Goree!

I've just retired to my room for the night. After watching a stunning (and needless to say, AWESOME) victory for the U.S soccer team over Spain, I decided to be awesome myself by buying some sodas for the family. To my extremely conservative Muslim family, buying 2 big bottles of Sprite is the social equivalent of buying everyone a drink at the bar, and thus it was a small party at my house tonight. Despite having no power for most the night, we sat there drinking soda by cell phone light, laughing about how happy I was that the U.S won ("Gallas kontan na!" they kept on saying). Tomorrow it's back to work, as now my leather workers have been getting interest from foreign buyers. We have to essentially prepare an online catalog and make some spreadsheets outlining all of their product line in order to advance in this process. That will definitely keep us all busy until I head off to Kedougou and then (gasp!) Eastern Europe for vacation. This is in addition to the basket order that continues to progress (they're almost done with production!).

This past weekend was once again spent in Dakar, but this time I actually had some work, meeting with the head of my leather workers about getting the online catalog set up. It was also my last chance to see one of my friends before he went home so we took a trip out to Goree island on Saturday. For those in the dark, Goree was a very popular stop-off point for slave traders back in the day, and thus has some fairly significant historical relevance. The island has kept its colonial charm and preserved the historical buildings that made it famous, and thus is a big attraction for tourists and Senegalese alike (there are often school trips going there). There is a well maintained boat (anything well maintained in this country is worth taking note of) that runs every hour or so to the island and back. Being the cool Peace Corps volunteers that we are, we very slightly impressed the other toubabs there by getting the "resident" price. After walking around for awhile, we took a visit through the museum (which still has its original cannons in place), and also visited the famous "maison des esclaves" (slave house), which was quite sobering. Pictures were not allowed inside the house, so the door sign is all you get (see bottom). All in all it was really a great trip. We spend so much time in this country experiencing the frustrating parts of it (namely local transportation) that we seldom get to appreciate its more attractive features. Goree as one of those times where I was really able to see that Senegal CAN be a incredible place to visit. I also really enjoyed seeing school children out there. I think it's extremely important for kids to have some pride in their country and its history, and Goree is a fantastic place to instill some of those values. In a country where the youth is often forgotten, it was encouraging to see kids running around the island, learning about their country while having the time of their life. Especially when many of these kids are coming from families that may never even have SEEN Dakar, let alone Goree. It's for this exact reason that I was alright with paying $10 (don't laugh, I make $90 a week here...) for my host brother to go on his school trip to Goree back in May. Having now seen it for myself, I'm very pleased he got to have the experience. I'm off to bed, as the next week promises to be pretty busy. Hope people back home are doing well and that everyone will watch the U.S play the final of the Confederation Cup on Sunday! Etats-Unis laa faral!!!

Work Updates

Earlier today I returned from a productive, yet very fun week-long stay in Dakar. Around 40 volunteers (or more) gathered in Dakar to help out with the 3rd artisanal exposition at the American club. This time, we combined forces with the Eco-Tourism volunteers to make it a joint artisanal/Eco-T expo. In preparation, I had transported some baskets around and also made a nice brochure for my leather workers (see attached PDFs. Can you spot the typo?). The expo itself went pretty well, despite the fact that we didn't sell as much as we did time. Many of the artisans there did, however, gain valuable experience and feedback on their products that will help them improve their ventures. Unfortunately, I left the battery to my camera in its charger here in Ngaye and thus was not able to snap any pictures. Obviously, we did manage to sneak in a few mandatory games of volleyball during the expo, prompting one artisan to comment "So...after lunch is done, all Senegalese people drink tea. Do all Americans play volleyball after lunch?"...

Before the expo, I had taken a few field trips to our basket villages to measure baskets and hand out salaries based on the number of baskets succesfully completed. Even though I'll be going back several times in the coming weeks, I don't particularly like doing it, since the image of a white man strolling into a village with $1,600 in his pocket is not what I like to call development. Obviously, someone has to do it, and it's the end goal of the project (to increase the salaries of the women making the baskets). That said, we're working very hard on making one of our counterparts do this, so that the women don't just start associating the white men with money (since everyone else in this country does that already). The last picture is of one of the villages I visited a few weeks ago (notice how the woman in blue seems very happy...she happens to be holding over $1000 in her hand...). Anyways, for now I'm back to working with the baskets, and am counting down the days until Eastern Europe (Peace Corps offically approved me for my vacation today!) Dafa Neex koi!