Training 1: Accomplished

I am halfway throught with my entrepreneurship trainings. Due to serious incomptence on my counterparts part, the first week of trainings, scheduled the week of January 12 has had to be pushed back until mid February but the second week went ahead and started the week of Jan 19 as planned. The training lasted 5 days and Ousmane talked about various things such as why entrepreneurship is important here, what makes a good idea for a business, where to get funding for a project and basic business skills such as marketing and record-keeping. 16 members of the local ASC showed up to participate and they were a really fun group. They were fairly talkative (which pleasantly surprised me) and seem to be quite motivated. Several of them have really good ideas for projects. Masseck, for example, really wants to open a fish-selling business in town and Massamb wants to open a cyber. Now that Pout has internet, we will need more cybers, as the only one we have has 2 computers; neither of which work very well.

Although there were some stressful moments throughout the week, mainly dealing with budgeting issues, the week went quite smoothly and Ousmane did a really great job. He led all of the sessions as language and cultural barriers would make it a lot more difficult for me to do what he did. I wish that I was competent enough to have participated more, but sometimes the hardest thing is to admit that the best thing for everyone is for you to sit back and let someone else take charge (for the greater good). This is expecially hard for a control freak like me.

And the best part is: it's over! Halfway over in the long run. The plan had been to have two consecutive weeks of trainings and then I would leave to go on vacation in Mali, but now the two trainings sandwich my trip. I finished the first before I left and will come back to the second one. At least I have work when I get back, right? The participants were also really interested in doing basic IT trainings with Word and Excel when I get back so we may spend a couple of weekends in the computer room at the local middle school doing that.

I leave tomorrow morning to use up the last of my vacation days in sunny Mali. I know, I know, it's a bit early to have used them all up seeing as how I still have 7 months left in Senegal, but thats sort of how things worked out. If I went to Mali any later than January I would run into their hot season, which I hear is only suited for massochists. I am not a massochist.

So the next time you hear from me, I will be in Mali!