Rain

I arrived in Senegal at the end of rainy season. It rained twice; the most recent being in October. Last night, I was awoken by the rain (for those who don’t know me well, I sleep through everything). I woke up with a smile on my face listening to the rain hit the tin roof of my little room here in Ndem, resisting the urge to go play in it. But then panic hit. If it is raining in Ndem, 11k away in Bambey, it is most definitely raining as well. I have a few quarter-size holes in my roof, not to mention probably another dozen smaller ones that I have put off getting fixed. Shit. Rain is great and all; I just would have been interested to see what it does to my room. I have heard devastating things about Bambey and the rainy season. We tend to have a bit of a garbage problem. With garbage comes puddles, and puddles come mosquitoes. I may be spending a lot more time in Ndem when the rain really starts coming.

I have been in Ndem since Wednesday early morning. That’s the coolest part of the day and there is no way I could bike it another other time. We finished a grant application that should get mailed out by next week. Then we started working more on the IFAT application and hit a few road blocks. I’ll try to explain. First, there were the obvious road blocks. Abdou, who I work directly with, happens to be the busiest and most popular person in Ndem. He is in charge of everyone’s problems and if there was enough time in every day, he would find them all solutions. So he had a bit of politics to deal with around here and our application got tossed aside. I planned to leave this morning before breakfast, but since he was so busy with other stuff, we hardly got started. So I have decided to leave after work tonight – around 7pm. (I may die in the heat but I have to get back)

The other road block deals with way the business here in Ndem is run. Back in training, they emphasized how businesses here in Senegal, and other African cultures have trouble separating business with family (social) affairs. I guess I just figured, assumed, that Ndem was different. Well! As we are going over the application, questions come up asking what percentage of profits is used to go back into development. He said plain and simply that we cannot know this. You see, here, if someone has a wedding or baptism or is too sick to work, Ndem takes money from the business and gives it to them. If there is ever a problem at the primary school or a need at the maternity center, they hand over money; not a whole lot of questions asked. They will have to change their entire way of accounting in order for us to make this IFAT certification possible. At least I alerted them of this problem. Maybe we will change some things?

It’s not the end of the world I guess. We have other plans for Ndem. As volunteers, we are forming a network of artisans here in Senegal. In 2 weeks, we are having an expo of products of artisans as our work partners at the Club Atlantique. We will sell products from all over Senegal in one place, joining together people that we all talk about all the time, and getting them to talk to each other. I get to go to an Ndem store in Dakar next weekend and pick out all the products that we hope to sell at the Club. Let’s hope I pick the right ones!

A few more hours until I hit the dusty trail… can’t it just spontaneously start raining now? I am cursing the beautiful blue sky.