Dy Season Doldrums

Dry Season Doldrums

Dry season continues in Senegal.  In a little over a month, the first rains will come.  Unlike in Guinea, where the rains start in May, the rains in central Senegal don’t start until July.  It’s barely enough time to grow field crops of millet, corn, peanuts, and sesame. 

The demonstration garden that I have devoted most of my time to is currently “resting.”  My counterpart has been busy building a new house.  You see, the main road that passes through his village is being expanded and improved.  His current family compound is slated for demolition to make room for the improved route.  So my counterpart has been laboring away trying to get his house built so he can return to building his garden paradise.

  

My counterpart and his new house... in progress.

In the meantime, I continue to gather compost materials for the rainy season.  Chicken manure, goat and sheep manure, bird feathers, fish waste, charcoal, peanut shells and more are being hoarded underneath the only tree in the garden. 

I know, I never thought it would happen to me.

Hoarding organic fertilizer!

Okay… garbage!

(Actually, it’s not really garbage; it is food for soil microbes.)

What have I gotten myself into?

Please, somebody give me a plant!

Initially, I thought that my collection of materials for a “super compost” would be rather benign.  But because my counterpart has been sidelined a bit longer than both of us expected, my stash has become the home for a nice family of rats!

Yikes!

But I am old enough to know that

When life serves you rats, you make ratatouille.

For the children.

Yes,

they,

the children,

eat rats….

When they can catch them!

And I have caught a few with my nifty invention.

Though there are no chickens in the garden to accidently eat rat poison (see my previous post about that experience in Guinea), using commercial rat poison is not an option for two reasons: my counterpart is committed to organic methods, and more importantly, all his money is going into building his new house.  As I am serving as a Peace Corp volunteer, I have declined to buy commercial (and toxic) rat poison as this would not only set a bad example (When the going gets tough, it’s okay to compromise) and it would not be sustainable (I would soon have all the villagers coming to me to buy them poison as well.)

So not taking a short cut has forced me to find a more sustainable way to eliminate a rodent infestation.

(I did willingly come here to solve problems.)

The solution which I have directed my efforts is one in which any African living in the bush can duplicate: a clay pot (or plastic jug) buried in the ground, and nearly filled with water.  With the right incentive, rats either jump or fall into the drink and bye bye rat.  Peanut butter placed on a conveniently angled slippery slope (plastic) seems to do the trick okay, but I am still experimenting with the most effective “assist” with the getting the critters into the pot.  (On occasion, the rats are able to enjoy a free lunch without going for a swim.)

An early version of my rat trap.

In the meantime, I need to find me a plant… to make use of my organic fertilizer.

I promise to keep all my readers updated.

On both the number of rats we catch…

And

What the village children have been eating for dinner!

Site Visits

Recently, I spent some time visiting various forest garden sites in Senegal with Curtis McCoy, Program Manager for Trees for the Future.  It was an opportunity for me to visit with Senegalese participant farmers from different regions of the country.  Many of these forest gardens are a bit more mature, as they have been working with Trees for the Future for a number of years already.

A typical forest garden in its first year.

Each site is unique, yet they all conform to an agroforestry model.  That is, trees are planted in the same area as the vegetable crops.  This benefits the farmer in several ways.  First, the trees reliably provide fruit (mangoes, soursoup, desert apple, oranges, lime, papaya, and banana) under low maintenance conditions.  Second, trees greatly improve soil fertility and structure as they recycle nutrients from deeper soil depths.  Lastly, the trees provide shelter for the more delicate vegetables.  It gets hot here in Africa (115 degrees F during April and May), and often the wind blows in from the Sahara desert to the north.   Dappled shade is extremely welcoming in gardens growing tender lettuce and tomatoes.

Farmers have generally embraced the techniques promoted by Trees for the Future, though it will take some time and repetition to get most farmers to see the efficacy of certain permaculture techniques.  In many gardens, the soil is really poor and compacted. Getting vegetables to grow and to produce something is the first step.  Step two is to maximize production.

Training session with the lead technicians with Trees for the Future.

 

In addition, those who choose to grow vegetables during the peak of hot season (March through June) have another difficulty to overcome: insects!  It is not only the animals who go on their annual weight loss plan, the insects do as well.  When you create an oasis of green in the vastness of leafless trees and dead weeds, you are inviting trouble for yourself.  Dry season gardening creates challenges that I am still trying to find effective solutions for.  It is disheartening to spend weeks growing and watering cabbages, only to see them get eaten alive by caterpillars.  In other cases, the plants will still produce fruit, but not as prolifically as when the insect pressure is negligible.

An example of insect damage to the African vegetable Jaxatu.

Human nature invites us to take shortcuts, no matter what country you live in.  However, as I have said before, the earth knows what it needs, and the more completely you understand this dictate, the more prosperous you will become.   I am not under the illusion that every participant will create a textbook model forest garden.  The adjustment process will vary from participant to participant, but eventually, those with a sincere interest and passion for agriculture will get it.  And what they worked so hard to achieve, they will fiercely protect from destruction.

Fiercely protecting the environment. 

Now that is something that will save Africa!

International Development in Africa

I am working with Trees for the Future, a small (annual budget is less than $2 million dollars) non-profit organization / non-governmental organization (NGO) headquartered in the United States.  They share the development space with thousands of other NGO’s, all of which have different philosophies and approaches to assisting third world people and countries.

At times, I encounter these other non-profits working in the region.   Though I have not yet found an organization that has implemented the perfect development approach, some non-profits are more effective than others.

A case in point is a rather large non-profit that has a history of creating projects in Senegal.  I mention this non-profit because part of the space where I am currently creating a forest garden with my counterpart previously was the site for a rainy season dam. 

This NGO had the “brilliant” idea of trying to dam a rainy season river to create a water source that would last a few months into the dry season.  In doing so, the executives of this NGO had hoped to facilitate the creation of a gardening co-operative for the local village.  They even created two large composting pits that my counterpart is currently using.  On its surface, damming a river seems like a great idea.  However, this is a big undertaking that has more widespread ramifications when one considers that no village lives in a vacuum.  There are many other villages, some downstream from a potential damming site.  This is a project that probably was best left to the national government to pursue as infrastructure development.

Nonetheless, the NGO attempted to dam this river.  Twice.  Both times the dam failed.  I don’t know about you, but building a dam is not rocket science.  It doesn’t take a genius to construct a dam that will withstand the forces of a surging river.  Evidently, they didn’t have the money to hire an engineer, and the dam failed… (and the town rejoiced). 

The remnants of the dam near my counterpart's garden.

Their money would have been better spent by digging a well, complete with a solar panel pump.  It sure would have beat the money constructing two poor quality dams that got destroyed. 

Another NGO that is working in the area is having better luck, at least for now.  Their research revealed two major problems: an increasing number of young people leaving the Kaffrine prefecture in Senegal, and the ever-present problem of food security.  Their solution for both of these problems was to enclose a few hectares with metal fencing so that the space could be converted to gardening and crop production activities.  This included installing a drip irrigation system for dry season gardening.  During the rainy season, the space will be used for field crops (corn, millet, peanuts).  Thus, the project will create a few jobs for the young people in town, and yield something productive from the vast amounts of land that exist in Africa.

The drip irrigation system for the tomatoes.

This project is in contrast to the work that Trees for the Future is doing.  For one, the fencing is permanent wire woven fence.  There is no plan to create a more sustainable, living fence model (with trees).  Second, there is no incorporation of trees in the cropping system.  Fruit trees such as mangoes could easily be planted and would produce a valuable agricultural commodity.  In addition, trees would have the ability to recycle soil nutrients in a way that annual vegetables are unable to do.  Certainly, the simplicity of the current system is attractive to their financial supporters, but there is an opportunity to do so much more.   Some participants are experimenting with manure and chemical fertilizer, but this is not a focus of the project.  I imagine also that crop residues will be burned in the typical African custom, rather than being recycled into compost and returned to the soil. 

We live on a vast planet where we are all free to do as we wish.  Independence is a major value that most of us take for granted.  However, the planet is highly interconnected, and we could achieve better results if we cooperated and worked together on the world’s problems.   Perhaps then our results would be amplified and we could achieve something that no single organization is able to do on its own.

An Introduction to Permaculture

PERMACULTURE

It is a word that many Americans would have difficulty describing accurately.  It can be complex and difficult to understand.  Countless definitions exist that try to capture the essence of permaculture, yet they are often incomplete.   Many associate permaculture with the new age movement or a hippie lifestyle.   Though many proponents emphasize a deep spiritual connection with the earth through the practice of biodynamics, or advocate an off the grid lifestyle as with the use of composting toilets, these are not fundamental doctrines of permaculture.  These spiritual and social activities may complement permaculture, but they are not permaculture.  Permaculture is a biological science, not a social science or a spiritual science.

(I define spirituality as strictly a human endeavor.  Whether or not a tomato has the capacity to connect spiritually with basil growing next to it is a subject for a completely different blog entry.)

Permaculture describes the ecological vitality and diversity of a cultivated parcel of land, both horizontally and vertically.  It requires the presence of trees, hence the use of the term “forest garden” by many practitioners.  Many gardens that exist can never be considered permaculture, no matter how biologically vibrant and diverse they are.   Once you understand how nature operates, especially in an old growth forest, the concept is rather simple.   

Permaculture mimics how a forest operates when not disturbed by human activities.

Tomatoes planted with mint utilizes the groundcover and herbaceous zones of permaculture.

 

Onions planted with lettuce utilizes the underground and the herbaceous zones of permaculture.

  

Permaculture, as I define it, is:

A temporally and spatially diverse gardening system that is self-sustaining and inherently resilient, agriculturally productive and ecologically vibrant due to its interconnected, redundant, and cooperative elements.

Because gardening is a human activity, human intervention is required to create a permaculture environment. 

My role with Trees for the Future is to facilitate the adoption of the forest garden system to restore degraded lands, as well to improve food security and household incomes.   To help focus my efforts and those of the lead farmers in the region, I have condensed the key philosophies that underlie permaculture/forest garden systems.

Key Philosophies of Permaculture Include:

1.    All vertical and horizontal spaces, known as the seven permaculture zones, are utilized to enhance productivity in three dimensions.

2.    The productivity is abundant and continual, as there is always something ready to be harvested. 

3.    Chemical inputs are not allowed as they destroy life within the ecosystem.

4.    In a well-balanced and mature ecosystem, everything is recycled, with minimal external inputs.

5.    Effective and sustainable agriculture techniques are practiced and serve to support the diversity and abundance of the ecosystem.

6.    Multiple methods are used to achieve important functions and to create synergies.  This redundancy protects the health of the garden when something fails.

Like I mentioned previously, permaculture is a concept not easily understood by Americans, let alone by villagers living in remote villages in Africa.  Even though gardening is often practiced by women’s groups or by individuals, they often farm in ways that are unsustainable.  The excessive burning of organic material, lack of composting or mulching, and monocropping are a few practices that invite problems when employed habitually.   

For instance, it is frustrating to watch a woman ignore your advice to align her garden bed with the slope of the land, rather than the aligning it geographically with other beds nearby.   In concentrating solely on the uniform shape and placement of each bed, soil is continuously eroded to the lowest point of the bed with each successive watering.  (Yes, my counterpart spoke to her in her native language that she was fully capable of understanding.)

The land is wiser than you are.  It was here before you were born.

Listen to it!

It is not my goal, nor is it the goal of Trees for the Future, to simply provide an enclosed space in which the community can speed up the degradation of an already degraded land.  Part of the 4 year program designed by Trees for the Future is in monitoring and evaluating the success in not only improving the livelihoods of the target community, but also in teaching and reinforcing the agricultural knowledge that will allow farmers never to go hungry again.

The techniques that I teach are often foreign.  (But so are many of the vegetables and fruits that have become staple crops for most Africans.)   They also are not easy.  Building and maintaining a compost pile for instance is more labor intensive than simply throwing the manure you collected from your livestock on your fields prior to cultivating.  The regular practice of improved farming techniques will bring long-term dividends.  They are simple to understand and to implement.  I am always open to questions.  And if we disagree on the efficacy of a technique, I usually recommend an experiment, where two different techniques, where one is the traditional “African” method, are tested side by side.  (Though I understand that some techniques require several years to prove their superiority.)

My counterpart taking a soil sample.  He will refer to it to verify soil improvements in future years.

 

Despite the challenges with some individuals, it is refreshing to have a participant farmer enthusiastically tell me that he implemented companion planting of lettuce and onions after hearing from me that it was a great combination.  These are the farmers I try to nurture.  As a volunteer, I am prohibited from profiting financially from my efforts.  I freely share this with the farmers I work with.  I have no ulterior motives. I am not trying to advance the interests of a big multinational firm looking to make an easy profit off the African peasant.  All profits and improvements that they make are theirs to keep, to do with as they wish.

For those that lag behind, there is but one option. 

Repeat.

Repeat.

Repeat.