I think the hardest part about saying good-bye is not knowing when you will return next. Everyone is anxious to know when we are coming back to stay for good. My answer, “I don’t know”. A totally unsatisfactory answer, even if true.
I spent yesterday in a meeting discussing strategy for moving forward with the agriculture work and CEFA, the new NGO/project in Gamboula. It was a good meeting with input from everyone present and I think we are in a good position to move ahead with the work.
Today I went to Clarisse’s garden for the morning. Her mom and oldest daughter were in the process of preparing cassava that had been soaking in a nearby fish pond for several days. We arrived in time to help remove the peel of the cassava which was then ‘washed’ off in the fish pond water and thrown into a giant bowl called a cuvette. I was ready to wade into the pond to do my part in washing the cassava but Mama told me that there were little bugs in the water that would ‘eat’ me so I should stay on the edge and help peel. The little bugs turned out to be leeches, which I have no desire to let eat me, so I gladly sat on the edge peeling. After three days in stagnant water cassava develops a distinct smell, sweet and fermented-like, which, after showering and putting on cream, is still on my hands. With some friends arriving to help, I was displaced from my peeling job to the job of lugging huge basins of wet cassava on my head, up to the small shelter built within the garden. I was not given a full basin, not having a neck able to support a large load and having just had my hair braided. I put a little cloth ‘donut’ on my head, was helped to heave it on top and stalked off down the trail, one hand helping balance the basin on my head. I managed to carry the empty basin back to the pond hands-free which I was pretty proud of. On the way home I carried a stack of cassava leaves on my head which met with many comments from other farmers along the road.
I have one more full day left in Gamboula, and while I am very excited about going home, it is not easy to leave here. Despite all the depressing things about this country, the nutrition garden and the Women and Children Gardening for Health program continues to be a bright light in the community. Nadege’s energy and love for her job amaze me; the garden is humming along despite the lack of rain and staff. It is easy to see the negative things around, the things that are easy to depress the spirit, but one look at Nadege and the garden and the women working away, meeting people like Mariam and seeing women receive seeds and machetes, there is hope. We can’t just roll over and die, we can’t just leave people in their misery, despite how normal it seems.
