World Bank

So…I don’t know if my village even needs me here. First of all, they already have a groupement doing reforestation and they know what they’re doing (they have a pepiniere where they are direct-seeding Gmelina to transplant when the rainy season starts). Also, World Bank is in my Sous-Prefecture with $20K American dollars JUST for environmental projects.

Some of the projects they have identified working on are: mud stoves, living fences, reforestation and solar dryers. These are four of AgFo’s biggest projects and World Bank is stealing them from me (just kidding about the stealing, no seriously they are Bahs…they are taking my activities!!). So today I went and talked to the representative, Mr. Diallo, and I told him I have training in those things and he is “voler-ing” (stealing) my activities and he just got real excited and said “THAT’S GREAT! You can help us!” Then he said again that they have $20K just for those projects (well, those and all the other enviro. Projects) and I told him to save the money for other projects because all four of those things are free. He kinda gave me a skeptical look and was like “Yeah…ok.” And I was like no seriously. I can do all that stuff for free. Save the money for the other projects.

I mean, the only one of those projects that could cost money at all would be solar dryers and that’s if you want to have them built by the carpenter and buy grillage and plastic for them instead of making them out of sticks and rice sacks. So maybe I will use money for solar dryers. But how are they expecting to spend money on mud stoves? All you need is cow poop, termite mounds and dry straw. Free. Living fences? All you need is Moringa. Free, as long as you can find it growing. I have a bunch of Moringa seeds and the President of the pepiniere groupement has Moringa trees in his yard that are seeding. And reforestation should be free unless you have to pay someone to do all the watering while it is in the pepiniere stage.

So basically I think a lot of my service will entail me working closely with the World Bank which I guess in the end isn’t such a bad thing, because they drum up the interest and then I show them how to do it for free and make sure it’s sustainable (as in, teaching people how to do stuff rather than just doing it for them – just today I corrected several people when they asked if I would make a mud stove for them and I said I will TEACH you how to make it and they all seemed to think that was a good idea so they could show other people…people in my village seem to understand the philosophy of sustainable development).

Also, my tooth is getting worse. I’m going to call Traian tomorrow or Sunday and ask him if I should come to Conakry and if he says yes I will catch the mail run there on Monday so I don’t have to pay for a bush taxi. That means I will miss out on the Labe trip. But you gotta do what you gotta do.