Family Dinner

I harvested some of my beets and onions from my other garden.  The beets were grown from seeds from Territorial Seed Co.   They grew really well and they tasted great!  They had a real mild flavor.  We took the harvest along with some other vegetables that I bought from the market and we made a nice family and friend dinner.   We made spaghetti sauce from scratch and a cheese, caramelized peanut, date, olive, raison, beet salad, garlic bread, enchiladas and green salad. 

The dinner was amazing and we all stuffed our faces. 

Urban Gardening in West Africa

Living in the city sometimes you have to find things to keep you busy.  I enjoy gardening and I enjoy eating vegetables.  I had a garden in the village and loved it.  When I moved my neighbor a fellow IT PCV had a couple cut bidongs and was going tomatoes. 

My under window garden

I currently have a bumper crop of sweet green peppers growing, two types of basil, oregano and cilantro.  I recently planted butternut squash and cayenne peppers.  I have sowed cucumbers 3 times and I hope this final time they will germinate.  My plan is to plant some eggplant and dill for the upcoming months. 

I drink a lot of Ovaltine

Some basil

squash and cucumber

Front yard garden

Oregano and cilantro

tomatoes

Sweet Peppers

I started collecting bidongs and composting my kitchen scraps.  I mixed some soil and started filling containers and planting things. 

Fly proof compost bidong

Sidenote:  I finally took a picture of the sweet fabric that I bought in Togo.

Sweet Togo Fabric

Wedding

I got a call from my brother a week ago that said he is getting married.  So, myself and a friend headed to village Thursday night and attended the wedding festivities Friday late into the night and then headed back to the city on Saturday. 

As usual it was pretty disorganized but a lot of fun!  We ate really good the entire time and the weather right now is the best you can ask for here.  It was a little chilling in the evening forcing me to throw on a long sleeve t-shirt.



Sharing culture and clothes

 

Mother and Aunt woopin' it up

Baby Sue

Brother, wife, some logger with a beard

New wife and family



The bride and sisters



Amadoo and Jess



To go to Togo

I recently was sent to another small West African country called Togo.  It is between Benin and Ghana.  I was there for six days and it was pretty sweet.  The workshop I attended was really great and I learned a lot.  I was lucky enough to stay right on the ocean. The View was amazing!! 

My Room

The View

Sweet Picture in my Room

At any one time you could see like 50-75 ships just a few miles off of the coast waiting to go into the neighboring ports.  There are pirates in the area so they stay close to the coast line for safety.  

The Ships

Togolese flowers

As we were driving around I took some pictures of a bank and of the ECOWAS building.  I thought the architecture was pretty different than what I have seen in West Africa.

Hard at work

ECOWAS building

another building

Ben and I sittin gon some rice bags





 The Togolese police had some of the sweetest trucks I have ever seen super reinforced.



I am Food Secure!!



In Service Training

So we just finished up a week long technical training in Basse.  This training was for the new volunteers that Just sworn in three months ago.  We taught grafting, all aspects of tree growing and gardening, then their counterparts came and we taught them the same thing. 

Grafting

It was hot like 110+ hot.  I forgot what hot is like and I understood how I lost so much weight, when it’s hot all you do is drink warm water and you don’t eat.  

Thats me in the middle

“facilitating”

Craziness

84lbs of onions

Onions

onion moving

onion drying



Getting the perfect shot




The US Ambassador said “this is the best onion I have gotten all day”

one I forgot from The Fatou Show

I am back in the city now for a while.  It’s nice to have a fan to sleep under throughout the night and actually enjoy the cool evening breeze. 

I am headed to my village for a mini staycation tomorrow

Pluggin Away

I just got back from two treks each being about 3-4 days.  The first one was a food security trek to check up on projects.  It went well on of the highlights of it was a monkey at another volunteers site.  I fed it some jujube fruits and it took them all out of my hand and stuck them all in his mouth like a chipmunk.  It was sad, cruel but still entertaining. 

Mokey feeder

I came home for the weekend and went to a live taping of a local evening television show called “The Fatou Show,”  the host Fatou is basically The Gambian Oprah.  There was about 15 volunteers and staff.  We went to watch a couple volunteers talk about a camp they just put on for Gambian high school kids about leadership.  It was a real success so they were invited on to talk about. 

On air

Modu and I

 Overall it was entertaining; it brought back memories of being on the Rambling Rod Show. 

Ramblin Rod

Then Monday I left again for a couple days back up country to visit more sites for an “environmental compliance check.”   It went as well as expected.  I got to go back to my village and see my host family and check up on my former project, which is always nice and puts a smile on my face. 

I have been busy lately and thought that it may slow down in the near future but I am still unsure as to when that time will come.  I leave again Sunday for a week of training.  I am hoping after that I can take a few days and just relax.

I recently spent some time at the beach, which is rare for me I could count the number of time I have been to the beach here on one hand.  I grew up on the west coast and the beach; I never felt the need or desire to go to the beach here compared to some volunteers that go to the beach as often as they can.  In the last couple weeks I have been a couple times, and each additional visit it gets better.  I think it is my mindset when I go; it is like anything else, I have to mentally prepare for it.   A clear mind or at least a mind that is clear of things you don’t want to think about is where I have to be.   My most recent trip was late at night, Just sitting on the sand and staring at the white from the waves breaking would just appear like lightning from the darkness and it was like fire you just stare at it and it become mesmerized by it.  This has all made me appreciate the beach here as much as the beaches back home.