Pictures of My Village

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Happy New Year! Here are some pictures from my site!


My family's compound. Cashew tree in the foreground

My family's compound. On the right is the shade structure where we sit when we spend time in the yard

My family's compound. My hut is in the foreground on the right

My hut


Inside my hut

I put my mosquito net up very poorly and have not fixed it yet

Inside my hut

My backyard. Small tree nursery on the left in the black tree sacks. Paintings done by previous volunteers at my site


My bathroom

Rice fields

Getting ready to beat rice in the fields

Beating rice

(Some technical difficulties with the video upload. If it doesn't work, I'll try again later)
Beating rice in a group. The rhythm of this practice was mesmerizing. I helped a little doing an initial beating of the rice bails before they were tossed into this group beating.


Making a fence around the cut rice so that the cows do not eat it

Completed fence around the rice bails

Fence close-up. The posts are dead branches, and the cross-pieces are bamboo tied on with another palm-like plant called ban.



The rice is cut and gathered, waiting to be fenced in

Cutting grass for thatched roofs

Loading grass onto the back of a bike

Burned area of the forest near where we were cutting grass. It is unclear how the fire started

Cutting bamboo in the forest a few minutes away from the village











Comments

  1. Charron AndrewsJanuary 10, 2019 at 8:25 AM

    Hey Tavish,
    Here is a message from Bill who refuses to get a google account so can't respond himself!
    Thanks for these photos, Tavish. It looks spartan but, assuming you have a place (elsewhere?) to cook and eat, all the necessities are taken care of. Does your hut have electricity? Is there upkeep on it that you’re responsible for? I also wondered if the doors have locks on them.



    Happy New Year!

    Uncle Bill

    ReplyDelete
  2. Charron AndrewsJanuary 23, 2019 at 5:59 AM

    Tavish, thanks for the photos and the detailed comments on your host family in Mbour and the family at your site. I wondered why you were renamed Fadialy Sane in Mbour (?) and then renamed again at your site (the name of which I'm not sure you told us). Seeing all the photos of the garden plots made me wonder what you were growing. From your description of the meals you're having on site, it would seem that the diet could use more green vegetables, but I wonder what sort of vegetables grow well in that climate.

    You're definitely reading some first-rate stuff in Senegal. I haven't read THINGS FALL APART but Charron has. Most of my reading about Africa has been Joseph Conrad. In other words, too Euro-oriented. THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD has gotten a lot of attention here in the US. As you can imagine, it was a must-read for me simply from a professional standpoint. I found the premise of the book fascinating -- not the idea that the UR could have been an actual South-to-North train that ran underground, but the attempt to imagine various ways that white Americans in different states would try to deal with their "Negro problem" once slavery had proven no longer viable. THE HANDMAID'S TALE is also a fascinating adaptation of the slave narrative genre, as is THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD. As you probably know, I've been studying, editing, writing, and lecturing about US slave narratives for 30+ years. WATERSHIP DOWN was a huge bestseller about 40 years ago, as I recall, but I never got around to reading it. I remember reading REDWALL to David when he was a kid -- we both enjoyed it. I'd never known what a vole was before reading Brian Jaques.

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