Glimpses of the Future

      We woke up at 5 am one the morning of the 25th of October and loaded a ~20 person Peace Corps bus with bicycles and bags necessary for the 4 day trip to visit our future site or something similar. We dropped people off along the road where they met up with a current volunteer to guide them around the region and show them what the next two years might be like. It was late afternoon when I exited the bus to find a tall guy with tape on either side of his thick glasses, who would be showing me where he had lived for the past two years and where I would live for the next two. We borrowed a bike from Tasha, the health volunteer stationed in Mampateen(the nearest town with a paved road to my site) and took off on a small dirt road, at times simply a path, through the African brush.

The gentleman who I am replacing, Tucker so called, and myself, pedaled through tall grasses and trees occasionally passing people and fields of cotton, peanut, sorghum, and corn. We stopped and took a short walk through some shorter grass and looked at a rather disorganized garden of banana trees a few tall palms and some other small trees. Tucker had selected the owner of this farm as a promising work partner for me and we had been hoping to meet him at his garden. When we failed to locate him we returned to the bikes and finished the 7km ride to the village passing more concentrated fields of the above mentioned crops as the village came into view.

Tucker had passed his two years living with the family of Dembo Balde, son of the chief of the village. We entered and began the very long process of greeting every person over the age of 16ish who we met. Each greeting consists of about 6 back and forth wordings of “how are you”- “peace only the (time of day) is without evil”. Also the day is split into six or so parts and each part has it’s own special greetings. We greeted and unloaded the bikes behind Tucker’s hut. The hut was about 2.5m diameter with a cement wall going up about 5.5 feet, the roof is thatched on top of bamboo sticks that come to a point making the building about 12 feet tall.  A bamboo bed and chair as well as a wooden desk chair combo furnish the small space. Two traveling trunks also provide storage area with a bit of protection from bugs, humidity, and likely children who may wander in.

The sun set soon after our arrival delaying the much anticipated introductions. I was informed that the village was excited to meet me. We were seated and provided with kosam(a sour milk with sugar added, hopefully,) and lecceri (pronounced lechery) which is a pounded sorghum that is cooked and often served with a watery leaf sauce. The food was good and apparently far more nutritious than the rice I had become accustomed to eating for almost every meal prior to arriving in village. Tucker and I ate by flashlight while Dembo sat with us and they made light conversation in Fulakunda. After I took a pretty sweet bucket shower in the backyard of Tucker’s hut beneath the stars and thought to myself “I could get used to this”. The remainder of the night was spent lying on a supported bamboo mat talking with Tucker about the village, it’s people, and his projects that he worked on over the past few years.  Then bed.

Woke up at 6:45 just as the sky began to grow light. Started the long process of greeting the rest of the village. Considering I couldn’t even remember the people I had met the night before I had already resigned to the fact that remembering more than two or three names would be useless. We took a break after an hour or so and walked 100m outside of the village to the East to admire the baobab grove consisting of 7 or so of the massive trees. The rest of the morning was spent greeting and talking to the important people in each of the family compounds and getting to know some of the important points such as the blacksmith’s workshop.

After a late lunch, everyone eats lunch at around 2pm, of sorghum pounded into a slightly finer consistency we took the bikes to see the farmer whose garden we had stopped at the night before. He was present this time and we chatted for a bit and he showed us the part of his garden where he wanted my help establishing a live fence to keep out animals. The three of us walked back to his village, which is between my village of Pidirou and the road town of Mampateen, where we looked at his peanut and millet crop.

Next we returned to Pidirou to check in on a project Tucker was rather displeased with involving a mildly incompetent mason and a basin and some piping. Once the sun went down we visited a man on the other side of the village, who Tucker had also selected as a very promising work partner, and we discussed his garden and made arrangements to look at it the next morning. We ate a little bit of supper with Walli’s family and then returned to our family compound… for a second supper. This was followed by some more stargazing an excellent night shower and bed.

The second morning we visited Walli’s garden and apparently made arrangements for him to extend his garden and buy and plant some vegetables so that I could take over when I returned a month later. I felt really productive that I’d have a project already half started when I arrived and some volunteers hadn’t even seen their villages yet. Once this meeting was over Tucker and I took a long walk that must have been 4 miles and began by going south into a large cow pasture that was bordered on the south by the small seasonal river that swells intensely during the rainy season. We walked along this river as it ran northeast along the village and then looped back around ending in some rice fields and meeting some men as they harvested sorghum. As we passed some other individuals harvesting sorghum a woman picked several peanut plants and gave them to me as a gift.  

I spent the afternoon writing about the recent events, taking a small nap, and doing a bit of homework that had been assigned to me. Ah yes before I forget this was also the morning that while on our way to visit Walli’s garden I thought it would be very entertaining to ride a donkey. Turns out it is very entertaining, although the word to stop the donkey only seems to slow it down in small increments and just as I repeated it enough to get the donkey to slow down the same kid who had suggested the ride whipped the donkey and effectively doubled the length of my mini morning adventure. After dinner I engaged in an excellent philosophy based discussion with Tucker (who had a bachelors and masters in the subject) while laying on one of the bamboo mats staring at the sky.

The final morning in the area was spent in mampateen visiting some people who Tucker knew and seeing another farmer who desired my assistance implementing a live fence around his mango orchard. Then we jumped on a 20 person bus that didn’t belong to the Peace Corps and began the 90km journey into the regional capital of Kolda city for the welcoming party that the volunteers who’d been in country already were throwing for us. Regrettably non PC buses stop to pick up anyone who wants to be picked up wherever they are along the road until it is full, and is much more sketchy and uncomfortable and took 4 hours to make the journey that I could probably bike in 2 hours.

We spent the afternoon hanging out in a very nice hotel’s pool for free with access to a full service poolside bar. The evening was full of a pig roast at the regional house where volunteers from the region can go to get internet access or can go to stay a night and chill while watching movies and just unwind. After the food everybody dressed in their toga, as a toga party is obviously needed, and we had a killer party. The day after we loaded the bus before sunup and were traveling until 45 min past sundown.

As an afterword what I’ll be doing in my site is to help farmers and interested individuals implement newer agricultural practices to increase crop yields in a sustainable manner. Which can be anything from grafting mango and citrus trees, planting live fences which do not need to be replaced every few years like traditional fences, and helping diversify gardens with new crops, help keep them healthy with natural pesticides, and try to educate the village about nutrition. I’m really excited to start my work and have the free time to do random village stuff, ie ride a donkey, and read my books and practice martial arts. At this point I am very hopeful that the choice to come here will be extraordinarily well reasoned, rewarding, and provide me with mountains of personal growth.