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Attaya: A Senegalese Tea Tradition

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Throughout my time in Senegal, across many regions and languages, the most unifying cultural force I have observed is attaya, Senegalese tea. My CBT family (local host family in Mbour) makes attaya once a day. My host dad in Kedougou makes it twice a day. Other families I have spent time with fall somewhere in between. Each puts their individual spin on it, but the process is generally pretty consistent. I will describe below how attaya is often made in my village, but small variations do occur among families. Attaya is made with a 100 CFA packet of green tea imported from China. These packets are sold in every boutique in Senegal. Even my village, which does not have a boutique, has multiple people who sell tea out of their homes. Conveniently, the same places that sell tea also sell 100 CFA bags of sugar; one bag is the amount of sugar needed to make attaya. Attaya is made in three rounds, so each person gets three small glasses of tea. In each round, more sugar is added to ...
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Beer Sheba Project

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I spent the first two weeks of February in Thies at the Peace Corps Training Center for my two-week technical In-Service Training (IST). It was the first time I had seen most of my fellow stage-mates (other than those in Kedougou) in about two months. During the course of the two weeks, we took a few field trips to surrounding areas, one of which is called the Beer Sheba Project. The Beer Sheba Project is a 100 hectare area in the Thies region of Senegal that has been reforested using farmer managed natural regeneration (FMNR) techniques and now serves as a training ground for students from all over West Africa to learn improved farming and natural resource management techniques. It was started 17 years ago by a Christian organization. The surrounding area is practically a desert; nothing more than a few baobob trees and small hills prevent you from seeing far off into the horizon. The area that is now Beer Sheba began as this same desolate landscape. The first thing Beer Sheba did ...
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Peace Corps Senegal

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Hello Travels with Tavish Readers! I am writing this post as I take a break from packing for Senegal!  I am joining the Peace Corps in Senegal as a Forestry and Environment Change Agent. For two years, I will be living with a host family and working with farmers to help implement sustainable practices on their farms. Many of my projects will be focused on tree planting. I depart for my Peace Corps staging event in Philadelphia on Friday, September 21, then my cohort will fly to Senegal together on Sunday, September 23. We will train for 10 weeks at the Peace Corps Training Center in Thies before moving to our respective communities. Due to limited internet access during service, my posts on this blog will likely be infrequent. You can subscribe to the blog to get an email update whenever a new post is made. After you click the "Subscribe" button and complete the Captcha, you will get an email from Feed Burner to verify your subscription to t...
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