Cultural Exchange

There are times that I am reminded that I live in a different culture - and that common everyday objects that I am used to are different and new for my national friends.

I had this experience again recently ... enter: antibacterial hand soap.

I have a great affinity for these little bottles ... portable for village visits.  I keep one in almost every bag.  I love all the scents.  I appreciate that I have something handy and liquidy for after I visit "behind a bush".  I especially appreciate that I have something antibacterial for when I have to eat a meal in the village - sometimes after touching dirt or animals.  The day we made manure in the village for our tree planting project would be a good example of said use for antibacterial soap!

A few weeks ago, I was at a baby naming ceremony in the village.  I love these events - a day filled with chatting in Fulfulde, seeing/holding a newborn baby, making friends.  The food at a baby naming ceremony is also usually very good!

Though, when the lunch meal is served, out comes my little handwashing bottle.  The Fulani do not typically wash their hands before they eat ... and yes, we eat with our hands!  If they happen to do so, it is without soap.  They will wash their hands after they eat - again, without soap - to wash the sauce and rice mush off.

However, I will wash my hands before I eat - usually just with this soap, but sometimes they give me a bowl of water as well.  Even though the soap is a liquid, it feels more normal for my brain to use it in combination with water! I always hope this might be an example to others - and those I hang out with enough have picked up at least rinsing their hands in water before they eat ... sometimes.

But this day - I thought: finally, the concept of washing hands had caught on.

For, when the platter arrived, I washed my hands.  And the lady sitting next to me asked for some as well. Given that we eat from a common platter 

and her hands would be touching my food - I was all too happy to share my liquid soap with her!!

Yet - as I squirted some of my *precious* soap into her hand, she said: "The wind (scent) of your perfume is pleasing!"

And then she proceeded to rub the soap into her clothes.

Her beautiful, white lace outfit!

I shouldn't have been surprised that she wasn't wanting to wash her hands, despite having watched me rub my hands together instead of putting it on as perfume!

For her, the cultural exchange was likely: "Wow - the white people sure do put their perfume on funny .... rubbing it all over their hands instead of spraying the liquid on their clothes!"  But, she liked the smell so much that she wanted to share this new and strange perfume experience!

Tree Planting - The End of the Story

Before I continue with this post - I feel the need to state that our trees did not grow with success this year ... lizards ate the little seedlings as they grew out of the tree sacs!!  It was discouraging as we lost around 1,500 trees this year!

We recently had an agricultural expert from Burkina Faso visit our village to help Megan and I with some of our project questions.  He said that he has never had this problem in Burkina, but that a Moringa Cooperative in Niamey this year had the same problem with the lizards and their trees.  Then, he looked around and said "Truly this is the desert.  WOW!  No wonder the lizards eat your trees ... the tree starts to grow and the lizards are attracted to this new, fresh, bright green plant!"  

All this said - I will write the last two parts of the tree planting story, so that you can see it to its end!

Tree Planting - Part 5

This lesson in the tree planting program was digging and spacing the holes for the trees - and how to plant the trees around their fields. 

The holes for the trees needed to be spaced 5 metres apart - the men measure the space of a metre by the span of their steps.  Roughly equivalent - but it works for the village where metre sticks don't exist!

The trees also needed to be planted at the edge of the field - and in between the direction of the wind and the field to help against soil erosion.  So, if the wind comes from the South-East direction, then the trees need to be planted on the East and South borders of the field.  As the trees grow - their presence will keep the wind from blowing across the fields and sweeping the sand away.

To demonstrate this, I printed pictures of little sandals and trees that I received from SIL ... I then taped these to our large board to demonstrate the spacing and direction of the tree planting: 

We then went out to the field and practiced digging the depth and width of hole for the tree sacs and spacing out five metres between the holes.

Tree Planting - Part 6

This was the final tree planting training day ... the culmination of 3 months of work!

Today, we learned how to plant the moringa tree seeds - and the spacing of these trees.  These are different than the acacia and neem trees - there are planted in rows.  With two feet between the rows and three feet between the trees.  Again - I brought out the tree and sandal pictures to demonstrate this! 

We then went back out to the tree holes that we dug the previous lesson and I taught them how to plant the tree sac in the hole.

They needed to ensure that the tree sac fit in the hole - not too deep nor too shallow:

Then, they needed to cut the bottom inch off the tree sac, carefully place the sac and tree in the hole - angled on its side.  Then they needed to slice up the sac, about 3/4 of the length - not digging too deep so as not to cut the roots of the tree.  

As our trees were not sprouting nor ready to plant, I demonstrated this with a sac filled with sand.

As you can tell in one of the above photos - we had a tree seedling start, based on the photos we found online of the acacia and neem trees - this was an acacia tree sprouting.  It was soon eaten by lizards.

I could tell the men were as discouraged to report this as Megan and I were to hear that all our work was for naught!

We will try the trees again this year ... but rather than starting the trees from seeds in tree sacs, I am hoping to buy the trees already started as seedlings from tree farms if I can find them!  

Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization's World Teachers' Day

Well - I was travelling on last week on Monday (and then the internet flunked enough that loading pictures was difficult), so I missed World Teachers' Day ... I have many teachers that I remember fondly over my life in school.  My piano teacher Sarah Clark is a friend to this day.  I remember Mrs. Rempel from Logos Christian School ... wow - that was kingergarten and Grade 1.  Apparently, my memory is much better from a younger age - because, I forget now the names of my teachers in High School - but my favourite two teachers were my French and English 30 professors.  I love going to school and consequently, I have many favourite classes and teachers in my recent history of my undergrad and masters degree as well - way too many too list!  But, most teachers I have had had taught me more than just the class material - I have learned valuable life lessons as well.  On the humorous side - my high school French teacher taught us that if we repeated something 64 times, we would have it memorized ... obviously, over the three years of high school - she must have repeated that more than 64 times as it stuck with me ... and it reminds me in my lifelong language learning that it takes time and effort to learn a language!!

I found some online articles written yesterday to honour teachers and capture classes around the world:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/reuters-photographers-classrooms_56127df0e4b0af3706e14954

http://www.buzzfeed.com/jasonwells/world-teachers-day-classrooms#.cck75d8XO

My favourite is in the second article - the class in Chile ... one is never too old to learn!

In a tribute to World Teacher's Day, and classrooms around the world, here are two village schools that I am helping over here .... one Tuareg village and one Fulani/Djerma village - both on the edge of the Sahara Desert in Sahel Niger!

Kongou:

Tinadakal:

And - in the spirit of the classroom in Chile .... the adults that I teach in the villages as well continue to learn - agriculture, animal husbandry, health,

Today, as I post this, I am heading to a meeting with the Inspector General of schools in Niger - he has promised to open a government school in Kongou and supply it with a teacher.  On Saturday, the chief's son and I went to the village to census the children ages 6-7 and have a list of 30 students ready to start school this week!  The school hut is being built by the parents today and soon primary school will start for these children!  This is the culmination of work and prayers for the last two years.

The next job?  Start a mini-school in the next village site ... out 10 km that does not have a school.  If there are at least 20 children ages 6-7, we can petition the Inspector to open a school next year at this site as well.  In the words of the Inspector "I am here to ensure equal opportunity and access to school for all the children of Niger!"  Quite the job!!  And I am all too happy to help him find all these children!

Tree Planting - Part 4

Soon the next training session arrived .... teaching the men how to plant each of the two seeds in the soil.

It was a bit complicated - as the two seeds were to be planted at different depths.  Thankfully, the two seeds were different sizes: so the small seed got planted by making a small indent in the sand with one's small finger - and the larger seed got planted at the depth of the first knuckle of the pointer finger.

One of the seeds also needed to be pre-treated in hot (near boiling) water and soaked for 10 minutes before planting.  It was a bit difficult to explain in Fulfulde that the water needed to be brought to "just before it starts to boil"!  But, we managed to explain it all visually - the sack of seeds that needed to be boiled were packed with a picture of a pot!

In the lesson - I also told a Fulani riddle .... looking for their answer:

Riddle:  I am a house without a door.  What am I?

Answer:  An egg!

So - we taught them how to crush egg shells into a powder and to put a small bit into the soil before the egg is planted.  For a few months - all our teammates were collected their egg shells for us .... so we had plenty to crush and distribute to the men!  (As the Fulani prefer to sell the eggs of the chickens for income rather than eating them! .... more teaching on that with the women on nutrition later this year!!)

It was a good day of training again - and always fun to be out in the village and interacting with the men!  Soon to come - Training Day 5!

Tree Planting - Part 3

The week following the "work day" - a national teacher from Samaritan's Purse came to my village to teach about the tree planting and nursery sacs.  It is so great to partner with other organizations who have knowledge and are great teachers!

The first part of the training session was the teaching portion - we all gathered under a straw hut for shade and learned about how to construct tree nursery sacs, plant the seeds, and plant the seedlings.

Following the training session began the work portion of the day!  We discovered that the manure we pounded the week before was not the correct consistency .... it needs to be the same consistency as the sand!!  

Good thing I brought the sifter back with me - and the men got to work sifting the manure to a finer grain:

The clay that I found by the river also needed to be pounded to the same consistency as the sand and manure.  So, out came the cement pounders from the time before - and the clay was pounded in the sack to keep it contained:

While the men had three work stations going: with all the manure sifting, sand mixing, and clay pounding ... Megan and I made friends with this little girl in the compound.  She stuck to us pretty closely all day - we could call her "velcro" - at one point, she had her arms wrapped around my legs, but I needed to move to another spot.  So, I just picked her up at her knees and she hung onto my knees as I walked around to the other working station!!

She doesn't smile much, nor talk - but she is the sweetest little girl.  She still comes running every time we arrive in the village, waiting for hugs from us both - which we are happy to give!

Finally - the tree sac mix was ready to begin - all components being prepared - and the men began to mix together the sand and manure.

Shortly the clay and insecticide was added in.  Soon, there was in the mix:

• 2 wheel barrows of sand
• 1 wheel barrrow of manure
• 1 shovel of clay
• 1 bottle of insecticide powder

I never imagined how much work it would be to get this all going - two days of work!  And then the hard work - mixing in water and turning shovel full after shovel full of the dry mixture until it was moist for the sacs!

Once this was ready - it was time to eat lunch!! 

And this "lemonade stand" on wheels happened upon the work day as well: 

On the back of his bicycle, he has a styrofoam cooler filled with cold water for sale.  He has likely biked in 6 km from the nearest town with electricity on the highway - today, he found many willing purchasers of his product!!

After lunch, it was back to work ... the mulch was ready - and it was time to learn how to fill the nursery sacs ... to tamp down the mulch soil and fill the bags to the top!

Each man received a small market sack of this soil mulch to take back to their village area, along with a bottle of the insecticide, in order to make the soil base for their tree sacs.  They were each given also enough tree sacs to suffice the trees for their field size.

The men returned home with their sacks and the knowledge of how to mix the soil base to fill all their sacks.  The next meeting is set for 2 weeks later ... enough time for them to prep the tree sacks by watering the soil and weeding out any weeds that start to grow.  At the next meeting, we will review the process for planting each of the two types of trees!