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!