The Magic School Bus

A few days ago I met with two women at the CPF (Center for the Promotion of Women) to discuss the living fence we (ok, I) want to build around their property.  A living fence is constructed by planting two parallel lines of trees in a staggered pattern, leaving 40 cm between each tree and 40 cm between the two rows.  The idea is to plant trees that are thorny, bushy, and unappetizing to goats so that the trees aren’t eaten before a permanent barrier is formed (after a year and a half or so).  The women planted sesame last year but had problems with goats eating a lot of it so they were looking for a solution.  I’m really excited about this project because it’s going to be relatively cheap and, in theory at least, sustainable, because after I buy the trees and they’re planted the only maintenance needed is in the form of human labor.  They won’t need to buy special tools or machinery and there isn’t really anything that can break and need to be fixed. Read – they should have no excuse for not doing the upkeep on the fence (trimming and watering).  The plan is to plant in May just before the rainy season so that the trees only need to be watered for a few weeks before the rain starts and takes care of the watering for them.  I told the women we could plant now but that that would mean someone would have to water every single day, and since we’re talking about more than 1,000 trees they were understandable hesitant.  I had researched some possible tree species to use and made a list that I showed to my supervisor who has a tree nursery.  Yeah, sounds cool, but his “tree nursery” currently only has one type of tree in it.  Anyway he told me which trees he would be able to order and we decided on Campecher and Acacia which both work well for living fences.  By the way, in French a living fence is called a haie vive.  So I brought my tree selection to the women and got a kind of lukewarm response.  Turns out they want to use this other tree that they heard one time might be used in the future to make biofuel or jet fuel.  Mm hmm, ok.  Quoi?!  I explained that while I’ve never heard of that it could very well be true, but in that case they would need fields and fields of it to actually make any, uh, jet fuel.  Their response? Well, whatever, but we still want to use that tree. I left it at that.  I’m filling out the funding application now in hopes that by May everything will be taken care of and we can start planting.

            After our biofuel discussion, we started talking about my family’s visit in December.  I told them when they were getting in, where we were going, and we laughed about how they will have to try to speak English because not everyone in my family speaks French.  One of the women then wanted to know how long it would take for my family to get here from là-bas.  I started explaining the seven-hour flight to Paris, which prompted the question “Paris…that’s where? In France?” (to be fair I was once asked the same question by a woman about to draw my blood for donation).  I told her it’s another six or seven-hour flight to get to Cotonou, plus buses and taxis to get up to Pehunco.  She looked surprised and a little confounded by this mention of 10+ hours in a plane and seemed to be working it all out in her head.  After a minute she turns to me and says, wow, you couldn’t even do that trip in a bus could you?  I mean it would just take too long, days. Confort Lines (a bus company here) wouldn’t even do that trip.  I started to say something about the whole Atlantic Ocean issue but stopped myself and replied as solemnly as possible, oui c’est vrai.