Preparing to trade the Sub-Arctic for Sub-Sahara

It's snowing. It's beautiful right now in Fairbanks. The temperatures have been graciously staying above zero as the sun shines just a bit longer with each passing day. As the minutes of daylight expand, my time in this sub-Arctic winter wonderland runs out.

My 65 liter baby blue Osprey pack is empty. Stuff sacks as well as the stuff that goes inside are strewn across the floor and have stubbornly been sitting for almost a week now. The piles move slowly around the room preparing themselves for finding the most appropriate conformation inside the pack.

I've been able to track the weather in Banjul, the capital of The Gambia using the Firefox add-on Forecastfox. According to the add-on, temperatures drop to the upper sixties in the evening after being in the low to mid ninety's in the day. I recall feeling chilly in the shade in eighty degree weather when I lived in Phoenix. After living in AK for over a year and a half, I can't believe that I used to be one of those Phoenicians that would dawn on a puffy coat in the winter at fifty above. Fifty above here would make you want to put your shorts and tank top on (in the winter that is)! I wonder if I'll re-acclimate to the temperatures in Sub-Saharan Africa and if I should re-consider adding a few more warmer layers to the stack of tropical clothes that consist namely of cotton T-shirts, light khaki and linen pants, some cotton skirts, and running shorts. Either way I'm happy to leave the puffy jacket at home, along with the winter boots, puffy mittens, faux-fur hat, and lined Carhartt overalls.

I signed up for the Peace Corps two years ago in 2010. Seeing how I'll come home in the Summer of 2014, it seems as if it's really a four year commitment. I was completely unattached to anyone or any geographic region when I joined. Though I know an amazing and most wonderful life changing adventure awaits me on the other end of the 36 odd hour flight from DC to Dakar, it's still difficult to say goodbye, especially when you've fallen for a place and those that live there.

But I have faith that Fairbanks in all it's quirkiness will still be here in 27 months time, even in our ever changing world. If anything maybe Bernie Karl will really start utilizing his stocks of recyclables turning mixed paper into briquettes that generate as much BTU's as coal (British thermal unit used to measure energy) for running his recycling plant. Glass will be crushed at UAF and at Karl's site to use as silica, agriculture, and horticulture sand, and plastic will be turned back into the oil that it came from to run motor vehicles. And maybe the experiment with the cold climate housing research center to use aluminum in cement will take off and an industry for aluminum will appear in Fairbanks so that that can be recycled and re-used locally as well.

Maybe Alaska Waste will change there policy of being paid per tonnage of trash and start entering the recycling game so that there is more incentive to reduce waste and thus landfill fill. And hopefully the compost project in the Cutler apartments will gain in popularity to become customary in all dorms and campus housing. Perhaps when I come back there will even be a place to compost tea bags, coffee grounds, and food waste around campus to add to the huge piles hidden somewhere in the forest which are used as fertilizer for all the garden beds on campus in the Summer.

A girl can dream. What I'll leave behind in The Gambia though is something I can barely imagine. It seems surreal that in less than a week my entire world will change for a significant amount of time. So much so that when I finally make it back up to the northern latitude it will all seem like a dream.

Here's to dreaming and to seeing those dreams come true. Enjoy the fresh snow, the re-awakening sun, and the northern lights! What a magical place to be able to miss, and what a magical place to go to. Here I come Gambia, hope you're ready (and that I am too)!

A taste of PC in AF/TG (a 32 min video)

The Baobab

Banto Faros and mangroves make up the mangrove swamp forests at the mouth of the Gambian River. I wanted my blog to be called The Baobab (featured right) as Baobab trees (Adansonia digitata) are one of the tree species in the region, as well as one of my favorite trees also featured in one of my favorite books The Little Prince (highly recommended good read!), but it wasn't avaialble. The Baobab trees are (according to my trusty source, wikipedia) typically found on old beaches higher in elevation than the coast.

The Gambia has very sparse forest cover. Of the trees that I could find there are: The Ron Palm (Borassus aethiopum), the Silk Cotton tree (Bomboax costatum), Mahogany tree (Khaya Senagalensis), African Rosewood (Guibourtia coleosperma), and the Mango tree (Mangifera indica).

The geography of the savannah and sahel regions have gallery forests or moisture forests where trees rely on ground water, opposed to rainforests where, rain, supplies the vegetation it's water.

Land degradation and deforestation lead to desertification and drought which are exacerbated by, that's right I'll say it, climate change. Desertification and drought are some of the major threats facing The Gambia and other regions of the Savannah and Sahel landscapes. One of the best ways to fight desertification is to plant trees. Desertification is basically the absence of ground water where ground water is stored in vegetation. Introducing more vegetation and namely more trees can help incredibly. But this is a difficult task when coupled with drought, poverty, and lack of resources.