Tree planting in Mauritania

On Saturday, October 26, we organized a planting of twenty trees in a neighborhood of Nouakchott called Basra.

There were 19 of us, including, among others, 6 people from the Islamo-Christian Group including Sr. Mia and Sr. Elyse, three priests, the president of a Mauritanian association for Education and Culture, the president of the association Soleil des Enfants, the president of the association Ensemble Pour un Avenir Meilleur and his team. We went to get the trees from the gardener to bring them to the neighborhood of Basra where the action took place.

The young people from the association had raised awareness among the families in the neighborhood about the benefits of trees and some of them asked for a tree. Each family had already dug a hole in front of their door and had prepared the manure and the fence to prevent the sheep from damaging the young trees. As a team, we went from house to house to plant the trees, water them and entrust them to the good care of the family.

The people in the neighborhood were happy to see us together, from such diverse backgrounds! Some were surprised. A group of children, very curious to see what we were doing, followed us from start to finish. We included them in the entertainment, asking them to applaud each time a tree was planted. The afternoon was punctuated by a song that says:

“Together, together we can make a new world”. It accompanied us throughout this activity.

After the planting, we gathered at the headquarters of the association “Ensemble pour un avenir meilleur” to get to know each other better.

In turn, each participant spoke. One of us said:

“I am very happy to have heard that there is this activity of planting trees. It is visible to all people. Others may be preoccupied by big projects, but this is a real and practical action.”

A Mauritanian was touched by the fact that foreigners have love for their host country and that we manage to carry out this action together with people from such diverse backgrounds.