This is my big tree planting project for next year- it got accepted as a Peace Corps Partnership so it's now just waiting for funding! Please go check it out guys, the link is below!

Hello friends and family! Salam malekum, peace to you

As a agriculture/forestry Peace Corps Volunteer in The Gambia, West Africa, I'm excited to announce the "Trees for Fuel" reforestation pilot project! This is a tree planting project between myeself, a few other Peace Corps Volunteers and even some Gambian Department of Forestry counterparts, to be carried out in several villages in my district. It is registered now as a Peace Corps Partnerships project, which means everyone can go to the link and glance at the proposal and, if you want, contribute ANY amount right then and there. If you have nothing extra to contribute right now, or course, no worries. But please, if you know others with charitable tendencies or interests in rescuing this planet's forests, please pass this link on.

https://www.peacecorps.gov/resources/donors/contribute/projdetail.cfm?projdesc=635-042®ion=africa

This is why I'm so excited about this project:
Driving a few hundred kilometers through northern Senegal to the airport a few weeks ago I saw the shocking picture of desertification in full for the first time. The parkland of The Gambia, sparse but still treed, unfolded mile by mile into a devastated washed-out waste land. It's not fair to call it a desert, conjuring up pictures of lizards and cactus, red sand dunes and canyons, wolves howling at the moon from atop mesas. This was a man-made expanse, stripped of its layers of life down to a nutrient-void greyness, dotted only occasionally with an angry little shrub inevidably snagging some shred of plastic trash. Yikes. Senegal has electricity; power lined cut through the desert scene in all directions. Yes they are "developing," but at what cost?

The Gambia in in trouble, but it's not a desert yet. And the institutions are in place to inform people that desertification is a real scenario, that planting trees will keep their wells wet and the rainy season long. The time is right to make it "cool" to plant you own trees for firewood- the concept of planting mangoes and cashews caught on beautifully and it's just a small hop to making fuel wood tree propagation a practice.

So- thanks for listening! Pass on the link to all who might be interested and help us if you can. Feel free to email me with any questions. I wish you all well!

Hey guys! It's been too long since I blogged. Life can be really busy in a slow-moving way. These past few months, it seems like I've been in Kombo so much for this and that... before my Morocco vacation to get all that in order, and then I was gone to Morocco for 2 weeks, and then now this past weekend has been the Great All Volunteer meeting! It's so wonderful to come down and just see EVERYONE, all hundred of us, just relaxing, indulging and partying. For all the tough moments, all the dirty days and un-luxurious duties of site, Life really rewards 2-fold... listen to this: We all came in on Wed night and hit a karioke bar in the touristy part of town... goooood stuff! Who knew we were so talented? Our rendentition of Ace of Bases's All That She Wants was probably phenonmenal. My sister reminded me of how we found the tape and memorized all the words in 5th grade... Then Thursday morning, Rodney, our env. sector director, let us storm his house to cook for our big Thanksgiving dinner. He provided 3 cases of beer for us, music, his entire kitchen, his BBQs, playstation and fresh basil from his garden so we could bake 20 (yep.) pumpkin pies and roast 260(that's right.) quarters of chicken... there's not much better than cooking out with friends with good music and good beer (well... it was beer anyway!). That night we all got prettied up and headed over to the ambassador's mansion with our gross quantities of chicken and pie and preceded to stuff ourselves with so much good food. The new agriculture/forestry volunteers that just recently got into country were there too and we got to hang out with them a little. We all swam in the moonlight in the ambassador's pool, with the palm trees and ocean as a backdrop. The next morning we attended a formal "40 year anniversary of PC The Gambia" ceremony in a big room with lots of important people. We had to one by one stand up and tell them what we were up to in our villages... the president's band played some tunes for us, and the ceremony was over before it became painfully boring. More free good food followed. After some afternoon beach time, Life granted us yet another ridiculously wonderful boon... JelBrew, the one brewery in the country, threw us another free beer party! That means we all go to the brewery and hang out on their patio all night while a few cool employees feed us beer after beer from the two big fridges... 30 cases in all!! Goodness. This was our second, even better than the last- the full moon was shining down as we busted moves to our ipods and there was a movement amongst the guys to take off their shirts and sprawl around on the Peace Corps Land Rover to pose for a calender we're making... at least that's what we told them it was for...
Anyway! Much to be thankful for. I miss my family and home so much this time of year, but good friends here make is all A OK. The next morning we has our All Volunteer meeting, which was pretty nice... lots of annoucements, introductions to new NGO's and partners, updates on health stuff, ect. Now all is over and we're all heading our separate ways, until the nect JelBrew party, which, rumor has it, is going to feature a new beer- a mead actually, made with Gambian honey!

So life has been luxurious. I just got back from Morocco too, which I won't go into, but it was amazing! Figs, oases, being cold, and a rented car named Fatima were the highlights. (:

In Jamagen, all is well... things are gearing up in village for a great second year, inshallah. Village life is so peaceful, finally I feel just completely at home there. Our two chickens started laying eggs! Our compound got a puppy! I'm tutoring my host brother, just started a little garden with my two 12 year old sis's and am starting a "nursery" school for all ages once or twice a week to practice A,B,C's and numbers and maybe do some fun projects too. Other than that, just hanging out until time to collect tree seeds and plant.

Hope all is well for everyone all around the world, take care!