and accentuate that Christmas spirit. Not the other way around. More than any holiday, it’s about celebrating how wonderful life is and how joyous it is to share our time with each other. Since I cannot be there in person to celebrate with you, you will have to accept these words in my stead.

This past year has been a productive and enjoyable one for me. A year ago this month I started working with my counterparts on planning to build the ecolodge and at the beginning of this month we had our first real tourist guests. It was an exhilarating moment for me to see all of the plans we had made a year ago being put into action. My counterparts were paid, the staff was paid, the village received their share, and just walking around I could literally see people being indirectly employed. (You can read more about this on my blog: zachinrim.blogspot.com) Seeing the project begin to come to fruition was exactly what I needed. While I have excellent counterparts and have faith in their ability to make the project a success, it has been progressing on their timetable not mine. This is as it should be, it is their ecolodge after all. I told them from the beginning that it was not my job to babysit them, I am only half their age. However, besides camping out in their yards, I can’t move the project along any faster than it is currently going. These past few months they’ve been busy farming and I recognize that growing the food the need takes priority, but it has been hard to see so much time pass with so little progress happening at the ecolodge, especially for someone who is itching to go home. The pace is picking up again though. All of the corn was harvested two months ago, the peanuts a month ago, and the cotton just last week. With the three major crops stored away I look forward to the new year and the increased productivity that will come with it. If all goes as quickly as possible I could still be done in May, inshallah (if God wills it). Right now it all depends on raising the rest of the money needed for the final phase of construction. As of this moment you’ve helped me raise $5,772 which is amazing! However, that still leaves $1,969 to go. Unfortunately we can’t start using the money until all of it is raised and we’d love to get started as soon as we can in January. If you are interested in learning more or helping out with this project, please visit: sites.google.com/site/segouecolodge

As the classic Christmas carol says, even just forwarding the link on to others would be a huge help…

Christmas is coming,

The geese are getting fat,

Please put a tenny

In the new lodge's hut.

If you haven't got a tenny,

A forward will do,

If you can't send a forward,

Then God bless you.

With your help and a little luck, I’ll be seeing you all soon. I hope you all are well.

Yo Allah rokku aduna e jam!

(May God grant peace on earth.)

z.

P.S. Did you know you can send texts directly to my cell phone for FREE from Gchat in Gmail? It costs nothing for you and it’s cheap for me. We can chat in real time, any time. Please abuse it!

To set it up: Click on "Settings" in the upper right of the Gmail window

Click on "Labs"

Activate "Send text messages from Gchat"

Save your changes at the bottom of the page

Go back to the Gchat window

Click on "Actions" in the upper right of the Gchat window

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My number is +221 77 729 9164