Culinary School (written Feb 21)

If I had told you that I was going to The Gambia for two years and was going to help teach cooking classes you would have laughed at me right? Well guess what...we might help teach some cooking classes. Today we went to the Soma Scouts Skills Training Center with the intention of watching another computer class. However, class was canceled because the students had taken an exam on the previous day. Instead we talked with the person who taught that class about the many other activities he is involved in, one of which is a culinary school for girls that is attached to the Scouts center (both are supported by a Danish Scouts group). It is a two year program that trains students to work in the hospitality industry teaching skills such as basic math, english, and cooking. Apparently we had impressed this man with our cooking when he happened to be over for dinner the other night and he has been encouraging us to teach the students how to cook ever since. At first I was not incredibly excited by it, but then we realized the income generating potential of teaching new dishes to these students. Think a bake sale. There is minimal diversity in the market. If you want to buy a ready to eat snack you are basically limited to a couple kinds of sandwhiches, an orange, a banana, or panketos (fried balls of dough). If we could help several Gambians learn how to make a new dish that other Gambians would like, then we would create a great opportunity for income generation if these new creations were sold in the market. The funds raised would be used to support the Scouts program and the school fees for the particpants (many of these youth come from very poor backgrounds so paying school fees is often an issue). So assuming we can rustle up all the relevant supplies, we might work with the culinary school and teach them how to make some of our favorites and work with them to test them in small focus groups (our Gambian friends idea) and then sell them as a small income generating activity. For the record - never expected to teach cooking in The Gambia but income generation and skills development is a huge issue so I am actually quite excited by this potential project.