Green is the colour

As we look out from the hospital our part of the Sahel is a verdant green colour, you can see it on Google earth if you like, the image is from this time last year. Green is the colour but it won’t last ; the 4 month rainy season is coming to an end and we will soon be in the 8 month of dryness and all the low vegetation will be eaten by the livestock or catch fire and burn leaving the desert like baked mud that we saw when we first arrived. Every tree is precious in order to maintain the fertility of the ground and avoid true desertification and as such wood burning is actively discouraged by the government and instead they do something quite amazing, they subsidise the small bottles of gas for the simple gas burners of the poor whilst the larger bottles that we need for our fridge and cooker are actually more expensive per kilogram of gas. Robin Hood would be proud of the policy on two
accounts.

There was a conference in N’djamena June 2010 where they planned the creation of a 15km wide ‘Great wall of trees’ (BBC news 17/06/10) to block the advance of the Sahara. Seems like a good idea, apart from the big traffic jams caused by having 10 heads of state here at the same time

Sometimes it seems like we as BMS Mission partners not doing our bit to help, emitting greenhouse gasses as we fly around the world, and a couple of weeks ago setting an recruitment test for 200 nurses and midwives that used what I hope was imported sustainable forest or recycled paper or we’re done for. Adding another couple of degrees to the usual 45C and occasional midday peaks of 50C of the hot season would finish us off.


So we are pleased to say that we are planting trees, BMS have given us money to plant 150 trees to offset a part of the missions international travel carbon emissions. There are other BMS projects elsewhere around the world. Our trees will need protecting from goats and camels for the first couple e of years and also a bucket of water each day of the dry season but they will soon develop deep roots and be able to cope as those next to our house which are now 5 years old. In addition to photosynthesizing they will also give much needed shade in the care givers village and discourage the transit of cars and lorries across our land which is always a potential danger for us and the neighbouring school.

PS. this post got delayed by a week due to technical difficulties. We have now marked the above mentioned recruitement tests and will be holding interviews with 30 candidates for 15 posts later this week. We will need lots of wisdom to select those who will best enable to serve the people of Ndjamena.