Its been a while since I have posted and this time it is not for want of activities as it was in the fall of 2009, in fact, just the opposite. After training version 2.0 was over, actually it was really just training 1.0 all over again, mom and Dave came and went, and life has picked up big time.
I can’t remember if I have described my new village yet, so I’ll do it now. It’s a small village of about 1,200 people, near the Guinea border. It’s a big change from my previous town in Mauritania, much more picturesque, very few concrete buildings and much less electricity ;). Its right at the base of a low plateau, all round huts with thatched roofs. The villagers seem to have a bit of an eye for aesthetics, as many have stream bed stone “patios” outside the front doors of their huts (although in reality these exist for the much more practical reason of door mats that keep dirt, dust, and sand from being tracked into the huts.) All of the housing compounds are closed off by woven bamboo fences. Bamboo is very abundant here, finally fulfilling my childhood dream of living in a place where I could build things out of bamboo. There are narrow, worn down foot paths that zigzag between the bamboo fences and lead to the cattle proof entrances to each compound. In order to keep the cows out, but unfortunately not the goats, where they want to make an entrance in the fence they lower the height of the fence about half way and then make “steps” up and down on either side by using two forked vertical pieces to support a horizontal log. One steps on the log, then on to the fence, then on to the log on the other side and back on to the ground. Not being totally accustomed to this process, I do it somewhat awkwardly, but the native women do it with a full bucket of water on their heads without spilling it. At some point I plan on just hurtling over them, it would either be impressive if I made it or humorous if I fall, either way its another good way to entertain the villagers.
As I mentioned, the village is situated right at the base of a plateau range that serves as the foothills to the mountains in Guinea. That plateau is more or less the reason I am here; it provides the vertical drop needed for waterfalls and a sanctuary for chimpanzees. The waterfall near my village is certainly not the most spectacular in the region, but the hike out to it is. The waterfall itself is, I forget exactly, maybe 100 feet tall and falls into a small pool that immediately flows underground and resurfaces as a stream 30 farther down. This characteristic gives it somewhat of a magical feeling. However, like I said, the hike out there is the real draw for me. You are hiking through a fern and bamboo lined ravine that gradually gets narrower and narrower as you approach the waterfall. Since very few streams flow year round, being in the ravine at this time of year feels a little like being in an oasis (I can say this with confidence having actually been in a desert oasis recently). The other interesting aspect about the hike is that there is only somewhat of a trail. There are often times when you are scrambling over rocks and cantilevered a few feet above the water. Some tourists and guides have complained that it is too difficult, I think they just don’t know how to have fun. All the same, one of my projects will be to “fix” it up a bit while maintaining its character. Thus far the chimpanzees have been elusive, aka I have not seen one. However, I am told that later into the dry season they occasionally come into town to steal mangoes. Think raccoon in your trash can except this raccoon has 98% the same DNA as you. The local government covering my villages and the ones surrounding it is in the works of establishing the plateau area as a chimpanzee reserve. This of course has all sorts of potential and even more pitfalls. The idea was proposed by a local NGO called Wula Nafaa which is funded by USAID. They have brought in a specialist with experience creating parks and in my lack of experience they seem to be doing the right things.
As I mentioned, work has been picking up. Since I moved into a “fixer upper” of a hut, I have made that my first project. My hut, like all the others in the village is round and made out of woven bamboo walls covered in mud, then a thin layer of cement, and painted white. The walls are about 7 feet high and the room is about 15 feet in diameter, it is big by comparison to some others in my village. Last rainy season some of the thatching was washed away which caused the rapid disintegration of the walls in a few places. I have been nagging the village chief, who has welcomed me into his family and let me use HIS hut, to get the roof repaired before idiots burn all of the grasslands (more on that later). My hut is located in the corner of the small field inside the chief’s compound so I have a bit of privacy from the rest of the family. Behind my hut, as per Peace Corps regulation, the chief put in a pit latrine and also a cement slab to shower on. The pit latrine I greatly appreciate but the problem is that both the latrine and the shower are sloped so that any excess water runs directly towards my back door. Over my time here in west Africa I have had numerous conversations about why people seem to lack a certain ability to think critically. I will probably go into this in greater detail at some point, but my current understanding is that it is a product of environmental factors that created cultural traditions that have amplified the affect of the environmental factors. Anyway, when I take a shower or wash my hands after going to the bathroom, the path to my back door gets muddy. I solved these problems by digging a compost pit that absorbs the runoff water from my pit latrine and making a bamboo channel that collects the water from my shower and directs it toward the mango tree growing in my back yard. Also growing in my back yard is an intensive Moringa bed. Moringa Oleifera is the “miracle tree” with leaves as nutritious as multivitamins and tasty as spinach. Peace Corps and many other NGOs have been promoting is use for years. Normally people will grow one or two trees in their compounds and occasionally harvest the leaves. What I am doing is treating it like a vegetable, not a tree. I have planted several hundred trees just a few inches apart and every time they get two feet tall I will harvest all the leaves and cut them back to the ground. My motivation for doing this is that my family is pretty poor, and so is the food we eat. This is actually the mark of a good village chief, he is supposed to give up anything he has to the village or any villagers who want it. I also have started a small mint plot, since my village doesn’t have any and because mint is hardy enough to handle not being watered for a few days when I leave, especially since I placed in the shade under the eve of my hut. I am saving the rest of the space in my little garden to grow and propagate flowers and shrubs for the tourist lodge I will be helping my counterparts to build.
Speaking of which, it’s the ecotourism lodge that has me really busy. There have been several attempts to build lodges at my village before but all have suffered from being built of thin woven bamboo strips, that the termites eat every year, and built on a hill that washes away the floors of the huts every year. My counterparts had contacted a few other volunteers, Matt and Hayes, and asked them to help find funding. They had already started doing this before I transferred to Senegal. Right about the time I showed up at site for the first time, the money had gone through and I had a $5,000 USD project to manage. It has been great to be able to jump right in to a project since I had to leave all of the ones I had worked for a year to build up behind in Mauritania. On the other hand, it is probably not exactly the project I would have done myself if I had started from scratch. Despite that, I am very grateful to have the work to do. I am having to play catch up a bit since I am new to this project and they need to finish building it before the rains come in May. One of the first things I worked out with them was that my role was going to be that of a guide, I would be there as a consultant but it was their project to do or not do. Of course, the money would disappear if they chose the latter. The new lodge will be built in a location with a view of the valleys and mountains, terraced, and be constructed of cement. It will have five huts with internal bathrooms, a restaurant, and a guard’s hut. This small ;) project and many others have been keeping me running around and loving having work to do again after nearly four months with nothing to do. I’d love to talk about the others as well but I fear that this post is already longer than attention spans.
In short, happy new year to everyone, I am very happy where I am at, my life, and the work that I am doing, but as always, I miss you all very much.
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