Toilets

Okay, here's the actual link I wanted to post:

http://appropriateprojects.com/node/184

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Byron Yee

Peace Corps Volunteer - Senegal, 2009

School Toilets!

After a couple months of somewhat complicated grant writing, administrative hoops, and of course the challenge of working in my community, Ecole Karang Soce now has its first official toilets!

Check out this link to see my project as well as the opportunity to donate, if your heart so desires.

Also, a full album of construction and other pictures were just posted on my Piscasa website:

http://picasaweb.google.com/thebyronyee/SchoolToilets#

Thanks to all who donated and are supporting my work here!

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Byron Yee

Peace Corps Volunteer - Senegal, 2009

My Life as an Agroforestry Volunteer

This month, my site mate Cassie and I spent an intense 2.5 weeks planting trees. Lots and lots of trees.

Collectively, we planted/seeded trees for 4 schools, 2 fields, and a garden for our local hospital. Total tree count: 11,300. More trees to be planted this weekend as well at our friend's site.

Yay trees!!

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Byron Yee

Peace Corps Volunteer - Senegal, 2009

Ants in My Pants!!

No, its not just a saying, I literally had ants in my pants.

I was working on our community farm and stood in the wrong place for a bit too long. And these ants bite with a stinging passion. And unfortunately, they bit me in my "stinging passion"

Bad news...

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Byron Yee

Peace Corps Volunteer - Senegal, 2009

Permagarden Training

Today, Cassie and I did an intensive garden training at our local hospital for 20 people, in 2 different languages. Within 6 hours, we trained people new garden digging techniques, seed spacing, tree outplanting, compost, and planting trees for a live fence. We were so surprisingly (and shockingly) efficient and effective with our training, we performed this program more quickly and efficiently than when Peace Corps was training us volunteers…

More importantly, we’ve now enabled all local health facilities to provide vegetables and vitamin rich trees for their communities and well as enabled them to be teachers themselves. Not bad for a day’s work, huh?

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Byron Yee

Peace Corps Volunteer - Senegal, 2009

Kedougou – The Most Beautiful Place in Senegal

For our 4^th of July celebration, all the PCVs met in Kedougou, the most SE point, yet the most beautiful spot in all of Senegal. I spent a couple days exploring the area and visiting some PCVs before our outrageously American holiday.

To summarize, I…Biked about 100km, climbed 2 mountains, forged 2 rivers with my bike, saw 1 waterfall, ate avocadoes, learned a little Pulaar language, ran 4km, drank an uncountable amount of beer, and ate an uncountable amount pork. All in just a few days.

Overall, the trip was wonderful, intense, exhausting, yet spiritually refreshing and fulfilling. Now I’m back at site, with every single day of this month planned out with lots of work activities.

As always, pics to come soon. Bonne fete de l’Independence des Etats-Unis!

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Byron Yee

Peace Corps Volunteer - Senegal, 2009

Community Gardens

This past weekend marked my largest project and training session of my service. For 3 days, 4 PCVs, one PC Supervisor, and another NGO representative worked in town to train 58 new and exciting garden and farming techniques. The work was exhausting and stressful, but the goal is to provide people with new techniques that can exponentially increase their garden and farm harvests, thereby increasing their income and standard of living.

This is a newly formed group of community members wishing to utilize the strength in numbers philosophy and work together to produce larger output than individual farmers can. This is the ideal group for PCVs work with. Also, this is an ideal project for Peace Corps as it involves the expertise and participation of all volunteers: Business, Agroforestry, sustainable agriculture, and much more.

Best of luck and thanks to everyone for your help! And once all 4 PCVs get to a central computer, we will have pictures eventually…

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Byron Yee

Peace Corps Volunteer - Senegal, 2009

Rain!!

For the first time in 8+ months, it rained!

The morning was warm and it sprinkled a bit. Not because of rain clouds necessarily, but because humidity was at a full 100%...

That night a somewhat frightening wind and rain storm struck my town. It continued to rain for about 4 hours into the morning. It was lovely and cool - for a bit. Then it was incredibly hot, humid, and full of flies and bugs.

Man, I really miss Seattle right now.

--Byron YeePeace Corps Volunteer - Senegal, 2009

Time for more Theatre!

This time, I had a break – sort of. Another PCV wrote a grant to invite a local professional theatre group on tour through several towns and schools. They did a performance on the protection of the environment. The students were captivated, entertained, and most importantly, educated.

This also re-inspired my local group to continue working hard and producing another fun little show. Thanks guys for the great work!

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Byron Yee

Peace Corps Volunteer - Senegal, 2009

Business Training: A lesson on how to teach

I was fortunate enough to have my supervisor, Talla, come to conduct a training with one of my groups I’m working with. Subject Matter: Roles and Responsibilities of a group, Contracts, and By Laws. These are subjects of which I have limited technical, let alone language skills to conquer. Overall the sessions were very well accepted and successful.

After he left, I had enough energy (and newly found inspiration) to conduct a training of my own. Subject matter: How to calculate profit; a simple equation. The challenge: half the women’s group was illiterate, and their primary language was Mandinka.

Needless to say, I’m very, very tired right now…

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Byron Yee

Peace Corps Volunteer - Senegal, 2009