I am headed to Senegal, West Africa for 27 months, meaning I will return around December 2014!
My role is an "Agroforestry Extension Agent" and projects could include, but are not at all limited to, reforestation efforts, teaching sustainable agriculture techniques, starting vegetable nurseries, and leading community or after school programs!
Agroforestry is an integrated approach of using the interactive benefits from combining trees and shrubs with crops and/or livestock. It combines agricultural and forestry technologies to create more diverse, productive, profitable, healthy, and sustainable land-use systems. A narrow definition of agroforestry is "trees on farms."
Senegal has a hot climate and will be around 85 - 100 degrees and muggy when I arrive! The population is 94% Muslim, the official language is French, and I will also be learning another tribal language. The population is just under 13 million. (CIA World Factbook).
I will likely be living with a family on a compound with my own hut without electricity or running water. I am enormously excited and also nervous that I am not qualified enough to make a serious impact! I realize that I will probably gain far more than I can offer and I cannot wait to be fully immersed in a totally new language and culture!
Peace Corps Senegal describes their approach: "Peace Corps Senegal has a very strong emphasis on the first goal of Peace Corps—the development goal. We take pride in tangibly helping the communities where we live and work make progress in improving their day-to-day lives. In addition to our strong focus on programs,
such as Community Economic Development/Ecotourism, Health, Environmental Education, Agro-forestry, and Sustainable and Urban Agriculture, Peace Corps Senegal is developing innovative approaches to working across these sectors to achieve goals in each of the regions of Senegal where we work. In these efforts, Volunteers work as teams to design, develop and implement strategies for development in collaboration with each other, their communities, the local government and non-governmental organization partners." (Exciting stuff!! :D)
Teddy Roosevelt said "Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, [and] difficulty" ... Here it goes!
