Training in Basse

For the past two weeks we have been in training again. Our first two months were all about learning language and culture, the most important things. But they called us all back together to learn the more technical and hands on stuff were encouraged to be doing in the village. Last last Monday I and the eight other Environment volunteers all met in Basse. There is a garden there at the Peace Corps house so we have free reign. Monday was all lectures, paperwork signing, and making sure that everyone had a good first three months getting used to their site. On Tuesday they actually had one representative from each of our villages come to Basse as well to go through garden training with us. Its not so much that as volunteers we need to be taught how to loosen up soil and plant seeds, but bringing somebody from the village around to see a formal training and giving them the chance to ask questions straight to our Program managers about things just gives a little bit of legitimacy to the fact that a stranger is there to help work in the garden or on the farm. Tuesdays training including digging garden beds, transplanting vegetables, but also planting and transplanting trees, as well as selecting, cutting, and then grafting trees together. Wednesday was how to treat and store seeds, how to make fences out of trees, and more grafting practice. Our village representatives went home on Thursday, and then we shifted to doing paper work and listening to some more lectures. I asked the garden master from the Arabic school to come as my counterpart (his name is Omar, hes in one of the pictures), but since he has to teach on Tuesday and Wednesdays the school sent a woman named Mariamma who is a teacher in training, which means she just hangs around the school and helps out however she can. Aside from the knowledge and practice, the coolest thing about bringing people from our village with us was just the way everyone had fun in a huge group. At all the break times all of our Gambian counterparts would just go sit under a mango tree and drink attaya, so even if they didnt learn anything they were having fun. Peace Corps also put them up in a hotel, and provided all of the breakfast, lunches, and dinners, which are huge, diverse, and full of the produce that you cant always find in the village. Friday was a travel day, and we all loaded up in the huge Peace Corps van and got a free ride to the big city for some more training...