Bloggin late now from Kyiv- more on my re-establishment in Ukraine in an upcoming post. Let me catch up with an overdue blog from a field trip to a USAID site in Senegal. - Arghh! - Again I forgot that darn small grey cable that connects my dijjie camera to my computer. It's now probably in a sweltering plywood shipping crate in some port somewhere waiting lazily for the next unhurried cargo ship... won't likely arrive for another 6 weeks :( See the questionnaire to the left and vote.... UPDATE - found the pics on my hard drive. Here they are... ...more on Ukraine soon...
In my last week in Senegal I was lucky enough to be invited by a colleague of mine who had I been in training with, an Agriculture Officer (pictured here in the wide brimmed hat, explaining the project), out on yet another site visit, this time to see the first phase construction of an infrastructure portion of the decade-long Wula Nafaa Project.
We embarked early on this long, long day-long trip with the Chief of Party (COP) for the implementer, the International Resources Group. The COP provided some valuable insight on multi-project operations of a large partner. On the way out to the site in Kaymore, one hour past Kaolack, he volunteered an honest assessment of international donor's impact in the country, and some challenges and triumphs encountered in the implementation of this particular endeavor.
We approached the project site: a large barren field that had been made fallow by encroaching saltwater in the water table; a result of creeping climate change. Although salt production is a boon to the local economy, the fields at question once thrived with cash crops. A bulldozer was excavating a large hole in the opening stages of constructing a dike. This would capture fresh water during the rainy season, allowing 500 hectares of land to be flushed regularly; thereby decreasing salinity and making the land arable. Community leaders from this municipality (chosen for its cohesion and enthusiasm) were out by the site when we arrived and greeted us. Together we watched, mesmorized as the backloader pulled up the first tons of red African earth. In two years, what we were standing on would be a field, thick with cash crops...
As we left, the COP pointed out a group of monoliths that were likely thousands of years old. An African stonehenge just sat there stoically, in peace and quiet besides a quiet village... ...and it will probably be there long, long after we are all are gone. There Bill snapped the world's only existing picture of me in Africa.
The landscape of the Sengalese backcountry is dry, but colorful. Our return back was cheerfully interupted at times by wayfaring cattle and goats crossing the street. The baobob trees (pictured in the first image above), among the most curious organism I'd ever seen, spread around us in every direction. Whereas most trees seem to like to clump together in groups, these fat limbed, sparsly leaved (in the midst of the dry season) trees like their space, even at times appearing to space themselves evenly into the distance.
