This blog is a product of my time served in The Gambia West Africa as a University of Alaska Fairbanks Masters International Agroforestry Peace Corps Volunteer. (Say that five times fast!). I am currently working towards writing my thesis on how forestry management and reforestation efforts can contribute to poverty reduction in sub-Saharan West Africa.
As a masters student, some of the most important skills to have include those of reading and writing. Time management is a good one also. Since returning from my Peace Corps service I've been working to support myself after two years of not reading or writing within an academic context. Writing a thesis, for those that haven't written one before, turns out to be a rather full time job itself.
Hence the blog. This blog will serve as a journal documenting the many papers I hope to read while pursuing life and other careers to encourage my reading and writing practices (because like any skill, the more you work towards it, the better you get). In some posts, I'll try to be more scientific citing things here and there in an MLA or APA fashion, perhaps. But for the most part this will be a venue to encourage free writing. I'll let the thesis be restrictive to my voice but want this blog to allow me free reign to voice thoughts and opinions without always having to have cited "proof."
Why the title? In West Africa, Acacia trees are some of the most common as well as some of the most important trees (observed opinion) growing in sandy loamy nutrient-depleted soil. The Sahara dessert is encroaching at an ever increasing rate turning soil into sand expediting desertification, deforestation, and drought.
One of the most successful approaches to the planting and promoting of tree planting that I discovered as a volunteer during my time (2012-2014) was through the encouragement of non-timber forestry products or NTFPs (also known as non-wood forest products or NWFPs). In the rural area I served, the NTFP that we promoted was honey.
In The Gambia, honey is a rare commodity. It wasn't a common staple in peoples "pantry's." But it was harvested and sold in markets. Only it had a rather smokey taste. This is because more people knew to harvest honey by lighting the hive on fire, killing hundreds or thousands of bees, and damaging the quality of the honey.
A non-government organization (NGO), Bee Cause, was established in The Gambia by one of our Peace Corps Environment Program Manager Assistants and other Peace Corps Affiliates. This organization served to promote best practice training for Gambians interested in learning about how to "keep bees" versus "kill bees" to harvest grade-A quality honey.
Long story short, I worked with two community members in my village, my small father or uncle, Baay Malick, and another host relative (everyone in my community was related somehow), Seidu Malick. They established two Kenya Top Bar (KTB) hives and produced over ten liters of grade-A quality honey since last I checked with them.
The discussion of honey in the town got people excited. Honey is another means to earn money plus it's very tasty. At first, our hives were dry for quite some time. It took 6 or 8 months before we had a decent harvest. As we waited, people kept asking me where the honey was and why it was taking so long. I explained that the bees were hungry too (we lived in a severely food-insecure village), and that if they had more trees, they could make more honey. Of the 250 some residents in the community I lived in, worked in, and served, maybe three or four of them got really excited about bee keeping. (One or two people were actually quite terrified of bees and upset that I brought them there to the village). Of those 250 some residents, half to more than half were under 18. These men that were interested were the ones that had some of the best farming and agricultural knowledge and skills already.
As I prepared to leave my then home of two years, all they could talk about was all the trees they wanted to plant to encourage more bees so they could have more honey and thus more money.
Hence the thorny trees and dusty bees. Acacias are often thorny, the desert is encroaching, and bees are a critical component to healthy forests. The "dusty bees" part of the title is also perhaps a bit symbolic of the idea that bees are dying out or are often an after thought if thought of at all in relation to forests and tree planting.
The first paper I will be summarizing is from the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO) entitled State of the worlds forests: enhancing the socioeconomic benefits from forests, 2014.
I thought this would be a good starting point. As I get deeper into my research I will try to narrow the focus of my articles, as much as possible, to forestry management and practice in sub-Saharan West Africa or at least to management practices of arid and semi-arid dry forests.
This blog can serve as a resource to fellow researches and students. I will try to provide links to the papers I reference whenever possible. But keep in mind, my summations of my findings and reactions to what I read should not be cited as my writing and insight are not peer-reviewed or intended to be purely factual and scientific. I want to stress again that this is simply a public journal to document and organize my thoughts on the papers I read that may or may not go into the thesis I write.
I hope that by the end of the blog I can post a link to the completed thesis. The ultimate hope is that some of my chapters will be published, perhaps in some of the journals that I review. I don't expect a large audience for this blog as it's mostly personal but for those that do happen to stray upon it, I hope you enjoy the contents and can take away with you the main message which is that we depend and rely entirely on a healthy environment in order for us ourselves to thrive. With out healthy ecosystems there are no ecosystem services such as clean water, clean air, healthy and nutritious food, or materials for fuel and shelter. Cultures and peoples all over the world depend on trees. Some more directly than others. Trees provide far more than shade and aesthetics and I hope that all the work that people are doing towards reforestation and sustainable forestry management are able to achieve success in the best of ways.
Want to start your adventure in agroforestry? You can start by learning the names of the trees in your neighborhood. Ask people for their local knowledge about their uses and history in the community. Some trees in The Gambia for instance were burned to a crisp amidst a healthy forest. Some people claimed that a powerful witch was trapped in the tree and then burned in order to kill its spirit. There's perhaps a lot less of those kinds of stories in the United States but we house or used to house some amazing forests full of interesting and incredible stories.
A fun project idea for students of any age could be to survey your neighborhood or community about the names of trees in your area, their uses, which ones they like or dislike and why, their interaction with trees- do they plant them or cut them down, harvest anything from them for what purpose, or take care of them in any way through composting or fertilizer or by keeping bees? Simple questions like those are what got me started.
I hope that readers will enjoy and that my passion and love for trees and this planet may seep if even a wee bit into those that view this blog and/or the other links and references I share. Enjoy your day. Be happy. And give thanks to your arbor friends.
As a masters student, some of the most important skills to have include those of reading and writing. Time management is a good one also. Since returning from my Peace Corps service I've been working to support myself after two years of not reading or writing within an academic context. Writing a thesis, for those that haven't written one before, turns out to be a rather full time job itself.
Hence the blog. This blog will serve as a journal documenting the many papers I hope to read while pursuing life and other careers to encourage my reading and writing practices (because like any skill, the more you work towards it, the better you get). In some posts, I'll try to be more scientific citing things here and there in an MLA or APA fashion, perhaps. But for the most part this will be a venue to encourage free writing. I'll let the thesis be restrictive to my voice but want this blog to allow me free reign to voice thoughts and opinions without always having to have cited "proof."
Why the title? In West Africa, Acacia trees are some of the most common as well as some of the most important trees (observed opinion) growing in sandy loamy nutrient-depleted soil. The Sahara dessert is encroaching at an ever increasing rate turning soil into sand expediting desertification, deforestation, and drought.
One of the most successful approaches to the planting and promoting of tree planting that I discovered as a volunteer during my time (2012-2014) was through the encouragement of non-timber forestry products or NTFPs (also known as non-wood forest products or NWFPs). In the rural area I served, the NTFP that we promoted was honey.
In The Gambia, honey is a rare commodity. It wasn't a common staple in peoples "pantry's." But it was harvested and sold in markets. Only it had a rather smokey taste. This is because more people knew to harvest honey by lighting the hive on fire, killing hundreds or thousands of bees, and damaging the quality of the honey.
A non-government organization (NGO), Bee Cause, was established in The Gambia by one of our Peace Corps Environment Program Manager Assistants and other Peace Corps Affiliates. This organization served to promote best practice training for Gambians interested in learning about how to "keep bees" versus "kill bees" to harvest grade-A quality honey.
Long story short, I worked with two community members in my village, my small father or uncle, Baay Malick, and another host relative (everyone in my community was related somehow), Seidu Malick. They established two Kenya Top Bar (KTB) hives and produced over ten liters of grade-A quality honey since last I checked with them.
In this photo Baay Malick and Seidu Malick (from left to right) are constructing a KTB at a Bee Cause training.
The discussion of honey in the town got people excited. Honey is another means to earn money plus it's very tasty. At first, our hives were dry for quite some time. It took 6 or 8 months before we had a decent harvest. As we waited, people kept asking me where the honey was and why it was taking so long. I explained that the bees were hungry too (we lived in a severely food-insecure village), and that if they had more trees, they could make more honey. Of the 250 some residents in the community I lived in, worked in, and served, maybe three or four of them got really excited about bee keeping. (One or two people were actually quite terrified of bees and upset that I brought them there to the village). Of those 250 some residents, half to more than half were under 18. These men that were interested were the ones that had some of the best farming and agricultural knowledge and skills already.
Completed KTB in Seidu Malick's garden in Jimbala, The Gambia.
Baay Malick is hanging a catcher box in a deembu or bush mango tree (you can tell by the distinctive bark). This box will attract the bees with the scented wax which they will then transfer into the KTB.
Baay Malick and myself working on a rounded grass hive at Bee Cause headquarters in Banjul, The Gambia.
As I prepared to leave my then home of two years, all they could talk about was all the trees they wanted to plant to encourage more bees so they could have more honey and thus more money.
Hence the thorny trees and dusty bees. Acacias are often thorny, the desert is encroaching, and bees are a critical component to healthy forests. The "dusty bees" part of the title is also perhaps a bit symbolic of the idea that bees are dying out or are often an after thought if thought of at all in relation to forests and tree planting.
The first paper I will be summarizing is from the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO) entitled State of the worlds forests: enhancing the socioeconomic benefits from forests, 2014.
I thought this would be a good starting point. As I get deeper into my research I will try to narrow the focus of my articles, as much as possible, to forestry management and practice in sub-Saharan West Africa or at least to management practices of arid and semi-arid dry forests.
This blog can serve as a resource to fellow researches and students. I will try to provide links to the papers I reference whenever possible. But keep in mind, my summations of my findings and reactions to what I read should not be cited as my writing and insight are not peer-reviewed or intended to be purely factual and scientific. I want to stress again that this is simply a public journal to document and organize my thoughts on the papers I read that may or may not go into the thesis I write.
I hope that by the end of the blog I can post a link to the completed thesis. The ultimate hope is that some of my chapters will be published, perhaps in some of the journals that I review. I don't expect a large audience for this blog as it's mostly personal but for those that do happen to stray upon it, I hope you enjoy the contents and can take away with you the main message which is that we depend and rely entirely on a healthy environment in order for us ourselves to thrive. With out healthy ecosystems there are no ecosystem services such as clean water, clean air, healthy and nutritious food, or materials for fuel and shelter. Cultures and peoples all over the world depend on trees. Some more directly than others. Trees provide far more than shade and aesthetics and I hope that all the work that people are doing towards reforestation and sustainable forestry management are able to achieve success in the best of ways.
Want to start your adventure in agroforestry? You can start by learning the names of the trees in your neighborhood. Ask people for their local knowledge about their uses and history in the community. Some trees in The Gambia for instance were burned to a crisp amidst a healthy forest. Some people claimed that a powerful witch was trapped in the tree and then burned in order to kill its spirit. There's perhaps a lot less of those kinds of stories in the United States but we house or used to house some amazing forests full of interesting and incredible stories.
A fun project idea for students of any age could be to survey your neighborhood or community about the names of trees in your area, their uses, which ones they like or dislike and why, their interaction with trees- do they plant them or cut them down, harvest anything from them for what purpose, or take care of them in any way through composting or fertilizer or by keeping bees? Simple questions like those are what got me started.
I hope that readers will enjoy and that my passion and love for trees and this planet may seep if even a wee bit into those that view this blog and/or the other links and references I share. Enjoy your day. Be happy. And give thanks to your arbor friends.
Featured is a Neem tree, a highly invasive tree brought over from India for timber. It does extremely well in The Gambia. It produces a toxin that allows this tree to easily take over where other trees have been established. While some ecologists say invasive trees never have a place in environments, much of The Gambia wouldn't be forested if it weren't for this tree as in some places, all you see are Neem trees (Janjanburreh Island in The Gambia, for example). I agree that local trees should be promoted as much as possible and would not promote Neem trees myself but was happy we had one in our compound since it provided shade and really is a rather beautiful tree.
The two photos featured above were taken in Senegal. Senegal is far more desertified than the South Bank of The Gambia. The trees shown are likely egyptian thorn or Acacia Nilotica trees.
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