Garden Sangalkam

Garden Sangalkam:

As a requirement for all PCT’s in Senegal, we have to plant and tend to a group garden. We chose to plant our garden at the local school in Sangalkam hoping to inspire the children to participate and even take full responsibility in watering, weeding, planting and maintaining it in full, Inshallah, or ‘God willing’ in Arabic. The site we chose, however, is in straight sand – like legit beach sand, with no clay or even simple dirt to work with. We knew for certain nothing would grow but we did our best to prep the site for our garden, anyhow.

First stop was the house that sells manure. It has a rust red gate but you can find it using your sense of smell alone. We took our wheelbarrow and shoveled it full of you know what, joking the whole time how we didn’t realize we were joining the Peace Corps to shovel s*@t – it is actually a regular occurrence and should be taken into consideration if you are thinking about joining. Also, side note, I strongly recommend NOT wearing flipflops when scooping manure off the ground. Pretty messy. Not to mention smelly. And it lingers no matter how hard your scrub. Totally worse than goalie glove hand stench; at least that’s macho and you know where it’s been. Ok, back to the point. So, we filled our wheelbarrow to the brim and wheeled it on over to the school as the kids we pass by giggle, hold their noses and great us with a nasaly toubob shoutout.

To prep our garden for planting, we measured out our plots for our two big gardens, a site for our tree nursery, or pepinier, and a place to transplant our trees and whatever else grows. We hoed our manure and sand, dug our plots and watered. For the next two weeks, we watered to prep our soil for planting and watched as nothing grew – not even weeds. We went back to Thies for a three day technical training session knowing that our garden would either be destroyed by kids trampling it, goats feeding on it, or would have reverted back to sand.

When we returned, however, to our surprise weeds had sprouted everywhere and it took us over an hour to clear site for seeding. This was very encouraging for us as we were to plant our garden the next day. We planted okra, cabbage, lettuce, carrots, beans, hot peppers called Kani, onion, and Morenga tree seeds in our pepinier. We watered twice a day for a few weeks and watched how everything began to sprout. The best part was we were able to get some of the students involved in the seeding and transplanting process and there were a few kids genuinely interested in the fundamentals and maintenance of gardening. For the next several weeks the same few kids would come with us every day to help water and weed the garden. They made sure the other kids around didn’t step in our beds and didn’t uproot our plants. Two weeks ago, we left Sangalkam for 8 days for training in Thies. The school director and his family assumed responsibility for the garden while we were gone and we instructed him on what to do and what we planned to do when we returned. He had to water twice a day, morning and evening, weed the garden, and make sure there was enough space to transplant our growing cabbage, carrots and Morenga tree pepinier somewhere in our fenced enclosure.

Our first day back in Sangalkam, we were blown away that our garden had not only exploded in growth and green but the school director and some of his students had taken the initiative to dig and manure more garden beds to transplant the growing veggies, had transplanted most of the plants, and had lined the fence with our Morenga tree pepiniers. We couldn’t believe how much time and care was put in to the garden and how incredibly well it was maintained. Our lettuce and Morenga trees survived the transplant and are growing strong, and we are now sprouting unbelievable amounts okra, peppers, carrots, cabbage, onion and beans. Apparently the school director wants use the garden as an incentive for students to work hard in school. The students who perform the best in class will get to water and help plant and weed, etc and the students are really in to it. The garden will also be used to talk about nutrition, as it is full of veggies and healthy Morenga. The director was very grateful for the garden and is excited to have more Peace Corps trainees come through Sangalkam and help out the community. It’s amazing to think that something as small as a garden could have the potential to help a community grow.

Here are some pictures of our garden. It’s interesting to think that you don’t always have to have the perfect environment to make something grow. Sometimes all is takes is sand, a little bit of poop, water and patience.