As I navigate treacherous footpaths on my bike while balancing a 6-foot long bamboo contraption tied together with string, the majority of villagers guess that I'm either mad, going fishing, or trying out a new torture device. The truth is much more mundane, so I like to make them guess first. The bamboo, when assembled, is actually a magical device called an "A-frame," which allows farmers to redecorate their farms so that not only are they much more aesthetically pleasing, but much less prone to erosion. The A-frame is used to measure contour lines, so that ditches can be dug or vegetative strips can be left on the contour. I feel like some kind of opposite Santa Claus, as I show up to peoples' homes bearing strange gifts to the tune of children fleeing, and neighbors peeping warily out of their doors at me. One of my main priorities in the village is getting people to stop flat-farming on the slopes, and watching year after year as their topsoil is flushed into streams and rivers. I have set up a schedule with everyone who was interested, to visit their farms and come up with a plan to plant long-lived nitrogen-fixing trees or shrubs, and to dig contour ditches and plant or leave vegetated strips. As I mentioned, I got people to come to a seminar by advertising that they should come if they had trouble with fertilizer. Many of them thought that I was going to give out bags of free fertilizer. I was a little worried that this would lead to some hostility when they found out that I was just going to teach a session. But when I showed them the math on how much money they would spend on fertilizer for an acre, and how much they would spend on intercropping nitrogen-fixing trees on their land, and the subsequent benefits, they stopped clenching their fists under the table and thanked me for the ideas. The message was that you can spend the American equivalent of $2.25 to plant trees on one acre (instead of $25-50 on commercial fertilizer), and over time the benefits can reach $2,000-3,000.