I’ve made you wait awhile, haven’t I? I’m sorry. (Baal ma aq - Forgive my sins)
I’ll give you the highlights of what I’ve been up to for the past almost four months.
To preface July, I must admit that I went on vacation to the United States to visit my parents the final two weeks of June. As it happens, I left just as Ramadan began, so when I returned home to Linguere, my family was in the midst of their annual month-long fasting.
Ramadan is the ninth month of the Islamic calendar. Islam uses a lunar calendar, which means that each month begins with the sighting of the new moon. Because the lunar calendar is about 11 days shorter than the solar calendar used elsewhere, Islamic holidays "move" each year. This year, Ramadan began at sundown around June 18th. Although some villages or towns in Senegal started a few days before hand or few days after depending on when their Imam saw the moon and declared fasting to begin.
In Islam, Ramadan is a holy month of fasting, introspection and prayer. Fasting is one of the five fundamental principles of Islam. Each day during Ramadan, followers of Islam, known as Muslims, do not eat or drink from sunrise to sunset. They are also supposed to avoid impure thoughts and bad behavior. Muslims break their daily fasts by sharing meals with family and friends. The end of Ramadan is celebrated with a festival known as Eid al-Fitr, which is considered one of Islam’s major holidays.
During Ramadan, most people are too lethargic to do conduct a lot of work, so I spent a good amount of time reading, watching shows and waiting for the sun to set, so that we could break fast (which occurred each day around 7:30pm). Breaking fast consisted of eating bread with either chocolate spread or butter, dates and drinking coffee, tea and home-made hibiscus or ginger juice or mango lassi. My favorite part of breaking fast certainly was all the delicious drinks. Dinner would then be served later between 9pm or midnight. My family would then also eat again around 5am before the sunrise and their day of fasting commenced.
So night became day and day became night, throughout the month of Ramadan. People conducted most of their affairs during the night when they had energy and then during the hot days they would nap and rest, which meant that I simply prepared for Ramadan to end and rainy season to come, so that I could start working on projects again.
Ramadan ends with the celebration “The Feast of Fast-Breaking”, known as Eid al-Fitr, internationally, but here in Senegal it is referred to as Korite. This year, Korite occured on July 18th.
The day consisted of preparing food abundant; french fries with an onion sauce and fried chicken. I spent most of the day helping my yaay preparing the food while people came in and out of our compound saying the ritual forgiveness sayings:
Dewenati - May God grant us life for next year
Fekkeel dewen - May you be present
Baal ma aq - Forgive me any wrongs I may have done to you
Baal naa la - I forgive you
Yalla nanu Yalla boole baal - may God forgive us all
Yalla nanu ko fekke ay at yu bari - may we be present for years again
In the later afternoon, the younger children put on their yere wolof (nice Senegalese clothes) and go around to different houses in the neighborhood asking for money or sweets. The next few days consist of saying the ritual forgiveness sayings to your friends and family
The core of the Peace Corps Agriculture program is the seed extension initiative, developed in conjunction with ISRA (Institut Sénégalais de Recherché Agricoles) which affords farmers access to improved variety seeds and appropriate cultural practices to accompany them. The seed initiative is a means of introducing the other agricultural interventions that the Peace Corps Agriculture program promotes, such as composting, seed storage, proper thinning and weeding, tree protection and production, and erosion control.
It also assists in increasing food security. The seed initiative continues to provide improved variety field crop seeds to farmers and continues to extend appropriate cultural practices for these varieties. The seed does outperform local varieties provided that the recommended protocols are followed. Farmers are asked collaborate with Peace Corps Volunteers to provide data and harvest information, which is reported to the Department of Agriculture and the researchers at ISRA. Peace Corps Volunteers act as a liaison between ISRA and local farmers, extending seed and technical expertise as provided by ISRA.
To enable Peace Corps Volunteers to assist Senegalese farmers in increasing and diversifying their crop.
1. To provide improved variety field crop seed and accompanying recommended cultural practices to
2. To generate information about the performance of field crops across out intervention zone and provide feedback on the improved varieties to ISRA so that they can make further improvements.
3. To promote good seed selection and storage techniques to growers and enable them to serve as local sources for quality seed.
(Excerpt taken from the 2012 Peace Corps Field Crop Manual)
In early July, the sky changed and rain began to fall. The ground was wet, the air humid and farmers were rushing to their fields to seed their rainy season field crops. Yet, rainy season is a tricky mistress. It may have rained, but it was not yet raining consistently, so those farmers who seeded after the first rain had the problem of their seeds either germinating, but then not having enough water to continue growth, or their seeds not germinating at all because there was not another rain for another week. It was not until late July that the rains became more consistent and that the dry, sandy, barren landscape of Linguere started to turn green as all the dormant seeds that lay in the ground for the previous nine months soaked in the rain water and grew abundantly.
Before the first rain, I extended many kilos of cowpeas, millet and corn to four farmers in the Linguere area. I continued to visit their fields bi-weekly to check on the progress of their crops and to collect data for the seed extension program. Out of the five farmers, only one’s field has flourished as two of the farmers seeded to early and one did not properly maintain his crop. As rainy season is now coming to an end, people have started harvesting the beans and other crops. One of the farmers I work with offered me two small bags of raw bean pods that I took back to my house and my aunt cooked them like edamame, where she steamed the bean pods and then added salt to them. Everyone quickly devoured this seasonal treat! An additional seasonal treat that I have noticed about town now is roasted corn. Oh the wonders of a good harvest! Which brings me to comment that the rain we had this season was far more than they had last year. I have heard that it only rained about four times last year, which hardly affected the harvest, but this year we had an abundance of rain (over twenty times) and the greenery here shows it.
For some visual of what rainy season looks like, please check out my good friend and fellow Djolof volunteer, Meg’s blog about going to the fields:
https://travelswithmegan.wordpress.com/2015/10/05/a-visit-to-the-fields-and-farm/
At the end of the month, I traveled to the Thies Training Center with my fellow UAG Meg in order to attend our bi-annual training. It was a three day training that consisted of a bunch of presentations on subjects such as: how to write our seed extension campaign report, record keeping, proper use and application of chemical fertilizer, youth vevelopment: working with at-risk youth and the 4H initiative, seed storage, gardening tips and tricks, soil fertility, and good ole earthworks. In addition, we had a day field trip to Beer Sheba, which is located about an hour away from Thies (about 15 km from Mbour). The Beer-Sheba Project combines a sustainable agro-forestry program together with holistic training and an agricultural resource center for young Senegalese farmers. We, UAGS, had a tour of the grounds, followed by a few presentations on agro-forestry and gardening techniques.
To learn more about the Beer Sheba Project, click on this link: http://beershebaproject.org/about/
Besides the super interesting trainings that occurred throughout the day, it was good to reconnect with other volunteers that I had not seen for awhile and hear what projects they have been working on as well as their daily activities at site. No one really warns you how isolating service can be, so it’s always nice to get out of site and interact with those of a familiar culture, but on the same note after three days i was itching to get back to site, back to my family and friends and back to implementing some of the techniques that I had learned about.
Was quite a busy month and you’re about to find out why...
Camp Gëm Sa Bopp is a week-long leadership development program for girls between the ages of 12 and 16 organized by local female activists (the monitrices and directrices) and Peace Corps Senegal volunteers. Through an interview process, we select girls who show leadership, motivation, and a desire to pursue their dreams. We aspire to empower and inspire girls from central Senegal to become strong and independent leaders who will have a positive impact on their communities. In a setting where campers meet other girls their own age from a wide range of backgrounds, we aim to provide summer camp memories that can serve as a resource for each participant throughout her life. Through a variety of workshops, games, and discussions, these girls will learn to recognize that they have the agency to set and achieve their own goals. They will discuss topics such as health, career options, environmental protection, gender roles, and human rights. The girls will also meet successful Senegalese women whom they can look up to as role models in the form of volunteer counselors (monitrices) and guest speakers. We work hard to ensure that every girl says goodbye at the end of the week with increased self-confidence, improved communication skills, a greater capacity for leadership, lifelong friendships, and higher self-esteem.
This year, I participated as a counselor in the 5th annual girls empowerment camp that the Linguere, Louga and Saint Louis regions put on each September. Camp took place at Gaston Berger University, outside Saint Louis, from September 14th to 19th. Throughout the week, we conducted a variety of activities and had speakers come present based on the day’s theme. We also had activities that took place around the same time every day: morning workout, English lessons at breakfast, arts and crafts, afternoon sports, and an after-dinner activity such as a sing-along, cultural night, bonfire, and talent show.
For more detailed information on the daily events, please read Meg’s post on camp: https://travelswithmegan.wordpress.com/2015/10/11/gem-sa-bopp-2015/
Albeit exhausted from a week of fourteen hour or longer days, I very much enjoyed camp and watching these young girls grow and become more confident in themselves and their abilities to go out into their communities and relay what they had learned from the week. I can’t wait to do it again next year! Thanks to all those you donated and made the camp possible!
Here’s another look at what camp was like:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grOBr0GinsU
Another year, another Eid al-Adha or “Festival of the Sacrifice” celebration. I might have thought that last year’s Tabaski celebration was overwhelming, but as we volunteers say ‘You never know what to expect in Senegal’. You might have attended 100 of the same holiday celebration, but even with all that experience, you won’t be prepared.
To remind you all what Tabaski is, it is the celebration of the willingness of Ibrahim (also known as Abraham) to follow Allah's (God's) command to sacrifice his son Ishmael. In Senegal, they commemorate this sacrifice by recreating the original deed of Abraham and killing a ram.
This year, my mother, aunt and young female cousins woke up around 6am to start preparing the Tabaski feast. I joined in the peeling of potatoes and cutting onions and around 10 am after the men of the family had gone to mosque, we sacrificed three rams. Then the men of the family continued to butcher the rams for the next few hours. Once the meat had been cut and cleaned, it was put on a makeshift grill. Around noon, the meal was prepared. The french fries, onion sauce, grilled meat were devoured. I ate so much meat that I felt sick, but in a good way. Even though I couldn’t contemplate ingesting anything else, I made room for the soda and juice that was served afterward. Then I helped clean up the cooking area and enjoyed some attaya as my mother continued to partition up the meat and organs. Three 30 liter buckets later, our fridge was packed full of meat, our stomachs were full and I put on my special dress that I had made for the day. Then I went out to greet some of my relatives and friends about town. I conducted the ritual forgiveness sayings and drank some more soda or juice when offered. At the end of the day, I was exhausted, but content from all the good food, fun and familiar faces that I had encountered that day.
Now it’s October. School is starting again. The harvests are being conducted and cold season is coming, insh’allah! On the horizon, I am conducting a cocktail reception (soda and beignets) for the ten girls that I had apply for a scholarship that pays for their years school fees as well as some school supplies. (For more information about the scholarship program, click here: https://senegad.wordpress.com/projects/ ) I am also rejuvenating the high school garden with some help from my host mother as well as working on starting a garden at the prefecture office in town, insh’allah. In addition, one of the farmers that I worked with for seed extension is currently in the process of moving fields, but once he does he has asked me to help him put on some gardening trainings at the new field. Once the harvest is complete, I also hope to install some cold season demonstrations at the Master Farm.
Yet, you never know where the road will lead you, so here’s to next time!
Ba beneen yoon - until next time!
