hospitality training

Photos are from the training sessions, it was a trip. Yup, that's me (scary, huh? but I'm laughing!)
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In the second photo you can see a breakout group working on an exercise, and in the background are pointy thatched roofs of Dogon granaries. (As someone said to me, "It’s the 10th century meeting the 21st century.") It was a rewarding experience. The participants were all excited about learning and very engaged in the program. Those guys (and it was guys—108 guys and 2 women) just have no resources to work with—-but can we change that? This project is bringing them information, not computers or even flipcharts. We’re trying to teach them how to change their circumstances for themselves, but they’re really starting from less than zero, and the only support they get is from aid projects. No government support, no private enterprise support: it’s hard. I just finished reading Jared Diamond’s “Collapse,” and Mali seems like another society on the verge of collapse. Everyone is fighting for survival—or so accustomed to fighting for survival that they don’t want anyone to know that they have any bit of surplus.