Epiphany!

I had two amazing conversations on Friday that are helping me to fully appreciate and understand what my time in Senegal is and could still be.

First I met with John Fay who started a micro credit program with my organization a few years back. It's actually one of GEN-Sen's most effective programs and now has a life of its own. So far I've been focusing a lot of time and energy on a fair trade project. Everything is still "in the works" so John talked to me and a coworker about his thoughts on fair trade. I completely appreciated the 20 minutes we had with him because he was very honest with us. He let us know about a lot of the holes in our plan and gave us a clue as to some of the difficulties we will encounter. Because I'd been doing all this research I was aware of some of this but it was great to hear it from someone who is already well versed in the field. In our talk we somehow got to the topic of "aid" from foreign countries, ie clothes. Donated clothes often arrive here in Senegal but are soon taken and sold by various merchants in the markets. While this may not seem so bad at first, we must think about the Senegalese manufacturers and people who work in the textile industry. They are suffering severe losses because of this trend.

Later in the day I took part in a "conversation club" that is meant to help Senegalese students practice their English. Our topic was The Future of Senegal. For two hours we discussed the problems that the country is facing and possible solutions there may be. Of course most of the students were very impassioned and it almost seemed like the whole talk would circle on all the bad but i learned so much from listening to them. Besides bad politics, and a not so perfect education system, a few people mentioned the lack of pride in Senegalese products. Everyone prefers things that come from the states or Europe over Senegalese products that are sometimes of even better quality. My friend Jane brought up the point that sometimes people aren't willing to make necessary sacrifices, including us in that room. She picked up the bottle of coca cola that was sitting on the floor and said when are we going to stop drinking coca cola and only drink beesap juice (a popular Senegalese drink)? The conversation went on for two hours. Afterwards I was so happy that I'd had the chance to take part in it. It was so enlightening to hear more about the country from it's youth. I'm only here for seven weeks total-what I will get to see and experience will only touch the surface, but this went beyond that.

The best thing I took from these conversations was the value of pride in one's country. Unfortunately a good number of Senegalese people have lost some of that. In order for the country to help itself the people must be proud enough to take control and fight against the corruption that is destroying them. No matter what we do from the outside, it will never be as effective as what the country's own citizens do from within. I'm not saying that the help we give them is useless and irrelevant, I'm saying that it would help so much more if they weren't just one time occurrences but rather helping build infrastructures within the country that can be run and sustained by it's citizens.