The first day, I got a tour of the village and met a lot of people. It was funny because many people tried to greet me in Pulaar but only knew an initial hello, and then were speechless and laughed when I would continue to talk to them in Pulaar. Ash said her village loved it because previously, her visitors have known either French, Wolof, or English, and either would chat it up in Wolof, or seemed rather incapable in the village. That evening we went out with her family to collect cashew seeds.
The second day I was there we experimented with cashew apple food transformation. Ash was really interested in making fruit leather, so we went out, collected cashew apples with her host sister, came back, diced them up, boiled them down, added citric acid, sugar, and cinnamon, strained the mixture, and laid the mixture out on a cookie sheet covered with syran wrap. The remaining cashew apples, we diced up and made cashew applesauce. During the day I also map "lop lop" (a green mango mixture with vinegar, mustard, maggi, and onions) in the midst of the cashew goodness. It was a hit with everyone who stopped by to say hello!
Then on Wednesday, after heating up our cashew apple sauce for breakfast, we walked the 2km to the road where we waited for a car. We ended up squeezing onto an Alhum to go to Toubacouta. We went to a campement/resort place to use internet, enjoy the view of the mangroves and pool as well as a few drinks. I ended up seeing villagers from my area who were up for a meeting. How ironic! It was a beautiful getaway though and I am thoroughly jealous that these volunteers have this accessible at their fingertips! After a dip in the mangroves, that evening, I went back to Sokone with Emily, and then we went to her village, Dramine Sadabou, about 8km away.
Emily's village is about 8km away from Sokone where we got a horse drawn cart to. Her village was really nice and ended up coming together to do henna on my feet! It was quite a success, even if it was a long process (3 hours to do taping and henna application in the evening, slept with plastic bags on my feet overnight, and then peeled off the tape and henna and the morning and had my feet charcolaed and cemented for another 3 hours). I saw her tree nursery, helped her fill tree sacks, and enjoyed many mangoes. It was a short stay but very pleasant! We took a donkey drawn cart back into Sokone to meet up with Ash and have lunch with a person in their English club. I had pockets put into a dress and we enjoyed another campement with a view of some mangroves. We enjoyed dinner at one of their Senegalese friends' houses before I went on the overnight bus to Dakar.
All in all, it was a wonderful way to spend time seeing sites and getting some work in before going to the quarterly SeneGAD meeting back in Thies.
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