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Yaguemar (the volunteer coordinator and me with broken knee and hard cast)
Training
Shot from the road
Traditional tea making
The ever ubiqitious Nescafe, ruining coffee since 1938
Cool tree outside one of the villages
A Foulani herder shoed us away thinking we were government taking "evidence" of his crime: letting camels eat some trees that were not on his land. Don't worry sir, we don't have the GPS coordinates of this tree (and I don't work for the Senegalese government)

I was sad to have to leave early but sometimes things like violence during a presidential election are outside of your control. It’s not easy to get to Senegal and missing out on good travel is unfortunate but I had a good experience in just two weeks time. The trainings with the farmers went pretty well and helped me gain some real confidence, but whether any of it helps the farmers I’m not really sure. But maybe that’s just the nature of development work and why it’s so hard. I did have several people ask me after the trainings if I could hire them for Equal Exchange – I told them I wasn’t the one making decisions around that, ha. But if you told me going into this trip I would break my knee, actually to some decent presentations in French for about 4 hours every day, and eventually have to be pulled out of the country early because of rioting I would never have believed it.

Interesting nonetheless to learn about new cultures – people snap when they want attention here, they drink a super surgery tea all the time and random people come in during meetings to offer it (and I never see money exchanging hands, I guess it’s just custom?), you give a koala nut to a girl to get married here, learning that it’s illegal to talk on the phone and drive in this country, smelling the odd burning smell throughout the country that reminded me of Cameroon, that type of thing, it’s just interesting to learn about and one of the reasons I like travel so much. I’ll miss not being able to really “know” Senegal but leaving home also makes you remember all the good things you have at home too – like good coffee