Ok, so it’s not as bad as the title of this post might insinuate, but it’s about as hot as hell here, and for a couple of weeks, I am out in the field pretty relentlessly filling tree sacs, scarifying seeds, and trying to organize farmers and the women’s group to get their work done so the seedlings will have enough time to root and grow before they get outplanted over the rainy season. The majority of the tree nurseries will be devoted to local thorny species that will be used in live fencing. Now is the season when the need for decent fencing is best demonstrated, since the rains have been gone long enough that there is really no natural grass that goats, sheep and cows can graze on, so they are highly motivated to try to break through any man-made barriers that are placed between them and the yummy dry-season gardens that are lovingly watered and taken care of on a daily basis. Monday morning, for instance, while watering my garden out in Pape’s field and waiting for the rest of the women to get there and begin their pepiniere, a small heard of cows broke through the tree-branch fence they had constructed to begin feasting on the okra, onion, and tomato planted there. Diego, being a curious puppy, and I ran over there yelling (or barking) to get them to leave. The damage was noticeable though, and hopefully now the women will have learned that it is important to begin seeding live fencing and inspecting their dead fence regularly for gaps or weak areas.
While I spend my mornings filling plastic bags with dirt and manure, I am trying to figure out the best way to keep cool in the scorching afternoons. Oumi finds it highly amusing that I have taken to soaking a bandana and wrapping it around my head, or even just soaking my entire tshirt and fanning myself to take advantage of evaporative cooling (I’m such a geek.) My canary, the French word for the large clay pot used for storing water that I purchased in a louma a couple of months back, has been put to good use in its original intended purpose: storing and cooling water. Granted the water is not ice cold, but it is significantly cooler than if I drank it directly from a plastic filter or a Nalgene bottle. Sleeping, however, is a different matter altogether. While I have not yet been forced to set up my cot under a mosquito net outside, I generally adapt the wet-bandana concept to put over my to help me keep cool trying to sleep, or even a larger piece of wax fabric to put over my whole body. By the time May rolls around, I will attempt to not fill up the majority of my blog entries complaining about the horrors of the hot season. The beginning of June is equally painful, but the first rain is generally due in mid-June, so I eagerly await that watery reprieve.
Also, in case anybody in the land of online-ordered pizza deliveries has been keeping track, I have no been in this country over eight months. Can you believe it? Looking ahead, I still have a long way to go, but going from the comfortable life of living in a university with close access to all of your friends, good food and regular wing nights at your local pub to pulling your water from a well and eating millet porridge for dinner ever night, it’s easy to see that I’ve come a rather long way. Not to get too sentimental, but it is amazing what a couple months working and living in a third world country will do for your general perspective. It no longer weirds me out if I find myself stuck on a rickety old bus with a bunch of people who have a different skin color than yours and are yelling at each other in various languages in the middle of the desert with a screaming baby next to you, while it very well may have thrown me off a little bit before I arrived in this country. It’s a lot easier to just anticipate that everything will go wrong here and be extra happy when something goes right than if you take things like bus schedules for granted and get overly upset when you find yourself waiting at 4 am for two hours to get on that aforementioned adventure.
In the meanwhile, it is time for me to go pull water so I can go seed some Acacia mellifera and reward myself with a cool bucket bath. You should try one sometime, it can be rather refreshing. Come help me fill some tree sacs while you’re at it.
~E
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