My first memory of Senegal was seeing the coastline of Dakar outlined suddenly against the Atlantic. Orange street lamps and charcoal fires pierced the early morning dark. As our training group took their first ride through the capital city, all of the things I had read floated through my head. Dakar is a dense capital city of two million people in a country of 10 million. There is urbanization and there are squalid living conditions, a lack of clean drinking water, sewage in the streets. My eyes burned from exhaustion and pollution and all I could think was -- I’m so glad I came.

That bus ride will forever stay in my mind – and stomach. I had traveled some in college, but I rarely saw an inner city of America, much less the poverty that now struck me. But then we passed through the city and out, into the surprising green of the late rainy season. Here the disparities of Senegal struck me, and they run deep. There are supermarkets in Dakar and BMW dealers and flat screen TV stores. But 15 minutes from my house in the north are villages unchanged by time. Women bring water from the river and search for wood for their cooking fires. Senegal is just below the Sahara on the west coast of Africa. The desert is to the northwest and the rainforest to the South. There are over 10 different clans and languages, 11 administrative regions and three religions. But the country is predominantly Muslim, village-based, and proud to be Senegalese. A sense of optimism still springs from the recent election, in which the opposition won for the first time since independence. With this, Senegal became a "real democracy" in the shaky landscape of African democracy. We have little trouble with corrupt officials, roadblocks, or lack of transparency.

The economy is as disparate as the geography. Our group is formally known as Small Enterprise Development Volunteers. We are assigned to transfer our skills and knowledge to the Senegalese. It is a dauntingly vague job description, but it has given us the freedom to really address the various needs on the ground here. Our official program goals fall under four objectives: (1) training entrepreneurs to "grow" their businesses; (2) creating information and market links; (3) helping youth and women enter the workforce; and (4) promoting ecotourism as part of Senegal’s development.

It is hard to define the focus of a SED volunteer. The variety of our work is remarkable. We are not usually assigned to any specific person or project; though there are exceptions; we are just sent out into our cities to find work, supervised by the Ministry of Family. Volunteers may work with artisans and bakeries, for example, teaching business classes, then staying behind the scenes to provide gentle guidance. Some assist groups of women to with money, teaching them how to make soap or form a savings club. Others consult with Mayor’s offices on city development. We teach the benefits of a having a simple accounting system. Some work in French, with educated entrepreneurs; others in local, African languages with less sophisticated groups. We get two months training in language and culture before spending two years at our selected site. It’s a tough job.

And that’s how I ended up under a thatch roof in Africa watching a sheep and writing on the blackboard far from the snows of New Hampshire.

We were playing a game as part of my training session on Marketing. That’s a concept as familiar as the air we breathe at home, but here it is a mysterious foray into low-price competition and a dizzying variety of products. In this game in just four days, participants explore an imaginary month in business. They buy material and sell "hats," made from little pieces of paper they design. Players get a loan at the beginning of the month and they must pay it back at the end. They have to divide their money between investment in their business (buying more material), saving money in the bank, and providing for their family. The focus of the game is to cement the concepts of financial planning and investment in their businesses. The player who makes the most hats always wins. The capitalism we grew up with in America, hasn’t arrived here yet. My job is to bring it.

My class was a women’s group that makes juice, tye-dyed clothing, incense, and other things. They seemed motivated, traveling over an hour from where they lived the first time to find my house. The group already had its movers and shakers. We consulted. They checked me out. I got to know their business- for about five months before we picked out dates for the training session. By then, I felt I understood – a little. Their boutique was on a back alley in a remote quarter. We set up our four-day session in early May, playing a game for two days and spending two days on what products to sell, at what price, where, and how to tell the world about them.

As soon as the workshop started I felt like I was the student. I quickly learned that these women’s minds worked in vastly different ways from mine. I also discovered that they were, for the most part, letter and image illiterate. I’m not sure why that surprised me so much: I knew that a lot of women here couldn’t write, and had been told that illiteracy often includes image illiteracy. Amazingly, I was trying to increase their business capacity -- for buying and selling and for complicated operations - and they couldn’t even add. They couldn’t read numbers. How, I wondered, had they gotten this far?

That question started me down the right path. Just because these women couldn’t do math or read didn’t mean that they couldn’t analyze or learn to sell things better. But how?

CONTINUE to read Letter from SENEGAL