C'est la Vie!

As some of you know, last week, my passport was lost "in the mail" and had never made it to the Mali Embassy.  Not the ideal news to recieve T-10 days until departure, so with the help of our administrative assistant, Meghan, at Compatible Technology, and my Executive Director, Roger, whom I will be traveling with, after a stress-filled couple of days, we can anticipate my new passport and visa in hand by Monday, with a Thursday departure date.  C'est la Vie!

We are finailizing details, and arranging meetings for our non-field time in Kuer Ali Gueye village.  I am proud to say that upon arrival in Dakar, Senegal, our first meeting will be with Oxfam Deputy Director Ebrima Sonko who was delighted to entertain our arrival at the WARO offices, which happen to be 5km from our place of stay.  To have this opening opportunity to sit and discuss the due diligence of organizations and NGOs that seek to secure livelihoods of populations wrought with strife from war, climate change, lack of resources and education is a paramount ingredient in understanding how to best approach development work.  We don't develop nations, they develop themselves.

Compatible Technology International Millet processing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYfGbQgRjlY

Our next meeting, which is still pending, is with Mr Sanoussi Diakite, a Senegalese technologist working in small seeded grains who has been a participant with http://www.ashoka.org/, a global association of the world's leading social entreprenuers.  Mr. Diakite has developed some agricultural technology that we wish to see and discuss.

Following these meetings, we will be moving from the center of Dakar, to the Kaolack region where our village of farmers resides to begin our field work.  I anticipate the next 13 days to be filled with much to see and say.  (I have begun my 8 day crash course in French)...wow do I wish I had kept going with it after highschool!  Zut alors!

I am very much looking forward to phase II of our journey with a transfer into Bamako, Mali, where we will be meeting with head scientists from ICRISAT-one of the world's leading R&D scientific agricultural organizations.  We have preliminary information that has been sent, and I will be collecting that data, inquiring about other areas, demonstrating our prototypes, and ultimately headed back out into the field on one of their HOPE sites which is backed by the BMGates foundation. 

HOPE is a 10-year project and builds on over 30 years of research for development by ICRISAT and a number of partners at national, regional and international levels.

Though the project has six objectives, emphasis during the first four years is on ensuring that technologies developed during the last 30 years and that have either not been disseminated widely or are still “on the shelf” are delivered and increase farmer yields by 30% or more, benefiting 110,000 households in Sub-Saharan Africa and 90,000 households in South Asia through increased food security and incomes.

A benevolent mind