A Week in the Life of a PCV: Day Four

Planting rice with Madame Obama.  May 2015.

8:45AM --  After a nice hot shower and some delicious cocoa oats, I began the walk to Dzamtewutug.  Today was greenhouse day!

So what’s the deal with these greenhouses that I keep mentioning?  Well, really I should be calling them shade houses.  We’re not aiming for climate control – we’re aiming to keep birds out. (Anti-bird houses?)  In Akono, a family can easily consume several kilograms of rice each week.  However, whenever anyone tries to cultivate their own rice to save on costs, birds will come and eat the entire harvest.  In the past, families would have their children spend entire days by the field to chase away the birds.  Then as soon as the kids went home for dinner, the birds would swoop down and eat all of the rice within minutes!  Scarecrows – or “juju for bird and monkey” as Anglophone Cameroonians like to call them – don’t seem to do the trick either.  Consequently, community members have pretty much given up on cultivating their own rice, and instead they must buy it.

The goal:  to teach 50 local women how to construct these shade houses, have them each construct a shade house of their own, and have them cultivate NERICA rice under the shade house’s protection.

It’s estimated that in a 9m x 15m shade house, a family would be able to harvest up to 300kg of rice per year, thus completely eliminating the need to buy rice.

Today we invited the women to a workshop to learn how to construct one of these shade houses.  The “modern” shade house was already complete upon arrival, save for stitching up some seems in the covering.  However, the technicians wanted to demonstrated how we could construct a more affordable frame using bamboo instead of metal poles.

The construction process took all day (discounting our 2 hour late start, because of "African time"), right up until the women left for 4:00PM mass.

(Somewhere along the way, we had lunch… a hardboiled egg and plantain jam sandwich.  It was really… special.)

Watering the rice.

Stitching up the seems.

Attaching the covering.

A team effort to get the screen cover on the bamboo shade house frame.

"Modern" shade house from the inside.

"Modern" shade house from the outside.

Bamboo shade house from the outside.

EDIT:  I had previously made an error regarding the financing details of this project.   
 

4:00PM  --   Came home to change into pants before taking a moto (motorcycle taxi) to Mfida 4 to visit Mr. Mfugue.  (Mfida 4 is filled with moopmoops – an evil mosquito-like insect that draws blood when it bites and gives you golf ball size lumps that itch for days).

Mr. Mfugue and his wife, Adema,
observing and noting results of a harvest back in May.

Mr. Mfugue is a fish farmer: the first fish farmer that I met in Akono.  He had emptied one of his ponds for a harvest this morning.  Usually I attend harvests, to witness results and to get a bit muddy (the task requires emptying the pond, sinking knee-deep into the mud, and collecting the fish by hand).  Pond harvests are actually my favorite "work" events in my Peace Corps life.  Friends and neighbors come to help out and everyone is jovial, excited to see their success, and knowing that they will eat well and make a bit of money.  Harvest days always end with a jug of palm wine and a feast.  Unfortunately because of the shade house workshop, I was unable to attend this morning's catch.  Nevertheless, I thought I’d swing by to see how it went!

Mr. Mfugue was not thrilled by the outcomes of today’s harvest.  He caught far fewer tilapia than expected (only 700 when he had stocked the 250m² pond with 500), and both the tilapia and catfish were much smaller than they should have been based on the daily feeding regimen over the past six months.

Nevertheless, he was able to catch plenty of fish to feed his family and guests who are visiting for his daughter's wedding this weekend.

Visiting Mfida 4 is always a pleasant experience.  Mr. Mfugue and his family have become my favorite family to pass an afternoon with.  Mr. Mfugue and his wife Adema are engaged in such a wide variety of agricultural activities that they always have something new to show me.  On top of that, all of their neighbors and family members always welcome me as if I were family (okay, not exactly like family…I never have to do the dishes!).

I spent a few minutes with the ladies in the kitchen-house who were busy making baton de manioc, and then I joined the crowd on the veranda to eat dinner:  fish, cassava, and some palm wine.  Though the conversation was entertaining (subjects included Mr. Mfgugue’s sister’s beard, voodoo dolls, and the high rate of albinism in West Cameroon), eventually I had to pull myself away to make it home before dark.

Mfida ladies making baton de manioc.

6:00PM  --  I waited on the side of the road to flag down a passing car for a ride back to Akono.  Once back in town, I stopped by the bakery to treat myself to a slice of cake (a new addition to the Boulangerie d’Akono!).  Came home, took a shower, planned on saving the cake as a treat for after writing this blog post.  Managed to write one whole sentence before succumbing to my sweet tooth.  Ate the top half of the cake because the bottom half was weirdly soggy.  (My foolishly high expectations were not satisfied.  #1 rule of buying baked goods in Cameroonian boulangeries:  have low-to-zero expectations.  But cake is cake and sugar is sugar so I wasn't totally disappointed!)

And that's a wrap for day four!