So where are your peanuts?

Rainy season has kept us busy for nearly a month and half now, and to this day I still get asked: “Ndoundou, where are your peanuts?”…twice a day. Now at first I thought this a silly question. Why would I, a Peace Corps Sustainable Agriculture Extension Volunteer, have my own field of peanuts? I don’t have land, saved seed, machinery, or a nice large batch of children to help with the labor. But I shrugged it off. I said I don’t farm on my own, I farm with everyone and talk about farming techniques and knowledge to increase yields. They would stare, say a prayer, and, when I met them again a few days later, ask again: “Ndoundou, where are your peanuts?”

My family weeding one of many peanut fields

It really isn’t so silly a question. After all, we live in the heart of the peanut basin. Peanuts are well suited for the sandy soils of Kaffrine and with the government’s economic subsidies, there is a lot of incentive. So peanuts take priority for most of the farmers in my community- from seeding, to timely weeding, to fertilizer application, and then proper harvesting and storage. After peanuts, people grow crops for subsistence including millet, sorghum, and corn. However, considering half of everyone’s diet is rice, a crop not suited for Senegal’s conditions and despite great attempts from the government and NGOs to increase rice production (that’s a whole other blog post), a crop that seems to fail year after year, people need the financial gains from peanuts to buy half of their food. But if I’m not growing my own peanuts, what is it that I’m doing? (And how do I have any money?, my community asks). Though I know on paper my job title and can give a nice rehearsed description of a peace corps sustainable agriculture extension agent, in practice, it is less clear.
First let’s get everyone up to date:
September- November: training for language, culture, administrative concerns, health and safety, and technical

A sea of moringa at the community garden- a result of my moringa extension project, which took place at the end of cold season

December- February: install at site, language study, and adjustment. However this is also cold season which means for sustainable agriculture volunteers, our focus is on cold season gardening. Our overall target and point of existence is to increase food security, so in a garden setting we work to implement new and/or improved technologies and practices that will increase yields, including: composting, double digging and amending beds, intercropping, proper spacing, integrated pest management and natural pest solutions, mulching and the list goes on. From a more practical point of view, I work in the community garden, I buy my own bed space, and use my bed as a demonstration area. I walk around the garden and comment on observations and ways for improvement. And I lay the ground work by establishing good relationships to have more formal trainings my following cold season. But what I have found is that my community has been trained and trained again on some of these techniques but due to labor or time intensiveness, economic constraints, or the importance of traditional and cultural practices, holding trainings doesn’t equal implementing practices. Behavior change is far more complex than that, which has led me to adapting these technologies to some that can be more easily integrated into existing practices. But I still can’t help but wonder, what is my place?

Outplanting a live fence in the community garden- I guess all of the work over hot season has paid off!

March- June: hot season! This means hot season gardening, which includes similar work to that of cold season. But a huge addition is tree work. This is the time people establish tree nurseries for livefencing, alley cropping, and fruit tree production. So I held trainings in my community garden and with other interested individuals, and distributed tree sacks and seeds. But here too, the knowledge was present. I helped farmers stick to their schedules so that trees would be ready to be out planted come rainy season. But mostly I felt like a seed distributor. People would come rushing to my house saying, “Ndoundou, I hear you got seeds for a new type of thorny species. I gotta have some!”

July-October: Rainy season. In my community people are busy seeding peanuts, millet, corn, sorghum, and beans in the field. They are planting rice, sweet potatoes and okra along our seasonal river. And they are out planting the trees they cared for all during the hot season. But my primary work is seed extension. Peace Corps Sustainable Agriculture volunteers partner with ISRA, an agricultural research agency in Senegal that works to develop improved varieties of seed. PC volunteers extend seed to a suggested 15 farmers and then monitor the seed, under the conditions that it’s grown, and with the practices the farmer used. We then pass this data on to ISRA to synthesize and make improvements to these improved varieties. Additionally we are to work with these farmers to improve practices, such as timely weeding, correct thinning, proper fertilizer or manure applications, and timely harvest and proper storage techniques.

First, weeding between the rows is done by machine pulled by horse, cattle, or donkey

So that’s what it looks like on paper. But considering I get asked daily where my peanuts are, there is some confusion about my existence. I don’t blame them, because in practice, even I am confused and I have my project framework with all of PC’s goals and expectations taped to my wall. We extend typically 1 kilo of seed per farmer, just a fraction of a typical quantity seeded so that the farmer can assess whether he likes the seed and if he wishes to replant the following year. And the crops we work with are millet, sorghum, corn, beans, and rice (notice no peanuts). So while I’ve been so eager and excited to work with my farmers, the reality is, my PC seed is so low on the list of priorities for these farmers. And finding my farmers working in their field of PC seed is a rare occurrence. And, what’s more, attempts to improve weeding and thinning practices, which are dependent on a long list of factors (rain, the availability of machinery or labor, and, of course, the needs of the peanut fields, which always come first), are often just that: attempts.

…And then the women weed within the rows. This is my favorite task!

So what am I doing here? I was frustrated at first. There are certain expectations placed upon volunteers. These are often expectations for our primary sector work, the ones that are reportable and used by the US government to measure the success of each post. But there is so much more to PC. Not only are there secondary projects in youth and gender empowerment or projects in other sectors, but we have two other goals: to share America with Senegal, and to share Senegal with America. I have come to realize that I myself as a person- not as a PC volunteer, not as a sustainable agriculture extension agent, not even as an American- just by living and forming new relationships, each one of us has the opportunity to impact the lives around us. Just as those around me in my community have impacted me. When my baby sister finally learned to say my name, as she dances through the compound (always choosing dance before walking)- that is why I am here. As my mom brings me bread, knowing that I have been sick and encouraging me to get better- that is why I am here. And as I walk out to the peanut fields with my family, my friends, and my neighbors, with my konkoliya (traditional hand hoe) in hand to help weed- that is why I am here. And to share in laughter as a dust and rain storm hits as we are working side by side in the field, causing us to frantically scream and run for cover- that is absolutely why I am here.

My workpartner and I are applying fertilizer to his PC millet seed (finishing hopefully before the storm hits!)

I spent my first few weeks of rainy season always with folder in hand, searching the field for my farmers to collect data. Since then I have replaced my folder with a konkoliya. I spend mornings simply weeding and sharing a typical rainy season job description with that of my community. It is this work after all that I loved most about farming in the states. And I meet my PC seed extension farmers when we all get back from the field, utterly exhausted. We talk about their field and their seed. And we swap any crazy stories that we’ve had during our field work. Perhaps we set up an appointment to go visit their PC seed, or perhaps we decide we will weed the peanuts tomorrow and then check on their PC millet another time. PC sus ag volunteers often struggle with the question: how much time are we supposed to spend working in the field? Some choose against it, considering our job as an extension agent is passing knowledge on, rather than offering free labor per say. But each volunteer can choose what is best for them. As volunteers, we have so many expectations placed on us- most of all, expectations we place on ourselves. And in our efforts to be the best volunteers we can be, we often endure a lot of guilt. What I’ve learned in my ten months and counting in Senegal is that we need to do what we need to do to just be happy. It’s only when we are truly happy that we have those worthwhile moments and interactions and when our successes, defined by our relationships rather than our numbers, occur. All I know is my data is up to date and I am enjoying weeding the days away- and that is good enough for me!