2005-07-28 - 2:19 a.m.

Journal Entry Dated June 20th, 2005:

I have just a few weeks left before leaving for vacation and work seems to be piling up right about now making my days filled with planning, phone calls, meetings, traveling, thinking and talking!

I just came back yesterday from a village “en brousse” where Limnaye and I spoke at the local Girls Mentoring Center in occasion of an AIDS Awareness and Career Day organized by a fellow volunteer. Limnaye and I were two of eight speakers who spoke to teenage girls about the importance of education and career options for women. There was midwife, a teacher, a crafts trainer, a micro-finance agent, a cooperative president, the regional representative for the Commissariat d’Etat sur la Condition Feminine, an NGO worker, and myself!

Some of the points that came up were the importance of not giving up after not achieving the BAC (high school diploma) – an exam, which seems to be extremely difficult for the vast majority of students to pass. I personally ended up talking (in Hassiniya!) about the importance of learning different languages so that they can communicate with all kinds of people (pointing out how so many Mauritanians still don’t have a language in common because opposed to learning the language identified with the “other” ethnic group!) and also about the value of volunteer work in relation to developing skills and knowledge that will come in useful later on in their “paid” careers.

It was really inspiring to hear the local women speak candidly about their successes as well as difficulties, standing as living examples for these girls, who seemed very involved and enthusiastic. I would like to replicate this sort of “career day” at the Magta Lahjar center (whenever it actually opens up!) but with an added component or maybe an added follow-up session geared towards providing the students with specific information about post-secondary schooling options available in Nouakchott.

Getting to Mal, the village in question, was quite an interesting experience. I feared quite a few times that I wouldn’t actually make it to the intended destination: piled on top of a loaded pickup truck with 23 other passengers hanging onto each other and “Bismillah-ing” our whole way through (over two hours)! I put pictures online…

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I am hoping to get the money in to purchase all the feeding centers’ supplies/ingredients and distribute them before leaving Inshallah (and before the rainy season starts and the villages become difficult to reach.)

The ten-day training for women interested in starting a kindergarten is quickly approaching and that will take away a lot of my pre-departure time.

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I am also gathering info for a two-day training that will take place in each “feeding center”-village right after I come back from vacation. It’s a training that will be facilitated by a fellow health/water sanitation volunteer from Selibaby (south of the country). He will be teaching the women how to make cereamine flour, which is a highly nutritious mixture made with corn, rice, peanuts, millet, and beans. It’s supposed to be the next “moringa”. Moringa is a plant that has a relatively quick growth, which leaves can be harvested and pounded to get a highly nutritious and tasteless powder, which can be added to any meal. Lots of volunteers have been involved in moringa-related projects throughout the past few years. The concept has taken off in certain communities, becoming quite popular even with other aid organizations. We are hoping cereamine will have the same type of following.

People in Magta Lahjar are not familiar with either one of these “miraculous” products… and it will be interesting to see how much it will spread and become a daily component of their diets, if and when I come up with outreach activities and projects centered on nutrition issues and in turn these two products. I would have to lace in small enterprise development aspects in order for the project to be sustainable... marketing, pricing, production, etc. For now we are testing the population in my area by having the “how to make cereamine” training in these two remote villages where its production and consumption would not be modeled after a “capitalistic” approach but rather a “flour for all” cooperative effort, so that all families in this very harsh area can benefit from its availability – after all, in these two villages, there are no “commercial” activities yet: they are too busy trying to survive.

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I might be going to Kaedi to facilitate a session for the new group of trainees coming in the beginning of July… it would be fun to go back to PST (Pre-Service Training) “a year later”!

Love to all,

Jordy

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