Photos from the week 7/27/2014

Here are three barrels of cow peas that have been harvested from the farm. They will be distributed soon as seed. 

A few wind chimes I made of Bamboo

It is the time of year when people are harvesting peanuts! Fresh peanuts boiled are really addicting.

The Driver ants have been invading my house more frequently these nights. Saturday I found their home. Next step try to get rid of it. 

       I don’t have a camera any more except for the one on my phone. We don’t have cell reception on the farm, so I don’t often carry it with me. The quality of photos is also not great, so photos of the week will probably be a little different now.  

Canoes, rain, rapids and hippos.

     In the United States many people use the 4^th of July holiday as a time to welcome the summer and go camping. Although the 4^th is not a holiday in CAR, one of the missionaries here, his sons, and I took a week over the 4^th to enjoy the summer, and go on our own camping trip.

     The Turk boys go to school in Cameroon, and the parents spent the year there instead of here because of the unrest in CAR. The kids grew up in Gamboula and come back for vacations so they where all back for the summer. Benny the oldest just graduated high school and wanted to get one more good adventure in before heading to college.

      Since CAR is still not safe to do much adventuring in, we headed for Cameroon. At the border town we hopped on a crowded (people not being the only living creatures aboard) bus and headed to a town called Batouri. Here there is a bridge that crosses over the same river that flows by Gamboula. We purchased two canoes, 4 paddles, and set off downstream. 

The smaller boat coming through a narrow spot in the river. 

      I had printed out some satellite photos from Google Earth, but besides that we did not know how long it would take, and what obstacles awaited us around each bend. We did our best to connect with others along the river to ask for directions and advice.

     The first obstacles were the canoes. I am used to and am quite comfortable in flat bottom stand up canoes, like what I used in Congo. This whole area uses wide rounded hull sit down boats. They are more unstable, you are down lower, so you have less visibility, and take more effort to paddle.

My perch for the trip

      Second, the river was, in places quite narrow, and had rapids! Though I have shot rapids in a raft, I have not done it by canoe. From Google Earth I had been able to see where some of the rapids were, but could not tell the right places to pass. Lucky for us most of the rapids were only a few meters long, and mostly just intimidating.

While most of the time we went through rapids the camera was in a plastic bag, I was able to get photos of some from a distance. 

     Our first afternoon a storm caught and drenched us and all our things. We set up a wet camp, and since there was no dry firewood, we did not have a fire to cook over or chase the bugs away. Shortly after laying down in our soggy tent and clothes, driver ants invaded and we were forced to flee our tents. Needless to say none of us got any sleep that night.

     The river was really pretty, with forests on both sides. We saw countless kinds of birds, monitor lizards, playful otters, snakes, and large unidentified animals. The current was quite fast in places, and it was a nice ride.

Although we saw lots of animals and birds, most were moving fast, and so I was unable to get good photos of them. It was nice of this monitor lizard to pose for us as we went by. 

     By the end of the third day the river was joined by another smaller one and the scenery changed. The land was flatter now, with more grass growing on the sides. Hippo territory. There was a town we were able to stop at for much needed supplies. We had planned on catching and eating fish, but with all the rain, finding worms was impossible.

The two boats coming together for resupplying. 

     All through the fourth and fifth days we stirred up hippos on the banks. They would hear the boats coming, and crash through the brush before making huge splashes in the river. Others that were in the river already would just snort before ducking under. Most of them would just go under and stay there until we had passed, but a few of them went out in to the river after we had passed and surfaced again.

Our Camp site on the third night. 

     Our final day had the most rapids. One of our boats capsized after going over one of the falls, but we were able to right it and get all the water out fairly quickly. From Google Earth, I knew our biggest rapids were near the end of our trip. There was a maze of islands, with rapids all the way through them. Either we were paddling hard, or the river was flowing extra fast, because we hit the spot hours before we thought we would, and did not realize it was the spot until we had successfully made it through. Just before we entered into them, we found a fisherman and asked him directions through the mess. He told us and we went for it. The channels were very narrow, fast, and had lots of branches hanging out. Just like in those amusement park rides where you are going down a river and never hit anything you are going straight for, the current and some skill on the paddlers’ part, gave me the same feeling.

All of the travelers at the final destination 

     Since Gamboula is right on the border, we crossed over, and paddled right to the mission’s turbine house. It was a fun adventure and great to be with all the Turk guys..  

Photos from the week 6/28/2014

I have new baby bunnies! There are only 5, but they all seem to be doing well. 

This week we also had a baby cow born at CEFA. It is not quite at the same cuteness level as the bunnies, but at a few days’ old its attempts to hop and play are pretty funny.  

Since there is no daycare here, often small kids follow their parents to work. Here is a little boy helping his dad move some beans around. 

We have 5 huge drying racks for beans and peanuts on the farm. The beans spend a few days up there before being taken down to make room for more. The dry ones are shelled and put into sacks. 

I was able to get half a sack of Moringa leaves from our moringa plot this week. The very nutritious leaves went to the nutrition center to help feed the malnourished kids.

One of Roy’s bat flowers has been blooming the last few days. Quite the unusual looking flower. 

Photos from the week 6/15/2014

We have many hectors of beans at Somongue and this week they started to be harvested. The seed will be dried and distributed to local farmers. 

This week we also harvested another field of higher yielding manioc. Each sack holds many cuttings that will also be distributed to villagers.  

This viper was eating a toad alongside Danforths’ porch. 

One week ago I was getting about 1 jack fruit a day from my tree. Last week it continued and one day I picked four. This week I got 9 on one day! Here are just 7 of them. All nine of them together weighed over 100 Lbs. The total for this week is 17

One of the nine was a really small one . A fun size jack fruit.  

I have been having fun taming and training this African gray parrot. This week I wrapped him in a towel to trim his wing fathers so he could not try to fly away. Unfortunately a few nights ago my house and yard where invaded by driver ants, and I did not make it in time to save him.

I have lost many hives to driver ants, and this morning they attacked the rabbits and Danforths’ house.

Photos from the week 6/8/2014

Narcisse is a young man from another part of the country where they raise bees in grass hives. It is only a one-time thing as the hive and the bees are destroyed when the honey is harvested. I asked him to make me a few hives, so that I can try to incorporate this kind of technology into my project. Try to find out how to transfer the bees to a real hive rather then kill them.

Saturday five of our local and national government heads came out for a tour of the farm. A few of them are new since the change of government, and seem to be really good guys. 

One of the men working at the farm discovered a bunch of edible caterpillars in a bush. 

Roy has been collecting different kinds of hibiscus and planting them out at Somongue. This week this beautiful orange with a red center bloomed for the first time. 

Photos from the week 6/1/2014 fruit edition

Here are a few of the fruits that came in to season this week around Gamboula and Somongue.

It seems the guavas here have multiple bumper crops a year! They are in season again now. No complaints there.

               

Bunchosia is also called peanut butter and jelly fruit, because it kind of tastes just like that. These small trees look like Christmas trees this time of year, loaded with green, orange, and red ornaments.  

Marang has a somewhat sweet but burnt rubbery smell when it is ripe. You can smell it a fair distance from the tree, so this is your clue to go searching for it. The outside of the fruit is hard and bristly, kind of like a sea urchin, while the inside is like a small jack fruit, but sweeter. 

Canastel, or egg fruit, taste like boiled sweat potato. They go bad very shortly after they fall from the tree, so you have to snatch them up quickly.  

This pretty looking fruit is a water apple. It is not as good as it looks, and is like eating slightly sweet styrofoam. 

Rose apples are small yellow fruit that smell like perfume. I think eating them is like eating perfume too. 

The jack fruit tree outside my house is loaded with fruit. This week I had 8 ripen! These also have a distinctive smell to them which alerts you that one is ripe. When you smell it, you climb up the tree in search of it.

Cumquats don’t really do great here, but this year there are a few. 

And I can’t leave out the ever present banana.

Photos from the week 5/25/2014

There are now many organizations distributing seed to farmers who have lost everything in the east of the country. No one is doing this in the west of the country except CEFA. 

Here is one of our fields that is planted in cola nuts. The ground cover is perennial peanut. It has smothered out all the weeds, and fixes nitrogen for the trees.  None of the original trees where cut out of the field, so there is a mix of wild trees in there too. Looks kind of like a park.  

This multiplication field was finally ready to harvest cuttings from. This is an improved variety of manioc from Uganda. The stems were cut into sections, and the cuttings were taken and distributed the villages we work with. This manioc grows faster, produces at least 3 times more than local types, and is disease resistant. 

There are countless fields around the farm planted in beans and peanuts. This is one with a peanut that produces higher yields. When they are harvested, the seed will be distributed to people in villages as well. 

Since it is swarm season, I put together a few small hives this week, in hopes that they would get moved in to. 

A hungry medium size spider looks longingly at a huge moth.

This is some kind of tree viper that got in the way of one of the guy’s machetes.