2005-06-02 - 12:08 p.m.

June 2, 2005

Dear friends and family,
So much has happened since I last updated my online journal! I have two other entries that I uploaded today and one more that will come after this one, Inshallah!

The USAID-funded project I had been working on for the past five months was finally wrapped up yesterday… successfully, Alhamdullillah! Twenty-six women from thirteen coops were trained on tie-dyeing and business skills during a period of ten days with the help of two tie-dyeing experts (Fatimatou and Zeinabou) and my counterpart Limnaye.

At the end of the training each coop received equipment and a small amount of materials to start the income-generating activity. Limnaye and I will be busy visiting them weekly for the next few months making sure they are keeping up with the tie-dyeing as well as helping them keep up with the “business planning and recording” side of it. If the activity takes off locally, as hoped, the women will be able to organize themselves and take out a micro-financing loan to open up a supply store locally, making it easier for the women to purchase the raw materials such as cloth, dye, sodium, phosphoric acid, threads, etc.

The traditional tie-dyeing business presents a great potential for high profit margins. Until now the local women did not have the skills and knowledge to do the tying and dyeing themselves, so were forced to outsource their production to the capital, wasting much time and money and having to resell the melhavas (veils) at double or triple the regular selling price.

Thanks to this project, I learned A LOT about, for example, needs assessment, project design and management, budgeting, grant writing, adult learning, literacy and numeracy issues, politics, various development approaches, etc.

Something I was very happy with was the requirement for the community to contribute a minimum of 25% of the total project value. The cooperatives agreed to pay a participation fee, the mayor’s office also contributed some money, and Limnaye contributed her home and, as usual, her time and assistance. This community contribution was not achieved without incurring in some problems and headaches! As I wrote in a previous entry, women usually get paid to participate in trainings… not only was I telling them I wasn’t going to pay them, but I also told them I wanted them to pay me!!! This allowed me to weed out the cooperatives, which weren’t truly interested in the project… and Alhamdullillah all the women who ended up participating were really involved, enthusiastic, and satisfied throughout the initiative!

During the ten days I also had the pleasure of receiving many guests who stopped by to visit, en route to and from their sites. It was great seeing them all! Particularly Jess and Mustafa whom I had not seen since February (and live quite far from me in the north of the country) and my APCD Brian and my region-mate Julian who finally made it to Magta Lahjar for the first time!

A few days before the intended start date of the workshop I came down with a very high fever, accompanied by vomit, swollen glands and lymph nodes, sore neck and back… the training was postponed and I was called into Nouakchott for tests and medications. It was dismissed as “infection” and disappeared after about five days of antibiotics.

Not only Africa is filled with a variety of germs, bacteria, and viruses, but also Mauritania in particular is the perfect place for these to spread through the always present and everywhere-penetrating sand!

When I came back, one of the participating women said: “Alhmadullillah you were sick and the training was postponed: I gave birth to Aziz and now I can still participate in the training!” Aziz was named after me and my Mauritanian name Aziza. You can see how cute he is on my online photo album at http://jspadaci.smugmug.com along with other pictures from March, April, and the tie-dyeing training that took place at the end of May (freshly uploaded!)

Another thing that happened recently is a town-wide debate on whether it is “haram” (prohibited by the Koran) for Limnaye (my faithful counterpart and friend) and other friendly people to “touch my skin, shake my hand, talk to me, work and spend time with me, drink tea with me, eat out of the same plate as me, etc.” Limnaye was quite frazzled and disturbed by it all and sons/daughters were arguing with their mothers about it… until a group ended up visiting a respected Koranic scholar who said that all of that was nonsense and that there were only three things that were “haram”:

1. For Limnaye to “buy me” to become her slave
2. For Limnaye to give me money to buy her pork meat
3. For Limnaye to give me money to buy her alcohol

What are the odds of any of those three happening??? Eh! :-)

Limnaye and I will be going out “en brousse” tomorrow with Caritas to do a “depistage” in two villages not too far from Magta Lahjar. We will be weighing and measuring the children of the villages to identify those who are malnourished. Peace Corps will be financing two feeding centers in my area, which means that I will be working in partnership with Caritas for the next three months providing these villages with food rations for the malnourished children and measuring their progress in terms of weight and height growth. I am glad I can do something to help in this aspect as well… especially after seeing the shocking state of some of the children living out of town in nearby villages. The food rations consist of powdered milk, oil, flour, sugar, and salt… apparently this “tasty” mixture is deemed to be very nutritious and helpful if served twice a day to malnourished children! Two women need to be “hired” in each village to be in charge of the initiative and are also paid with food rations (rice, oil, flour, beans). These two particular sites already happen to have all the necessary “hard equipment” such as pots, cups, ladles, etc. as Caritas had already opened feeding centers there in 2003.

What’s next? I have a few weeks before the start of another ten-day training. This time though I won’t have much of a role in it, apart from facilitating the “meeting” of all the parts involved, securing a place, confirming everyone’s attendance and showing up everyday! I won’t be nearly as tired as I am today after the tie-dyeing and business skills training!

Unicef will be funding the training, a Nouakchott-based NGO will be leading the training, and I will be inviting the participants. It will be primarily for the group of teachers who approached me a couple of months ago asking for assistance in putting together a business plan to open a kindergarten. The training will focus on early childhood development, toy-making, how to involve the children’s family members and community at large, how to make sure the kindergarten experience is not a duplicate of first grade in primary school, how to develop and hold “outreach events”, etc.

And then? Then it will be vacation time: yuppeee!!! :-) Inshallah, I will be traveling during the second part of July… and seeing my family!

Love to all and a big “thank you” for all your emails, phone calls, letters, packages, photos, and “guestbook” notes!

Jordy

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