Why Don't You Have Any Trees? An Essay

Trees are not a bad thing, and shade is always welcome when it's hot

 

This blog post is a departure and not directly about our travel adventures, but more about taking a look at the belief systems and culture in West Africa. Of course, we don’t want to make the mistake of lumping all of Africa together. It’s a large and diverse continent with many religions and cultures. West Africa is much different than southern Africa, or the north which is mostly Arabic. 

But it's surprising how superstition is such a big part of their daily lives and what they believe. I was surprised on our last trip there how many people use superstition or old wives tales or rules of thumb or "traditional ways of thinking" (or whatever you want to call it) to justify their activities. Sometimes you run smack into these superstitions when trying to make a point or achieve something.

I need to give you an example. We are very active in developing market gardens to enable the locals in the villages in Senegal to grow not only enough nutritious food to eat, but also to generate enough surplus to sell. It has enhanced their quality of life and standard of living.

We have encouraged them to plant trees in the gardens and for some reason we get a lot of resistance to this idea. Keep in mind that this region is extraordinarily hot much of the time and the ground is flat and dry and hard. Trees would provide not only needed shade, but fruit and other benefits, and they don’t require much maintenance. Once they’re started, they grow on their own.

Based on the above description of the landscape, it can look desolate and barren, so trees help aesthetically to add life and green vegetation and variety and attract bees and butterflies and so on. All good.

We have tried to get them to plant more trees, without success. And to our dismay (see below), they even cut down or cut back the few existing trees that already exist!   Why? When we asked this question, we got vague answers like “well, you know ...” or “the shade blocked the sun for the vegetables” or “so-and-so did it, not me.” Hunh?

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Another brief example: When we tried to get them to plant watermelons in the gardens, they balked. Why? Because watermelons don’t grow in a garden - they grow in a field. Everybody knows this, they said. We tried to explain (in that climate) watermelons grow wherever you plant them. 

At this point, there are still no watermelons in the gardens. 

 

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Let me debunk one concern - that the trees block the sun. In this region of Senegal, the sun is blistering hot for much of the year. It is very dry and often windy, which sucks the moisture out of anything (including people!). Because it is so dry, much of our effort goes into providing a reliable source of water year round to make gardens possible.

To fear that there is not enough sun is just not realistic. It shines all day long and the temperature often run well over 100 degrees. When we were there last month it was 108 degrees. The heat and sun can be brutal, even for the locals who are used to it. They usually take the afternoon off (like a siesta) because it’s too darn hot to work.

So to be concerned about trees blocking the sun simply doesn’t hold water (pardon the pun). In fact the opposite is true, the shade produced by the trees can protect the plants and help them hold moisture. In many hot regions of the world, they use fabric mesh to block the harsh sunlight and give sensitive plants a better chance to grow. And there is so much sunlight that the ambient light even in the shade is more than enough. And the sun moves across the sky obviously, so the shade is somewhat temporary. In short, trees are not a bad thing, you need trees!

Despite all this evidence and reason, they are still resistant. This is where superstition or belief systems come into play. It is difficult for reason to prevail when there are such deep seated “feelings” or cultural beliefs about something.

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So we talked about planting more trees and they said the shade of the trees would affect their Gardens. Then they said the trees would take too much water (they don’t because their roots are much deeper than the vegetables). Then they would drag their feet and just not do it.

We said we would pay for the trees (they don’t cost much). We tried to explain that trees wouldn’t be much of a problem. It would benefit the plants, cool things off, plus if you put in the right kind of tree you can have fruit - mangoes, papayas, lemons, limes, bananas, etc. - almost year round.  You don’t have to keep planting them like vegetables and they take very little maintenance once they are established. We’re not talking about an orchard here, just a few trees here and there.

Not only that, but guess where the ladies hang out when they’re working in the garden and they get too hot and want to take a break?  Under the trees, in the shade - if they have any.

So we were surprised when they were still resistant and reluctant to plant more trees. We even pointed out that we went to visit several other Gardens with lots of trees and they were doing fine - even thriving. It seems a little bit of shade actually helps provide some relief from the relentless brutal heat and searing sun.

We investigate it further and ... it turns out that some of them said that they believe that trees bring shade and a wind which would bring disease and illness. What? You mean like Bad Luck? They seemed to be serious. We are always careful to not directly confront or dismiss any of their beliefs, but this was a surprise. We were just stunned. Do they actually think this? Or maybe they’re just making up an excuse? We’d never heard this before. Sounds like a bunch of mumbo jumbo.

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At one point the next day, we were traveling around with a Senegalese professional, an educated man who helps design and install the solar panels to pump water in the gardens. He turned to me and asked, why aren’t there more trees in the gardens? I felt like hugging him! We talked about our frustration in getting them to plant more. I told him about their “beliefs” and he rolled his eyes. It’s nonsense, he said.

He has experience in many other gardens and said even from a simple economic standpoint trees produce fruit year round that you can sell in the slow season. And many trees provide herbs and medicine.

I asked him to explain this to our garden team. Being Senegalese, he spoke their language, and went on to explain to them the benefits of trees in the garden. When he asked them why they didn’t have more trees, they looked down, shuffled their feet, and didn’t make eye contact.

When gentle persuasion doesn’t work, you have to use stronger persuasion (force?) so we gave them a directive:  we want more trees and we will pay for them. It doesn’t cost much. In fact we bought some trees before, but they haven’t been planted yet. Stay tuned. 

What? You are cutting the few trees we have?

You can see the trees in the back that have been chopped and defoliated

 

In closing, I will describe another episode that illuminated the lack of worth they attribute to trees. One of our newer project sites is blessed with a whole bunch of existing trees. Indeed, this property has the most trees in the entire village. Trees take a while to grow in this harsh climate and you need to take care of them - they are valuable.

When we arrived to the site on our trip, we were horrified to see that the trees had been cut. Not cut down (Thank God) but severely hacked and butchered. What’s this? “Oh, some guy always comes along and cuts the trees back every year and so we let him do it”. What? Who? And how is he cutting them? Turns out he is using a machete and just climbs in the tree to just hack and whack without much reason or rhyme. And he is not even a local, he is one of several nomadic cow herders ... who cut the trees to feed their cows!

Frankly, we were rather outraged. This is madness! Who gave them permission to cut the trees? Again, this was met with shuffling of feet and staring off into the distance, no comment. They realized we were upset and didn’t want to take responsibility.

At any rate, we told them this needs to stop. This is not even a local villager, just some guy passing through. Tell him no more cutting of trees. “Okay ...,” they sort of reluctantly agreed.

Senegalese are rather indirect at times and avoid confrontation in social situations.

Much to our astonishment the cow guy shows up the next day while we were there, and asks one of our crew if he can cut the trees. Our crew member says “sure, no problem”.  They talk quietly and we don’t understand this exchange in their local language.

Soon we hear the guy hacking on the trees. What the ... ? Are you kidding me? We are incredulous when we see what is happening. Didn’t we just have a long conversation about not cutting the trees? 

Were we not clear about this?

And again our staff members are slightly mortified. They are torn between their cultural sympathy for the nomadic cow herders, and the directive from the “management”. One of our guys slowly wanders over to the tree butcher and tells him he has to stop. The guy wonders why and our staff member embarrassingly shrugs and points at us. The tree hacker climbs out of the tree, and goes off the property ... to a nearby tree, and starts hacking on that one.

Culturally, it seems to be accepted that you let nomads cut on your trees. But trees are too hard to come by.  Go feed your cows on grass or something else.

Lesson learned ... the hard way.  It's hard to believe ... what they actually believe.