i Parkia biglobosa - School of Forest Resources & Environmental ...

the CCFI program. The nursery provided the tree seedlings and extension advice for the
farmers to plant trees on their farms. In most of sub Saharan Africa, the threat of
desertification and land erosion is directly related to the rapid depletion of local native
trees used by the increasing population for fuelwood and building. In November 1999, I
arrived in Kandiga as the fourth and final volunteer to serve in that community.
I spent the first six months working at the nursery to fully experience all of the
nursery activities. I also spent the early part of my assignment meeting my neighbors and
members of the community. I observed many different non-timber uses for many of the
local trees. Curious children came to my house offering unfamiliar fruits for me to eat. I
would ask them to take me to the trees where they had gathered these fruits. Sitting
under the shade of a massive mango tree I would see children strip and alter the mango
leaves in such a way to produce a pinwheel that would spin furiously in the dusty wind of
the Harmattan season. My next-door neighbor was boiling a cauldron full of empty pod
husks to make “sour water”, mixed into the mud in order to strengthen and waterproof the
plaster on his house (Figure 1). Strolling through the market, I would see unfamiliar
seedpods, dried bark, and many different products derived or harvested from trees. I was
very curious about these non–timber forest products and wanted to look at the cultural
uses, an ethnobotanical approach for studying several local trees. Ethnobotany is defined
as observing and recording indigenous knowledge and folk culture relationships between
humans and plants (Martin, 1995). However, with the limited time of my assignment and
the seasonality of many tree products I chose to focus on one species of tree, Parkia
biglobosa.
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