So I’ve been talking about how I would write about all my projects, and finally I’ve done it.  At least I hope so.  I have a feeling the real post will wait until after IST is done, simply because I don’t get much time alone right now.

The big thing is a peer educators group.  This will be a group of kids in the last few years of school who are motivated and interested in learning a variety of different things, with the goal being to have them work as educators in the larger community, teaching others what they learn.  Probably it will take the form of a couple of meetings each week, perhaps one where they learn what I want them to learn and one where they learn what they want to learn (probably English).  It would be a good forum to work on some gender issues as well.

Then there is an entrepreneurs group, which might be university students and others as well, but people who are looking to start their own businesses or at least learn some business skills.  We would probably meet once a week and have various hands on projects throughout, and might be centered around the school year.

Also in the working with kids theme, I’d like to get a math tutoring group together for women, or maybe a general one with a focus on helping the women.  Ideally this will lead up to having a big national girl’s math competition in a year or so.

Then there are a couple of groupements (a group of people who work together to produce something, usually agricultural) that I am going to meet with and potentially work with, who I am being introduced to by Credit Rurale, a small loan bank.

There is also a guy who runs a foundry/fabrication shop, and who doesn’t speak a lot of French, but is looking to remodel and extend his business and buy some equipment.  I will probably do some work to get him set up with some accounting and eventually to help him apply for credit to do that stuff with, provided his profits are actually high enough.

And there is a kid who wants to start an NGO.  I’ve met with him a few times now, and will probably continue to work with him, though I kind of suspect that he will drop it when he realizes that it isn’t the easy path to money he thinks it is.

Another big project is setting up village savings and loan associations, which are just groups of people who get together in the smaller villages that don’t have access to credit, and pool their money to allow small loans to their members.  They are a good way of helping people to save and giving them access to credit.  I will probably start in the village that has a volunteer that is close to me, and we will work together getting it going.  If it is successful, I (we if he is interested) will get to work setting some up in other villages.  I feel like VSLA’s might be one of the more effective things that I can do, so I am pretty excited about that.

I also am working to get a garden set up, a solar dryer built, and other stuff that will let me demonstrate things to people who are interested.

Of course, there also remains all the stuff that I will theoretically be doing with my partner organization, though I don’t know what that really means.

And lastly, I have a couple of things that are less directly related to my work.  One is setting up a wiki for Peace Corps Guinea volunteers, and linking with other wikis of that nature in western Africa.  Another is setting up something like a magazine of fiction, poetry, and other writing by volunteers.

All of that seems like a ton of stuff, so I don’t really expect that I will have a lot of extra time, but the trick will be actually getting all of those things to happen, and not putting off what is necessary too get them started.  Also, Ramadan is coming up in August, so if I want anything to happen before September, I need to get it going soon, or it will peter out during that month.

I hope that gives you a sense of some of what I am doing.  All of those things require any number of meetings, many of which may be postponed or forgotten, as well as almost certain missteps on my part as I get used to the whole process.  The specifics will be in other day to day posts, but I wanted this post to serve as a reference for the many projects I am planning.

Day three of IST is over, and most volunteers have gone to bed.  IST so far has been much improved over the semi-useless feeling of PST, though many volunteers, including myself, are feeling pretty ancy about getting back to their sites.  IST is a joy in many senses, mostly at being able to relax more completely than ever possibly at site, simply because you are with a bunch of people who you can talk to easily and who understand you and your culture.  Site involves a certain amount of stress jusst trying to fulfill basic needs and the communication that is necessary for that, and then any other interactions to be had.  But for all of that, IST has been difficult for the opposite reason of having a life that is completely up to you and suddenly changing to a schedule determined by everyone else.

Mostly its been good to hear how other people felt during their first three months and what they did to cope with it.  When I was having trouble just getting up the courage to open my door, I was making it worse by doubting that anyone else felt that way, but I’ve heard the same thing from several other volunteers, which is reassuring.

I’ve also realized that during all of PST I never talked explicitly about the types of trainings we had, so I would like to put a post together to cover what we were trained in for PST and IST and how they went.  I remember reading blogs feeling like they were not very detail oriented as far as training went, so hopefully I can rectify that.  So that leaves me with two posts I’d like to do, the other being a discussion of the various projects that have been or are about to be started.  Hopefully I will get to them soon, but many volunteers are happy to have internet for the first time in a while and looking to borrow my computer, so it may not be for a while.

So far IST has been several sessions dealing with challenges and successes that we felt at site, a few language classes.  I didn’t realize how much I like learning languages until I came here.  Part of it probably has to do with the manner of instruction, which is very hands on and intensive.  I liked language when I was in school, but I didn’t get terribly excited about it.  Now that I have some French and I am learning Malinke, I am enjoying the differences in the logical structures of the languages and how they relate.  It is a lot of fun.  I want to start learning Arabic after I have French and Malinke well started.

You might notice some unusual phrasings as I continue to live here, and there are probably some already.  I think they are a result of saying things in French that are differently ordered, and so sometimes that sequence will flow back into English, leaving me with writing that makes sense, but seems a little off.

We also did two sessions on project design and management, which was okay.  We each took a project we wanted to do and we went through the design steps of setting goals, finding resources, and developing an action plan.  Its all good stuff, but its stuff that, like most of Peace Corps training, has been a little hokey.  Maybe as a result of working in research and analysis I have enough experience with projects that I was just bored, but I think it points back to all the tools that we have covered so far in trainings, in that they all seem like the kind of seminar-type tools that consultants will use when they come in to work with a company, but that most employees never feel like accomplish much.  It seems like there is a word for that, but I can’t remember it right now.

Tomorrow we will work on village savings and loan associations, which should be cool and is something that I feel can actually give people access to capital necessary to expand production.  I hope it will be cool.  We also have a couple of language classes and a business training (how to give trainings).  The last one is being run by a volunteer that I like, but the subject matter is back to stuff that is both abstract and something that most of us already know, so I don’t have a lot of hope.

Saturday we will go on a trip to visit a farm, and next week will take a trip to learn beekeeping.  I am really excited about the beekeeping thing.

I think all the volunteers are pretty excited about the projects we want to do, and the excitement is catching and giving us confidence and motivation to feel like we can do some interesting stuff.  So if nothing else, IST will hopefully leave me with that feeling that I can take back with me.

I also stayed up till 05:00 the other morning playing poker, and I have yet to make up the sleep, so I need to go to bed.  I hope to get time to write more soon, but it may a couple of weeks before I have much of a chance.  We will see.