Saturday 2 May - Day 40

Looking forward to the next Planning Team meeting here in Abene tomorrow. It's so exciting to be in this position of instigating a participatory community project. Iam hopeful that it will be a success and that the assessment will have the backing of the community. It dawned on me last night in bed that I haven4t actually seen the Chief of Abene since I was here in December. I also need to make a point of meeting the Chiefs of the other two villages, Albadar and Dianna to discuss the plans with them as I am told things don't happen without their knowing!

I've just made a few corrections to my typing, sorry if there are any I've missed- I'm using the strange AZERTY keyboard againin the internet cafe. Well it's really just a bar/restaurant with one laptop and a satellite internet connection. I want the same thing to use with my laptop at home. It'snot always open in the mornings when I want to connect on my way out somewhere and I'd be happier doing internet banking, etc on a connection at home. So I went in to Kafountine this week -on my own - and managed to ask around to find the man who could tellmeabout getting an Orange connection. But at 64 pounds to start off and then 24 a month I really don't have the funds to pay for it. it's also a &12 month contract, so impractical for 2 months only. If I come back in the autumn to live - yes I am considering it now!- I would probably get it then, but i'd wait for a special offer on the start up price.

I hadan interesting day yesterday, completely oblivious to it being May Day as I hadn't seen the date in a while- nor any news. I'm relying on my mum telling me in our brief and expensive chats on my mobile if there is anything earth-shattering I would need to know about. I wonder if I could get the Guardian Weekly posted here. But I know fron friends that posting anything here from the UK can take anything up to 3 months to arrive. A friend in London felt sorry for me not having lighting indoors at night and living by torchlight with the ghqstly big shadows it throws out, so he wanted to post me a solar light he bought in halford,but a friend here tells me it wouldn't be likely to get here before the date ofmy return flight in June. Shame. But now I have some light in the new place I'm staying. I thinking about camping soon in a tent in the bush. The bush is great - such beautiful birds of varying lengths and colours. Just like in the book I've been looking at on Birds of West Africa, but nothing like the drawings at all! They lookso much better in the flesh, on a tree. I just stop in my tracks and marvel at them. I saw the smallest birds I've ever seen the other day walking along the back route through the houses in Abene. Tiny little things feeding on something on the ground. I love it. Then there are the reptiles- all I know is that theymust be related to lizards, or chameleons with a orange head I think it is. Bobbing up and down as they look around them. So I was starting to tellyou about my day yesterday... I started trying to get a local (African) friend here to prepare a business plan for the restaurant he is planning on opening in the future. He doesn't read or write, so we made a list of the costs with drawings of electricity and water- interestingly different kinds of drawings from how I would draw them from my Western perspective - well they would be different wouldn't they! So we write off the 'costs' of buildings after much dicussion... the favours he does for people he would do anyway, so the favours others do for him (in transporting sand, producing concrete blocks, etc) don't really have a cost to him. We discuss this at length and I come to the conclusion that the 'life system' as he explains it of doing for others and giving when they need it and recieving when you need it is just an earlier formof LETS or Time Banks which is being immitated in the West. Africans, or is it Muslims? I don't know, may well have invented this kind of system first. Whatever I decide that for all our efforts in the west to take money out of the system and do things for each other asan exchange of skills or time is not nearly as advanced or widespread as this here. Hawa and I, on the flip-side look at people who don't worry about where their next meal is coming from, as Allah will provide and thinkhow foolish, we couldn't be comfortable with that for ourselves, but then she finds that yeswhen she has run out of money for food somebody passes the house with a handful of fish for her, or cigarettes when she has run out. Allah provides? Perhaps.

After my attempt at a business plan we move on to literacy. Hawa Toure, a skilledand experienced Early Years teacher is giving me training on literacy teaching, which I amputting in to practice with Yousoufa. He is soaking up new letters like a sponge, has some difficulties with pronunciation but after less than 24 hours he can writa 7 letters, c,a,d,o,g,s,and e. In that order. He recognises lots of words starting with those lettersand doesn't stop repeating the letter sounds and has the paper he's written it all on in his hand almost continuously. he is really proud to be learning and incredibly motivated. Literacy levels are really low in this area and it strikes me just how luch there is to gain from the skill, a whole host of information, which equqls knowledge and power, as well as a vital means of communication, in reading writing, emailing and the internet.

I have heard- I'll keep it anonymous- froma friend that her Senegalese (and black) husband, believes that white people are known to be more clever than black people. Yeah, we were both stunned too. The difference is that we have had better access to educationand fora lot longer. Incredible and shocking to hear something like that.