One of the locals coming to market in Goure
Back in Maradi. This was on the way out to one of the villages where we work. It's rainy season, and we got quite abit of rain in one week, (hence the flooded road). Now it's back to dry again, but we're praying for more rain in September before the end of the season.
Me, Jaho, and Amina - before the rain hit! Jaho is one of the project staff for the agriculture project (Sowing Seeds of Change in the Sahel), he does alot of teaching out in villages + on the radio. Amina is a Peace Corps volunteer who lives in Dogon Baushe - one of the village we work with
Adamu and his grafts that took really well. The tree in Ziziphus mauritania, and the project has provided a new improved variety with much bigger fruit, to graft onto the native Ziziphus. The stumps they graft onto are fairly big so it takes off well and grows fast before the end of the rains.
A typical village in the Niger, (in the outlying countryside near Maradi)
Meeting up with a group of Fulani women who are keen on planting their own trees - this group have been alot more motivated than some of the other villages. Sally Cunningham (next to me) was seeing how many trees each of them had planted from the nursery.
One of the ladies in the group + her baby girl, Jamila (pronounced "Zhameela), who was fascinated with these white ladies who came to visit.
Weeding a metre out from the acacia seedling (these are Aussie acacias which they can sustainably harvest wood off, plus the seed which they make into a high protein flour, to use with the usual millet flour)
Me outside "Restaurant Florida" in Maradi, Niger - quite the opposite to the Florida I just came from in July!, but we've had afew good evenings there (if you're not afraid of earwigs, that is).
Our lunch stop on a bush trip out to the villages of Danya, Gidan Jido, and Rugga: Me with a friendly chamelion, and Aaron and Jaho (below) eating bread sardines.
The project staff for SSCS (Sowing Seeds of Change in the Sahel), at our Sept end of month meeting. As part of this meeting I did a presentation on the agriculture project I'd worked at in Ethiopia.
A full millet head
A crop of millet almost ready to harvest
Cattle with muzzles on, a common site in the countryside here.
Baby shrews that Aaron and I found while weighing bundles of firewood (as part of the trial work on acacias).
Animals grazing next to the road from Galmi to Maradi.
Camel riding!!
"Club Prive" - a swimming pool just out of Maradi that was put there when Niger was a French colony. Thankfully it's still up and running. It's alot easier to bear the heat and harsh environment when you can go swimming twice a week. We're roughing it here, I tell you!
