I guess it is time

...to tell you all what I actually do here.

I know that probably everyone reading this blog has been asking the question since I left the states (including "why on earth is she joining the Peace Corps") but lets take this one stepa t a time.

SO I am a Small Business Development Volunteer in Louga Senegal. This means that I am assigned to work in the city of Louga, a place with about 200,000 people. And that's pretty much where the rules end. I can teach classes for groups of people or I can work individually with an entrepreneur to get a business going or improve on something that he already does. The beauty of it is that I can work with government officials or I can work with youth ; womens groups or individual entrepreneurs. I have a couple members of the community who are my advisors but beyond that I am not confined by any institution or target community. This is essential for our work for a number of reasons-- I might really struggle trying to define my role at times, but in the end I wouldn't want it any other way.

So it works like this. I spent three months getting to know the community. I introduce myself and my work and then I wait for them to take the lead. The people who follow up and call me are most motivated and the most promising work partners, but sometimes I have to push a little too, since people are shy and a little suspicious of the random toubab offering free business advice.


Now that I have been here in Louga for about 8 months, the work is really starting to pile up. It is an extremely active town that is growing fast. We have hundreds of associations that have different activities, many major goverment offices and of course innumerable individual business owners. At the same time, it seems that everyone who isn't already in a business has a "project" that they want to develop or they want to run a business but don't know what. The fact that almost all educated jobs are as goverment employees and the overall unemployment rate is more than 50% drives many people to search other ways to support themselves, primarily through commerce.

Once a person has an idea we start planning. We talk about business plans and marketing and accounting. Then we talk about how he or she can approach a credit and loan institution. Louga is huge for microfinance and opportunities abound for people with well-developed business plans.

Of course, this is the ideal. It definitely isn't easy, and when it works it is bound to be a long slow process. many of my "clients" : the people I meet with on a regular basis to do business planning, are semi-literate, or most difficult of all, have never been to school. Which makes things like accounting, marketing and even the most basic planning a little out of reach.

even still we can usually come to an understanding. We try to simplify the concepts as much as possible and talk about what the entrepreneur hopes to gain in the future. This leads to a discussion of goals and then about what is feasible with the resources available. There are many things we would love to be more precise with (it is so hard to run a business with no accounting!) but for the moment we are satisfied with just more critical thinking.

Here is a little idea of some of the projects going on right now:
Business Planning-- local entrepreneur hopes to introduce rechargeable Batteries in local markets
Business Planning-- local entrepreneur hopes to expand refrigerator parts and repair store
Business Planning-- Aluminum worker wishes to expand his shop and add new tools
Business Planning-- Metal Apprentice wishes to open own shop
Business Planning-- English teacher wishes to open Language Institute
Business Planning-- Youth group looks for ways to make fields more profitable
Marketing-- Artisanal soap maker looks for better production and packaging methods
Teaching-- Local adults learn to use computers
Teaching-- Louga citizens take English Classes with local teachers

Does that make sense?

a medical question

Kari and Ted (volunteers from Linguere area, about 2.5 hours away) came through the other day and I thought I should share with you some of our musings

Kari: I wonder how much permament damage is being done to my gastro-intestinal tract while serving as a PC volunteer? Constant exposure to amoebas, cysts, giardia, and a daily medication regimen that would rival the average hospitalization.

Ted: I once sent a letter to a high school PE teacher telling him that his students should do a class project on my health. Exercise, diet, heat exposure, medications, etc.

Kari: Do twelve servings of white rice and six of cooking oil increase or decrease your chances of a long and healthy life?

So here is the question-- what will we be like 10, 20, 50 years from now? Do simple carbohydrates, a contaminated water supply and long hours of heat exposure and physical labor strengthen or weaken the human condition? Will we leave here looking (and feeling) like the shriveled lung you looked at in the smoking section of the health book?

I'm hoping that the lifestyle is coupled with an unstoppable ability to shake one's butt and shout louder than anyone in a tri-state area.

It can't be any less healthy than how I lived in college right? Only now beer is replaced with rice