Tree's!

I’m feeling a bit guilty about it being so long since I’ve blogged, but this’ll probably be a short one.

I’ve been kind of all-over the place (physically, mentally, emotionally) for the last month, well, maybe the last ten months, really. But I’ll just tell you about one piece of that. I’ve spent the last two months trying to get the women’s group garden my ancien started going again. It’s been a challenge and sloooow going. But, such is the way of Peace Corps life, I think. So, at this point, one pepiñeer has been completely destroyed by big frickin’ lizards. I’m a little pissed that they ate all our tomatoes. They were just babies! But you live, you learn. In the meantime I’m the only one watering the tree’s my ancien planted and cared for. Frankly, it looks good to be going there every day. I’m a hard-liner on this, and it’s a lot of talking so far, people telling me they want to have a garden, but not putting any effort into it (beyond that one magical day we set the whole place on fire…I wrote about that, right?)

So, frankly, I’m having a great time taking care of these trees. My goal is to be like, hey this isn’t hard work, and it doesn’t take long, and see what changes it’s made! So far only little changes, but I think it’s pretty magical. See, sometime during the rainy season or just after it, several of the trees were chopped down to stumps. Yeah, I was suuuuper pissed about this, and super frustrated, but it’s like a legit phoenix from the ashes story. Literally, cause like I mentioned, we burned the place. I noticed that some of these little stumps had little baby branches and leaves at their bases, so I checked them all by scratching the base. To my surprise still others showed green underneath. Since I’ve been watering them, they’ve just roared back to life. Which in and of itself is amazing to behold. These little mangled looking stubs that refused to die! I know, I’m anthropomorphizing, but it gets better. Because they’re like, making different decisions about how to grow! One Moringa has literally NO leaves, but several flowers, so will bear seeds this year (Inshallah). Most, however, are just a bunch of pretty little (tasty) green leaves. And most of the Flamboyant’s have clusters of individual leaf-stems (its two stems that share a base covered in tiny leaves), but this one guy has just shot out a whole dang branch! It’s this fat, super green thing with just the hint of some baby leafies growing out of the tip.

I also have a few baby tree’s in my “backyard” from the little set of tree-sacs I did with kids at the school (I wrote about that too, right?) Unfortunately, I didn’t know to pre-treat the seeds, so only four sacs grew. One grew four seeds, but again, not knowing how to transfer them properly, they died when I tried to replant them in new sacs (I was taught by my good friend this morning what I should have done.) Again, you live you learn. There was one definitely NOT flamboyant guy that just recently started growing with one of the dying flamboyants. It has been coming up for about a week, and still had a hard seed-case on its tiny tip. So, I tried to pull it off. Probably not a good move, but I couldn’t reign in my curiosity. That’s when I realized the seed case was from a baobab seed I’d spit out back there! MAN I hope I didn’t kill that thing. I think I’ll probably try to put some other baobab seeds in the sacs where nothing’s growing. I think they’re super slow growing, but how COOL would it be to have baby-bab’s to take care of??

Well, so really I hope this is somehow productive and that somehow this “trees are amazing!” attitude will rub off on SOMEONE, like, when I start the environmental exploration club at the school (as inspired by PCV Patrick Hair down south (credit where due, ya know?)), which will hopefully happen once I can finally cross paths with the school director, who seems to be missing a lot lately…

So, ya know, in general, this is still one of the most frustrating and strangely stressful experiences of my life, and also one of the most amazing, beautiful, strangely perfect experiences of my life. “The hardest job you’ll ever love” is one of Peace Corps’ slogans, and man, they’re not kidding.

Meanwhile, I’ll be back in the USA at the end of April!!!!! I recently heard about a girl who went back home and was at a dinner with a bunch of people, and when someone asked her to pass some mashed-potatoes or something she grabbed a handful and plopped it on their plate before realizing, no… not in America. So, watch-out guys. You’ve been warned. Also, OH MY GOSH I can’t wait to see all my family and the dear ones I get the chance to visit. LOVE TO YOU ALL!