Ok, but what do you actually do?

On Monday I had a meeting for what my host mom calls “cooking with garbage.” Technically it’s called a biodigestor, a giant bladder filled with a slurry of organic waste, from which methane is harvested for cooking. I am waiting for funding to come through for the first biodigestor in the region.

On Sunday I met with a group interested in starting forage banks and stables for their cattle; many of the hillsides in the area resemble grassy bleachers as a result of compaction from the repeated passing of skeletal livestock in search of food. If the project works out, it will be the first project I’ve committed to in which none of the beneficiaries can read or write. The project aims to help the farmers raise healthier animals with less daily work, provide more vegetative cover in this important watershed, and make it easier to collect fertilizer.
That afternoon I met with my worm-composting/organic garden group to organize the building of compost receptacles. The compost is excellent, but even more lucrative is the business of selling worms; they go for a handsome $25 per kilo.

On Saturday I coordinated a day hike with 13 high-school students to the micro-watershed that supplies them with water and to do a mini-study on the trees in the area. 15-year-old girls amaze me the same way mountain goats impress me; they are sure-footed on even the most challenging of rocky or muddy mountainous slopes, despite insisting on wearing strappy fashion sandals. Their communications also amaze me in the same way the Khoisan languages impress me; instead of a dialect riddled with clicks, it’s punctuated with goose-bump-raising shrieks.

On Friday I helped lead a group of high school students to the Biological Reserve to teach them about map-reading, acquaint them with the reserve, immerse them in mud, and orient them for the model-biological-reserve competition coordinated by a fellow Peace Corps Volunteer. The kids were happy to be tuckered out at the end of the trip, but the next day one of the teachers wrote me a message saying “Girl! Everything hurts down to my fingernails!”

On Thursday I traipsed around a part of the reserve I hadn’t yet been to with the forest rangers, exploring options on where to put a trail in the reserve’s buffer zone. We were charged by some bulls, who had been happily grazing in the part of the reserve where all agriculture is prohibited. Luckily, one of the forest rangers is somewhat of a cow-whisperer, and knew they were bluffing. We passed through fields being burned in order to plant cabbage, and entered the forest, coming upon the delicate tracks of a young white-tailed deer (which is endangered in this part of the world).

On Wednesday I worked on an environmental education grant with a local teacher and got myself involved in a baseline study for a latrine project the municipality hopes to carry out (or to put it bluntly: I have to go around and ask everyone if they have toilets or if they poop on the ground). I am bewildered by the prevalence of this problem; as far as I know in Tanzania, even the poorest households would dig a hole and raise a wall of dry grass to deal with their necessities. Here, there are entire communities where latrine culture hasn’t caught on. I made the rounds to see the results of a latrine project carried out 3 months ago, and one woman was using hers for a doghouse. She kept referring to the latrine as “este animal,” or “this animal,” and saying how she just wasn’t used to it.

On Tuesday I taught an agroforestry workshop to women from a flower-growing micro-enterprise. The group is one of two flower-growing groups I work with; attempting to help their businesses become more sustainable by incorporating trees strategically into their fields, composting, and experimenting with integrated pest management techniques.

My work isn’t always this varied and exciting; I left out some days in which I get to do the mundane stuff (scaling cliffs to rescue endangered wildlife, saving babies from burning buildings and abandoned mine-shafts, high-speed car chases to escape corrupt police, etc.).