It has been a while since my last update. But I can assure that is not due to any lack of activity going on at site! Typically, May can be quite a low-key month. It is too dry and far too hot to really grow anything. And the heat greatly reduces the hours during the day that can actually be used for manual labor. This is typically a month when the farmers spend the day preparing their seeds and make sure everything is lined up so they can begin working in the fields plowing and planting as soon as the first rains come mid June.
But we have not been sitting idly by this past May. Here are a few highlights from the month.
Bee-Keeping
During the same time I was learning bee-keeping for my in-service training at the end of April, several members of the skill center in my community were at the same place for trainings going on to make different types of craft items to sell. They have known about the concept of bee-keeping for quite a while and the two volunteers in Chargel before me tried to introduce the idea of working with bees for the honey and wax, but were met with minimal interest from members of the community. As it turns out, seeing is believing.
They came back to Chargel with a great interest in the concept of bee-keeping and the uses of honey and wax they could be getting. I was very encouraged when they actually came to me with the idea as their own idea and had even already organized a men’s group or “kafo,” who wants to begin making bee-hives from local materials.
Since this is actually the “dearth period” (yes, dearth, not death), the bees won’t begin really settling down and producing honey until September, giving us a few good months to organize and get ready to start bee-keeping this coming fall. Chargel and six smaller surrounding communities have each organized a men’s group who will make and maintain several bee-hives. I’m very excited about taking on this project and am planning to host an extensive training session in August for everyone interested with help of a few of my Peace Corps friends who have more experience working with bees.
This is a project I think has great potential for the farmers involved, and I’m very excited to help them take this on. Not only will it give them great access to working with the wax and comb for income generation, but they will also be able to easily add honey to their diet for nutritional and medicinal purposes. Additionally, having this influx of bee-hives will be great for the growth of several new cashew, mango and orange orchards we are starting at the edge of the village. I will be sure to keep you updated in the months to come as this project gets up and running!
Chargel Area Market
Chargel officially has a market! I have written before about the difficulty for women to really take on income generation projects since the two closest markets they have access to are both around two hours away by horse cart, and that’s just not workable when they are also caring for children, cooking, washing clothes, gardening and taking care of the daily projects going on in the family compounds.
Originally, the women’s groups I have been working with, and the community in general, though it would be a great idea if I would just write them a proposal for the people from “toubabadou” to just give them the funds to put up a huge cement structure to house the market, like they have at the more major market areas in the country. But after quite a few meetings with the community about all the aspects involved in organizing to build such a structure, the labor intensive work involved with maintaining it, and with the actual cost of something like it, we all decided it would be best to put up some structures made from local materials and see how successful the market actually is before moving forward with trying to put up any permanent structures of seeking outside funds. When it comes down to it, they can do just fine with local-made structures, just like they do in hundreds of other smaller local markets throughout the Gambia. The key is helping them realize they don’t need something donated or given to them from “toubabadou” for it to be good or successful. In fact, often times the key is trying to avoid, at all cost, actually helping them get something from “toubabadou” so that they don’t develop a dependence on foreign aid for the success and continuation of their project. I have much to share on the topic of foreign aid and donations to places like the Gambia, but those will have to wait for another blog of their own.
In any case, the community spent several days working together, men and women, gathering materials and actually erecting the market structures. (The main purpose of the structures is really just to provide shade, which is why 500,000 Delasi concrete buildings are definitely not necessary.) I was glad to see that they were even helped out by many people from the surrounding communities who want to see this kind of area market succeed.
And when the work was finally finished and the community could celebrate that they finally had their own market to work with, they did indeed celebrate! The women put on a program with food (pankets (like a donut) and rice with bean sauce), singing and of course, dancing! It was a fun time, and I’m glad to see the women and men working together on a project like this. It’s was rewarding to help them see that they really can do things like this for themselves, it just takes some brainstorming and organization. And even though it happened to get finished at a time of year where there really isn’t much to sell, we are all excited to see its success!
The Horse and Donkey Association of The Gambia
One organization I have been working closely with in village is the Horse and Donkey Association. This UK based aid organization raises funds to help provide donkeys, plows and carts to farmers in The Gambia who otherwise would not be able to afford these animals and equipment.
Farmers who are selected to receive a donkey are required to attend a training session to learn proper care and treatment of donkeys, as well as understand common nutrition and medical problems animals face, such as worms or malnourishment. Once a farmer “graduates” from the training they are “loaned” a donkey and the necessary equipment to help the farmer get started with their field work. The Horse and Donkey Association then sends out a field staff member to check up on the health and treatment of all the donkeys they have “loaned” throughout the country and as long as they are in good health and taken care of the farmers can keep them, but if it is clear they are not upholding the contract for animal care they agreed to, they will have the donkey taken away from them.
This organization visits the farmers in my village about once every two months, and it has been great to get to spend time with them learning about their organization and helping them become more integrated with the community and help address the farmer’s needs. And it has lead to some interesting learning experiences here at site. For example, one of the requirements from the contract they sign says they agree to provide a shelter for the donkey no less than 3 meters by 3 meters. But the farmers here just don’t understand why it would be a big deal for an animal to have a special house. After all, it is just an animal. Once it became clear to the H&D field staff worker and myself that the farmers really weren’t committed to building shelters for the donkeys because they didn’t find it necessary, it opened up the opportunity for what turned out to be a fun meeting for me to share our cultural differances. Basically, I was able to explain to them that how we “toubabs” tend to name our animals, provide special houses for them, and even sometimes let them live with us. I was able to better explain this by comparing their donkeys to Khiva and how I bath her, feed her and she lives in my house, even though she is an animal.
I can’t lie, they think we “toubabs” are pretty crazy in this regard and they laughed at the idea of having different houses for different kinds of animals. But they also understand why it is important to us and even how sometimes an animal can become a part of our family. In the end, they all agreed to build houses for their donkeys... but they still think we are funny.
So as you can see, I have been able to find enough to do throughout May to keep myself busy... most of the time. But I still find plenty of time to chat it up with people around the community, enjoy attaya with the guys my age who like to come over for “current events,” and help out with the projects going on in the compound. In fact, I even built a new book shelf for my house! I was pretty excited about how that turned out.
In any case, I hope this blog entry finds you doing well, enjoying the change into spring, and just a bit more clued-in to what exactly it is I am doing here in “The Smiling Coast of Africa.”
Until next time, God bless!
