General Thoughts

Thursday July 3^rd 2008

8:17 PM

 

Wow, what a day. A total work day. I have been working like crazy distributing seed to farmers. Giving away seed is the easy part. The difficult part is trying to get my demonstration plot farmers in gear. Two farmers that said they were game two monthes ago and confirmed again another month ago have completely changed their mind. They don't want to do it. It makes it so difficult.

 

A little back ground. A demonstration plot is a small piece of farm land that is used to demonstrate new agriculture technique. For example techniques such as intercropping (more than one crop type that are complentary (ie corn and beans), crop spacing (more plants in an area) and finally fertilizer concentrations (no fertilizer, half strength, full strength.)

 

The farmers that I thought I was working with have decided to plant the areas we discussed with something else. More to the point, they planted those areas with out telling me with something else. When I saw the land was planted- they feigned ignorance. That is my major frustration.

Besides that I have been busy planting my own projects. Today I planted corn in my backyard. I only had a spade shovel to work with. No donkey or plow. So I dug it all out, mounded the soil in rows. I did it without help primarly because I needed people to see that I know what I am doing. When you live in a farming village, if you can't farm you are not respected. So to me, it was showing people I can handle myself.

Though it was a hell of a hard work. I'll take a picture and post it when I can. I left my camera at the kolda house.

 

Also I have planted a bunch of beans in my backyard. Lima, black, bush and green beans. Also I planted some pan patty squash and some "massive" pumpkin seeds. Should be interesting to see what happens. I don't think I will see 200 – 300 pound pumpkins as the little packet advertised.

 

Also there was a snake in my hut two nights ago. I think it was a little black mamba. Probably about as thinkg as my pinky and about 18 inches long. At first I thought it was a centipede- a huge one. I backed up quickly and asked one of my village brothers what it was- it hadn't hit me yet. After a few stunned moments, we got a large stick and shoved it out of the hut. Minutes after that a large yellow scorpion appeared in the hut from the outside. Man…. I have been so careful at night after this. Kinda afraid to get out of bed in the middle of the night without carefully looking at the ground with my flashlight.