Earth, Fire, and Mangos

Dramatic developments in the bush

Desert Castle

Lately I've been pulling 14 hour days in a furious attempt to finish my new brick home before the rains come. This type of building is based on ancient adobe arch construction used in Africa thousands of years ago. Lately its been making a bit a of a resurgence in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Senegal (check out this amazing website: http://www.lavoutenubienne.org/en). Called "La Voute Nubienne" or "Nubian Arch" construction, these houses are a spectacular way to use available resources to create a building truly tailored to its environment.

Digging the foundation with the expert guidance of my brother Michael who flew all the way to Senegal to play in the sand with me. We also biked, ran, climbed, camped and cooked. Those things were almost as fun as the digging.

Filling the foundation with a combination of sand, clay, and rocks. The trenches were 75cm wide and 60cm deep.

Baby goat wrangling. A riveting game of skill to wile away the single five minute break I grant my employees. No unions here. Michael and I were joined here my Matthew, uniting all three brothers in a small Senegalese village where we dug holes, made bricks, and caused small goats to bleat madly in sheer panic when seized by white men in funny clothes.

The final layer of the foundation! Unfortunately the foundation took so long to dig and fill that both my brothers had come and gone before it was complete. We did have loads of fun outside the work-site though. And built many of the bricks that were to soon comprise the walls and vaults.

Bricking. The small bricks I'm making in the foreground are for the arches. The large ones stacked in the background are for the walls.

One of my friends helping me crank out more bricks. I've calculated that my house requires 2,500 large bricks and 5,000 small bricks. As of writing this I am about two-thirds of the way there. I have been building bricks for three months.

Building this new type of home in my village is meant to be a “technology transfer” project—essentially introducing a new idea, skill or process to a benefit a community. This is the crux of the Peace Corps approach and drives the work that other volunteers and I do in forestry and agriculture. I became obsessed with these Nubienne Arch buildings, however, and decided to build my own in my village, teaching any interested individuals as I go and hopefully ending up with a spectacle that will draw people from the whole region to come see and eventually emulate.

Two layers of bricks laid. Each layer covering all four walls is about 110 bricks. That's a giant mango tree in the background. One of the most rewarding activities is to hurl sticks into the upper reaches to knock free ripe mangos and feast on their juicy sweet goodness after a hard morning of work.

Six layers. The triangles are air-vents I built into the lower walls to provide circulation.

Stretching a string line. Building is slow work since I'm new to being a mason and err on the side of caution to make sure my building is sound

Sure helps when I get workers. This is my grandfather Aji who owns the land I'm building on (and therefore will inherit the house when I leave). The two guys mortaring bricks are Ass and Hussainu, his nephews. Grandpa Aji is pretty excited about the house. So is the rest of my family. Shoot, everyone in my village likes it. It's an imposing building and gets quite a lot of attention. People love to speculate about it with mixes of fascination, curiosity, dubiousness, and support.

Nubienne Arch homes are not so divorced from agroforestry after all. They are built entirely with local. sustainable materials (clay, sand, rocks) and therefore have much less environmental impact than current homebuilding strategies (which include lumber and/or cement). Add to this list durability, (can stand over 100 years) safety, (impervious to fire), thermoregulation (thick adobe walls keep the interior cool during the day and warm during chill nights), and thrift (does not require cement or metal roofing, which are often huge financial burdens on cash-poor families trying to build homes). It’s also insanely cool to live in what feels like a mini castle. 

10 layers of bricks (170cm) and the first arch is up

Second and third arches. And my little niece who came to check out the fortress and got stranded, having hung out with me until the sun rose high and she was unable to walk barefoot over the fiery sand back home. I gave her a ride back in the wheelbarrow

Current photo, still have a lot of arches to build...

Inside shot, the cable guide marks the center of the radius of the ceiling, therefore the window arches much fit that contour on the inside to match the arc of the ceiling.

Most amazing natural lounge chair I've seen. It was going to be turned into charcoal but I realized its potential. When I asked my friend if I could have this particular cut of his tree he said sure, why. I explained animatedly to him it was the perfect chair. He smiled and nodded. Sensing he did not share my conviction I urged him to try it out. He hesitantly clambered onto the back of it with his feet on the seat. When I began laughing at him and told him that's not the proper way to sit in a bucket seat he proceeded to turn around and contort his legs over the back while sliding his shoulders onto the seat. I was hysterical at this point but calmed down enough to model the above pictured pose.

INFERNO house

I declared war against the insects invading the mud hut I built at my garden. The termites had completely infested the wood in my roof, and more recently hornets had built a plethora of nests in the rafters. Moths also flocked inside, attracted by the cool shady space. Retaliation was swift and brutal. I filled the inside from floor to ceiling with brush and lit it on fire. The resulting conflagration immolated the interior of my hut and drove me a full twenty feet from the entrance. All life was expunged. 

The inner fury

I kept the trees out back well-wetted to make sure I didn't burn down the farm. The hut fired surprisingly well, like a giant version of my clay oven, giving rise to the name of the baking branch of my multi-faceted company here in Senegal: Burning House Bakery

Blaze striking a statuesque pose next to the oven. Probably hoping for handouts

The three brothers at work in the Burning House Bakery, the menu that day was pizzas and brownies

Traditional red-sauce and not-so-traditional pesto--I ground the fresh basil in my mouth. Unconventionally delicious. (trademark slogan of Burning House Bakery. All rights reserved)

Moist and velvety Betty Crocker brownies

Golden treasures

Mango season is a magical time, making the heat dust and agony of the hot season all worthwhile. Hunting your own mangos is incredibly rewarding--capturing the elusive perfectly ripened mangos sheltered away at the tops of the trees, out of range of the gaggles of rock throwing children and pole-wielding women. It is a challenge that makes the reward all the sweeter.

This was my finest catch, two mangos with one stone

Feasting in Senegal

Poached fish, fresh veggies, stewed rabbit, and stuffed chicken

Life has been good and food bountiful at my garden these days.

 Catfish from the stream in my garden. Such a succulent meaty fish! I fried thick slabs of it over the fire with garlic, oil, and fresh basil. After taking that first scorching, juicy, delicious bite I had to sit down, take deep breaths, and talk myself into remaining calm and eating slowly. Maybe I'm a bit protein starved. Or maybe it was that good.

 Fruits of the garden. Moringa leaves on the left--these tree leaves are more nutrient rich than spinach and ubiquitous in my garden now--in the bowl are pigeon pea pods (like green beans that grow on trees) basil, and tomatoes.

 Skinning the first of my rabbits to be turned into lunch. Browned with onion and garlic then slow stewed it with beans, rice, eggplant, carrots, peppers and basil. I shared lunch with my grandfather at the farm and then took all the leftovers home for dinner where my family quickly cleaned the bowl. My brother enthused over the meal, praising the meat and my skill. Afterwards his wife declared simply, "Mustafa mën na togg," "Mustafa can cook." Jealous, sis?

 My latest in a series of trial and error designs to develop the perfect low-cost rabbit hutch. This is my ultimate winner. Built entirely out of branches of the tree Azadirachta indica bent and woven together. I used a negligent amount of twine and to make the floor I pay 1500 CFA ($3) for a meter of wire mesh which I brace with more branches underneath. It is durable, portable, easy to build, cheap, and with the shady interior and wire bottom provides a cool sanitary environment. I have built four already and intend to complete many more.

Christmas dinner in Toubacouta with a bunch of the other volunteers! We had garlic mashed potatoes, fresh cranberry sauce, green beans, home-made chocolate chip cookies, and snacks brought fresh off the plane from the USA by one of my good friend's brother and cousin who are here visiting. I baked banana bread and stuffed and baked two chickens and another of my rabbits Thanksgiving-style. It's a rare occasion that I get to stuff myself to repletion here but this was one of those times. Excellent breakfast leftovers too.

I sure miss being home with family and friends in the States but we survive here.

Happy holidays!

Back to Work

Hermit house

I decided to build myself a hut out at my garden. I already spend so much time here working on my plants and trees that I thought it would be great to have another cool, shady retreat for the hot part of the day and a comfortable shelter for spending the night when I don't feel like leaving the the tranquility of the bush. I also just love building forts, so it wasn't a hard sell.

 Stage one of my cob hut. A shady spot with a commanding view of my garden, the water, and the distant fields and forest. The plan is to dig down inside while building up, using the excavated sandy soil mixed with clay from a nearby termite mound as building material. End goal is a building half submerged underground and with thick (12-18inch) walls to keep the inside cool even on the 110+ degree days.

 Progressing slowly, or "ndank ndank" as we say here. Working by myself is really fun and relaxed but definitely incremental.

 Getting help from another volunteer, Tracy, who hung out for a few days before she left for Dakar and then on to other adventures, her two years in Senegal finished. The four separate pits in the bottom are all for mixing cob. My mixture is four buckets of clay (~50 liters) hacked from the termite mound mixed with roughly equal parts sandy subsoil carved out of the floor and walls of my hut, ~20 liters water, and an armful of chopped straw.

 Using a half of a steel barrel as support for the arch over the doorway. Also planted two papaya trees out front to give shade and fruit.

 Cob stomping laborers are always welcome!

 I had a whole crew working for me this day so I set up of chain of kids to pass the cob out of the pits and up on to the tops of the walls. At this point the side walls are finished, just the front and back remain, to set up for an A frame roof. The roof will be a series of eucalyptus rafters covered by a layer of millet stalks and then all covered completely with cob, leaving an air-tight cob-insulated
shelter.

Current status: walls almost complete. Have cut roof beams and rafters and left them to dry while I finish up the walls and inner excavation. My efforts have drawn increasing interest from my community and surrounding villages. A surprising number of people come out to the farm I work on to visit with my grandfather who spends all day out there keeping birds from eating the ripening rice. Now that word has spread of the strange creations of the white man almost all these visitors cross the water to my side of the garden to satisfy their curiosity. While the cob hut is undoubtedly the main attraction it provides a great chance for me to share the other projects I'm working on, including cob oven, terraced beds of fruits and veggies, mango trees I've recently pruned and grafted, and the various other tree species interspersed throughout my garden.

 After-rain remodeling

The rainy season left me with a lot of weeding and repair work to rebuild what Bevan and I had created by the end of last dry season. But having the outline all in place helped significantly. Many of our cob berms needed only a fresh layer of cob, having held up to the rain quite well. The beds closer to the water, however, are still saturated and have succumbed almost entirely to weeds and swampiness. I can only wait for the water level to recede before reclaiming these lower beds.

Enlisting Andalla's help to re-cob the inside of the oven. The wet season didn't harm my oven too much but after a season of baking and then months of rain it needed a remodel. This kid was gutsy (and small) enough to slide inside the oven on his belly and plaster wet mud all over the walls and ceiling.

 Re-finished oven, outside and in. Ready for another season of baking

 The new coterie of clay heads I made to disturb and fascinate any visitors. I found I can scrape rust out of my barrels and mix with water for orange and brown paint, and use powered charcoal for black.

 Sunset on my walk home after another day of work in the garden

Other exploits

Another new hobby while out in the bush is slingshot hunting. This was a beautiful iridescent blue-purple bird that I just stunned and caught before letting it go. Other less flashy and larger breasted birds like bush pigeons don't get away so easy and usually end up as a tasty snack if I manage to hit them.

 Some kids and me spending an afternoon drawing and coloring my wall with chalk

 The bird I drew. Unfortunately it's inevitable that tiny eager child fingers will smear the colorful chalk into oblivion and carve unintelligibly over it with blunt hunks of charcoal. Metaphors for Peace Corps service are ubiquitous.

My yard. Recent boundary disputes and political wrangling resulted in my substantial gain of 10 square meters of ground, where my new cement rabbit hutches now reside (visible in background). My five papaya trees have been growing like crazy, they are already 10-15 feet tall and putting out fruit, yet not even 10 months old. Their broad-leafed canopies and two vigorously spreading passion fruit vines--which have spread between the tops of all my trees already (seed from Brazil, thanks mom)--combine to provide my yard with cool dappled shade. I hope that as I continue to water consistently through the dry season I'll have a mini oasis of shade and greenery encompassing my yard.

Rains, fasting, and slaughtering rams

Tabaski

Tabaski is the grandest of all Senegalese holidays. Generally every family slaughters a couple rams (or sheep if you can't get rams, or goats if you can't get sheep--the hierarchy is well-established). It's a mark of pride and status to be able to provide a ram for your family. Generally every man with a wife will provide one, but sometimes it falls on unmarried younger brothers and sons to scrape the money together for the animal. Since my host father and two brothers (all married) had the ram situation well under control I contributed a big sack of onions and another of potatoes. This combined with liberal use of the "no wife, no ram" excuse deflected most of those trying to convince me I should buy my own ram.

The routine for Tabaski in my village went something like this:

Slow morning around the home, eat breakfast, perhaps sweep the courtyard (I made a quick mission to my garden to plant some seeds and go for a run, this kind of behavior is discouraged since Tabaski is one of the few times people here DON'T go work)

Dress in your fancy new clothes bought especially for this day, and go to the big tree outside the village to pray (many women and some guys didn't go--I didn't go, nor did I dress in traditional Senegalese clothing. ***This subject merits further discussion--since I do so much to fit in with my community why don't I wear their clothes? The reason is that I really don't like wearing the traditional men's clothing. I was coerced into it during my time as a Trainee but now that it's up to me I want nothing to do with wearing what feels like an over-sized, starched, waxy, pillowcase. I admit the men look impressive and the women beautiful in their gorgeously patterned and personally tailored clothes, but I don't care to wear them myself. Since I have done so much to integrate here already (language, culture, work, relationships, etc) I feel I deserve some leeway to be an American and in doing so teach my community a bit about my own culture. My clothes are one of the few concessions I allow myself. I wore my best dress slacks and a nice button-up instead).

Come back and change into normal clothes, then slaughter the rams. Immediately afterwards they are all loaded onto a cart and pushed out to a nearby field to be skinned and butchered.

Deliver the meat to the women

Men = sit and talk for the next three days

Women = the same, except they have to get breakfast, lunch, and dinner prepared every day, so usually only dress up and socialize after dinner each night

I read a lot, visited a friend in another village, and spent plenty of time sitting and talking with family and friends around my hut

One of my cousins in his Tabaski splendor

Video of the Tabaski morning ram slaughter. *Disclaimer* Rated "R"-- bloodshed, animal cruelty

 Slaughtering the rams in the morning of the first day

 My brother Abib and me, hanging out in the evening on the second day of Tabaski

 My mom, Aram, and some kids

 My neighbors, dressed up for Tabaski

Troupe of girls in their Tabaski best

Coloring in my room

Baby rabbit. My two rabbits had five babies and they're growing up quick

Part of my awesome crew of kids showing off the shirts I brought them from the US. They are great, always hanging out with me, helping me with chores and projects, and explaining village stuff when I don't feel like talking to adults about it

Ramadan 

I did not write this blog in chronological order, since Ramadan happened July 10th to August 8th and Tabaski was October 16th-18th.

Ramadan is one of the five pillars of Islam, when Muslims fast for 29-30 days during the 9th month of the Islamic lunar calendar. This fasting was not like anything I was used to in the States. Here we woke up at 4:30 am to eat breakfast before the sun rises, then no food or water until sunset at around 7:45 pm. At dusk we would "break fast" with some bread and tea, then eat "lunch" shortly after at around 8:30 pm, followed by very late "dinner" around 11 pm.

I decided from the beginning that I wanted to fast along with my family. I'm not Muslim but I am a part of the community and wanted to show respect and solidarity for their customs. I also wanted to see if I could handle the challenge. Since making the commitment to fast it was never exactly difficult to forgo food and water, i.e. I was never really tempted to cheat. But it was pretty miserable at times. The water. I was never hungry because thirst was so overwhelming. I worked in my garden in the mornings but after about 10 am I was done, and would just nap at the farm then wander home to sit on under the shade of my porch and read, write, draw, listen to music, or talk. People here would often go back out to work in the late afternoon, a truly impressive feat that I did not care to attempt.

Fasting for 30 days was a difficult but rewarding experience. I found myself reaching a peaceful state of focus when reading, writing, or drawing, as if the fasting left me physically drained but mentally sharp--unable to pursue more than one task at a time and often sluggish to switch tasks but when set and in-the-zone I was fully absorbed and all the more effective for the lack of distraction.

Fasting was also a tremendous source of respect and credibility--shared mutually. I got to see the sacrifice and tenacity of people here that fast for a month every year. They in turn where quite surprised that I--an American, non-Muslim, had never fasted before, etc--was able to go without food and water for a month just like them.

My proudest moment here in Senegal was during the morning prayer after the last day of Ramadan when everyone gathered under a giant tree on the outskirts of the village. After we all kneeled, stood, kneeled, stood, and then sat while praying, the Imam (religious leader)--who is my grandfather, neighbor, and friend--lead a prayer of thanks for all that this year had brought. The praying lasted for over an hour, and I had dropped into my own revery of giving thanks for all the wonderful people and events in my life. I awoke from my thoughts when I heard my name from the Imam and glanced up to see many of those kneeling in the huge group around me to be smiling approvingly in my direction. I tuned my ear to the Wolof of the Imam and heard him praising my integration into the community, my openness to learn and share with everyone, my hard work, my compassion, and the importance of work like mine to share our ideas and cultures. It was the greatest compliment I have received here and from a culture notorious for their lack of positive feedback. It meant a great deal to me.

The Golden Era of Garden Expansion

One of my best friends from back home, Bevan, paid me a surprise visit. He had been traveling for the last several months in East Africa but had led me to believe he was in New Zealand working. Then rumor reached my ear that "a strange tall man with a large beard and some kind of foreign accent" had showed up in the regional Peace Corps office looking for me. I had no clue who this stranger could be until I narrowed down the list of conceivable bearded traveling friends I have to one: Bevan. I was still in a state of denial, repressing my excitement that he could actually be here, so I went about my day in the surrounding villages, visiting some friends and buying supplies at the market. When my host family called to tell me a visitor was there looking for me I finally believed it was true, and raced my bike home just before dusk to find Bevan waiting for me in my tiny village in the middle of the bush. This was no small for feat for him, given he knows no Wolof or French, and managed to find me by using my address and a picture of me off my blog. Since nobody here in Senegal nows me as Patrick (it's Mustafa), he had to show people a photo of me and repeat the name of my village. This tactic worked surprising well.

After a joyous reunion, we settled into a solid work schedule, spending every day out at my garden working, coming home each evening exhausted after digging, watering, foraging, weeding, landscaping, planting, etc. We've been busy turning my humble garden space into a stellar botanical resort complete with mud-brick terraces and a bench with rice-sack pillows. Our main building material is cob--a combination of clayey soil, straw, and water which once mixed and set, hardens into brick-like rigidity. Here are some pics of our progress:

Bevan and me relaxing on our lounge couch. Naturally this was the first thing we built.

 The original part of my garden, now dubbed the Sculpture Park after our contoured terraces and decorative cob spheres.

 We started building in patterns on our main staircase as well. Some of these superfluous design additions draw skeptical or confused looks, but most people like them.

 Some local kids enjoying a fresh watermelon from my garden. The mangos are also exploding on the trees right now, meaning the most delicious snack breaks imaginable on days that never stay below 100F

 The largest section of the great garden expansion Bevan and I have been working on. Six new beds about 1.5x3 meters, dug to a depth of .5 meters and heavily amended with compost, manure, and sand (the soil here is almost devoid of organic material, and the high clay content makes for an almost cement-like consistency when it dries). This area is the Back '40, behind our central shelter.

Our terraced melon beds (second wave of watermelons and honeydews on their way). We had some extra cob one day and made heads, which turned out to be a huge success with visitors to my garden, especially kids. So now we have plenty of cob heads around the garden, protecting against evil spirits and malicious monkeys.

The upper half of my garden, all new expansion since Bevan has joined me. To the left are the new beds we are breaking in the hard earth to the north of our current space. Known as The Northern Frontier, this area is our sunniest location and we have high hopes for corn, melons, beans, and tomatoes there.

The lower garden, my original area but now remodeled with smooth paths, steps, and rock-hard berms for every bed.

 Shot from underneath the shade structure that will soon complete our central pad, off to the right is our cob oven, dug halfway into the side of a termite mound (the soil in these mounds is like rock, has to be chipped out with picks) and then built in layers using an internal removable frame of peanut shells. It is drying now, we hope to fire it up this week for a pizza, banana bread, or roast meat.

Cooking station, a sheltered cob alcove that does an impressive job of radiating heat and conserving cooking wood. To the left is some amazingly dense wood that Bevan and I hacked off of an old stump out in the bush. It burns like crazy and lasts forever. In the background are two of our three compost pits.

Movie night with the neighborhood kids. I get constant petitions for movie nights, and occasionally relent granted I have my comp charged up and I have the requisite energy to stay up a little later after our long work days. But the kids are always super happy to see some random American film that must confuse the hell out of them (How to Train Your Dragon--"look, it's a giant chicken!"). The kids are a lot of fun to hang out with, and since they have learned I give out snacks to however helps me with my chores (feeding my rabbits, pulling water, sweeping my porch, etc) I almost inevitably have an army of little kids nearly fighting over who gets to help with the evening work when I get back from the garden.  I couldn't imagine a better arrangement.