Noor be new na! (Hot season is here!) May 2014

It is currently the hottest part of the year here in my corner of Senegal, and that means too hot for me to make coherent thoughts or blog posts.  I figured a fun alternative would be a photo essay (of sorts) of what I've been seeing these last three weeks in my village.

WHAT DO YOU SEE IN SENEGAL IN THE HOT SEASON? 

Peace Corps Volunteers biking with strange cargo on their bikes

My friends J.J. and Kait about to bike 30 km on dirt paths back to site.  J.J. had been gone a while so he wanted to buy his family a nice present... like a chicken to eat the day after he got back.  Only in Senegal, you can't buy nicely packages chicken breasts or frozen chickens.  You can only buy live ones.  So J.J. headed off to the market, bought the chicken, and attached it (quite creatively, might I add) to his bike for the ride.  

Another of my colleagues, Allie, could be spotted this hot season biking back from our road town where she'd bought a hose for her men's garden.  Notice the ingenious positioning of the object!  Allowing for ease of movement and minimizing the cumbersome weight.  

Erin's tree nursery, with special appearances by her little helpers (aka, my brothers)

So new trees are hardier and have a higher survival rate, we PCVs extend the 'tree sack' or other pre-rainy season nursery techniques.  You get the trees started in a controlled, shaded, protected environment before transplanting them after the first rains.  I helped with several live fences (thorny or poisonous tree species that deter pests and last longer than fencing) for gardens, trees within gardens, and cashew orchards that we are establishing in the area.  My personal nursery has cashew, two types of pigeon pea, citrus, Luciana, Meringa, and papaya.    

Amet (age 2), with cashew seeds.

Ada (age 3), planting away!

 Abibo (age 5), making holes for the pigeon pea seeds.

My flamboyant, a shade tree with red leaves.  

Napping boys in my hut in the afternoons! 

Mom!  I don't nap in your room, I never sleep!

Yeah!  We just come in and tear things apart, we don't sleep!  Sleep is for...

Ok boys, I called your bluff.

All the cool kids playing 'UNO' after I broke out the cards 

I must confess, I was impressed the kids caught on so quickly since my explanations left much to be desired.  I don't know the word for 'reverse' in Wolof, or 'skip,' so I named these "mix up!" and "don't play!" respectively.  They love to scream those out when they lay it down, "ABALAI!  DON'T PLAY!"

Even the elusive teenagers have been spotted with the cards, though you have to stalk them to get any evidence.

 Huge piles of 'demb' rinds

My older mom, Awa Top, peeling and halving demb fruit.  At the peak of the hot season there are space pickings for fruits, vegetables, or leaves to cook.  Thankfully, the local bush fruit called 'demb' is in season and every woman prepares a couple pounds of it for the sauce on our nightly ground millet.

Another of those huge piles!  On the stick bed, you can see dehydrating fruits.  You can either serve them stewed or dehydrated.  I much prefer the stewed version as they soak up the sauce they cook in.  The dehydrated version is like a dry rub of Senegalese spices... on dry ground millet.  Not quite to my taste, but interesting nonetheless.

 Endless Shelling of Peanuts

With the end of the peanut harvest last December, I joined the village in the months of peanut shelling that ensued.  I acquired calluses on my fingers and learned how to conjugate a lot of basic Wolof verbs back then.  I thought that was behind us, but it was not to be!  Here in the peanut basin, it was unusual for us to take a couple months off peanut shelling.  Now we are back at it, shelling and sorting the second you sit down so the best peanuts can be planted when the rains come.

Sifting through the peanuts.

 

 A distinct lack of vegetables

Nothing is growing.  It is almost impossible to preserve fruits and vegetables here.  Hence my role here to combat food insecurity.  A perfect example of this is my lunch, maffe.  White rice with a ground peanut and hot pepper sauce.  Not all that nutritious, but give us a couple more months and that sauce will have carrots, potatoes, cabbage, eggplant, and other vegetables again.  

 My 'wannek' garden

Everywhere else, it's brown and only trees and old bushes with deep tap roots have green leaves on them.  I'm trying out my green thumb in my backyard (wannek) and these are my pre-rainy season nurseries thus far.

A cucumber nursery.

Banana, basil, cucumbers, and mint.

A spaghetti squash nursery, I hope it survives this Senegalese heat!

  New huts being built

This is the slowest time of the year for farmers.  You can start some nurseries and prepare your fields, but it is too hot for even Senegalese to do too much work.   Instead, this is the time that jobs usually secondary to agriculture get done.  Like building huts.  This is a typical hut in an impoverished community like mine.  Bricks made out of mud (not very stable, especially in the rainy season), woods beams for the roof, and thatch to keep the weather out.  People with more money build with concrete and metal, but even those families have at least one or two of these typical huts in their compounds.

Making thatch!  After laying out the tall grass, it is wrapped handful by handful in strips of tree bark to make these long lines of thatch which get wrapped around the roofs.

 Matching Outfits

'Mama Yassine' teaching kids how to make faces

Part of my job description?  No.  But it was too hot to work.  Call it a 'cultural exchange.'  It's been so hot we haven't been able to do much but sit around and make faces at each other.  I've learned (and taught) quite a bit.

Petite, the latest addition to our family

When we adopted my puppy Yussa Ndor, one of his litter mates started hanging around the village.  This last month, my brother decided he would adopt her too.  She's much sweeter than Yussa Ndor, and better behaved.  The two of them are always up to no good... or napping.  

Malaria Education

I helped with two malaria education programs at different schools this past month.  With rainy season comes standing water.  With standing water comes mosquitoes.  With mosquitoes comes malaria.  Every individual in my family has had malaria.  In 2010,  over 660,000 people died from malaria- most of them in Africa.  The programs we did discussed malaria prevention (mosquito nets (proper usage and care), limiting standing water) and  treatment (go to the health post!).  The program was fun because it incorporated soccer, so the kids were pretty excited about it!

Usually, boys don't wash clothes or mosquito nets.  We decided to do some impromptu gender equality work and taught the boys to wash as well.

Checking for holes in need of sewing up.

A mini-training on tree nurseries 

This past week, I held a small training with the seven women of the Escale Women's Group.  I taught them how to make tree sacks, protect the nursery, and decide which trees were best for their community garden.

Sifting the dirt and manure for the tree sacks.

Filling the sacks.

Putting the sacks in the nursery hole, protected with wood ash and neem leaves.

Hot Pepper Nurseries 

Hot pepper is one of the most coveted, and profitable, crops in Senegal.  Most women have their own hot pepper gardens and this is the time to start the nurseries!  They prepare the soil, plant the seeds, keep them under mosquito-type netting propped up with sticks to protect from insects, covered in grass to protect from the sun, and water daily.  When the rains come and the peppers are big enough, they'll be transplanted to the river garden.