Farmer-to-Farmer Program: Day 12-14 Kedougou, Tambacounda, Dakar, and Goree Island (Senegal)

I was very disappointed that I was too sick to do the final day of training in Dar Es Salaam. We left the training materials with KEOH, who will do the follow up with the women's groups. After wrap up sessions with KEOH and the USAID-Yaajeende office in Kedougou, we said our goodbyes and hit the road again. My volunteer coordinator and our driver kindly arranged to break up the long haul back to Dakar with an overnight stay in Tambacounda so as not to overtax my recovery. It ended up being a good idea for everyone involved since traffic into the capital added an extra 2 hours onto the 9 hour journey.

Dakar is big and sprawling with 2.5 million people calling it home. We passed open markets selling all manner of goods, and should you not want to bother getting out of the car, quick-footed salesmen dodge traffic to sell cashews, bags of water, and a yellowy green fruit (very tart, good when juiced and mixed with sugar, and popular with the monkeys in the bush) at your window. Our neighborhood was mostly other hotels and government and NGO buildings. Dinner was at a lovely seaside venue, where I had yummy shrimp beignets and juice from the fruit of the baobab tree (creamy, sort of pear-banana-custard apple flavor).

I had an extra day to see a bit before leaving Senegal. We headed out to Goree Island, a settlement just off the coast. For many years, it was a major trading stop. The colorful architecture and balconies are reminiscent of New Orleans. You can visit the House of Slaves, where many Africans taken during the slave trade passed through the Door of No Return on their way to the New World. For less grim thoughts, Goree seems to have become a popular beach for day trippers. There's also a good view if you climb to the top of the island and look out the old gun turrets that used to defend it. Learning a tiny bit more about Senegalese culture and history made for a nice way to finish up my assignment.

Farmer-to-Farmer Program: Day 10-11 Dar Es Salaam and Kedougou (Senegal)

At one point in time, I considered joining the Peace Corps. One of the things that scared me off was an elective innocently called "Medical and Veterinary Entomology"... or as I liked to think of it, "101 Reasons Not to Join the Peace Corps." I'd always been fascinated by relationships between diseases and their insect vectors, and I thought, hey, malaria is pretty interesting! But then you learn about West Nile and dengue and yellow fever (all mosquito-borne) ... and African night time sleeping sickness (tsetse fly) ... and let's not ever forget the horrifying flesh-eating pictures of Leishmaniasis (sand fly). Seriously, DON'T google it. It's one thing to study these things in a vacuum. It's another thing to share the class with a couple of students - and former Peace Corps volunteers - who piped up with the occasional, "Yeah, I know someone who got that"... or worse, "They eventually found a doctor, who removed 21 larvae from his sinuses." That one still keeps me up at night.

Fast forward to the present, the Farmer-to-Farmer Program lets me try out that old Peace Corps dream... within the comforts of a shorter term commitment, a coordinator who speaks the local language, and travel insurance that covers medical evacuation. This assignment has allowed me to go and teach small farmers how to better feed their families in remote villages in Africa. How cool! Then that Peace Corps nightmare reared its ugly head.

It had started out with stomach cramps. I mostly ignored it, being somewhat of the opinion that your luck will run out eventually when traveling in the developing world. We had driven 2 hours down bumpy roads and puddles. Was it car sickness? We were in a field outside the village of Dar Es Salaam, looking for insects and diseases, handling plants, and chatting with the growers for about 20 minutes... until we found out that this field had just been sprayed with insecticides!?! Every pesticide has a restricted entry interval, or the time period after spraying when no one can enter the field without the appropriate protective equipment. We were still well within the dangerous period so I insisted that everyone exit immediately. I washed as best as I could at the time and encouraged others to do the same. We interviewed the growers about their practices and problems, feeling a little sorry for the fellow who applied the pesticides. He probably felt like he was being interrogated. They passed around mint tea in communal cups. Was this the reason for my digestive tract issues? Was it the pesticide exposure? I removed the contaminated clothing, had a cold shower, and washed my shoes as soon as possible. But as I lay at the hotel with a headache and severe body aches, my inability to sleep for 10 hours was plenty of time to review all I could remember about exposure symptoms (from another class - on insecticide toxicology). The scientist in me couldn't help but see the irony - and wax philosophic - about potentially being accidentally poisoned by the exact substances that I had researched for years under the strictest of safety protocols. I was almost relieved when the high fever set in, since it pushed my diagnosis towards something infectious. A bad night of mosquitoes a few nights back before we got a new bed net got thinking about new questions, like "What were the symptoms for those diseases?" and "What were their incubation times?" In the end and most fortunately, the well-stocked pharmacy that is my first aid kit managed to get me through the night. Having endured some exasperated looks from Rich at its bulk while backpacking, it really came through for me this time. Even the thermometer! Within 24 hours, I was feeling decidedly better.

The volunteer coordinator did offer to take me to the doctor or the hospital, but frankly, it was fatiguing to even walk the 3 feet to the bathroom. Of course, I would have gone if I hadn't improved the next day. Alls well that ends well!  

Farmer-to-Farmer Program, Day 3-4: Kedougou, Fadiga, Thiankou Malal, and Dindefelo Falls (Senegal)

Kedougou is the name of the town and region where I will be based for my assignment. The region has a border with Mali to the east and Guinea to the south. There are more foreigners in town, too, because of international investment in the gold mining industry as well as activity by the U.S. Peace Corps and NGO's. Although the official language in Senegal is French, and most Senegalese speak Wolof (the largest indigenous language) as a native or second tongue, Pulaar is the language of choice in this region... Explaining to visitors that they'll hear Catalan, not Castellano, in Barcelona seems a lot less confusing. As a side note, Catalans might be amused to know that "nyam nyam," as in the sound you make eating calçots, has Wolof roots!

Conversations in the USAID office here in Kedougou happen in all 3 languages. I mostly sit back and wait for someone to explain. While USAID has several programs around Senegal, including the Yaajende Development Project for improving food security, mine is the first Farmer-to-Farmer assignment working in this region. The office supplied us with useful information and lent us some training materials (e.g. a backpack pesticide sprayer). We also went to meet the host contacts/beneficiary organization KEOH (Kedougou Surrounding and Guidance for Human Development) at their headquarters, where we discussed scheduling training and field visits.

Two KEOH guys came along in the truck the next day as we headed out to visit some fields. We stopped in Fadiga to look at fields where the women in the village grow crops to feed their own families as well as to sell at market. Vegetables like eggplant, hot pepper, and okra grow in small plots alongside mint and another leafy plant used in cooking called boro boro. Despite lacking much formal education and training, it's clear that the women are on to some good ideas. Building on these, I have hopes that I can provide them with solid techniques as well as give recommendations for their pest problems. Likewise in Thiankou Malal, we saw positive practices and challenges in the fields of the village's chief. Similar crops were growing as in Fadiga, albeit on a much larger scale and with access to much more upscale resources (e.g. an animal-driven plow). It never ceases to amaze me what experiences I have had that will come to inform an assignment. One of the problem insects in Fadiga was flea beetle, which was my first research project in entomology... way back in high school! Another blast from the past came when I asked the grower in Thiankou Milal which okra variety he was planting. He pulled out a empty can of Clemson Spineless - the one we used to grow in North Carolina!

We'll be working hard through the end of my assignment (no stops for the weekend!) so we decided to do a tiny bit of sight-seeing in the area for an hour. Not far from the last field we visited lies the Dindefelo Falls. Located in Niokolo-Koba National Park, first there is a 2 km walk through bush and woods, lovely and cool after the heat of the day. Sporting greenery in the crevices, two vertical rock faces meet in a corner, and the water falls from a lush wooded plateau 100 m (~ 30 stories) into a clear pool below. It's a beautiful and tranquil spot even now, and I imagine it only grows more impressive as the rainy season continues.

Farmer-to-Farmer Program: Day 1 - 2 Kaolack, Tambacounda, and Kedougou (Senegal)

After a French breakfast of coffee and croissant, we head out for some administrative business at the USAID office in Kaolack. The city is about 3 hours southeast of Dakar. The roads are remarkably good for the most part. The land is flat and parched and red with clay soils. One of the small towns we pass has capitalized on this with many of the roadside stalls displaying ceramic tiles as wares. A common sight in the dry land is the baobab tree, whose enormous girth threatens to give those California redwoods a run for their money. Along with the lion, the mighty baobab is an important symbol of Senegal. We didn't see any lions, but that might have to do with the huge tracts of land cleared and already marked as parcels for new construction. As we neared the Saloum river, shallow stretches of water appeared on either side of the highway, along with big white mounds where locals have been harvesting salt. Different sections are worked by different people, and the harvest is so plentiful that salt dominates the cargo of the semi-trucks that pass us. Some is destined for neighboring Mali, and some even gets to Europe for salting roads.

Delays at the bank meant we needed to stay overnight in Kaolack. The upside was getting a fantastic meal at place nearby. A typical Senegalese meal is some kind of meat or fish in a generous sauce on a heap of rice or couscous. It sounds simple enough, maybe even boring, but it is not! My first foray was thiou kary, a sort of beef stew with all the love and tenderness of hours of slow-cooking. It brought back memories for me since it basically was a dead ringer for that Filipino favorite mechado. The only difference being the occasional chunk of a sweetish yam. Now that sounds like comfort food to me.

Another morning, another drive brings us to another USAID office in Tambacounda. It's really just a pit stop on the march eastward. Lunch is in a real local place for local people. Butchering is happening roadside and everything. Maafe is on the menu: some kind of red meat and African eggplant (texture like our eggplant, but maybe looks more like a mini-pumpkin and has very faint bitter taste) in a tomato and peanut (aka "groundnut" in many parts of Africa) sauce on a bed of white rice. I also got to try sorrel, a delicious and refreshing reddish-purple drink made from steeped leaves. Another win for Senegalese dining!

The scenery changes gradually as we continue onward. The rainy season has come just a tiny bit sooner this way, and shades of green go from just faint patches on the ground to full blown carpets. More shrubs and leafy trees appear, competing with the giant termite mounds in the landscape. As we near Kedougou in the far southeastern corner of the country, the road rises and falls into actual hills. Though Kedougou was our destination all along, it was great to be able to see the full swath of Senegalese countryside.