Lots has changed in the last few days...
First for all.. i want to give a shout out to all of my republican family members and say GO BARACK OBAMA! The inauguration was a great one. A few friends and i had the opportunity to watch it live at a restaurant in Kaolack. I was hoping for a Peace Corps shout out by the big man himself but beggers cant be choosers and i was nothing short of pleased with his speach!
Anyway, I now have work.. and lots of it. I met with a lady named Viola this week and i tink she is the answer to many of my problems here. She is running an NGO here called 10,000 Girls. I am now working with her and am starting a girls group in my village. My girls group will consist of any interested girls in the villages ages 12-22ish... I plan to go back to the village and just start having meetings once a week. In these meetings, we will just do small projects and start making things that can possibly be sold..such as pepineers and neen lotion. Neem lotion is made from soap, oil, neem leaves. After boiling the ingredients together, a lotion is formed that helps fight off mosquitos. This lotion is a big hit in many villages and i am hoping t get it startd in Diagle as well. The girls group will spend a few months just doing small projects so the people that dont really want to work will weed themselves out. In the meantime, i will be trying to get a plot of land. I need atleast 10 hectors before Viola will work with me. After i get the land, the girls will plant and harvest bissap. Viola's NGO will then buy the bissap from the girls and then her group will work to have it exported to the states. Another voluteer is working with Viola n the smae project. She told me that her girls cant keep up with the demand for the bissap so i am hoping this will be a great new project for the young girls in my village. It will be a good way for them to learn how to have a business but also do somehing they know how to do...like grow bissap. The entire project will tak about a year but hopefully it will be succesful and the girls will be able to continue it without my help. This whole thing sounds somewhat easy but really it will be VERY hard! The other volunteer that is working on the project has had numerous set backs because the older villagers are not so happy about the young girls making so much money. Hopefully this will not happen in Diagle but i have a feeling it wont be a piece of cke to get this thing rolling. Regardless of the setbacks and whatnot, i think the project sounds great! I am excited to work with young people because (for me anyway) i find it hard to relate to te older people in the village. They seem to think that since i cant speak their language like they do, I am an idiot. I think i will have a lot more success with the younger folks because they are not so set in their ways.
I am also going back to start the Mangroves project. I wrote about it in my last entry but maybe i should elaborate more. I am going to talk to a man that owns a campement near my village. The mangrove trees grow right through his campement. I am hoping to be able to start a mangrove pepineer directly in the water there so i wont actually have to carry water to it every day. I am going to colect seeds this weekend and then Laura and i are starting the pepineer next week. We will build a large wooden box that just has seeds planted in it. The box will be places directly in the water to grow for a few months. Potentially, we could have hundreds of small trees by August. In August, we will invite the volunteers that live in the kaolack region to come help us plant the small trees. This project should be somewhat easy but is very important. Really, we could keep it going for years to come.
All in all, a successful week it has been!
