On Saturday we (only) paid $50 for a full day of activities! The fee included all of our equipment, transportation, lunch, etc. First we walked the few blocks from our hostel to the adventure company’s building. We got on mountain bikes and biked somewhere around 5 miles… the lady specifically told us to listen up to her directions on where exactly to go. But, being being a typical group of 20-somethings, we realized once we had already gone a ways away from Baños that we actually had no idea where [...]

“Plage de Yoff” (Yoff Beach) on a sunny afternoon. One of our local friends recently took us to the fish market in Yoff, very close to where we live. This (and not the grocery store!) is where the locals buy their fish. Barracuda, grouper, shrimp, and many other kinds of fish and seafood of various sizes and colors cover rows of tables. To get the best prices, it is best to bring a local with you. And thankfully for us, they will clean the fish for you while you wait. [...]

“Equipe Senegal” (Team Senegal) near the USAID/Senegal office on our first day of work. We have just begun our third week of eight working with USAID/Senegal on a local capacity development project. USAID has a global goal of channeling 30% of its total budget through local governments, NGOs (nongovernmental organizations), and businesses by 2015–currently the figure is 13%. This doesn’t mean that local organizations aren’t actively involved on USAID projects already: the current trend is that major Western NGOs like World Vision, Catholic Relief Services, and other giants are awarded [...]

This summer I am spending ten weeks Senegal, a small country in West Africa on the Atlantic Ocean. After a two week homestay, I will be doing a project for USAID/Senegal with three other students in my Master of Development Practice program. We will be working with USAID/Senegal’s Local Capacity Development Team to assess the capabilities of local capacity builders. What is capacity building? Generally speaking, “organizational capacity” refers to an organization’s ability to do what it sets out to do effectively and efficiently. “Capacity building” is a process aimed at strengthening an [...]

At the end of our 5th week in Fatick, I was exhausted. I had been having some petits problèmes with my family and my internship, and Sophie and I had done an intense run with some four Senegalese garçons that left us pretty sore for the next few days (and me with a fresh cut on my knee! Note: roads in Fatick are not lighted at night).  So, naturally, I wanted to sleep in Saturday morning. Unfortunately, masonry workers outside my room at 7am made that impossible, so Sophie and I made plans to [...]

One of my projects was to interview two women who were head Panchayats and write success case studies on them.  Men within the Panchayat were arguing that women were struggling and were not doing their work.  I was to report that these women were doing their work successfully and give them credit for the work they deserve and make sure society recognized their accomplishments.   Maya   My first case study was on Maya Palival.  She has completed primary school education and her husband is an elected member within the [...]

I finished the program…ALREADY!!?? Now it’s backpacking time! On April 21st, a majority of people from my program went on a six hour bus ride from Jaipur to Delhi so five girls could catch their flight back to the U.S.  Since me and one other girl who will travel with me, Leigh, had a flight out of Delhi the next day to Kochi, we also went with.   It was a crazy, chaotic single night stay near the New Delhi railway station.  That was plenty of time for me in Delhi, [...]

Well, I can’t say the past two weeks in Fatick have been easy, but I’m actually starting to feel at home here, believe it or not.  Sophie and I went to Dakar for Easter as planned. On a trop trop trop mangé l’ngalax (the delicious concoction of peanut butter and baobab juice served with sweet cous cous). Like, seriously, we abused the ngalax. But it was so good! Getting out of the car in Dakar I felt incredibly light–life in Fatick had seemed a bit difficult before I left. It was like [...]

There are many things I’ve become accustomed to in my first few weeks in Fatick, like eating my weight in bread every day, sharing my dresser with a petit mouse I have named Franklin, walking about eight times slower than any New Yorker would ever dare, falling asleep sweating from the heat, being followed home by every child in the neighborhood, stopping for cows and goats in the street, and not knowing before opening the door to the communal shower if the resident cockroach will be joining me for a [...]

Well, the results are in, at least for the most part. We won’t know for sure until the Constitutional Council confirms this Sunday, but it appears that there will be a second round of elections between President Wade and opponent Macky Sall. They will take place either Sunday March 18th or 25th, by which time I will be headed to Fatick (Sall’s hometown, as it turns out).  The elections passed pretty calmly, and I even went out around my neighborhood over the weekend without running into any political demonstrations or [...]

This last weekend was AMAZING!!!! We went to Dana Nature Reserve, Wadi Rum where I got to ride camels, ride in a jeep, flip down sand hills, eat with the Bedouin, attend a fake Bedouin wedding, climb a cliff, then climb it again at 5am to get to the very top and watch the sunrise. Then we went to Petra where I rode donkeys, saw the sand building that is famous from Indiana Jones, and saw many other buildings. On a more serious note the more and more I experience [...]

It has been a while!!  I have been busy and been traveling!  Since the new program started I have read many articles about Ecuador, globalization, westernization, the Andean cosmovision, education, the new constitution, and so much more.  I wrote a group paper, and spent great time with amazing people. As a big group of gringos we travel to communities who are working to sustain their indigenous cultures, cultivate their land, offer everything and more to their youth, and contribute to the world or larger community market.  First we visited a rose plantation, which is [...]

This is how one governmental leader described the series of events over the last week here in Kenya on the news last night. Though a formal conflict has not broken out in the country, the seemingly endless death toll that has emerged in the last seven days has been heart wrenching. But even more frustrating than the series of events themselves is how preventable each accident could have been with better regulation by the Kenyan government. Many of the Kenyans that I’ve talked to, rather than showing sympathy, have expressed [...]

We got out of class very early today, so I decided to come home and change into warmer clothes (it was very cold today) before going out to get tortillas to make quesadillas for my family. The paper was on the table when I got home, so I sat down and started reading it. When I turned the page, I saw an article that really pissed me off, and I’ve actually been pissed off for several hours now. Looks like the quesadillas are going to have to wait.  This article [...]

Updates: I’ve been going to Kibera, I got braids, I gave blood at the hospital yesterday, and I’m going camping tomorrow.  I started going to Kibera with Jeremy to help with the girls’ play, which was this Saturday. At first I was incredibly pissed off that people lived like that in the slums, and that no one was doing anything about it. But after being with the girls for a while, I realized that yes, it sucks that they live in a place like that, but they’re making the best [...]