Let's Plant Some Trees!

Today, I had an unusual assignment. One of the volunteers in the Kindia region is a agroforestry volunteer. His village has suffered from rampant deforestation and one of his projects is to plant trees at all of the surrounding schools. The trees will filter the air, provide much needed shade, and will help educate the students about environmental sustainability. In other words, it is a great project. One of the trees that he wants to plant is the flamboyant tree. It is beautiful and full of red flowers. We have a few of them in Kindia, so he asked me to go collect seeds for him. Of course I was not going to climb up into a tree and pick the seed pods off, so I did it the African way. I got some petits to do it for me. I felt like such a creep, waiting under a tree for a boy who looked big enough to climb, but small enough to not break the branches to walk by. A perfect one passed me and I called him over. “Would you please climb this tree and fill my bag with seeds? I’ll give you some money”. Of course he would. Petits here are constant errand boys. He would have done it for nothing. He scaled the tree quickly and easily and within 10 minutes had pulled enough pods down to fill my bag. I paid him and started walking back towards town thinking about how happy he would be to buy some bonbons or some other treat. I heard him call out “Salematou, Salematou. Attend!” I waited for him to catch up. He asked me if it was enough for him to buy a notebook. He had nothing to take his notes in at school. I told him that it was and he ran off happily. Whenever I get frustrated about this country (see last post), I have to remember that for every youth who is going to grow up and keep the cycle of graft going, there are many more like this boy who have the foresight to spend his money on preparing for the future.