Thursday's adventures in Senegal were colorful and filled in a lot of background for the Millennium Villages projects.
Legendary American radio announcer Paul Harvey had a program called "The rest of the story." He started with one statement or event from the news and delved deeper, usually to humorous effect, but more importantly, he told personal stories behind the headlines.
On Wednesday we met community health workers and learned how technology enabled them to bring a better service and improve the lives of villagers. Obvious though it may be, it is still amazing to witness that nothing happens in isolation. If the old headline was about health and technology, Thursday's adventure provided the rest of the story.
Let's start by looking at where we are. The origins of the word "Senegal", we learned today, are from "-gal" – the dugout canoe used by fishermen and a verb "sene-" meaning "come together". So the name of the place engenders the spirit of working together to steer a boat to its destination.
Now, why we are here. Beyond health care, the Millennium Development Goals are far-reaching and have touch points in education, agriculture and more. Our guide, Ousmane Mbaye, Regional Communications Specialist for the Millennium Development Goals Centre for West Africa, tells us stories of people transformed as we walk to the oceanfront.
From a distance, you see the colorful clothing. It looks like captured sunshine, in all different shades. The boats are just as colorful. This is a workplace. There are groups of people gathered and crouching down near dozens of colorful canoe-like boats, cleaning fish and preparing them to be salted or taken to market. Ousmane Mbaye introduces us to a woman who stops cleaning fish to tell us this story:
"We used to let the fishermen come from the north, we had nothing to do with fishing, even though we live right here. But now we have a cooperative. This is our community and this is our livelihood," she explained. About seven years ago, Millennium Villages Project invested in three boats for local fishermen and arranged help to teach the locals to fish. Now they are fully self-sustaining, and intimately connected to the area they live in.
The actress Olivia Wilde is here to learn more about the 1 Million Community Health Workers program, along with her friends from RYOT.org, who are filming and documenting the project, as well as her visit.
She has been sitting with the health workers as they visit the households throughout the area and also asking questions about their lives and how they have changed. Wilde is no stranger to seeing people lift themselves out of tragic situations. Along with RYOT, she has been active in Haiti, working with social recovery programs.
Today, she walked away amazed that "the whole fabric of society changes…the women have become landowners, this has changed how women are respected in this community."
New professions, new respect, new ownership – and new crops. As we've been driving between villages, we often pass horse-drawn wagons loaded – and I do mean loaded – with onions. The air smells sweet with them.
And it turns out that the success of growing onions is also down to a Millennium Villages project. Onions are a major part of the national dish of Senegal, but they used to be imported. With a simple irrigation technique, farmers have been able to produce and sell onions locally. (Archived story from IPS here).
So when peeking a bit beyond the simple headlines here in Senegal, you find a deep transformation in every aspect of society and business. The rest of the story seems to be just the beginning.
Dodi Axelson is a multimedia producer at Ericsson headquarters in Stockholm, Sweden, where she makes videos about Ericsson news and employees and about the latest telecom innovations. In addition she takes to the stage to moderate large Ericsson events. She has been asking the important questions ever since she started her journalism career in newsradio in Seattle, Washington.
