Hey Hey Hey
The title of this blog reflects the fact that I have absolutely nothing to write about so I'm going to just start typing and see what happens. I guess I feel I owe it to my audience however small to update since its been a few weeks at this point.
Looking back at the last entry it appears that I'm a little crazy about cashew fruit. Not much has changed on that front and the cashew season has just started so the forecast is not good if your tired of that topic. I have started making cashew wine. In true bush wine fashion the first batch was made win only the juice from the cashew fruit. I went down to the market a few weeks back and bought two piles of fruit (about 2 Kilos) for 10 Dalasi (about 40 cents) and smashed them all up with a coffee cup when I got home to get the juice out. This yields almost 2 liters of juice. I wanted to use the natural sugar and yeast in the juice so I didn't add anything. I let that ferment for a couple days which from what I was told was long enough. Well with much fan fair we broke it out on the third day and started drinking. Wasn't wine. We drank it all anyway because it was so good. Round two started about 2 weeks ago. I did the same thing pretty much, still didn't add any yeast but did add some extra sugar and this time I up a balloon over the top of the container with a pin hole in it to release the pressure. This gave it an anaerobic environment in which to ferment. It took about a day for the fermentation to get rocking but then it came on with full force. It sat in the corner of the room bubbling away for the last two weeks and Lydia and I tried one of the bottles last night. Definitely wine! Strong Wine! So I have successfully made my first bush wine. I think I will try again sometime without adding even the sugar to see how it goes. Pretty amazing that you can just squeeze the juice out of some fruit and let it sit for a few weeks and all of a sudden you have wine.
The next few weeks I will be in Peace Corps IST (in service training). Each sector within peace corps has their own IST which last a week but since I'm working in two sectors Environmental and Education I am going to two ISTs. This coming weeks Environment IST will be the most fun probably. We will be working on Beekeeping related techniques which I might be helping with some of the training on that and later in the week we will be working on tree nursery management, fruit tree grafting, and various Argo Forest skills. I'm looking forward to that part since I haven't done much work in that area and we are starting up our tree nursery at the beekeepers soon hopefully. There will be Peace Corps volunteers from all over W. Africa coming to attend the Environment IST so it will be fun to meet those people. The Education IST is the week after next and will be slightly less exciting since most of the material will probably not relate to my work. Anyway it will be nice to catch up with all the people in our group and I'm sure I will gain something out of the workshops.
I took my counterpart from the college fishing last weekend. He said he hadn't been fishing since he was a kid so he borrowed a bicycle from his friend and we road out to the river. We caught four catfish which my host family cooked up and were delicious. Im hoping to get some more interesting catches some day here but its still nice just to hang out down by the river and catch anything. Rumor has it that there are some monster fish in The Gambia river but thus far they have eluded me.
For any of those nice people out there that have sent us packages. First off, thank you. If we haven't told you we got them or we've told you specifically that we haven't gotten them you cant actually worry until its been 12 months from the time of shipping. That's the new rule. We just got three boxes of Christmas presents from Lydia's folks that were sent in November. Nothing like Christmas in April. They were shipped 6 months ago and as far as we can tell from the stamps and tags on the boxes they somehow ended up in Johannesburg, South Africa for awhile and then maybe whet back to the states for a bit until they were sent from New York to Belgium and then finally to The Gambia. We have actually heard stories of packages arriving a year or more after shipping.
Ok that's enough rambling for now. Hope everybody is enjoying the beginning of spring back in the states. We have enjoyed a few days of relative cool lately but its getting into the hot part of the year and we shall soon suffer. To quote one PC Volunteer who was trying to convey how hot it gets to a newly arrived volunteer "It gets so hot (dramatic pause) you want to f*$!ing die!" I don't know about that but just don't stray too far from a source of water.
Looking back at the last entry it appears that I'm a little crazy about cashew fruit. Not much has changed on that front and the cashew season has just started so the forecast is not good if your tired of that topic. I have started making cashew wine. In true bush wine fashion the first batch was made win only the juice from the cashew fruit. I went down to the market a few weeks back and bought two piles of fruit (about 2 Kilos) for 10 Dalasi (about 40 cents) and smashed them all up with a coffee cup when I got home to get the juice out. This yields almost 2 liters of juice. I wanted to use the natural sugar and yeast in the juice so I didn't add anything. I let that ferment for a couple days which from what I was told was long enough. Well with much fan fair we broke it out on the third day and started drinking. Wasn't wine. We drank it all anyway because it was so good. Round two started about 2 weeks ago. I did the same thing pretty much, still didn't add any yeast but did add some extra sugar and this time I up a balloon over the top of the container with a pin hole in it to release the pressure. This gave it an anaerobic environment in which to ferment. It took about a day for the fermentation to get rocking but then it came on with full force. It sat in the corner of the room bubbling away for the last two weeks and Lydia and I tried one of the bottles last night. Definitely wine! Strong Wine! So I have successfully made my first bush wine. I think I will try again sometime without adding even the sugar to see how it goes. Pretty amazing that you can just squeeze the juice out of some fruit and let it sit for a few weeks and all of a sudden you have wine.
The next few weeks I will be in Peace Corps IST (in service training). Each sector within peace corps has their own IST which last a week but since I'm working in two sectors Environmental and Education I am going to two ISTs. This coming weeks Environment IST will be the most fun probably. We will be working on Beekeeping related techniques which I might be helping with some of the training on that and later in the week we will be working on tree nursery management, fruit tree grafting, and various Argo Forest skills. I'm looking forward to that part since I haven't done much work in that area and we are starting up our tree nursery at the beekeepers soon hopefully. There will be Peace Corps volunteers from all over W. Africa coming to attend the Environment IST so it will be fun to meet those people. The Education IST is the week after next and will be slightly less exciting since most of the material will probably not relate to my work. Anyway it will be nice to catch up with all the people in our group and I'm sure I will gain something out of the workshops.
I took my counterpart from the college fishing last weekend. He said he hadn't been fishing since he was a kid so he borrowed a bicycle from his friend and we road out to the river. We caught four catfish which my host family cooked up and were delicious. Im hoping to get some more interesting catches some day here but its still nice just to hang out down by the river and catch anything. Rumor has it that there are some monster fish in The Gambia river but thus far they have eluded me.
For any of those nice people out there that have sent us packages. First off, thank you. If we haven't told you we got them or we've told you specifically that we haven't gotten them you cant actually worry until its been 12 months from the time of shipping. That's the new rule. We just got three boxes of Christmas presents from Lydia's folks that were sent in November. Nothing like Christmas in April. They were shipped 6 months ago and as far as we can tell from the stamps and tags on the boxes they somehow ended up in Johannesburg, South Africa for awhile and then maybe whet back to the states for a bit until they were sent from New York to Belgium and then finally to The Gambia. We have actually heard stories of packages arriving a year or more after shipping.
Ok that's enough rambling for now. Hope everybody is enjoying the beginning of spring back in the states. We have enjoyed a few days of relative cool lately but its getting into the hot part of the year and we shall soon suffer. To quote one PC Volunteer who was trying to convey how hot it gets to a newly arrived volunteer "It gets so hot (dramatic pause) you want to f*$!ing die!" I don't know about that but just don't stray too far from a source of water.
posted by Andy at
4:56 AM
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