Planting Season 2010

I thought I might post a few pics of the summer planting/weeding season of July and August. Corn, peanuts and millet was planted starting in late May and continued through June in some areas, depending on rainfall. As I have explained and shown in previous posts, sesame wasode planted starting in mid to late July in order to have it mature later than other crops due to its need for dry conditions in order to properly mature. There was a fairly good and consistent rainfall this year that resulted in a moderately good to really good harvest for many farmers in my community during and just after my departure in September.

Here I explain the importance of spacing of both rows and individual sesame plants in their rows at roughly the 15th day after planting:

Here we are in a sesame field during a day of weeding and thinning of plantings:
A family planting corn in rows:

Soap Making Workshop

In August I had the privilege to put on a one day workshop on liquid soap making and small business management with a womens group in Fada. Liquid soap is a very popular product in Burkina because of its ease of use, affordable price and effectiveness in washing dishes and hands. I held the workshop at my association's office, where fourteen women learned how to make their own liquid soap and sell it as a way to create much needed income without too much additional effort and hours in their very busy days. Very basic accounting was taught in order to show them how to calculate profit and the importance of good shop keeping so as to keep their small business profitable. The women loved the activity and the process of making their own soap and choosing their own colors and scents.

Entrepreneur Workshop in Fada

January 2010

Myself and a good friend and colleague Chris Naffziger, MBA (the aspiring Senator from Indiana) applied for and received modest funding to put on a three-day workshop on entrepreneurship and business plans here in my town of Fada. We had worked together at a much larger workshop in the capital in August (see relevant post below for pics and description) and wanted to do a smaller scale version with several improvements. We worked in conjunction with the Ministry of Employment to locate seven motivated and aspiring local entrepreneurs and then invited other Peace Corps volunteers to join us in order to create one on one working partnerships to best maximize impact. It was the first time for many of the participants to conceptualize detailed record keeping and financial projections, let alone amortizing equipment or calculating break even points! Needless to say, a lot was learned by all, including us volunteers given the amount of technical language involved. Some the projects included a mechanic garage and retail sales, a restaurant, a small general store, and of course a couple of farming concepts such as cattle rearing and chicken egg production.

Day one, above, I cover basic business concepts and strategies for business planning, new product/service brainstorming, and marketing.

After the third day of developing ideas into workable business plans, a judge panel, including the director of Peace Corps Burkina's Small Enterprise Development program and a technical expert from the Ministry of Youth and Employment awarded the business plan of a local mechanic to expand his shop and include retail space and a washing service area. Special thanks to business development expert David Swenton for his partnership and contributions to this winning plan.

Thanks to all of the volunteers who made the trek out east to provide invaluable help and expertise to all of us in Fada.

Sesame Harvest 2009

During June and July I accompanied my association in the distribution of seeds and the advising of best practices in the planting, maintanence, spacing, harvesting, drying and storing of sesame seeds. Most of this seed will be exported to the U.S. providing several of these farmers with much needed cash, given that many of their other crops are solely for self-consumption or crop for crop trade.
So, with the arrival of October and the start of the harvest season here in Burkina I thought I would show you all a little bit about the harvesting of sesame. The earliest any farmers I work with had planted this year was the first week of July, and so around 70 days later of fairly consistant, and ideally not to heavy, rainfall the farmers in these photos were cutting their sesame plants to begin drying them in the sun for around 10 days. The sesame plant is spread out on plastic tarps to dry in the sun, and after several days the drying pods, which are left on the plant, will begin opening up on their own and the seeds then fall, or are shaken out, onto the tarps. Now the seeds can be picked through to filter out the inferior, and much less valuable, smaller and darker seeds. The seeds will be put into 100 kilogram (220 pound) sacks before heading off to markets.

Each plant can have up to several dozen pods on its stalk:

A sickle is used to cut the plant at its base:

Entrepreneur Workshop in Ouagadougou

I was recently selected to work as a presenter and coach at a two week long workshop with young aspiring entrepreneurs. The creative impulses to start our own businesses in the U.S. cannot be taken for granted here, as most young adults lucky enough to get a full education here most often strive for the security of a state paid bureaucrat job. This workshop was meant to inspire a group of forty selected young adults to start their own small business and equip them with the know-how to do so. This entailed coming up with creative and useful products or services that fulfill a demand or remedy a problem, drafting a business plan and basic financial projections, and locating small business loans or financing. We used several examples from the U.S. that stressed the art of starting small, using family and friends as resources (financial, feedback, etc) and the importance of persistance, patience and flexibility. The participants were so engaged and motivated, it was really inspiring!

Rainy Season

hello again. it's officially the rainy season now, which is nice because it means much lower temperatures and fewer sunburns for me! it also is the time when the entire country actually has a job, that being to plant any and all surface area within reach with staples like millet, corn, green beans, peanuts, sesame, okra, and chickpeas. the association that i work with is active going village to village to distribute sesame seeds for planting and teaching best practices for planting, harvesting, drying, and storing the resulting crop which will, beginning in october, be transported with help from my association to the capital where it will be sold at international market prices to companies in the u.s. providing much needed cash (think school fees for their children, clothes, housing repairs, etc) for farmers who often to struggle to do more than self subsist. it has so far been a quite dry season, let's pray for a wet august and september which will be make or break time for literally millions of west africans.
Below are several photos from the last couple of months...enjoy!

*farmers gathered to discuss sesame production and receive seeds:

*my associations president (on left) and other workers registering seed distribution:

*a photographer takes shots of villagers who want to join the association (they love this part!)

*village kids and women near fields prepared, but not yet planted:

*more playful kids out in a small village:

*kids outside a village schoolhouse, with teachers and another peace corps volunteer in the background:

*while visiting a fellow volunteer, a man showed up with this guy and tried to sell him to us for ten bucks:

*my friend Brekke stands amidst the biggest waterfalls in Burkina, the Karfiguila Falls. hey, theres just not much water here! :

*this is me near the falls overlooking the expansive southwest of the country near Ivory Coast:

*the new pig raising house on my associations land, which will be used to teach other farmers how to raise pigs. it was part of a grant from the us embassy. :

*this is my host associations presidents kids, raul and ervish out helping to plant seeds:

*raul, ervish, and little wilson(willy as he is called!) :

*on a visit to aaron's site up near mali, we drank some ceremonial dolo (a type of cider made from millet) in a tree nursury that he helped organize:

Ghana Vakay

I was just in Ghana for ten days with a few other volunteers. It was a wonderful and refreshing trip... the fresh air of the forests and then the salty ocean breezes of the surf drenched white sand coast! Here's a pictorial recap:

Ghana (formerly called Gold Coast by the colonialists) has a coastline covered with fortresses and castle once used to defend against outside attacks of other colonial navies and to store gold and then later, and more infamously, slaves before shipping them off to the americas. Many of these date to the 15th century making them the oldest European structures outside of Europe. Many are UNESCO World Heritage sites.
Here is a guide next to a cannon atop one castle in Dixcove, Ghana:

The oustide walls of the same castle:


We spent our last couple of nights at this little resort spot and here was the view from my eight dollar bungalow room. Not bad...

Below is the flag of Ghana planted in the beach at Busua. This place was way too much fun, and we literally had the entire beach to ourselves, save for a few local fishermen and surfers! :


A fisherman mending nets in Cape Coast (one of the two towns President Obama will visit during his visit in July) :

Inside the largest of Ghana's castles in Cape Caost. The round doorway at the end of the alley there leads to the Door of No Return, where so many slaves left to never return after spending three months here in dungeons.


This is Kakum National Park, and this is a 'canopy walk' that links eight huge trees and sways as you walk over it. It is nearly 10 stories high at some points and we spotted some monkeys swinging in the trees below:

Update and some pics

I thought I would update a bit on whats going on around this neck of the woods...I've been scattering my time and energy around a few different projects lately. My association's farmers are still producing lots of sesame using irrigation during this dry season, but the rains are starting to arrive so another crop will soon be planted, along with lots of other staple crops like millet and corn. Its nice to get out of town and walk around the lush irrigated fields out in the country area from time to time!

I was recently selected to serve on the 'Food Security Committee' of Peace Corps Burkina Faso, which is essentially a bunch of us who do research on agricultural issues here in Burkina and try to get all volunteers communities to plant the best and most nutritional variety of food possible, using the best methods possible. Basically. I will be heading off to Ghana in a few days for a 10 day vacation!! Cool huh?! Its hard to believe that I've been here for seven months already...and I'm ready to leave the land-locked sands of Burkina and plant myself in the surf of Ghana. Of course, my next post here will be all about that, with lots of photos, I promise, as one of my travel partners is a great photographer who shows me cools tricks (Aaron, the guys golfing in the funny pants, and wearing the plastic bag blazer!).

The first picture below is a young entrepreneur who makes cheese (a simple soft white variety with local milk...its actually really good!) at his house and pedals around town selling it to those few folks who have the money for such a product (or even know what it is). I helped him develop some packaging and some labels to better market the cheese, and then we started asking it some of the local grocery type store where the occasional tourist (they're French mostly) passes through and might be inclined to buy some cheese. Sales seem to be picking up a bit and I've help him devise a savings scheme to prepare him for some upcoming materials costs (cheese cultures, packaging, etc).

The lady on the left is my counterpart's mom who is visiting from their home village! Both of these ladies are Gourmatche (the prodominate ethnic group in my region)

These are some Peul neighbors of mine (Peul are a minority group in my region, with unique culture and dress, and they are almost all cattle owners).

A Giant Birds Nest? ... no, its bean stock and leaves being dried before being fed to cattle, sheep, and donkeys.
A Women's group cleaning and drying plastic store sacks before turning them into 'thread' to weave clothes (see blazer below!) and beautiful hand bags. Smart, resourceful and job producing!
A blazer made entirely of recycled plastic sacks!
This is how trucks are typically (over)loaded here in West Africa! and yes, they do tip over from time to time, so dont linger on the side of one!
I nearly fainted when I saw this sign announcing the Mayors office(mairie) of the Konsa district (arrondissement) of the major city of Bobo Dioulasso in the southwest of Burkina.