Some H's C's and A's

HCA: Happy, Crappy, and Awkward highlights:

What's cool is I think I have more Happies to talk about than Crappies and Awkwardies!

Happy:

• Sitting around "learning" how to eat fresh sugar cane with my host siblings Yura and Maram - rainy season
• Seeing the garden grown in Kaur and all the active children watering and hearing the teachers say, "we're growing more food than we know what to do with!" - just after rainy season
• Seeing the school take initiative without any of my input to build a local fence and start garden beds hauling water from the pump several hundred meters away because our garden pump is broken, again - post rains
• Watching the grade nine students wash their hands with the tippy tap that we built - recently
• Watching my host family wash their hands with either the tippy tap in our compound or kettle that I gave when I first moved in - since moved in and recently with tippy tap
• Christmas brunch was amazing, thanks VSN! - xmas
• Coming home from a bee keeping training and seeing the motivation of my counterparts as we hung our catcher boxes - couple weeks ago
• Receiving letters and care packages from home! - since coming, thank you!

Crappy:

• Alpha getting denied on his US visa application- It felt like a personal rejection since I and others of us had worked so hard for MONTHS to help him.  What the heck US Counselor?! - Nov
•  Running out of gas for cooking food - Jan
• Stink bug infestation! Fat small flat weird looking insects that are/were everywhere.  Was kind of like a living nightmare - Nov-now
• Uncovering and having to deal with two mouse nests including nine infant embryonic looking mice and the killing of... - every so often it's just one of those things that happens
• All the trees we tried to plant this rainy season, including the 5 Leuceana in my host fathers field, have since died or been eaten by the ruminants- they weren't lying about the tree guards..!

Awkward:

•  Asking my family to build me a cement bed if I buy cement and then coming home to see both bags gone and not enough bricks to explain why both bags were emptied but no other bricks in sight.  So it felt like they stole from me which was really awkward.  I then told them that I lost one of my keys which was true and so told them they had to take everything they were storing in my house out, as I was going to change the lock and not give them a key...  Was awkward for me but my host father moved the incredibly heavy sacks of wheat flour or whatever while laughing since I offered to help and my sister said I couldn't and I said I could and then I tried and couldn't and conceded that yes, my younger sister is in fact much stronger than me, which I conceded verbally in Wolof which they thought was very funny.
• Learning a new word that I thought meant spoiled, I tried it out with a "spoiled" groundnut announcing that "this ground nut is "spoiled." The whole compound starts laughing hysterically, my English speaking brother who is a teacher and was up for the holidays comes out laughing and tells me that xamadi means rudeness, and that I was calling the groundnut rudeness.  Well, it is rude that it's spoiled! I defended myself in English in my sense of humor which he translated for me to be met with even more laughter.  Fortunately I don't mind being the blunt of the joke- which is good as it's going to happen again and again! : )

Meet Gayende, my little lion

She's been a wonderful companion, hunter, and ball of cuteness.  I'm hopeful she'll survive.  If she does, her next stop, Inshallah, is the opposite of sub Saharan Africa, sub Arctic!

Food Security

Greetings!

All right let's dive in and get it over with.  You knew it was bound to come, I guess I knew it was bound to be an issue but didn't want to believe it let alone understand what it as a problem really means, food.

Life force, energy, sugar, calories.  Can't live without it.  Literally.

In the small kitchen mud hut you'll see a couple piles of ash collected within the triangle of stones used to hold up the aluminum cooking pots.  In another corner are dishes, maybe some fire wood, another corner holds the clay pot that stores the water.  Up top a metal bowl with a lid holds some ingredients, some course salt, likely mined from the brackish part of the river, maybe some onions and dried fish.

In my host fathers hut is the bag of rice, coos, ground nuts, and pot of local peanut butter.  These, the above, and jumbo (chicken bouillon) cubes are just about the main ingredients to any dish.  Making things a bit more fancy/tasty, costing a bit more money unless you are fortunate to be able to grow them yourself, are the local vegetables: carrot, cabbage, potato, sweet potato, cassava, beans, tomato, bitter tomato (a relative of egg plant), egg plant (commonly called garden egg), okra, squash, pumpkin, and that famous hot hot pepper.  Also leaves from sorrel, baobab, and moringa. 

Lunch: (will try to add pics at a later date!)
One of the most common dishes right now is domada/mafet.  A fresh ground nut sauce made with local peanut butter, tomato paste, jumbo, onion, garlic, water, and typically dried boney fish, served atop a bed of steaming fresh white rice.  Prepared well this is one of my favorite dishes.  When the sauce is rich and local vegetables can be found within, and dried boney fish not found within, this dish is delicious.  More common in village and up country, the sauce is weak and watered down and extremely fishy and salty.  Also, commonly, it's just not available in copious amounts to fill everyone's belly, or at least to fill mine.

Dinner: Mbaxal orYangkaton (depending on your tribe)
Another simple and common dish.  The ground nuts are pounded but not too fine, not too course.  Rice is cooked.  The fresh ground groundnuts are added as well as the dried boney fish, bouillon cubes, salt, and maybe onion and all mixed together.  Again I like this much more when the fish doesn't find it's way in.  But even so it's good.  Even better with fresh lime and hot pepper to add for flavor.  But even hot pepper can be hard to come by at times, let alone fresh lime.

These two dishes complemented with the breakfast bars my family sent me is what I've been subsisting off of solely for about a month.  Until recently I was able to add to my regimen rice from the school food bowl.  There they cook bennechin every day except Friday when they cook yellow split peas with onion and oil.  Bennechin: rice, oil, onion, jumbo, and salt. 

And then the school ran out of their WFP (World Food Program) rice.

The common theme is the 'shocking' absence of vegetables.  Vegetables and leaves do find their way in seasonally.  But all the above mentioned dishes and breakfast bars just somehow wasn't enough to keep me healthy nor enough to fight off infection or stave off the cold.

Then my gas ran out.  It was out in the neighboring town and in low quantity next nearest me in Senegal.  Oily pasta and Parmesan cheese couldn't come to the rescue.  Nor could vegetable noodle soup, oatmeal, or soya macaroni.  My standard staples when I can cook.  I was slipping.  My cold relapsed.  The market stubbornly remained stationary some 12 km away.  I was too tired or sick to make the 24 k round trip journey.  Vegetable gardens in the community remained stubbornly dried out and unproductive.  Depression, frustration, and apathy settled in along with the cold nights (my blanket was some 140km further up country left at a friends site after a bee keeping training)...

My kitten was happy and plump though.  She had fish heads and scraps to eat on a pretty regular basis.  And though she turns her nose up to the rice initially, after realizing that's all we got, she'll pretty much finish her handful offered by the family before the next handful or two comes.

So Peace Corps had me come on in, eat some food, take even more antibiotics, and get back on my feet.  Pizza, homemade chicken noodle soup, apple pie, hot chocolate, r&r and wonderful friends to the rescue. 

The hardest thing with the food is that we do have it, but what we have is somehow small and basic and is supposed to feed some ten people.  My little brother will look up at the food bowl, lay back down as I start to dig in with my camping spork.  Yura, doo lekka? Yura, you won't eat?  Full.  Bullsh*& I think to myself.  But what do I know.  Maybe he ate at another compound?  It's so hard to gauge ages here because the malnutrition stunts growth and size substantially. 

When this happened before the harvest, when we were just getting small bowls of coos (millet) flour and cold water to eat, and it was just me and some of my brothers eating, I would ask my sisters if they ate the next morning after finally mustering the courage to ask wondering if it was inappropriate as we don't really talk about food or hunger, ever. I was surprised to feel the stinging sensation strike my nose and eyes as I tried to fight back the tears as my words came out of my head, did you eat, and hearing my host sister tell me with a smile that she did not eat, she doesn't like coos/chere. 

I have an out, always.  It's called America or the United States of America (as there are more than one America).  If I'm out of money and going hungry, someone will help me, PC, a fellow PCV, a teacher at the school.  But this is their life.  There is no out.  There really isn't a McDonalds up the road or Taco Bell as much as I may fantasize.  There are other compounds where all are always welcome and will always find an invitation to their food bowl.

But they are "used to it."  As horrible as it sounds.  It's the bit of solace I hold onto to make me feel better that it's likely they aren't 'suffering' or feeling as badly as I feel when the food just isn't quite enough.  But it's one of those things I'll never really know as I doubt they'd ever really tell me. 

The quality and quantity of the food bowl is correlated to the emotional rollercoaster of peace corps correlated to the emotional roller coaster of life.  It has it's ups and downs.  Some periods are better than others. 

I'll be ok.  As much as I hate the stereotype here that because I'm white I have money, it's true.  And as long as you have money you can buy food.  But what about them?  What about them especially if food aid stops? Which is likely to happen at least eventually.  Our rice is aid rice.  It's one of the reasons we aren't eating our home grown millet because aid rice is available and they prefer it as it's held in higher prestige.  Even though the millet is available in higher quantity and has more nutrients.  But it's probably being saved for when aid rice is in smaller quantity.

This powerful book I nearly finished, Two Ears of Corn: A people centered approach towards agricultural improvements by Roland Bunch with World Neighbors, emphasizes that one of the most powerful things you can do, is somehow get the people to believe in themselves.  To believe that things could be better and that they, not foreigners, can make it better.  Most people of the developing world have been or are minorities that have been made to feel over the course of history that they are inferior and incapable of doing anything.  If you believe it long enough it can become the truth.  I think this is the situation we are dealing with and should be the angle we approach any form of community development anymore.  There is a dependency now on foreign aid.  If that dependency can be replaced with confidence achieved by seeing that yes they can produce more food and make more money if they space the corn like this or till the stalk in like that, a spiraling outward effect of "what else can we do" is likely to follow which is how development will actually occur.  Like I said, it was a powerful book!  It proposes a time frame of work that is substantially longer than Peace Corps (5-8 yrs) but gave me much 'food' for thought.  Check out the organization here if interested.

The moral of the story is if you want to help- stop giving things out.  Hand outs aren't valued and are the opposite of useful.  Give confidence.  It's much harder to give but much more valuable!

Thank you again for all the continued love and support and care packages and letters!  Jynene, Souse, B, Laura, Robert, Sarah, Brady, Mom, and Joe- they keep me goin!  Love to all of you.  And if you live in a climate that is conducive to this, take advantage! Grow what you eat and eat what you grow!  Our motto around here.  I'll have quite a few paces to walk with my 25L of water on my shoulder but am going to give dry season gardening a try here soon.  Hot season okra here we come.  Also am excited about the hot season mangoes that are already on their way!

Good food makes for good livin.  Enjoy, savor, and if you really want to, send some this way ;-D
So much love!

GAD Days

Happy Hanukkah, Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year both from the Muslim Calendar and Gregorian Calendar!  Thank you for all the love, and polar bear card, Mrs. Stevens!  It made my Christmas!

It was a warm Christmas spent at the beach with fellow PCVs with a more than an indulgent breakfast of sticky buns, quiche, muffins, and fruit put on by the volunteer support committee (VSN) for a price of about seven US bucks.  Not too bad when you're far from home for the holidays.

I came in partly for the holiday and good cheer but mostly for the gender and development (GAD) in service training that occurred on the 28th and 29th of December.

The GAD committee was encouraged by PC admin to put on a GAD in service training for both volunteers and counterparts.  The two day training covered topics regarding:

• Gender in The Gambia (the difference between sex and gender)
• Gender Development in our Sectors (environment, health, and education)
• Men as Partners (how men and women can work together)
• Family Planning (birth spacing, number of children, etc)
• Cultural Mysteries (demystifying Gambian and American culture where some questions included for Americans, do people practice polygamy, does America have tribes and do we know them, and what superstitions are we having there, and  from PCV's, why do Gambians steam the rice before boiling it, and clarified how the term toubab is a promotion for Gambians but derogatory for us, PCV's)
• Business Strategies
• Micro finance
• Girls and Sports
• Female Genital Mutilation/Cutting (FGM/C) and gender based violence
• Making Changes in Your Life and Community
• Action Plan for change in our Communities
• and Evaluations

The training, as you can see, touched on highly sensitive issues but went in my opinion extremely well.  Both volunteers and guest speakers from organizations in The Gambia participated in giving presentations.  Counterparts and volunteers worked together throughout the two day training having difficult but important discussions and coming up with concrete plans of action to take back to our communities.

I invited a female teacher from my school to attend.  She is very active in the school heading the Peer Health Club and always assisting me in anything I need.  I got to know her mostly from her profound assistance with regard to teaching a lesson on HIV/AIDS to our grade nine students at the school.  Our plan of action is to continue to spread sensitization messages of HIV/AIDS throughout the community in the form of dramas by the Peer Health students.  We also want to try to encourage more girls to play sports at the school.

*--**-Caution, the following is super sensitive and perhaps difficult read regarding FGM/C-**--*

I was nervous as to how this discussion was going to go.  A volunteer brought in a guest speaker who works for a research organization out of Spain, http://www.mgf.uab.es/?lang=english.  The website is mostly in Spanish but maybe it can be translated if you are interested.  He is a Gambian working for this Spanish researcher and was extremely sensitive and professional in his presentation on the issue.  He came about it from a research and medical concern angle in a means to take the personalization out of it.  In The Gambia, 78% of FGM/C is observed amongst the different tribes.  Our neighboring Senegal observes 28% where it is illegal to perform FGM/C there.  One reason it is so high in Gambia is because here is home to a number of different tribes that recognize this practice as being important to their culture. 

From what I can understand there is Islamic law, Farla, and prophetic teaching, Suna.  Praying five times a day towards the East is an example of Islamic law, meaning if you are to be a good Muslim, you have to honor Islamic law.  Male circumcision also falls under Islamic law but female circumcision does not.  According to our guest speaker, FGM/C is not practiced in Saudi Arabia.  The image below shows where it is known to be practiced in the Africa and some Middle Eastern countries:

Picture image from: http://www.mgf.uab.es/?url=geography_mgf_0x33&m=ml_03

Where type I is a small cutting of the clitoris to full clitoral removal.  Type II is full clitoral removal and scraping of the minor labia, and Type III is the removal of the clitoris, small and large labia, sometimes followed by a closure of the vaginal hole to be opened again upon marriage.  There is a story from the prophet that mentions a cutting of the clitoris but no command that this needs to happen.  Every culture has their own beliefs wrapped up around the issue.  As you can imagine this is a very personal and sensitive issue where it is important to remember as volunteers we are not here to change culture accuse or judge.  We are here to promote peace and encourage best practices in each of our sectors including health. 

Several tribes believe that a woman is not clean if she is not circumcised, several males won't marry an uncircumcised woman, and it is difficult to be one uncircumcised in many as insults will find their way to you as "smelly man," etc.  This practice is primarily through the women only where men are not invited to be a part of the ceremony or decision.  The pressure comes mostly from the grandparents as well as the society at large.  The Wolof tribe historically was known for not practicing female circumcision.  Recently with all the intermarriages, this practice has started to infiltrate into the Wolof tribe.  There was a story of a Wolof bride uncircumcised and thus looked down upon from the women in the tribe of her husband.  She pleaded to her husband to be circumcised in order to be accepted by the women in the village and was before giving birth to her first child so that the women could see during the birth that she was circumcised.

In the Gambia specifically 66.2% practice type I FGM/C, 26.3% type II, and 7.5% type III.  Some complications include hemorrhage, death, keloids, tetanus, STI's, UTI's, scarring (which can prevent vaginal fluid being secreted causing extra friction tearing etc during intercourse and labour), etc.  Health clinics and health working professionals are not encouraged or permitted to safely perform FGM/C as it is perceived as a health risk that is not safe.  Any modification to the female genitalia is disturbing an organ where in male circumcision it is removal of foreskin, not damaging or effecting that organ (yes I'm aware that skin is an organ too...).  A small improvement is that people seem to be using clean new razor blades more, and a blunt rusty knife passed down from generation to generation holding the spirits of the circumcision ceremony, less. 

People also seem to be aware of the "this is maybe not such a good thing" attitude surrounded around FGM/C and are keeping quieter about it, perhaps even becoming embarrassed about it and so forth, but still practicing it.  Change occurs slow slow and needs the support of many, men and women for behavior change to occur.

Our guest speaker from this Wassu Kaffo organization trains health professionals as well as Imams (prayer leaders) on the health risks associated with FGM/C so that those professionals and well respected individuals can share the message with the communities in which they serve either at the local health clinic or in the local mosque.

For us volunteers, we can try to even just have that difficult conversation inquiring about the practice to learn more about the culture we are immersed in.  If our host sister or best friend in village knows that we know about FGM/C, they know they have someone else to confide in.  As volunteers too we can inform about health risks and inform that women from America at least are both healthy and can be wed, with a full clitoris in tact and all.

--**--**-end super sensitive topic-**--**--

So, we survived the GAD days where it was followed by a modification of the "Anything you can do I can do better" song having men and women taking turns to announce the above verse followed by the opposite sex chiming in with "no you can't" and so on to the modified verse of men and women then holding hands and singing "anything we can do we can do better, yes we can, yes we can, yes we can!!"

We left the training with concrete action plans, inspired, and more aware of what the sexes feel and go through.  I saw in the faces of the men the pain they felt in hearing about FGM/C in particular.

It might take some time but I think the more we can do trainings like this and expose each other to... each other, the sooner we will start seeing men fetching water and supporting women with their chores, and women supporting men with finance and business.  We realized after the training how it's important for a nation to utilize the skills and talents of both men and women for development and that when you are capitalizing on all your people, you can develop that much faster than if you are only utilizing half of what you've got.

I think young men and women would benefit from similar GAD talks and activities stateside because as much as we like to think we're perfect, we're not.  Pay is still not equal and men and women are influenced by "socially constructed differences behaviours and expectations that change across cultures over time" aka gender. 

Anything we can do we can do better
We can do anything we want to do.

Yes we can

Yes we can

Yes we can!!!

Food Security, WAFSP, USAID,

and Peace Corps.

First, Asalaamaliekum.

This has been a long project, especially for walking into the middle of it.  WAFSP stands for West Africa Food Security Program and is in affiliation with USAID which is in affiliation with Peace Corps in that PCV's are the ones on the ground here utilizing tax payer money in as sustainable ways as we can to promote food secure projects and activities.

The volunteer in the town over wrote a grant to help her school have the funds to procure a garden.  There was nothing but a plot of land to begin with.  The grant money rehabilitated the hand pump, procured a chain link fence, provided a garden training, seeds, garden tools, and ally-cropping fruit trees, and of course, appropriate signs showing off USAID and Peace Corps logos- can't forget the publicity part.  

By the time I took over the project (the volunteer had to leave their service early for personal reasons) the grant had been submitted but the money hadn’t yet hit the bank.  My responsibility was making sure the money went where it was supposed to and that a garden got made.  The most difficult part of this project, and probably any project handover, is not knowing the community or the people like I know my own.  It’s easier to work with strangers from your own country because you innately have a better idea of the culture and where people are coming from since you are coming from similar places.  But here, I may never know or fully understand where people are coming from because I did not spend my childhood here.  So the best I can do is get to know my community as best I can and work within that.  And every village is different just like every person is different.  And so the same goes for the large town receiving the garden.

The most disappointing thing was the attitude of the formed garden committee.  We held a training and they continued to ask about logistics which was the polite way of asking where there money was.  Because so much foreign aid has been pumped into this country, it seems to be that people just expect things now and don’t necessarily truly value or care about those things themselves but care that they are being given something.  Charity is one of the five pillars of Islam and so that expectation goes deeper and further than foreign aid.  Nearly $5000 US dollars was pumped into this project to establish a potentially highly productive vegetable garden to promote gardening and healthy eating at the school and in the community.  Instead of being excited about that outcome, which granted does take time and work, they were disappointed that there was no per diem.  After a long discussion I stuck to my guns and refused to offer per diem.  They got a training, and a very nice lunch, and a garden.  The grant doesn’t allow per diem anyway.  I had to try to explain how Peace Corps was different than Unicef and Actionaid and WFP.  We are not an organization that gives money but an organization that builds capacity.  This was rather lost on them.  At any rate they told me that if there was no money there was no motivation to attend any more trainings which was honestly fine by me as the garden is for the students anyway and they don’t need per diem to attend a training.

I told them honestly, in English so I’m not sure how much was heard but I definitely cannot speak Wolof whilst frustrated, that had I known per diem was their motivation from the get go and had I know they wouldn’t show an interest in the actual garden, I wouldn’t have volunteered to help see this project thru taking my time out of my own village away from people that actually care about projects, and not just per diem.

You can’t get too upset though.  A training takes you away from your other duties and you want to see compensation.  I understand that.  Heck if I ever have to come down for a “mandatory” training, as a Vollunteer! I want compensation too which Peace Corps does provide.  But the trainings I attend are not giving me things like a $5000 vegetable garden.  They just give us skills and knowledge to help people better help themselves.  So I feel that they are somehow different.  It’s also an interesting culture difference that here, in order to motivate people to attend trainings or workshop, there needs to be something like money, lunch, juice, or snack while in the states we typically have to pay for the trainings and workshops we attend.  But there often is food and tea at those as well.

It’s just very unfortunate that foreign aid seems to do more harm than good in the sense that it has created an attitude of expectation for things and assistance which practically eliminates the motivation to help oneself.  And I don’t blame them.  The work here is exhausting.  I admittedly cannot do it and nor do I try or feel guilty anymore for not going to the field every day or for asking for help once in a while to fetch water.  Not only is it exhausting work but it’s work that is being done on a very very small calorie diet (maybe 1200-1800 depending on how well off your family is).

But the students and school itself is stepping up in showing interest after some more pep talks.  Since the training they have created 12 beds and have been watering the nursery.  This is a big deal!  They can only benefit from doing the work but let’s be honest, it’s even hard to get people to garden in the states!  

Letters! Mail Run!

Two very very exciting things in the life of a PCV.  When the truck comes up to your site and you haven't seen an American in who knows how long, and they give you the Peace Corps Times and local Newsletter written by PCVs with important announcements etc., and then that's it... no letter, no care package, no nothing.  It makes you wanna cry a little.  I mean the Worldview Peace Corps magazine and Peace Corps times and newsletter are better than nothin.  But it still hurts.  Even when that white Peace Corps vehicle pulls up just to give you one letter on top of all that, it lifts your spirits so so much!  So I'm sure I will be embarrassed about this post in due time.  But while I'm here I feel like I have to plea, a little bit.  I'm not in the capital much and hope it stays that way as I get super stressed out and find myself to be overwhelmed with the hustle and bustle of city life and copious amounts of American time with fellow PCV's, which is nice but just so very different than village that it can be a difficult adjustment.  Don't get me wrong, it's wonderful to take a break once and again but I enjoy taking my breaks out of site up country where I don't have to spend three hours or so on a wobbly ferry. 

Given that I'm up there more so than not so, and thus only get mail and such every other month:
Dec, Feb, Apr, Jun, Aug, Oct

where I have only nine more months before my COS date!  Time is flying.  Anyway I just feel like I have to say/plea that receiving mail via letters, especially when it's the primary form of communication for me, is so incredibly incredible!  I feel like people think they have nothing to say because I'm living it up in West Africa and they're living it up in the states and that I know the states and thus don't want to hear about it.  This is a very unfortunate misconception.  Being far from home, and missing home, I would like nothing more than to hear about it, including mundane small details like weather, shopping, food, pets, etc.  I'm not even a little bit joking.  I think I can speak for just about anyone serving overseas that it makes our entire day if not week, if not month, to receive love and support from back home. 

I know for a lot of my close friends, we don't really come from a generation of letter writing so much anymore.  But the ones I've received have been so great!  I also know everyone in America is pretty busy all the time.  So I too will try to be a better corresponder!  But anyway, what it comes down to is, please please please keep em coming!  I miss you all so much and love hearing about everything that is going on in your lives.  Really really really! 

On a similar note- my mom's class of I believe sixth graders has sent letters to exchange with probably some grade eight and nine students at the basic cycle school in my community.  We hope to exchange letters and thus culture etc.  If anyone else is a teacher and wants to do a letter exchange with my students in the bush in W. Africa, Bissimmilli! (you are welcome!) I hope to have the themes be mostly about environment to trigger those discussions as well like what wildlife is in Arizona (where my mom teaches) vs. The Gambia, what environmental issues is Arizona facing vs. here, and how are the ecosystems and ecology similar and or different.  Things like this.  I'm really excited about it.  Sorry for the perhaps desperate sounding plea.  I'm going to stock up on stamps and cards today Inshallah to practice what I preach!

Wishing you all the very best.  Thank you for the continued support and interest.  Hope to hear from you soon! Very very best!

Words on Wheels

This project was inspired by the awesome children books my Mom was sending that included things from children atlases to Goodnight Moon to colorful reforestation efforts in Kenya to detailed information about Baobab trees and the insects and animals that benefit from them, including people.

The idea was to put together a box of really good books that kids would be interested in and able to read to encourage reading.  This box would travel on our mail run which occurs every other month (Dec, Feb, Apr, etc) to places where really good books and resources for reading and learning are hard to come by .  Several people try to embark on library projects but in my experience, several of these communities are not quite ready yet to appreciate the value of a library to justify all the time and money that goes into them.  On the other hand, several students, even if it's just one or two, do benefit from those types of project which can have unknown positive ripple effects.

I talked about Words on Wheels with the program director for the Education sector, she was super excited, I wrote a proposal and then essentially handed everything off to the PCVL, Peace Corps Volunteer Leader, for education since he's been focusing on improving literacy and since he lives in the capital with much more access to resources than myself. 

We ran a pilot test this last mail run in October.  Packets of five or so books ranging from early beginner to moderately advanced went around the CRR with feedback papers.  In addition to the books there were study tools like alphabet flashcards and or a small chalkboard to practice handwriting and a note from Ed volunteers with some tips on how best to use books for teaching purposes.  The second idea is that several of us health and environment volunteers care about improving literacy also but aren't going to necessarily go out of our ways to achieve this.  But if a nice little packet of books and resources come to us for a period of two months, between the mail runs, we can do better to focus efforts helping tutor our siblings or others in the community that are interested.  Because it is a small concentration of books, and because they aren't really being used without the supervision of the volunteer, this ensures, Inshallah, a decent life for the book which would not be the case if left to the child alone for even a short period of time.

For me, with my books at my site with my kids, the pilot was a huge success.  Even though I had some fantastic books already myself, they were all quite above the reading levels of my host siblings.  These books that came in the Words on Wheels packets brought to us perfect beginning books that my host siblings were not only able read but able to read, but master in the time we spent focusing on them.  This built confidence which may perhaps further increase interest in reading.

In addition to this project, some volunteers are working on creating simple and easy stories in the local language or simply translating already existing stories into the local language to peak interest that way.

As we say here, we're on the work slowly slowly.