A Community Builds a Wall, and a Future for its School
August 6, 2012
When I visited St. Therese's Basic Cycle School in Fula Bantang in January, I made short videos of thirty or so of the students, to share with their sponsors and to upload to our GambiaScholars YouTube channel (http://www.youtube.com/user/GambiaScholars). Several of these videos were interrupted by the bleating of goats, who wandered freely in and out of classrooms while we worked.
St. Theresa's serves many villages in the surrounding countryside, and each one has its own ethnic/tribal make-up. But Fula Bantang, as its name says, is a Fula village. The Fula, or Fulani, people are traditional herders, and their goats, cattle, and donkeys are truly free range. And as the video I took as we drove up to the school shows, St. Therese's was open to the surrounding countryside. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=771W3BSIKjo) Which makes it part of the "range."
As the goats bleated, I remember thinking, "Isn't this charming?" And then, "Yes, but what a drag to deal with every day." That second feeling intensified when I visited the school's garden, which Principal Kebba Sanyang had started to demonstrate the value of gardening (and farming year round) to the students, to add nutrition to the school lunches, and to generate a little income for the school. The small fence around this garden had been breached more than once, and it was make-shift in a way that so many things are in the Gambian countryside that are built with only pocket change. And then as Kebba showed me the garden, he pointed out what he was proudest of: he had hoarded enough school funds to purchase 500 cashew seeds and had propagated them (one for each student, he said) into a small seedlings.
Now, all he needed to plant an orchard was... a wall.
He did not know it, but growing cashews had been one of the most promising agricultural activities that Peace Corps volunteers had worked on while I was there. Too often, we would introduce new crops to diversify the farming base, but unless they were for home consumption or could be sold in a local market, the efforts fell short, as the supply chain from a remote village to the rest of the world was beyond anyone's capacity to build. However, in the last ten years, India had been unable to produce enough cashews for the world market, and Indian traders were encouraging west Africans to grow them. The climate was ideal, and it takes relatively little skill to succeed as a cashew farmer. Just patience. Moreover, where the traders had had their greatest success, Guinea-Bissau (just south of The Gambia) was in the process of degrading a dysfunctional narco state - the staging ground for Colombian drug traffic en route to Europe. And to top it off, in 2009, a former Peace Corps volunteer and one of our best trainers, Joanne Sallah, who had met and married a Gambian at Cal Berkeley and moved back to west Africa, had convinced a USAID-funded organization to headquarter its new Cashew Value Chain Enhancement Project in The Gambia. So my confidence in the viability of this project was high. But to make sure, I asked several Peace Corps volunteers to review Kebba's plans, offer any assistance he needed, and tell me if they felt the project would work.
The answers came back thumbs up, and over the course of several months, a series of proposals went back and forth until we all agreed we had something solid. What tipped the scales I think was the budget, provided by Kebba and PC volunteer Etienne Marcoux:
The key facts were these: the village alkalo (chief) had allocated land next to the school for the orchard. And in order to build a wall that would enclose not only the school, but also this plot of land large enough to hold more than 400 cashew trees, the school and community had already anted up $1,637. The community would donate its labor. What they needed was just $905 to buy fuel for transport, cement, a metal gate, and to pay a skilled mason to come and assist on the project.
Since GambiaRising prioritizes its funds for direct student educational support, we asked a generous donor if he was interested in putting this project over the top. Happily, he reviewed the plans and said "Yes." And just in time. The wall was finished just before the rains began. And the seedlings were planted after a few weeks of rain had softened the ground.
This is a community that values its school and understands the promise that it represents for the next generation. This is a Principal who is a leader with vision, and who knows how to engage that community. And, perhaps most impressively, this is a project that entails vision. These trees will not bear fruit for at least five years. In the meantime, they will be able to intercrop (plant cash crops between the trees), but five years from now, the trees will begin to bloom and bear fruit; the apples can be eaten and the raw nuts sold for cash. It's the best PTA project I've ever seen.
I wrote a few weeks ago about a virtuous cycle going on in Fula Bantang. It is still turning. I hope you will consider being part of it. (Scroll down for a few photos.)
When I visited St. Therese's Basic Cycle School in Fula Bantang in January, I made short videos of thirty or so of the students, to share with their sponsors and to upload to our GambiaScholars YouTube channel (http://www.youtube.com/user/GambiaScholars). Several of these videos were interrupted by the bleating of goats, who wandered freely in and out of classrooms while we worked.
St. Theresa's serves many villages in the surrounding countryside, and each one has its own ethnic/tribal make-up. But Fula Bantang, as its name says, is a Fula village. The Fula, or Fulani, people are traditional herders, and their goats, cattle, and donkeys are truly free range. And as the video I took as we drove up to the school shows, St. Therese's was open to the surrounding countryside. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=771W3BSIKjo) Which makes it part of the "range."
As the goats bleated, I remember thinking, "Isn't this charming?" And then, "Yes, but what a drag to deal with every day." That second feeling intensified when I visited the school's garden, which Principal Kebba Sanyang had started to demonstrate the value of gardening (and farming year round) to the students, to add nutrition to the school lunches, and to generate a little income for the school. The small fence around this garden had been breached more than once, and it was make-shift in a way that so many things are in the Gambian countryside that are built with only pocket change. And then as Kebba showed me the garden, he pointed out what he was proudest of: he had hoarded enough school funds to purchase 500 cashew seeds and had propagated them (one for each student, he said) into a small seedlings.
Now, all he needed to plant an orchard was... a wall.
He did not know it, but growing cashews had been one of the most promising agricultural activities that Peace Corps volunteers had worked on while I was there. Too often, we would introduce new crops to diversify the farming base, but unless they were for home consumption or could be sold in a local market, the efforts fell short, as the supply chain from a remote village to the rest of the world was beyond anyone's capacity to build. However, in the last ten years, India had been unable to produce enough cashews for the world market, and Indian traders were encouraging west Africans to grow them. The climate was ideal, and it takes relatively little skill to succeed as a cashew farmer. Just patience. Moreover, where the traders had had their greatest success, Guinea-Bissau (just south of The Gambia) was in the process of degrading a dysfunctional narco state - the staging ground for Colombian drug traffic en route to Europe. And to top it off, in 2009, a former Peace Corps volunteer and one of our best trainers, Joanne Sallah, who had met and married a Gambian at Cal Berkeley and moved back to west Africa, had convinced a USAID-funded organization to headquarter its new Cashew Value Chain Enhancement Project in The Gambia. So my confidence in the viability of this project was high. But to make sure, I asked several Peace Corps volunteers to review Kebba's plans, offer any assistance he needed, and tell me if they felt the project would work.
The answers came back thumbs up, and over the course of several months, a series of proposals went back and forth until we all agreed we had something solid. What tipped the scales I think was the budget, provided by Kebba and PC volunteer Etienne Marcoux:
The key facts were these: the village alkalo (chief) had allocated land next to the school for the orchard. And in order to build a wall that would enclose not only the school, but also this plot of land large enough to hold more than 400 cashew trees, the school and community had already anted up $1,637. The community would donate its labor. What they needed was just $905 to buy fuel for transport, cement, a metal gate, and to pay a skilled mason to come and assist on the project.
Since GambiaRising prioritizes its funds for direct student educational support, we asked a generous donor if he was interested in putting this project over the top. Happily, he reviewed the plans and said "Yes." And just in time. The wall was finished just before the rains began. And the seedlings were planted after a few weeks of rain had softened the ground.
This is a community that values its school and understands the promise that it represents for the next generation. This is a Principal who is a leader with vision, and who knows how to engage that community. And, perhaps most impressively, this is a project that entails vision. These trees will not bear fruit for at least five years. In the meantime, they will be able to intercrop (plant cash crops between the trees), but five years from now, the trees will begin to bloom and bear fruit; the apples can be eaten and the raw nuts sold for cash. It's the best PTA project I've ever seen.
I wrote a few weeks ago about a virtuous cycle going on in Fula Bantang. It is still turning. I hope you will consider being part of it. (Scroll down for a few photos.)
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And in five or six years,...
