Right now two hours of the day are spent on Agro-Forestry and Alternative Livelihood Facilitating training. (Such a large title, when none of us going into this had any idea what it truly meant.) In Ghana soil erosion, and depleted nutrient content of the soil are two huge factors effecting the Environment here. Ghanaians are also cutting down precious trees to replace them with crops or burn for fuel. So in part, all the Peace Corps Environment Volunteers were brought in to help educate the Ghanaians on how to rebuild their soil, stop soil erosion, plant crops that can grow in the forests, education of trees that have nutritional leaves to give more nutrients to the nutritiously deprived children, possibly educated Ghanaians on more efficient ways to grow their own crops, help build more fuel efficient stoves that use less wood, and come up with any other project that is considered ‘Alternative Livelihood’ … such as food storage and latrine composting.

Training started off with planting our own tree nursery, putting in a garden, and building a fuel-efficient stove. At our ‘nursery’ (I use the word ‘nursery’ lightly, because there are no greenhouses and no irrigation, rather some bags filled with soil, a seed placed somewhere in there, put in a line and then watered… hummmm, but no worries we were told that this is how all trees in Ghana are started…) we have three different kinds of trees growing (I do hope that they actually grow). Our group of 15 divided and conquered as some rebuilt the fence around the ‘nursery,’ some filled the bags with soil and others planted the seeds.

Word spread throughout the village like wildfire that all the ‘obronis’ were hard at work. The crowds started gathering around making us feel like we were the newest exhibit at the Addonkwanta Zoo, pointing and laughing as we tried using a machete… (I guess we were a sight to see). The little kids were trying to show us the right way to dig a hole, weed, and prep the soil all with using a machete… (pretty sweet)

Us environment kids (the other sectors in PC are already calling us dirty hippies) started our garden next… turning the soil, building three raised beds and then planting the seeds. We planted tomatoes, peppers, and okra. In Ghana there is a fear of animals coming in and eating the seeds as well as the soil drying out… so we covered our beds with palm tree branches, gave them a good drink and now we are letting nature do its part… we’ll see what happens.