i heart trees

I recently joined up with a group of volunteers in my region to do a mangrove reforestation project in the delta region of Toubacouta. It is breathtakingly beautiful down there, and I am immensely jealous of the PCV’s who get to call it home. I mean, look at that sunset!

We all arrived the evening before – mostly so we could play in the pool for a few hours – and in the morning our ride showed up. There were about 30 of us, and the ‘ride’ turned out to be a pick-up truck filled with fishy smelling life jackets..how many Peace Corps volunteers can you fit in a truck? We’re up to sixteen.

We were taking these great little pirogues out to the transplanting location, so the 16 of us who managed to cram into the bed of the pickup trekked about 100m out into the water, rocking our smelly life jackets, and hopped in the boat. Then, in true Senegalese fashion, we sat. And we waited. For about an hour in the hot, hot sun. Lots of sunscreen being passed around that day! When the second half of our group arrived (they had thought they had been left behind! and they only got 12 in the truck), it was decided that they would not walk out to boat, but take another, motor-less boat, out to meet us. So they are rowed out, and as the boat is sitting about 25ft away from us, they are instructed to hop out and walk over to our boat. Realizing that the water we were sitting in barely reached our knees, we quickly shed the smothering life jackets.  And then, we were off! We took about an hour long boat ride through the mangroves, taking in all the scenery.

women sorting seedlings

The reforestation site was a long, sandy flat. When we arrived we were greeted by the organization workers that helped to set up the event, some local women, and a whole slew of kids, running all over the place with huge sacks of mangrove seedlings. I was especially excited to work with everyone all day, because all of the Senegalese people that were joining us spoke Serere – I could finally communicate with someone outside of my village! The local women were helping out with sorting through the seeds, discarding the bad ones. We all grabbed a bucket with seedlings, and headed out to get to planting. The guys who were running the show had drawn out these long lines that we were to plant along. It’s a pretty basic process. You take two large steps, stick a seedling in the mud so its deep enough that it won’t fall out when the tide washes in, take two more steps, and repeat, until you reach the end of the line.

me and khady

diligently reforesting

I had a lil’ buddy while I was working – her name was Khady (pronounced Hadi) and she stuck with me all day. At one point I somehow got myself into an epic battle with all the little boys running around, due to the fact that my last name is Ndiaye and they were all Dioufs. Serere’s love to have joking relationships with each other, and that’s basically what this was – we were hurling insults all day long. Ndiayes eat a lot! Dioufs only know how to eat! Ndiayes love millet! Standard fare for Senegalese insulting. I called a few of them ugly as well. Khady had my back, but those boys were out for me! As we were nearing the end of the day, one of the other volunteers decided that it would be oh, so funny to start splashing everyone. They quickly realized that I was not a fan of the splashing, and the boys that had been scheming jumped at the opportunity, with more than a little encouragement from my so-called fellow PCVs. It quickly escalated into an all-out war, with volunteers and kids running every which way, flinging buckets full of water, and hop-scotching over our newly planted trees. Needless to say, we all ended up soaked though, but I’m not gonna lie, after a long, hot day in the sun I couldn’t complain.

That evening we got to have another little pool party, and while a thunderstorm threatened to ruin the fun, we all decided to jump in anyways, cause honestly, when else can we play in a pool? Fun Fact: Turns out that when you go underwater in the rain it sounds like little bubbles are popping all around.

All in all, I had a great time in Toubacouta. Planted some trees, pretended I was a kid again in a splash fight, got to see a lot of my friends and the other volunteers in my region, again, we had a pool, and my campement had AC. What more can a girl ask for!

smiling pcv faces