Done In The Village

Our stay in the village is complete and we are all so relieved to have worked hard and have an opportunity to now relax. We are currently at a beautiful hotel in Mbour right off the beach. A summary of our work in the village is below:

COMPUTER:
-Taught kids to use the writting program on the donated Oil PCs (punctuation, sentence structure, capitalization, etc). They wrote basic sentences and eventually poems.
-Taught them Math Matching game and how to create French to Wolof virtual flash cards
-Showed the teachers how to use regular PCs

GARDEN:
-Dug new planting beds in school gardens
-Planted vegetables (eggplant, cucumbers, etc.) and shade trees
-Created a compost with dried shubs, animal manure, tree branches, dirt
-Dug trench to prevent flooding during the rainy season and add overall moisture to the soil
-Watered the soil twice daily
-Taught the villages to maintain the garden themselves

CONSTRUCTION:
-Built school desks
-Built tree bench
-Put tar on the leaking schol roof
-Sanding the desks
-Paid for constuction of new kindergarden school building (it was nierly finished when we left).

CLINIC:
-Served villagers including the many Imams (Muslim religious leaders)
-Glasses presciptions
-Pills and cream distribution
-Blood pressure tests

SOCCER:
-Destracted kids who were eager to get in our way when doing work


It is fair to say that our stay in the village was both challenging in many ways and sometimes very uncomfortable. In the end I think we all appreciated the experience and gained insight on lifestyles different from our own.