Sully and Senegal: May 2009

Hey all,

Sorry it's been a while since the last time I wrote; I cant believe it was the Eye Clinic...pathetic on my part, but all the better since I've got a lot more interesting stuff to write about. So really, I did it for you.
It's been an interesting couple months between the village and everything else PC-related. I officially graduated from freshman to sophomore status (though I hate when people refer to it like that), as we welcomed a new stage of volunteers into our ever-expanding Kedougou family. It was a smaller group than our stage, 3 guys versus the 8 people we had, but theyre great additions to the group and have fit right in. They were installed in their villages a little over a week ago and seem to be doing well so far from what theyve told me.
Unfortunately, with the welcoming of new volunteers comes the departure of the volunteers theyre replacing, and we had to say farewell to two guys from our group; which was tough, but theyre on to bigger and better things, i.e America, and were great friends in the short time I knew them. Best of luck Dan and Willie!
It felt like quite a milestone to officially become not the newest people in country, and made us realize just how much we've learned in our time here, though none of us would have really attested to being wizened old vets just yet (still not). It also has put into perspective just how quickly our time is passing, and how soon we'll be saying goodbye to the next group, and how much that will change things. Though it seems strange to say it when we're only in the month of May, the year mark is quickly approaching and it wont be long before we'll be the ones having to seriously consider what to do when we leave. Crazy.
Anyhow, I did get to go up to Dakar for a while for the Ag Summit, where all the Sustainable Ag volunteers got together for a kind of interim training for the 1st years and discussion time for the second years to impart some of their wisdom, especially regarding things they would have liked to know going into their first rainy season (which is almost upon us); all in all it was a very helpful 2-day session. Plus, I got to hang in Dakar...which is like a vacation in and of itself.
Right after getting back to the summit, everyone from our region got together for a retreat to a local campement in Mako, a beautiful little town just outside of Kedougou, to discuss regional projects and initiatives. It was a really effective meeting, with our doing some serious re-evaluating and re-planning for what we wanted to accomplish as a group on top of our personal PC goals. Plus, we saw hippos in the river, which anyone would agree was clearly the best part.
That weekend I also began a mural at our regional house of a local waterfall that I actually got to go to during our initial Kedougou visit during training. So far it's coming out well, at least everyone here approves, and will hopefully be done by our fourth of July party. I dont have pictures up of it yet but once I do I will post them as soon as possible.
What I DO have pictures of and what I really haven't been able to wait to share with you all is my current gardening situation. I was having some great success with my hot/dry season garden after my cool/dry season garden had been essentially wiped out by grasshoppers in my absence when I was at my In-Service Training. But we pressed on, and developed a hot season garden, making efforts to ward off grasshoppers by protecting young seedlings with netting and doing everything from burning plastic to smoke them out to covering leaves in wood ash to make them less desirable. And, for the most part, it was working.
If you get a chance, I highly recommend checking out my blog for the pics to get the full effect of what I'm about to write. So, I mentioned having great success; in fact, it was awesome. Eggplant and okra were growing amazingly well, as well as tomatoes and some cabbage, but the real prize were my cucumbers. At my last count, I had over fifty that were almost ripe and ready to be picked, and given that they're my favorite vegetable, I was pretty excited. Not to mention my plans to try to make pickles for our 4th of July party.
But, of course, my mistake was getting too satisfied with the results and happy with my success, because that's naturally when these things get taken away. We had a notably windy night at the beginning of this week, and the "rope" that we had used to tie my fencing together snapped in a couple places, exposing a corner of the garden. I used the term "rope" loosely because it's actually strips of bark soaked in water to be maleable and then tied; but, of course, it eventually dries out, gets brittle, and becomes the harbinger of utter chaos.
So, on my walk to the bathroom, I noticed that this one corner of my fencing had fallen down, and that the rest of the fencing was no longer protecting anything. I ran down to catch a cow in the act of entering the garden, but unfortunately for him, his friends had beaten him to it, and like me, he found nothing there. Like I say, check out the pictures, but they left no trace...it was actually quite impressive (I'm not including one of my tree nursery which was also within the confines of the garden, which was also destroyed; approximately 175 trees...hamburger, anyone?)
I didn't exactly know what to do; I was utterly defeated. My family was sympathetic, especially my brother who had been helping with watering in my absence, as well as anything else I asked of him. He was quick to begin cleaning up the area and performing what to be just seemed like mundane acts of maintenance on a thing that no longer needed to be maintained, but I think he felt he needed to do something to improve the situation, even the littlest bit. I was pretty calm about the whole thing, at least on the outside, considering other people have told me if it were them they would have gone on a rampage, which did cross my mind.
Instead we talked about the fact that this "rope" was not sufficient enough when it came to withstanding the winds we're now experiencing, and even turned into a healthy discussion about livestock management (after I had gone the 5k into Salemata and got a couple luke warm beers in me from the local campement, of course; it was Cinqo de Mayo after all). So, we're pushing forward...again, and will hopefully see the same level of improvement in this 3rd "rainy season" garden as we did between the 2nd and the 1st. Live and learn, especially in Africa.
I'm back in Kedougou now, obviously, because I agreed to help out with this next regional initiative we have coming up. The Michelle Sylvester Scholarship was established in memory of a former volunteer who passed away and gives opportunities to young motivated girls at the middle school level to win a monetary prize for school supplies, as well as be exposed to other successful students such as themselves. We're going to be putting on a tournee of all these schools in the region of Kedougou to not only conduct interviews of nominated girls, but also to distribute information about our Summer Leadership Camp that a few volunteers started last year and is being continued this year. The final part, and the part which I'm most involved in, will be the painting of HIV/AIDS prevention and education murals at each of the schools. It's the project of a 3rd year volunteer from the north who is coming down and whom I agreed to help with the design and then ultimately the implementation of these murals. It'll be exhausting, but also a great chance to see a lot more of the region.
So, hope you're enjoying the ups and downs as much as I am; but then again, if it weren't hard, it wouldn't be worth doing, right?

I also want to say thanks to The Brennans, to Uncle Ed and Aunt Maureen, The Simbolis, and of course Mom, SND, and Bobby & Amy for all the great packages I've gotten as of late. Thanks for helping keep me going!

Til next time,

Samba