Moringa, the Miracle Tree!

Throughout training as Env/Health volunteers we were fed a few key buzz-word projects that are our go-to work in all communities of Senegal. Among the maternal and child health, malaria work or general health infrastructure sessions we learned about the Moringa tree, also known as a "miracle tree" in the developing world due to its many nutritional properties and uses. They really sold it to us: It's full of vitamins and nutrients and is fairly easy to add to the diet: people can eat the leaves, either in leaf sauce or by drying it to make powder that you can put in any dish. Besides it's incredible nutritional composition, we could use the tree for everything! Live fencing; wind-breaks; alley-cropping... Lesson was: plant moringa, it's good for the soil and the people! Don't believe such an amazing tree exists? Read the wiki on Moringa for further info.

At first I was quite skeptical.. how can this one tree be so magical? Upon tasting the fresh leaves-- peppery, almost arugula-like--I started to cave.. I can get on board with a substitute for my favorite salad base. Then (being academically trained in human-environment interactions) I thought about the consequences of planting moringa everywhere.. Is it local? No, it's native to Northern India. Additionally, it's a drought-resistant species that is actually called "Nebedai" in local languages because the British colonists in The Gambia called it "Never die".. sounds like a possibly invasive species. So I remained uncertain about the seemingly wonderful tree.

But as I've been living in the desert for the past year I've realized one thing... I live in a sandy wasteland. There are very very few trees, and the only ones that are around usually have thorns. I've come to the conclusion, that in the Sahel, any living tree is better than no tree. And given it's drought-resistant qualities, it seems like a tree that can hack it in the Sahel. So I've started planting Moringa. Why not? Most people are willing to eat it; we already eat leaf sauce for dinner every night, but it's currently being made out of the more readily available bean leaves. And even we do nothing with these trees but keep them alive, that will be an environmental improvement in and of itself... things will actually look green.

I've started at my village's primary school. Working with the mothers of primary school children, the children themselves and any one else around to help, I've direct-seeded Moringa around the perimeter of the school. So far we've planted about 25 trees (all were sprouted and alive when I left village a few days ago... keeping my fingers crossed that they're still getting watered without my watchful presence in village..). As people see and get excited about these initial sproutlings, we will continue around the rest of the school, hopefully planting up to 100+ trees. I'll keep you posted on how this works out, but here's the progress so far:

Rice sack tree protectors. Necessary for high goat traffic.

Digging the protectors

And they've sprouted!

Hello, Moringa!