Friday, January 25, 2008

my january

Hello everyone,


Sorry it has taken me so long to write, but I just finished a stretch of 24 straight nights and consequently had extremely limited access to internet. High speed internet just arrived in my town about 6 weeks ago, but nobody has opened a cyber cafĂ© yet so I still need to travel to Kaolack (about an hour and half car ride north of me) to find reliable internet. I can occasionally use the internet at the phone company’s boutique in Nioro, but it rarely works and when it does it is still painfully slow because the employees are constantly downloading music videos.

My past month has been filled with meetings with various local officials and future work partners as well as attending all types of group meetings ranging from women’s groups to Red Cross meetings to planning committees for a summer camp. And of course continuing to learn/struggle with the local language, which has become a constant process of two steps forward and one step back. The majority of Senegalese in my community have never learned a new language at an older age so they are not very understanding of my struggles or why I haven’t become proficient in the past ten weeks. This coupled with the openly and naturally critical Wolof society has lead to more than one person telling me I’m not very smart or that I don’t know much. At first, this criticism was hard to take, but I’ve come to learn that this is how Senegalese motivate each other (positive reinforcement is somewhat nonexistent) and parents will use the same logic with their children. But despite these struggles, my Wolof skills are definitely coming along and I am feeling more comfortable everyday.

I am leaving this weekend to head back to Thies (the site of the training center) for another three weeks of more technical based training where we will have the opportunity to present the specific projects we will be doing and tailor our training curriculum to cover these topics. I’m looking forward to this because this past month I began to develop a basic plan for my work for this coming spring and summer. My biggest project will be working with 15 different groups/individuals that recently received loans from the United Nations Development Project to start small businesses. The supervisor for this program will leave a month after the loans were administered and I will take over his role and work with the different groups on developing sound business practices and making sure that they are going in the right direction. This will mainly consist of visiting the different establishments and offering various trainings for the entrepreneurs to attend. Additionally, I will start teaching business classes at a girl’s vocational school. These classes will cover simple business concepts as well as include field trips and seminars with successful, local entrepreneurs.

These two projects will take up the majority of my time, but I will also be working with a group of high school student volunteers from the local chapter of the Red Cross. They hold weekly health classes for the area youth and I will help them plan the trainings as well as skits and activities for the kids. The first class was held two Sundays ago and when I got there I was shocked to find close to 300 loud, clamoring children filling an auditorium. There was a slight miscommunication with the high school leaders and just before it began they told me that it would end in four hours and wished me luck in leading the session. Shocked (and quite scared) I told them there wasn’t a chance I could lead a ten minute class speaking Wolof, much less a four-hour class. I then explained that I wanted to help them develop their materials, but it would be them who conducted the trainings. We’ll see how this ends up working out.

The country has become consumed by the Africa Cup soccer tournament which started the beginning of this week in Ghana. Games are on every afternoon and evening and my host dad has stopped going to work in the afternoons to watch the games – he told me it was ok because he works extra-hard in the morning. I hope you are all doing well and I will write again soon.


Miss you all,

Chris