PASSY, Senegal — Mankato East High School graduate Matthew Wedzina followed his heart and the Grinnell College tradition into the Peace Corps. It’s an experience that fulfilled his desire to work on an agricultural project in an African country.
About 22 months after beginning his stint in Senegal, he has just learned that Peace Corps headquarters has found money to provide the remaining needs for his project to provide equipment needed to establish and maintain a solar-irrigated garden at his sponsor elementary school. Total cost is just over $5,100, and he was crowd-funding to reach that amount.
Unlike many of his predecessors, he was not able to seek a grant through USAID due to cuts of programs and services through the current administration as announced in January 2025. That has created a stronger push for crowd-funding through a Peace Corps website at peacecorps.gov/donate/projects/
“I would say (about) March of 2025, we got the news that USAID was cut and that we were next on the chopping block,” Wedzina said via a Whatsapp call. “So, at that point, I was about eight months into my service and only still getting established, so it was kind of scary for all of us.”
So scary, in fact, that several other Peace Corps volunteers he knows were looking at jobs back home. While he kept his position, many of the grant opportunities for funding projects like his that are offered through the Peace Corps Partnership Program were gone.
“Unfortunately, you have to wait until you’re fully funded (to start), because the materials that the community has provided are just some tools and such,” he said. “But the first thing we need to do is dig a well, and we need to pay for the labor and materials … that (cost) around $300, I’d say.”
Through his project, students learn to plant and harvest fruits and vegetables from seed while practicing environmental stewardship, according to Wedzina. This produce will enhance a diet of mostly fish and rice, with excess produce sold locally. Revenue can provide new and updated books, blackboards, pencils and supplies for students, and improved ventilation in classrooms, all of which will create a better learning environment.
While much of the primary U.S. government funding is gone, additional financing utilized since the Peace Corps began in the early 1960s is still part of the process. That includes host country contributions and volunteer contributions. His mother, Melinda Wedzina, had reached out to The Free Press hoping more Mankatoans might help him fund his project for the people of Passy before he received the news of his funding.
The town of about 21,300 is on the western coast of Senegal, 40-50 kilometers above The Gambia, which is the smallest country in continental Africa and bounded by Senegal on all sides except the Atlantic Ocean on the west. He lives in the region of Fatick; he calls Passy “a roadside town” at the intersection of two major roads.
Peace Corps volunteers are a common sight in Passy, he said, and he has been easily accepted. He wrote that in early April the hot season was well underway, with temperatures averaging 103-108, with some breaching 110 degrees.
“With heat like that, it’s exhausting to just simply exist,” he wrote. “Sleeping is difficult, too, when oftentimes the temperature is still in the high 80s by the time I lay down for the night.”
According to his newsletter posted on Substack, Wedzina has been trying to sell a 2,000-liter water storage tank left from a previous volunteer to be used for a women’s garden project. It was hoped selling the tank could bring in about $300 and make it possible to dig the needed well in a region where the water table is about 8 millimeters deep.
Although he thought he had it sold, that money didn’t materialize, leading to frustrations. A trip to a nearby town, Babacar Gueye, taught him, “A single water source can transform the surrounding environment.”
Although the more established farmers prefer gas generators to power their wells, with 10-pound containers of fuel easy to carry, Wedzina said most of the new farms created by younger Senegal citizens are powered by solar. It has been proven to be reliable, though all equipment requires constant maintenance.
As he approaches the end of his time in Senegal, he was wrestling with a variety of emotions, he wrote this spring:
“The bottom line is, whether I convey this effectively: life here is extremely difficult. It’s hot, it’s loud, it’s uncomfortable, and it’s full of roadblocks. Some days (or periods of weeks and months), it really gets to me. …
“Though, I try to remain grateful for it all. For the knowledge of the withs and withouts, for no longer living a life ignorant, and for deeply understanding what it really means to put yourself in someone else’s shoes. I’m treated differently here — in some ways nice, but others annoying, confusing, bad, etc. — that puts me a step closer to experiencing what many people deal with regularly, namely many of our fellow citizens in the U.S. I wouldn’t have that experience otherwise, and it’s broadened my worldview several-fold. I wouldn’t want it any other way.”
And he acknowledged his time there has made him rethink how he acted and reacted to a house with two brothers.
“As cliched as it is, it’s been totally life changing,” he said by Whatsapp, “and I think the example I like to use that comes to mind a lot is how people here share, without any second thought, whatever they have. … I think that’s one of the biggest things I want to take home with me is more openly or being comfortable sharing, and doing it just for the joy of seeing another person happy.”