Tuesday 9 June – Day 77

Day at home today, apart from briefly cycling to Sanna’s house at the other end of Dianna to get Oussainou and Sanaa to come over and have lunch. It was getting late and we hadn’t seen them yet. I had Mafee made for me. Delicious – peanut butter, without the sugar, cooked with vegetables. Nice with potato, aubergine, onion and okra. I really like okra. It has a sticky consistency when you cut it. The vegetable sellers at the market at the main cross-roads in the village, for the turn off to Abené always break the end off the okra before they give it to you, to check it isn’t a bad one. The market is under the shade of big trees – they use planks of wood that they must store somewhere and bring out every day, laid on top of supports stuck in the ground. They prefer to use this spot under the trees, opposite the taxi garage to the specially made market on the opposite side of the road. I think the development committee in the village may have better luck next time after consultation with the market traders, otherwise their efforts at building a fine market place go under-appreciated.

The team meeting was a success again yesterday. Oussaino got his bush taxi from the Gambia ok, had lunch and made it down to Abené in time to chair the meeting again and go through each of the proposals we had put together for projects to try to meet their educational needs. The team discussed the feasibility of each one and were encouraging, putting forward their own ideas and sharing the benefit of their local knowledge. Oussainou worked with them to put the proposals in order of priority.

We recognised the need to have a printed translation in French of the action planning proposals to enable the literate members of the team to refer to a written document to share the ideas with other members of the communities and get their feedback at a later stage. But for the moment some were making notes in the meeting to refer to later. And one even passed my house in the evening (after I had gone to bed early exhausted from concentrating on the language during the 2 and a half hour meeting, and with a sore tummy) to check over the proposals again. He’s keen! It’s great to see local people in the team putting so much effort in to the assessment.

We also noted the need to collate the information we have gathered and use that also as a basis for guiding the team in action planning. I am busy writing up a report, both for the team meeting tomorrow (as we’ve only got this one week left now, we have to cram it all in) and also to email to Uncle Fred before he makes his pitch for funding. It’s nearly 8pm now, luckily there hasn’t been a power cut yet today (touch wood!). So far I’ve written about 3,000 words and haven’t even scratched the surface yet. I’ll continue tomorrow.

I stepped out of the meeting briefly to pick up 4 of the short and fat local bananas for 200F CFA (about 33p) as I was really hungry. As I was chatting with the banana seller – she says I’m her best customer, or at least I like to think that was she means – my Great Uncle Fred called on my mobile phone to say he wanted to make a bid for funding to the Rotary Club International next week and needed me to send him information. His motivation and energy in fundraising are impressive.

Since I spoke to him about my plans to go to Africa to do this assessment and try to work with local people to improve education, he has been hatching plans to raise funds for the projects. He got me what he describes as the best date in the calendar for making a funding pitch to his local Rotary Club which he is involved with, as a long-term member of the committee. And now he says if they accept the bid, the International section of the Club may also accept a bid for matched funding. So I have lots of work to do now to prepare the bid for him to present next week. If the date is correct, it’s the day after my flight back to London.

I spent a second afternoon session today with thirteen 4-10 year olds in my living room. Together we have filled the wall with pictures and multi-coloured squiggles on lots of pieces of paper. This is also the second time I have used the blu-tack my mum half-jokingly said she wouldn’t go to Africa without if it was her. They loved the felt-tip pens I brought over with me, and had been nagging me for them to play again. We had a good time together, making cat and dog noises and some of them learnt to say the words too. We also practiced drawing circles and squares. I drew a sci-fi car cum rocket! And we got a few variations on the theme stuck to the wall. One girl wrote out the ABC and numbers up to 60 in lots of different colours. Another child wrote a few words in Arabic. He probably attends an Arabic school where he would learn the Koran. I was exhausted by their energy and interest in everything, calling to me Aminata (my African name) to show me what they had done at regular intervals.

I made a deal with them - they get to use the felt tips if they do not disturb me when I’m in the ‘African shower’! The palm leaf fence has lots of gaps and is almost like washing in the open if you’ve got people walking past or sitting on the step opposite like some of the kids were doing yesterday, having a giggle!