Chilling and Bissap

I've been chillin au Senegal.
There are a couple of awesome Senegalese things in this picture. My brown bag on the ground (thanks Aunt Laurie), the mat on the ground that is the dining room floor eating zone, and the purple cloth (called tissue here) that Leanna ended up getting tailored into a dress.

Bissap: the national drink of Senegal
Its tasty, full of antioxidants and good for the brain. Drink it if you are tired, stressed, or thirsty. People sell this stuff everywhere and its also a common beverage at parties BYOBissap

Ingredients:
two to three cups of dried hibiscus flowers
one to two cups of sugar
optional:
sprig of mint
one cup pineapple juice or orange juice

1. Rinse the dried flowers in cool water.
2. In a pot heat two liters of cold water. As soon as the water begins to boil, add the dried hibiscus leaves. Immediately remove from heat and let the flowers steep for ten minutes. Pour the water from the pot into a pitcher using a strainer to separate the flowers from the water. Stir in the Sugar. Add the other flavorings (if you want).
3. Add ice and chill completely
4. Serve anytime, and especially with ceebu jën or poulet yassa (ill hook yalls up with those recipes soon)



Now I'm working on the value of local foods in nutritional security and malnutrition for IDPs, irregular migrants, and refugees in West Africa. Check this out about the moringa tree. The peace corps and other agricultural development organizations are doing work on microgardening and school/community/health post gardens. I think its all fascinating.

We started working on this because of the growing food insecurities in West Africa, specifically the crisis in Niger.

FEBS moves forward. New plan: big health event in July. T-shirts should be ready to go by June. Meeting with the Medicin Chef and another guy in Yoff on tuesday. Monsieur Dieng is mailing our proposal to the national malaria (PNLP) and HIV (ANCS, CNLS) initiatives so that we can have a HIV and TB testing site and mosquito net giveaways at the event. You know how it do.

Migrantion, Music, Moussa mmmmm

Can you believe it has been one full week since you've gotten the news from Bzurk?
You can probably guess, its because I "does work" that I havnt been able to update
Also I have no Internets chez moi.

Give migrant domestic women Weekly Day Off by signing this petition!
They deserve it. Articles 23 and 24 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights say:

• Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.

• Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.

FEBS continues! and its going pretty fast. I submitted my funding request to USAID yesterday (I walked it there and handed it to them, I felt like a beast). I have a few other leads on places to get funding but if you or your organization wants some corporate social marketing in Africa you should think about investing in Femmes Ensemble pour une Bonne Santé, we're not asking for much.

I have had a pretty chill week. I finished Life of Pi. Its a good book and a fast read. A son of a zoo keeper who has 3 religions has an adventure that is terrible and wonderful. The book makes you think. The beginning and the end are really terrific and the middle is like the struggle of Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea I really recommend reading it if you haven't already (I know this isn't cutting edge stuff here).

I'm going to start Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse today.

I have started listening to African music and can listen to nothing else. As of now I'm listening to:
Amadou and Mariam
Les Freres Guisse
Putumayo Presents Africa Acoustic

Have I mentioned my boom box yet? It is my favorite thing in my apartment.

Heres a silly pic of my friend Moussa and I. I went to a wedding at his house on Sunday. Pretty fun, lots of Wolof. It was cool. Everyone was dressed all nice and the food/beverages were great. TONS of people. Our friend from the office Coumba got married in a crazy fast ceremony to Moussa's best friend. She's like my age and was a beautiful bride. Félicitations! Someone was snapping pics and the wedding, maybe Moussa will be able to get them to e-mail them to me... hahaha, or maybe not!

Alls well that goes well here in Senegal. Big meeting today (hopefully) where we can get a bunch of logistics figured out about funding, designing and stuff like that. I will have the logo, t-shirt designs and more specifics of the FEBS strategy ready to go for blog postage soon. Peace out WORLD. and happy birthday David Zamostny, I miss you tons. Remember this game from June, 2001? I do.

Public Transpo and FEBS Continues

Femmes Ensemble pour une Bonne Sante continues! If you want to see our current a good update it is here (it pretty much explains accurately and succinctly what is exactly going on with the project as of now) and the budget is here too. Enjoy!

Madam Ndiaye, the president of AMLD, leaves today for a month in Geneva (I miss Switzerland) and we had our "major coordination meeting" for everything for the month of May. This meeting has been rescheduled like 4 times. Madam Ndiaye gave me some project advice and off she goes. What a nice lady.


Public transportation is a whole different scene here in Dakar and took some getting used to. There are all kinds of buses cars and taxis called jungenji (I don't know how it is spelled), car rapides, mini buses, clandos (real cheap beat up old cars that people get in and out of, I don't totally understand them), sept plas (kind of like a station wagon for 7 people) and taxi cher (expensive cab even though they are only like 2-4 dollars to go anywhere in Dakar). The buses are much less expensive than cabs 100 cfa (about $0.25) and are a great way to talk to people, get around, and learn how to go with the flow here in Senegal. Some times they will just pull over at a gas station for 5 minutes talk about some stuff I don't understand and then continue to go on. If you want the bus to stop you either tell the driver or the dude collecting money or you tap on the roof or interior walls of the bus with a ring or coin and they will usually stop. Its hard to describe but the buses are like a 10 passenger van you might see Stateside except with 30 people and the middle isle also has seats that fold up that people sit on. 5 to a row and 2-3 people sit shotgun. Some of them are painted really awesomely and the Senegalese are proud of these buses.
This weekend should be saweet. Meat and beer with people I met at the Seder tonight, beach chillin at Isle Ngor (paradise) tomorrow, kewl garule (some big party I think?) Saturday night, and a marriage on Sunday. Peace.

FEBS

Les Femmes Ensamble pour une Bonne Sante

We have a project name and acronym! Woo hoo! If there is one thing I have learned about international development work you are nothing, NOTHING I tell you, unless you have a cool acronym. Logo, t-shirts, cups, and bowls coming soon.

FEBS is OK right? Women Together for Good Health
a project for migrant domestic women the world over!
Picturessss

Last night the urban migrant adult literacy group I work with, APADA, started a 4 day leadership training on using theatre and other methods to teach about health and development in Senegal. Pretty sweet right?

They started clapping and made me get up and dance in front of like 100 people. Pretty hilarious as I was wearing a Senegalese outfit and was the only toubab dude in the joint. Afterwards I went to Leanna and Ben's place and one of the girls (who danced with Leanna at the training) came over with Ben's brother randomly. We decided to snap a pic

I always have these expansive dreams of my little projects turning into international progressive movements that change the world.... let me walk you through this one.
So I have this program here in Yoff, Dakar. Repeatable, successful, tangible. I put the same program together in New Orleans when I'm at school. After that, I get friends and public health colleagues and Universities around the world to start putting this project together and in 3 years time we are a civil society organization bridging a health awareness gap for a marginalized and vulnerable group! Then we get invited to all the the conferences to present our project and to illustrate just how simple and easy it is to make a difference in peoples lives. haha.



In other less boring news the METS have won their last 6 games, 8 of their last 9 and are in first place of the NL East. Bay and Wright are finally hitting. Reyes is back in action, Ike Davis is a hoss, our catchers are making all the difference for the pitching staff, and Pelfry and Niese have become legitimate #2 and 3 starters (it only took them 3 years) behind Santana and the bullpen can pull the erratic Maine and Perez out of tough spots over this home stand despite having no regular setup man. Just like a week or so ago we were 4-8 and I was thinking "here we go again, another painful season" but low and behold I think the Mets showed the (people who care about baseball) world that they can win, I'm a simple man thats all I ask.

I think if you can dance like no one is looking, play cards, cook, and smile you can get along with just about anybody and overcome any language barrier.