Day 72: More field work

With no meetings or things to do in the morning, I slept late. By late, I mean about 8am. There’s really no such thing as “sleeping late” here; there are numerous things that prevent such a concept. When the sun rises, all life in our compound is awakened. This includes goats, sheep, cows, chickens, donkeys, bats (yea, for real) and loudest of all, small children. Also awakened are the insects, namely the bumble bees, which live in our room. It’s impossible to sleep with all these noises, but I guess I’ve just come to accept it.

After breakfast and stuff, we chilled until the afternoon. I spent some time talking with Mama Dou Thioye (the father of my family and chief of the ecovillage here.) He speaks French (one of the only people in my family,) and he has been extremely nice to me since I arrived the other night. Unfortunately, he wasn’t here for his last visit because he was in St. Louis visiting his 3^rd wife. His two other wives live here in Nder…

After lunch, Kristin and I walked out to the fields once again to observe the large tractor/plow machine clear the community garden. The garden has more than tripled in size, and has gone from a pretty scrubby looking garden to a massive crop field. It’s very cool to imagine what it could look like if we successfully install an efficient irrigation system for the whole thing.

After observing, doing a little work, and playing with machetes, we returned to our families. Dinner was rice and some kind of meat (maybe beef? I have no idea…). You just come to accept it, there’s really no other choice…