Badenya Project

Hi All,

So it's been a while now since I updated my blog. Things are going pretty well at site. Since the rainy season began a month or two ago, everyone in village has been busy working in the fields. I've been going out with them to help myself, spending a morning here and there weeding corn or millet fields with my host family. It's hard work, and my host father is out in the fields every day for five or six hours. Needless to say he spends most of the evening sleeping in his hammock.

In Feremuna, the women's organization has been busy. Every rainy season, they plant a field crop in the garden. This year we discussed a number of possible crops, including rice and millet, but settled on planting beans. We also took a day to go work on enforcing the fence that surrounds the garden, since the cows have been getting in and munching on the women's vegetables. We put up a few wooden posts to replace iron ones that had been stolen by roaming children and also planted some new gytropha bushes along the perimeter. The previous volunteer had started working on this 'live fence,' and hopefully in the next year or two the women will have planted enough to surround the entire garden, providing a more permanent fence.

In addition to working in the fields and in the garden at Feremuna, for the past few months I have been working with another women’s organization in Station N’Tarla, a small settlement down the road from Feremuna. It is with this organization that I plan to base the remainder of my 2008 work, a garden project that will increase the yearly income of the women’s cooperative.

The women’s cooperative of Station N’Tarla, Badenya Ton, has been in existence for over ten years. Since becoming a state-sanctioned cooperative in 2005, their activities have included farming two hectares of corn, millet and beans during the rainy season, the profits from which are used to support each individual woman’s small commerce activities during the rest of the year. Every three months following the growing season, women are able to take small loans of 2500 to 7500 CFA (about 6-18 USD) to buy materials for their small businesses, which range from buying and reselling rice to preparing refrigerated drinks to sell in market. In addition to these activities, the women have recently begun literacy training, which took place during the hot season from March to May of 2008.

For the past year and a half, the women have also been planning a community garden project in hopes of increasing the financial power of the cooperative. At the time that I first met with the cooperative, in December of 2007, they had already begun preparing the garden for work in 2008, obtaining permission for the use of a 1 hectare parcel of land from the village and a donation of wire fencing from the French NGO Fondation Pour L’Enfance. From March to May of 2008, they commissioned the digging of two wells in the garden space and are currently growing rainy season crops of corn, beans, rice, and peanuts.

My work with Badenya Ton will focus on preparing the garden for vegetable gardening during the 2008 cold season, including the installation of the wire fencing to protect the area from roaming animals and the digging of two more wells to ensure adequate water for the area. I also plan to conduct a series of trainings on gardening techniques I have studied during training with Peace Corps. The project will be executed through the Peace Corps Partnership Program, which allows me to raise funds directly through family, friends, and interested parties in the US. Our goal is to raise $1958.75 out of a total project cost of $2621.25. Badenya Ton will contribute the equivalent of $662.50 (about 25 percent of the total project cost) to cover the cost of labour for digging the wells and installing the fencing. We hope to raise the funds before the beginning of the cold season in October so the area will be ready for a full season of vegetable gardening.

I believe this is a worthy endeavour and I hope that you are interested in helping the women’s cooperative of Station N’Tarla to expand their activities and grow as an organization.

To make a donation, go to https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.donors.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=688-270 , enter the amount you would like to give (any amount is greatly appreciated!) and click Donate. Your contribution is completely tax deductible, and Peace Corps will send you a receipt. If you cannot make a donation yourself, please forward a copy of this letter to anyone you think would be interested. If you have any questions please email me and I’ll get back with you as soon as possible.

If you would like to see some pictures of the Badenya Ton at work, I have posted some at
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2023802&l=7e693&id=10301328

Thank you, merci, i ni che from myself and the women of Station N’Tarla.

Shall write a new more 'blog-like' entry soon.

Meg