I wrapped up my first real peace corpsing type activity this week, and it was of questionable value. That’s not actually true. It was as much for us as it was for the guy we were consulting. More, probably. So it was of questionable value to him, but it turned out to be great for me.
Everyone in SED/ICT met with a local entrepreneur (in groups). We were supposed to spend a month getting to know our contacts and how they run their businesses, and then give a presentation with suggestions for improvements.
Working on group projects like that has been pretty difficult because I’m the only one out in brousse. We never really had a good place to work on things since they didn’t want us at the training center outside of tech sessions (we’re supposed to be integrating into our communities, but you try to break out a laptop in a village that doesn’t even have electricity and see how much work you can get done). I tried to only schedule meetings for when there already happened to be a peace corps vehicle going into town. I was the only one in our group who could really speak french, but my group mates did go a couple times without, and a couple times I flagged down a bush taxi. So it mostly worked out.
I don’t know. I don’t want to complain too much about it because I’m glad to have had a taste of the brousse experience. It’s worth the aggravation and I’d definitely want it again.
I ended up having to spent the night in town the night before our presentation so that we could put it all together. Rosso is a magical place. I haven’t really spent much time there and the conveniences of the city are stunning. I wanted bread and a sprite-in-a-bag, and then two minutes later I had bread and sprite-in-a-bag. There were showers and satellite television and a two freezers in the house. Two. Incredible.
Anyway, we had tried to meet during the day but it turns out that two hours wasn’t enough for us to put all of our material together. Plus I had to do all the typing since I was the only one who could translate. It took a while. I didn’t get a lot of sleep.
The whole thing went off pretty well the next morning, I think. I did all the talking and the other two guys did a skit. It was a good presentation. We kept it light and he seemed mostly engaged. On an informational level we didn’t have a lot to say. The guy has the same (more or less) degree I do from a university in dakar. There wasn’t anything we could have told him that he didn’t already know. The best we could do was remind him that financial records wouldn’t hurt. I doubt he’s going to take our advice though; he does well enough and they are very much on the work-to-live side of things here.
But whatever. We probably had the best possible audience. I guess some people’s presentations turned into a cultural disaster. Someone said she got cut off a minute into hers and was told that that’s not the way things work here and there was no way they were doing that (keeping a check book, basically). Another person had their consultee start yelling when she interpreted the american gesture for I’m thinking to be the (identical) the mauritanian gesture for you’re crazy. Nice. I wish I had been there for that because it sounds pretty hilarious and I probably could have learned from their mistakes. I’ll have to keep that in mind the next time I hear of something like that going on.

laying around before the big party
laying around before the big party
laying around before the big party
ha ha I ruined a perfectly good picture