Thursday, May 9, 2013

Updates

It's been a busy last few weeks, lots of meetings, floor pounding, and building!

My village is nursing 120 Moringa trees currently with plans to plant 100 more by rainy season. We've had weekly meetings and are fast underway with the construction of the garden fence. So far the Moringa project is continuing at a smooth steady pace... oh except that one time a bag of cow dung that had been soaking in a barrel of water for two weeks split and splashed me and my foot quite thoroughly.

Now is the time for floor pounding and it never gets old. The amount of work that goes into flattening the compound floor always surprises me. What never gets old though is the singing, pounding, and dancing. I had a JICA (Japan Peace Corps) come visit and my village loved seeing two white people who spoke completely different languages haha.

Also I just returned from a training event hosted by Peace Corps about the care and conservation of Shea Trees and am happy to report we have been passing on the skill of grafting Shea Trees to the women of my village. Slowly but surely. It takes 20 years for a wild Shea tree to fruit, but by grafting (combining an older Shea tree with a younger one) the trees can fruit in 6-8 years.

All in all everything here is going well. In my spare time I am still reading and still talking Dagbani. Things have been rolling along very well and soon we'll all be running out to the farms to start planting crops. The future holds more organic fertilizer training and Moringa training.

Sorry the posts become shorter and fewer in time but I will try to make an effort to be more diligent about posting and keeping you guys updated.