Work Update

Hey homies.

So I’m still here, that’s pretty neat, right? Actually my whole training group is still here, we’ve been at site almost 6 weeks.

Anyhow, I’ve been busy chatting and meeting folks, scoping out possibilities for my Health and Community Development energies. Here are some leads and ideas I’ve got.

There is a local high school that has some stuff going on that I would like to get my hands into. There is a Heath Issues Peer Educators’ club that I’m told used to be very active, but has been suffering low attendance and as a result very low activity. I would like to revitalize it and maybe use it as a spring-board for other health related info-sharing. This high school is currently building a building to house a community computer lab. The idea is that community members could pay a small fee to come use the computers without disturbing the rest of campus, thereby gaining computer skills etc. That’s all well and good, but I think it could be better. For example, there are plenty of internet cafés in the nearby big town (an easy walk or a cheap taxi ride away), and any time I am in one of them they are filled with adolescent and young adult males using the computers to look at pictures of European women or in chat rooms chatting with people who claim to be European women. I’m always the only woman there. In my opinion, the young men in my neighborhood don’t need yet another way in which to slack off, even if the lab brings money into the school. Need a break to rest from sitting under the tree drinking tea? Want to come to the internet lab to try to talk women into bringing you to Europe? I don’t think I have quite a good enough relationship yet with the headmaster to offer this type of criticism, but I’m working on finding a way. Seriously, if they could even offer classes for women only, like once a week, on how to use a computer and the internet, then the café would be more then just another boys‘ hang out, but I have no idea if there is interest in such a thing. More research is necessary.

There is an elementary school nearby who is having sanitation issues. They have only 2 pit latrines for their 900+ students, and that’s just not sanitary. The headmaster is urgently trying to find money to make new ones, but in my opinion he’s not going about it quite right. He’s kind of a bristly guy, so I don’t want to drive him away by sounding critical, I really am trying to be helpful, but he’s not open to it. He’s applying to the US Embassy for funds to build new latrines, but when I mentioned that he would be much much more likely to get the funds if the community were willing to offer a portion of the cost, or would be willing to do the labor or such, he said that the community was not usually willing to come out, and even so they would probably mess it up. When I asked if the school has a PTA club, or a Mother’s Club or such, he said they had both, but that they met on an “as-needed” basis (sounds like a euphemism for “defunct” if you ask me), and wouldn’t be willing to help. Hmm. There’s got to be a way to get people involved, there just has to be. So I think its an important issue, clean and plentiful toilets, and I’d like to work on it, but we seem to disagree on the best methods(quite frankly at first when I said that I don‘t come with money, he didn’t really see the point in me being here), so we’ll see what happens with that.

My neighborhood is surrounded my mango trees. Quite literally, as far as the eye can see. That’s awesome. Unfortunately, a big problem is the lack of food preservation habits. All the mangos come into fruit at once, and then everyone has tons and tons, no one can sell them because everyone has them, and try as they may you just can’t eat them all. The reality is that many mangos rot on the ground. THIS IS A TRAGEDY. I LIKE MANGOS. More importantly, the mid to late summer time is called “Hungry Season” because that’s when the dry season food is usually running out, and the rainy season crops have not yet matured. So, if we could just instill preservation habits, that could help, right? PC gives us all the plans for making solar dryers for drying food, and I’d really like to get people excited about it. The usual reasons that this doesn’t catch on is that it’s a foreign idea for one which requires behavior change, and it does require a little bit of investment to buy materials etc. I’m hoping to just lead by example a little bit, building a box, drying food for myself and talking about it, letting people taste it, then hopefully I can pick up some interest.

Like I said, I met with my mother’s kafoo, and have been doing so every week. From what I can tell, its mainly a social club, and they do a lot of resource sharing (the kafoo owns a bunch of really big pots and pans for anyone to use if their family has a wedding or naming ceremony), but they don’t do any sort of group work or anything. I would love to get them interested in mango drying, they could eat them or sell them. Or at the very least maybe they’d be open to health talks or such. I need to work on my language though, so I don’t sound like such a four-year-old.

Yup. Domanding, a domanding. Slowly slowly. It’s the Gambian way.