C'est quoi, "Thanksgiving"?

Happy Thanksgiving.

I want to catch you up on my life by sharing a story and the things for which I have to be thankful. I have been blessed with many things over the last year- patience and love from others, opportunity and incredible life experience from the world around me. Let me start at the beginning:

In June of 2007, I was approached by Amadou Sow and Masamba Kébé, the leaders of a village-based Association, who wanted to strengthen the artisanal activities of the group. Women from their villages weave pretty colored grass baskets that I had seen all over western Senegal.

"What can you do for us?" the men asked.

Clueless as to how I could help these people, I deflected their question with my own question: "Well, what do you think we could do together to advance the group?"

The villagers looked at each other, and I quickly felt unease that this idea would not go anywhere.

But then we took a step back. I asked them to tell me more about their group: How many villages were involved? How many women weaved? What else do people do to support their families? How much schooling have you all received? What is the story behind these baskets anyway?

As answers to my questions came back one by one, Sow's interest in the project shined through. The Association is called And Suxali Sunu Gokh, which means Working Together to Make our Villages Flourish. It was started because a young girl in their village, Diama, contracted malaria and died before she could get to a hospital. The community was outraged by this avoidable tragedy and resolved to establish better access to medical care in the immediate area. While they were at it, they selected committees to start tree nurseries and organize the basket weavers. That was in 2005.

“We’ve planted some tree nurseries, which have been good for the community, but to this day nothing has been done for the artisans,” Sow related to me. “Today we’re here to see if you can help us get something started for them.”

Sow continued to tell me how little money the women made selling their baskets in my town’s weekly market (about $2/week), and how sometimes they wouldn’t sell anything at all despite leaving their children in the hands of others for the entire day.

“Their lives are not easy,” he said, shaking his head. “What’s more, these intermediaries come to the market and fill big buses with baskets to resell for a large profit in Dakar and the tourist hotspots. It’s not fair.”

I nodded my head in agreement as the economist in me clicked on. “The intermediaries have all the power. One intermediary walks into a market of 500 women and he can play one off another to pay the lowest price possible.” With the women struggling just to get by, this exploitation should be a crime, but instead it’s a daily operation.

“How about if instead of having 500 women compete with each other for just a few customers, you formed 1 group to find orders from bigger clients that will pay the women a fairer price?” I asked.

The men nodded their heads in agreement. “Right. This is our plan, and you will find Americans to buy our baskets,” they said smiling.

I laughed, hoping they were joking about the last part. It seemed like a pipe dream at the time, but I was happy to have a prospective work partner that seemed to be enthusiastic about their project.

After a few weeks, I went out to visit Diama. I rode on a horse cart, taking in fields of millet and peanuts as far as the eye could see, and I was captured by its beautiful simplicity.

Finally, in November we held a meeting with the women to propose the idea of forming a group of weavers to market and sell their products together. As I sat in a Diama schoolroom with Sow, Kébé, and 15 women, I didn’t have the slightest inkling of the journey I was beginning. All I knew was that the women were looking at the ‘Toubab’ (foreigner), asking “when will you place an order with us?”.

Sow laughed nervously, explaining “Moustapha is a Peace Corps Volunteer. He is here to work with you, but he doesn’t have any money for you.” They nodded knowingly, but they have never believed it in the year that we have worked together.

After Sow explained the proposition, the women spoke. One by one, they lamented the hardship of weaving and selling in the market. “We work every morning and afternoon until we are tired, but we don’t get anything from it. It is too difficult!” shouted one. “We cook lunch and take care of our children. Then, we weave to try to earn a little money, but we take our baskets to market, and half the time we don’t sell anything!” another said, exasperated. These grievances rained down on me like fists, and I resolved to figure out a way for these women to earn what they deserved for their hard work.

The meeting concluded as the women enthusiastically dictated their names to be taken down on our list of weavers; most of them are illiterate. “Get us an order soon, Moustapha!” said one, clapping me on the back on our way out. Sow and I looked at each other, hoping that we hadn’t stirred the pot for nothing…

Then, only three days later, something amazing happened: the group got an order! Talk about timing, another artisan Association we had partnered with received an order from a large French buyer the day after our meeting. They couldn’t make all the baskets by the deadline, so they gave me a call. “Can your group help us out with production?” they asked. These words were music to my ears. “Yes, they can. There are at least 30 women ready to work,” I laughed incredulously. I jubilantly relayed the news to Sow, and we set off to work.

First, a prototype basket had to be made that each village could copy. The basket in question was a laundry basket about thigh high and 20” wide. All 100 baskets of our part of the order had to match the provided dimensions and look the same. Easier said than done.

When I showed up in the village to inspect and pass out the prototypes, I was crestfallen. The prototypes looked nothing like what they were supposed to.

Panic set in. “How can you say this basket is good when it is nowhere near the dimensions we gave you?” I fumed.

“You’re right, it’s not what you and Sow told us to make,” was all Nar, the responsible weaver had to say.

As I asked Nar to compare the dimensions of the basket in front of her to the dimensions provided, my anger evaporated. She didn’t know how to read a tape measure. I looked at Sow, smacking my forehead at our naïveté. Nar had simply made a laundry basket how she thought it should be made, ignoring the specific instructions we had failed to properly emphasize.

The problem was that the group was on a tight deadline, and Sow figured that they would not be able to finish the 100 baskets in a month unless they got started in a couple days. In Senegal, where everything takes 5 times as long, that meant crunch time.

I left Diama on the verge of giving up this crazy idea. The challenges involved in bringing a new group of people together to execute an export order on a short deadline were greater than I expected.

We had one shot left that day-another village in the Association called Mborin. Sow had to prepare for class that afternoon (he is a teacher), so I headed off to the other side of the national road on my own without much hope.

But what I found in Mborin made my eyes bug: the perfect basket! Haha, it sounds a bit ridiculous, but after trudging around all day in the sand and being zapped by the sun, I can’t tell you how stoked I was to see that basket. My faith in the potential for development projects to succeed in this country seemed to rest on whether this group could execute this order or not.

Riding off on a horse cart through the millet fields at sunset with my arm slung over the basket and the day’s quest fulfilled will be one of the best memories of my time in Senegal. My question had been answered: yes these projects can succeed, and yes the Senegalese can make a better life for themselves.

Now, I knew the rest would happen. And it did. The group filled the order, and finished it so quickly that the partner Association increased the order. Our group answered that call too.

This experience proved to me that small people can do big things, and it taught me to dream. Since then, we’ve told everyone we know about what we’re doing. As a result, Peace Corps Senegal works with 25 artisan groups around the country, the basket makers sent a sea container to the US (you can purchase them here:
http://www.swahili-imports.com/home/si3/page_3068), and we’ve organized two Artisan Expositions in Dakar where artisans have sold $3,000 of product each weekend!

Now I have come full circle, to what I am thankful for. It is for these projects that I have decided to extend my service by 4 months, and remain in Senegal through March. Stories like the one just told have made me see that each of us can catalyze change in our world and that no goal is too big to be attained. My Peace Corps service has been what I hoped it would be, and more. Senegal will be tattooed in my brain for the rest of my life.

I am thankful for the people I have spent my time with here- Senegalese, American, and other. I did not know what ‘exceptional’ meant until I met Awa Traore, Amadou Sow, Serigne Babacar, and others who have completely ignored what society tells them to be, in favor of being something infinitely more to those around them. They continue to inspire me.

Finally, I am thankful for my extended family Stateside. The patience, strength, encouragement, and love you have shown me is humbling. Particularly in my decision to extend this crazy journey, thank you for being by my side through every twist and turn of this roller coaster. You too, are exceptional.