Seeds!

On my usual, (almost daily) trip to the Case Foyer de Femmes I make every morning I decided to switch up my normal routine. Usually I head to the Case, chat with my friend, Fall, chat with the directrice, Salimatu, hang out with the girls who go to school there, and sometimes I even try to instigate some future planning for formations there with Salimatu, which usually goes nowhere. But one morning last week, I did something quite different. In fact, you could say I even did some cross sector work. :) I, a small enterprise development volunteer, decided to collect seeds :) hahaha! It's kind of a joke around PC Senegal that SEDers aren't "really" volunteers because we usually live in bigger cities, have electricity, and fairly consistent access to wifi and good reseau unlike many village volunteers. But as a Peace Corps family, us volunteers share information and learn many different things from those working in different sectors.  I, for instance, learned from my neighbor Allyson, who is an AgroForestry volunteer, who primarily works with trees, that moringa seeds are ready for collection when the seed pods turn brown. 

So noticing that the Case Foyer de Femmes had 3 moringa trees with tons of brown seed pods, I decided to collect as many seeds as I could to give to Ally and contribute to our Kolda house seed bank, that way any volunteer in need of moringa seeds could just go to the seed bank and there would be plenty available. I spent a good amount of time shaking the trunks of trees to catch the falling seed pods, climbing the brick wall to try to get to the very high branches, and finally, (a trick I learned by watching Senegalese children), taking a large stick and hitting the pods off the middle branches of the trees that I couldn't quite reach even if I jumped.  It was quite hilarious because the pods would, oftentimes, break open and moringa seeds would fly out all over the ground like candy from a piñata, which I would happily pick up and put in my old oatmeal can :) It was a great morning!

On my seed collecting adventure, however, I stumbled across the most beautiful seeds I've ever seen! While waving my stick around in the air and hitting brown moringa pods off the branches, I accidentally hit a neighboring tree with larger pods causing one to fly off, and upon landing, burst open on the ground revealing 5 large Fuchsia colored seeds. I was taken aback by the exquisite beauty of these seeds.  Out of excitement of my new discovery I went to show my friend, Fall, and he explained to me that it is a seed that requires a lot of water, and he suggested I wait to plant them right before rainy season.  I happily continued to collect all the reachable seed pods off the tree because I was so excited about my beautiful new seeds that I found.

Some of the pretty seeds I collected

When I came home, I showed the seeds to my family.  I learned that the seeds are called "panté" in pulaar, and they grow into a flowery vine of yellow and green.  The plant sounds just as beautiful as the seeds! I also learned that pulaar kids like to collect the seeds sometimes in order to use them to play games, and local "witch doctors" (maribous) sometimes bless them and hand them out to people to protect from evil spirits.  I, personally, have never seen any seeds more beautiful than these! Before moving to Senegal, I never would have thought a day would come where I would get so much enjoyment from finding seeds.  They are just so exotic looking :)

Panté seeds