9/7/2004. Where in the world...

During the month of August, you could have found me variously: admiring an 80-foot reclining Buddha; in a steam bath on a 100-degree day; in a rice paddy; having a lunch meeting with the First Lady of Senegal and several other fascinating people; or in a swarm of locusts; and all too often, either in a plane or in the Singapore airport.

Regular postcard readers have probably just about given up on me. August was a whirlwind of travel which frankly drained me to the last drop. I'm just beginning to get my natural rhythms back. I missed writing my postcard and had every intentions of posting at least one during my trips (the road to hell, etc.) But finding a place to connect Denis' laptop and work for a couple of hours proved to be impossible, partly due to the fact that the connecting plugs were different.

Like most French people, Denis and I took les grandes vacances--the big vacation of the year in August. On the third of the month, we got on a plane to Singapore, from which we flew on (after a 15-hour layover) to Colombo, Sri Lanka.

This turned out to be nobody's favorite destination, mostly due to the almost utter lack of restaurants (baffling to us French) or lively commerce. However, we did experience some interesting moments interspersed with long hot stretches of road and bad meals. In the area known as the cultural triangle, we admired the aforementioned Buddha, carved out of the living rock of a richly ornamented cave. We also saw some exquisite frescoes, again in a cave high up the face of a sheer cliff.



In this same area, we stopped at an Ayurvedic health center. Ayurvedic medicine is the medical tradition of India (and Sri Lanka), and it is entirely based on plants and massage. This particular center was supported by the government, and had a lovely medicinal plant garden next door to the modest treatment building.

Denis and I both had a 'complete treatment' which included three different elements. The first was a sauna. Then came a very exciting steam bath, in which we were locked up in a wooden cabinet with only our heads sticking out. Inside, below wooden slats, boiling water heaved steam through a thicket of neem leaves, bathing us in neem-infused vapor.



I was fascinated by the use of neem (neem trees were all around the center). I have been working on establishing neem oil production in Senegal, for use against mosquito larvae, and I was delighted to witness this use of neem near its homeland of India.

After we were steamed to the point of well-done lobsters, we emerged red and sweaty, wearing decorations of neem leaves stuck to our derrières. (You will not find that photo anywhere on this page, so don't bother scrolling down.) After a refreshing shower, we were treated to a thorough Ayurvedic therapeutic massage, good--I suppose--for what ails you. Like all massages in the Ayurvedic tradition, it involved large quantities of strong-smelling, herb-infused oil and included our heads. We needed very long showers when it was all over, as we weren't comfortable feeling quite so lubricated.

The manager of the center made up for the excessive oiliness, however, with his enthusiasm and friendliness. He took us on a tour of the extensive teaching garden of medicinal plants adjacent to the center, where he introduced me to medicinal pineapple (for slimming!, which was almost the only plant I recognized, other than neem, ginger, cardamom (another plant in the ginger family, I was surprised to learn), and clove, nutmeg, and cinnamon trees.




My guide rattled off Hindi plant names faster than I could note them down. I do, however, remember the red flower in the photo, of which only the pistil is used. Eating this tiny thread is good for (and here my guide averted his eyes and gestured vaguely over the middle of his body, roughly where his legs joined his torso). He paused significantly. "Do you want to try it?"

I shrugged. Sure, why not? I took the tiny pistil from his fingers and put it in my mouth, where it rested indetectably until I must have swallowed it. I'm sorry to report that, much to my disappointment, nothing noticeable ensued. Maybe we should have tried it out on Denis, in which case the results might have been more observable.

We left the center, after lengthy negotiation, with a month's supply of "slimming" potion. (Pineapple! And bee's honey! We were skeptical customers, but were convinced by the manager's expert salesmanship. (If it doesn't work, you can write a letter to my boss! I will lose my job!) The treatment comprised 14 little glass bottles for each week--seven containing a red liquid (pineapple!)and seven containing a bright yellow substance (bee's honey!) which had to be mixed together in a glass of water and drunk on an empty stomach each day.

In spite of our enthusiasm for medicinal plants, I'm sorry to report that neither of us seems to have shed an ounce with this treatment. On the other hand, the bottles were so heavy that perhaps we lost weight merely by lugging them around for the rest of our trip. Even though their contents didn't seem effective, we were motivated to continue the treatment simply to reduce the weight of our luggage!

After Sri Lanka, we flew to Bali, again by way of Singapore. We love Bali, where we spent some unforgettable weeks the summer just before the bombing. We were determined to return, and this time remained in the area around the town of Ubud for our entire stay. We had nothing more strenuous to do than some magnificent hotel hopping, organized by Denis. And one day we hired a car to drive us once more through the world's most beautiful rice paddies.



At six in the morning of the 24th of August, we were back in Paris. At four in the afternoon, we were back on a plane, headed for Dakar and what for me was the most exciting part of my summer. We were going to participate in the 4th International ASNAPP Roundtable, the annual meeting of Agribusiness for Sustainable Natural African Plant Products, the NGO with which I've been working over the past few years on various medicinal plant projects in Senegal.



I was thrilled to meet many wonderful people whom I had before only known as email addresses, as well as to encounter many new personalities from all over the world. (The photo at right shows a group of us who met to discuss a fond idea of mine called Chefs sans Frontières, which moved a giant step closer to reality with this meeting. Left to right, me, Erica Renaud of Seeds for Change, Mme Viviane Wade--the First Lady--, Howard Shapiro--world-reknowned permaculture expert and VP of plant science for Mars, and the indefatigable Denis.)

It was also a time to see treasured friends and colleagues, including my dear friend and fellow adventurer, Dan Acquaye from Ghana who was recently crowned the president of ASNAPP. (That's Dan in the behind the President and me in the photo at the beginning of the article.) All of us shared passionate interests in plants, natural products, and organic and sustainable agriculture, and discussion was lively and nonstop from 7 in the morning until after midnight. Over 300 people attended with more than 20 different countries represented.



The proceedings were lent true first-ever significance by the welcome address presented the President of the Republic of Senegal, Maître Abdoulaye Wade (above and main photo head of article), and his patronage of the entire event. A meeting the President at the First Couple's summer home south of Dakar, where he was staying while he monitored the locust invasion, was the occasion for us to witness first hand this terrible plague of which I hope you have read. The skies were literally darkened with clouds of these destructive insects. It was horrifying. In areas that had been treated, a thick layer of their corpses littered the roadways. These destructive pests are huge, too; each one is the size of a small frog, and in areas where they were flying they made a ghastly, high-pitched, horror-movie noise.

We had meetings literally until the moment we left for the airport (a week ago Sunday), by which point I think I was more tired than I've ever been in my life. Yet I couldn't sleep, because my brain was boiling over with ideas and thoughts borne of the intense week. It was so exciting that it took me several days to get over, and even now, part of every day is devoted to furthering the projects that were conceived or discussed during those intense days. I am quite simply privileged to be part of such a network of energy and effort. And that, dear readers, is where I have been...

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