Bike-venture in Pulaar-Country

Howdy from Kolda! I just finished the main biking section of my grand bike-venture. Well, let me back up,

So after my long stint in Dakar for English camp, I had a nice long three weeks in the village. It was probably my most solidly productive consecutive days so far in my service, but also the most solidly frustrating and difficult. Mostly I was simply outplanting. This process is the final step in my rainy season reforestation project, that generally sounds a whole lot cooler than it really is. So months ago, April and May I think, I filled plastic tree sacks, put them in my backyard, put tree seeds in them and watered them. And watered them. Until the rains came, then let the sky do most of that work. But then weeded them, and weeded some more. And now, of the nearly 450 sacks I have, nearly 400 have good pretty trees, and as of now 315 have been planted out in peoples fields, gardens and compounds. Most of them were mango and cashew trees, but there were also species of acacia and moringa and papaya and lemon and several other species both local and foriegn.

I decided to hadle my outplanting differently than most volunteers I have talked to. From most of them, no really from all of them that I have heard have had problems in this area, it is always- oh, i gave 20 out to some family and they didnt plant them and they died, or goats ate them cause they were unprotected, or the family didnt know to water them, or people put them in bad locations, or children played with them and pulled them up, and on and on. If I have gone this far with them, I am not just going to hurl out these dozens of trees at random people, cross my fingers and check up on them in a month or two. No dice.

I decided I would go and actually physically plant all of my trees with the farmer or family that I was giving it to. In practice, this was exhausting and difficult, but I have good hopes now for a good portion of my trees. The vast majority were planted in peoples already protected gardens, something that is unique to my area I believe as not many other volunteers have villages with anywhere near the number of gardens as we have. So at least a high percentage of those will at least not be eaten or pulled up and have the potential to be watered and weeded and looked after like trees in a field wouldnt get. Some were also put in compounds with different kinds of protection and I have mixed feelings on most of these (one of the nicest tree protections was my neighbors stick and rice sack construction around a papaya tree, he un pinned a sack to water it, forgot to put it back on, three days after planting the tree was bitten off less than a foot off the ground, stupid goats). People wanted mangos for shade trees and and moringa and papaya for food.

The stressful frustrating parts came about for a variety of reasons. Mostly it was little things that just built up over a day, sometimes it was something big and rediculous. Often it was simply the rain. Yes, i know, rainy season, right? Yeah, that it is, but then it only needs to be dry for an afternoon and semi dry that morning for a day to be successful. But there was a week where it would just consistently rain all afternoon or be so flooded from a mornings downpour that the ground is just muddy water and nothing can be planted. So it was when one afternoon I had about 20 trees to plant and couldnt, the next day i had scheduled another 20 but had to push those back to for rain, then I eventually had a day where i told a dozen different people we could get nearly 80 trees done but then of course, I cant always find everyone, people go to the market in the afternoon, do silly things like attend funerals in other villages, or simply they are not to be found. Fun days.

Anywho, i could talk forever on this, but would probably bore myself to tears, so moving on.

After this fun filled three weeks and nearly all of my mango and cashew trees are out. I decided a little time away from site was in order. I have been really interested for a while in going to the south. The south-central area of Senegal, the part below the Gambia, I have heard is the prettiest part of the country and this time of year it is green and rainy and mosquito-y and great. Also, from my 4th of July exploits, I have let myself believe that I am an acually competent biker and could survive a multi-100km journey. So I decided to bike to the south, well, not really, let me explain-

The first couple days are just getting out of my region. I biked from my village east to Fatick, spent the night with SED PCV there, Daniel you are awesome, then went to Kaolack and stayed at the PC regional transit house. This whole part is just shy of about 100km all together. Now, I had hopes of making this an all biking, all the time, kill myself or die trying kind of adventure, but sadly that was just not feasible. So I had to skip over 175km, most of the way east to Tambacounda where i stayed in a little village 11km off the main road. This was my first toe into Pulaar country. The people are so nice, the food is so good, but then again, they did call me slave a lot for being Seereer, ah well... Then it was on to Tamba itself, eastern Senegal, like past the tip of the Gambia. That was a long day in the sun, left Ericka's village at about 9am didnt get to Tamba PC house till 630. Just a little sunburned and starving. After that night I went south over 100km to another PCVs site well off the main road. Amber introduced me to the fine snack of Pulaar roasted corn and more good food than i thought possible. After that I went south a little ways more, only 20 or 30km i think, and stayed in the booming metropolis that is Kounkane. Ok, maybe its not that booming, but it is a road town with electricity. Dorothy showed me just how nice a hut can be with just simple imporvements, like doors that open and close properly, and a roof that doesnt leak. Magic. The next day I went a very short 5km to another Pulaar site where the gods of rain decided i had biked dry far too long and had a good time with me on a muddy path. Kelly has a new roof though and a dog that makes one forget their troubles. Relaxing. My final day of biking was about a 100km west into the city of Kolda itself. This ride felt very fast and I surprised myself by not dying on it. I think those easy days beforehand really helped.

Now I am in Kolda! Sore-er than I have ever been i think, butt hurts, cant turn my head that well, back is killing me, sunburned and skin infections and fungus, oh fun! But I am here. And here they have more magical things, like boutiques with eggs and canned chicken and pasta. They have electricity and running water. They have wifi in the PC house! So life is good.

I head back up on Monday. Through the Gambia and all too! I hear it should be interesting. We are supposed to have no problems cause we are officialy working in Senegal and Senegalese citizens get through free. But well, this is Africa and all. But there are border people that i would rather not bribe, a ferry that i would rather not sink and my stuff i would rather not lose after getting off said ferry and back to our car. But well, I will let yall know how that turns out. I hear right before the ferry there are ladies selling chicken sandwitches too!

Oh, and there will be pictures of bike travel when i get around to a computer and internet that can handle them...