Day on the Farm

Today I returned to my village from Tumu in the Upper West region where I attended a two-day volunteer led training on dry season gardening. I left notes and class exercises for my students while I was out. I was interesting in going since there are a couple of dams in my community which could be used to do dry season gardening and help with food security. Feed the Future/Food Security Initiative is the big Peace Corps topic this year and was discussed at our Education training as well. During Buli language, our trainer PP discussed how during harvest time the food is plenty so people eat three meals a day then only two once dry season comes and food isn’t as plentiful and finally only one towards the end of dry season right before the rains come again when food is scarce. Although this is yet to happen it’s stayed at the back of my mind as harmattan ends and dry (also hot) season approaches.

Sunday was a long travel day since the bus leaving Bolga for Tumu was a few hours late leaving. But since I had a good book called The Shadow of the Sun to keep me company while waiting I was ok. The book is written by a journalist who spent time all over Africa starting with Ghana in 1957 on the cusp of independence. It has some great quotes which I will probably post on here from time to time. The training was great because after a few hours into the classroom session on Monday morning I’d already learned a lot about dry season gardening and types of irrigation (manual, surface, and drip). Then we headed out into the field to visit two PlanGhana dams used for dry season gardening by the communities. They both used manual irrigation so it was clear that it was quite labor intensive and perhaps not worth it depending on the pay off. We stayed at the SILDEP Guesthouse in Tumu and a new volunteer is working with the women’s group there on the miracle plant moringa, making soap and other products. I bought some soap, seeds to grow my own moringa, and some moringa & lemon grass tea. The Swiss woman who runs the guesthouse knows how to cater to Westerners so we enjoyed some amazing food including homemade papaya jam, pancakes, papaya pie, brownies with nuts, fresh juice, spaghetti Bolognese, and northern fufu with chicken light soup.

The training group was small- about 10 volunteers and some local farmers- so it great catching up with people I trained with but hadn’t seen in a while plus meet new people too. Yesterday was the installation day for the drip irrigation system (from a kit) which was procured using grant money. In the morning we had a session on different design considerations then went to the volunteer’s site Kupulima very close to the Burkina Faso border. The land had already been cleared, leveled, and measured out so our work occurred in three phases. First we used hoes and shovels to prepare the land. Next we laid out the drip lines, connect them to the main line, and connected the main line to the reservoir. Everything went very smoothly, except for a dead mouse blocking the flow of water, but this was quickly resolved and thankfully didn’t mess up anything. It was exciting to see the water flow through the entire system since it was a sort of experiment and they weren’t sure the water would be enough for the whole area. Finally we planted a few snap pea seeds and some cucumber seedling before calling it a successful day. We even finished early and most of us walked away feeling like we could install a similar system. I found the hands on part of the training to be extremely effective. The main idea I walked away with was to start small so I’d like to plan a small garden and manually water it this month. Happy February and Groundhog Day by the way! I want to tell one of my classes about our crazy ‘holiday’ tomorrow so we’ll see how that goes. This weekend I’m heading to Bolga again this time for a volunteer’s meeting on Saturday. I will finally be able to pick up some packages I have waiting on me plus meet the all (I’ve met 3) of the new volunteers that came in December.