Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Palm Oil (Written March 23)
So for a while I have been complaining to Sarah that most of the time our food tasted like soap. I thought it tasted like soap when we ate imported rice and it was not soapy when we ate domestically grown rice. Last night I decided that it was actually probably the palm oil that is in every meal we get from our host family. Smartly, Sarah pointed out that palm oil is a major ingredient in many soaps. I wonder if the two are related....
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Girls Guide (Written March 17)
This past Monday we went to the Girls Guide program. For those of you who remember hearing about our culinary class aspirations - it would be with this program. We came with the desire to observe and see what the students were being taught. Instead, we are informed that the teacher called in sick and that we should teach the class. Huh? I thought we had made it clear that we do not want to teach we just want to observe. Apparently, it was not to be the case. Not wanting the day to be wasted for the students we figured we might as well use the opportunity to learn more about their program and what they study.
The program has three elements - math, English, and home economics. After covering the basics of the two year course, which essentially culminates with an internship at a hotel and then hopefully a job, we decided to talk in more depth about a few topics. First we discussed nutrition. The entire class knew about the importance of eating a variety of food - protein, carbs, fats, vitamins, and minerals and were good at identifying good sources of these nutrients and also understood the basics of why different types of nutrients are important. That was an exciting realization.
Moving forward, we decided to talk about budgeting. Most vendors do not seem to track their costs and sources of revenue and thus have no idea how much profit (if any) they are making. We walked through an example of budgeting to make panketos (think donut holes) to examine how much profit one could make selling them. Again, the concept was not incredibly foreign and the girls basic arithmetic skills were impressive and we relatively quickly were able to develop a simple budget, calculate costs, minimum price per bag of panketos, and profit at the current market price. Again so far so good with our first real teaching experience...
Finally we moved on to English. Here we developed significant respect for anyone teaching a foreign language. Even with a language you are fluent in, it is hard to explain grammatical concepts to a group of students. We briefly discussed the conjugations of a few verbs and then broke for breakfast. Breakfast tends to happen in the middle of the morning between 10 and 11. After this break, another teacher was supposed to take over and continue teaching English.
At last we had the opportunity to observe the program in action. Well so we thought. In actuality, the teacher kept disappearing for meetings and we ended up teaching again. He started the "lesson" which consisted of writing a paragraph on migratory birds on the board. There were supposed to answer twenty multiple choice questions to fill in the blanks. Unfortunately to do this correctly you had to know words like mortality, migratory, immigration, emigration, suicidal, murderous, risky, risking, etc. Completely words that should be emphasized when teaching English. Of course we raised this issue with the teacher after the class and he responded, "You need to challenge the students." 100% you need to challenge the students but please challenge the students with something reasonable. Don't challenge students with a paragraph where we had to define 90% of the words for them.
I now completely understand why some people are not very excited about the World Food Program's School Feeding Program (the goal being get students to come to school by feeding them). The concept of food for education is a good one assuming you actually have a decent education system. If the entire class is taught in a language that most of the students don't really understand or is using vocabulary so advanced that even people with decent English skills cannot understand most of the words then it strikes me as a bit of a waste.
I have the utmost respect for people who are trying to reform the education system. I am sure it takes more patience and dedication than I possess...
The program has three elements - math, English, and home economics. After covering the basics of the two year course, which essentially culminates with an internship at a hotel and then hopefully a job, we decided to talk in more depth about a few topics. First we discussed nutrition. The entire class knew about the importance of eating a variety of food - protein, carbs, fats, vitamins, and minerals and were good at identifying good sources of these nutrients and also understood the basics of why different types of nutrients are important. That was an exciting realization.
Moving forward, we decided to talk about budgeting. Most vendors do not seem to track their costs and sources of revenue and thus have no idea how much profit (if any) they are making. We walked through an example of budgeting to make panketos (think donut holes) to examine how much profit one could make selling them. Again, the concept was not incredibly foreign and the girls basic arithmetic skills were impressive and we relatively quickly were able to develop a simple budget, calculate costs, minimum price per bag of panketos, and profit at the current market price. Again so far so good with our first real teaching experience...
Finally we moved on to English. Here we developed significant respect for anyone teaching a foreign language. Even with a language you are fluent in, it is hard to explain grammatical concepts to a group of students. We briefly discussed the conjugations of a few verbs and then broke for breakfast. Breakfast tends to happen in the middle of the morning between 10 and 11. After this break, another teacher was supposed to take over and continue teaching English.
At last we had the opportunity to observe the program in action. Well so we thought. In actuality, the teacher kept disappearing for meetings and we ended up teaching again. He started the "lesson" which consisted of writing a paragraph on migratory birds on the board. There were supposed to answer twenty multiple choice questions to fill in the blanks. Unfortunately to do this correctly you had to know words like mortality, migratory, immigration, emigration, suicidal, murderous, risky, risking, etc. Completely words that should be emphasized when teaching English. Of course we raised this issue with the teacher after the class and he responded, "You need to challenge the students." 100% you need to challenge the students but please challenge the students with something reasonable. Don't challenge students with a paragraph where we had to define 90% of the words for them.
I now completely understand why some people are not very excited about the World Food Program's School Feeding Program (the goal being get students to come to school by feeding them). The concept of food for education is a good one assuming you actually have a decent education system. If the entire class is taught in a language that most of the students don't really understand or is using vocabulary so advanced that even people with decent English skills cannot understand most of the words then it strikes me as a bit of a waste.
I have the utmost respect for people who are trying to reform the education system. I am sure it takes more patience and dedication than I possess...
GMT (written March 17)
What is GMT? My guess is most of you reading this immediately thought Greenwhich Mean Time. This is accurate, but is not what I am getting at. In our context for the next two years GMT means "Gambian Maybe Time."
A short example...
Yesterday we went on trek with RDI to visit some of their students on practical. We were supposed to get picked up at 9am. Normally, this means anywhere from maybe 9am to noon. However, in our case it ended up meaning getting picked up at 8am. We had just woken up, had not changed, had not eaten breakfast, and by no means were we ready for the day. Of course when this happened the two Gambians waiting for us were thoroughly unexcited to be waiting for us to get ready. Regardless of how annoyed Gambians will get when they show up and we are not ready for them, whenever they are three hours late for a meeting no one so much as says sorry.
Gambian Maybe Time. How I loathe you...
A short example...
Yesterday we went on trek with RDI to visit some of their students on practical. We were supposed to get picked up at 9am. Normally, this means anywhere from maybe 9am to noon. However, in our case it ended up meaning getting picked up at 8am. We had just woken up, had not changed, had not eaten breakfast, and by no means were we ready for the day. Of course when this happened the two Gambians waiting for us were thoroughly unexcited to be waiting for us to get ready. Regardless of how annoyed Gambians will get when they show up and we are not ready for them, whenever they are three hours late for a meeting no one so much as says sorry.
Gambian Maybe Time. How I loathe you...
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Picture update
Moroccan dinner to welcome the new VSO volunteers in Soma
The hot and sweaty group (typical gambian photography skills at work here)
Second attempt at french toast, this time with strawberry apricot "compote" - delicious!
Current picture of our garden, which is doing surprisingly well, despite the intense heat, complete lack of rain, termite infestation, and goat invasion...
Happy acorn squash (well, two of the four are happy at least)
Close up
Basil and one lonely little tomato in the top middle of the screen. We planted a second round of basil and tomatoes a couple weeks ago but they couldn't take the sun/heat. We're trying starting more basil in seed boxes in our back yard, which we can transplant into this bed later - hopefully that will work better.
Two plantings of edamame (the ones in the right-hand row were planted over a month ago but had to recover from a goat invasion).
Look, they even have little pods!
Slightly blurry banana tree. It looks a bit sickly, but 1) it looks better than it has looked since we planted it over a month ago, and 2) everyone here says that's how they're supposed to look and not to worry.
Funky tan lines
In case there is any doubt that I've been wearing my wedding band...
World Food Program School Garden Training (Written March 13)
Last weekend we went back to our training village to participate in a World Food Program (WFP) led training to support the creation of school gardens. The WFP already provides oil and rice to schools across The Gambia and now they are funding a pilot project to include vegetables in school meals. The goal is for each student to have at least one hot and nutritious meal per day. Fourty schools were selected by the WFP (20 to be funded by the WFP and 20 by other institutions) to receive training, seeds, and tools to create new gardens or expand existing gardens. Students and staff from each school as well as community members received training on important factors in site selection (proximity to water source, smooth not rocky ground, etc), the creation of seed boxes (essentially mini nursery beds), the creation and use of local pesticides and compost, the importance of vegetables in a healthy diet, and how to properly account for and report on the progress of each garden. They concluded the training by creating an action plan for each school and distributing tools (all of this occured in one long action packed day).
Overall Sarah and I were impressed with the training. Personally we benefited from the section on local pesticides and have found that a combination of onion, garlic, hot peppers, and laundry water left in the sun makes an effective termite deterrent. We also briefly discussed the problem of corruption in school gardening. Because the WFP does not want excess food to rot, they allow schools to sell surplus produce. What will keep schools from selling all the produce? What will keep schools from only putting vegetables in the teachers food bowl and selling the rest? Unfortunately this is a very serious concern. While we as Peace Corps Volunteers cannot actually be involved in monitoring the schools and reporting on those engaging in corrupt practices, we helped the WFP leader of the workshop brainstorm some potential tactics she can implement. Hopefully at least some of them will be successful and most of the produce will actually go to the hungry students.
Overall Sarah and I were impressed with the training. Personally we benefited from the section on local pesticides and have found that a combination of onion, garlic, hot peppers, and laundry water left in the sun makes an effective termite deterrent. We also briefly discussed the problem of corruption in school gardening. Because the WFP does not want excess food to rot, they allow schools to sell surplus produce. What will keep schools from selling all the produce? What will keep schools from only putting vegetables in the teachers food bowl and selling the rest? Unfortunately this is a very serious concern. While we as Peace Corps Volunteers cannot actually be involved in monitoring the schools and reporting on those engaging in corrupt practices, we helped the WFP leader of the workshop brainstorm some potential tactics she can implement. Hopefully at least some of them will be successful and most of the produce will actually go to the hungry students.
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Picture Update Part 2
Posed picture from the circumcision ceremony I wrote about earlier. Sorry for the poor quality - it's a picture of a picture.
The two boys honored in the circumcision ceremony
New tri-color braids
Side shot
Community mapping exercise (we had the women draw with charcoal on the ground because they were more comfortable doing that than using a pen and paper)
Finished library (view from the front door)
View from the back left corner
Team amazing mexican dinner
Amazing mexican dinner...chicken and onions with southwestern seasoning, toasted tortillas, refried beans, spanish rice, plus all the other self-explanatory toppings and chocolate cake for dessert (meal made possible by several key items sent from home...you know who you are...thank you from all of us!!)
Happy people
Another happy person
Picture Update Part 1 (in which it appears that all we do here is cook and eat)
We cooked ebey ourselves! (with some assistance from host sisters)
Masaman chicken curry with sweet potatoes, irish potatoes and bell peppers - our guest of honor loved it!
Key lime pie
The chefs with our guest of honor
Jacob explaining composting at a practical skills day we helped teach at the Community Health Nursing school. We also covered making neem cream (local insecticide), bed net dipping, making oral rehydration solution, and making moringa powder (from the leaves of a local tree).
Action shot
We even got a girl to help with the digging!
We made cake!! Using locally available ingredients and a makeshift dutch oven, we successfully made cake for a 1 year-old girl's birthday. I assure you it tasted better than it looks...
French toast, drowning in yummy peanut butter and jelly sauce. We slightly misjudged how much sauce we would need and couldn't let it go to waste...my dad will be proud ;-)
Mosquitos LOVE my left knee. Keep in mind this is the dry season, when the mosquitos supposedly don't have anywhere to breed, and in the interest of being culturally appropriate, I keep my knees covered at all times!
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