At work today….

Courtesy of Aesclinn’s Tamba Times tumblr

Kiva Labs | Financing Agriculture

Learn more about organizations like myAgro in terms of agriculture finance–some really cool orgs and information here! Proud to be working with an organization that partners with Kiva.

Business Trip to Kolda

Last week I went on a scouting trip to a southern region of Senegal, Kolda. About a 5 hour drive from Tambacounda, Kolda is south of The Gambia. The Casamance river runs through the whole region so it was cooler and more treed than Tamba.

We arrived in Kolda around noon (I won the time bet with Baba this time! He didn’t know that there was a good third of the road that was unpaved. Against my own credit, I didn’t either, but I heard roads were awful and judged accordingly). I was in Kolda to visit villages and NGOs to see if it is a place myAgro could expand to in the future. Pretty neat to be leading the first Senegal scouting trip.

Baba and I drove around Kolda to get a feel for the place and talk with a local Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV). We then tracked down the cultural center to post some job openings for the Tamba office. I was nervous about this initially, as it involves explaining the positions and signing a contract in French, I first went to Six Jarres. The woman referred me to the Chambre de Commerce. Once at the Chambre de Commerce, I had to photo copy the jobs because they wanted copies to pass out. They referred me to the Hotel de Ville, where I physically glued the postings to the wall. We now have a candidate coming to Tamba next week to interview!

Two months ago, I wouldn’t have thought that this was something I could do on my own. It would’ve made me nervous in the states. But I did it in French. In Senegal. By myself. Little victories sure do help get your mojo back. Small wins make it easier to leap. These things make the learning curve feel right; make it feel necessary.

Baba and I went to our hotel, Le Firdou, a hunting lounge on a river. It was pretty awesome. Clean pool, spacious rooms, fast internet, full bar, big screen TVs. It was a breath of fresh air after a busy two weeks in Tamba.

$7 fancy steak

The next day, I felt like I was in a development dream. I was sitting under a mango tree talking to a farmer with a PCV who was translating my English into Pulaar. In one minute, I was reading something in French, translating it into English and then Jessica was translating it into Pulaar. Then it went back down the same chain. The fact that my Senegalese name is Pulaar fostered many jokes about why I really do need to learn “my language”. I am starting local language lessons next week and am even more motivated after seeing how easily the PCVs chatted with farmers.

This happened in the three villages I visited–one large village (about 1,000), one commerce village on the main road and a small village in the bush. In the large village we met with the Peace Corps “Master Farmer” and visited his hectare of land that the Peace Corps gave to him–complete with a well, fencing, storage room and seeds. It was great to talk to him about his garden and listen to the PCVs discuss the same methods we teach our farmers with him.

The last village was by far my favorite. Small, shady, quiet. My main PCV contact lived in this village. We visited a vegetable garden where she explained that once they burn their rice fields after harvest, the women of the village work together to convert the river bed into the garden for the dry season. One garden a day and all the women help each other. Now these gardens are in full bloom. There were 24 gardens for the village of 200.

One thing of note was how nice the people in Kolda are (whichI feel weird saying, figuring everyone I’ve met has been very kind). I was never called Toubab. I was never asked for money, a present or food. I don’t know if it was because there are so many PCVs concentrated in the area or if it is because they are more isolated from the main commerce route. It’s a hard place to get to. While there are NGOs and numerous development projects in the area, the presence was hardly felt. Even the PCVs were saying they always heard of organizations in the regions but never saw them in village. Peace Corps and myAgro have very different approaches to development, making it that much more of a learning experience for me.

I came back to Tamba with renewed patience, confidence and courage. I hadn’t realized how downtrodden I had become by staying in Tamba for 9 weeks straight. It’s a nice reminder to get away from work and change up the environment. I think I’ll be doing these scouting trips more in the coming months and I couldn’t be more excited.

This Quotidienne Life: Village Visits

At 8:30, Baba and Oumou (our awesome translator—she speaks 8 languages!) came to the house to pick me up. I called them last night to say that we are going to visit Kéba, one of our field agents this morning. Field agents are the real oil of the machine here at myAgro, being the ones who directly work with farmers to mobilize to make payments for their savings packets, lead trainings and help plant.

Our villages are as far as an hour and a half away and as close as Touba Fall, the one we visited today, which is about 15 mins down the highway.

Once we arrived, Oumou and I went to the village chief. The village chief is normally an older man in the town and outside visitors must first stop by their hut before going about their business. Keba arrived 5 minutes after us. We went through the general greetings with the wives of the chief and went to find our first farmer.

Our agents are working on two main projects right now: mobilizing farmers to reach savings goals for their cereal inputs (mais, sorgum or peanuts) and planting with farmers who saved for a vegetable packet. We started by mobilizing a farmer towards his cereal packet.

What is cool about Touba Fall is that they have a mobile vendor who sells our scratch cards in village (if this is getting too jargon-y, check out the overview of myAgro here). He came with us to visit the farmer who ended up depositing 500cfa ($1) into his account. One of the main hurdles we are facing right now is that farmers are still waiting to sell their peanut harvest to the government, which means they have little money right now, even though it is supposed to be one of the times during the year that they have surplus. Keba still encouraged the farmer to pay “petit à petit”, a key component to the myAgro model. Farmers don’t have to pay everything right away, they can pay little by little when they have money to make saving easier.

After we visited the farmer, we moved onto planting with a vegetable farmer. One of the central ideas of myAgro is that all agents must plant alongside with farmers to teach them new planting methods that will not only increase their yields, but also conserve water. This was the second planting Oumou and I have attended, so we wasted no time grabbing gardening hoes and making the seedbeds with the farmer and his wives. As we planted, we explained the methods, helped women bring water in from the wells and joked that Oumou and I were stronger than the men of the family.

It’s pretty amazing to see how much community agriculture builds. We had neighbors stopping by throughout the day to visit, kids were playing (and staring) all around and someone was making the local tea. Although the work was long, with so many hands, we were able to finish at about 12:30pm.

At that point, Oumou and I headed back to the office for lunch and an afternoon of script writing for mobilization and meetings.

Field visits are by far one of my favorite parts of working here. It’s great to see our agents in action and to meet farmers. This all sounds pretty cheesy but I don’t know how else to describe it. It’s also great to learn from not only the farmers, but our agents, translators and driver. I’ve been told that field visits are the best part of international development work and I feel like I’m starting to see why.