I thought I would change it up a little and show you good people something you've never seen here before: evidence of work I've done. Starting on Easter Day (you know, because we don't really celebrate the Risen Savior around here) I hosted a training session for local women on improved shea butter making. If you're a girl, you may have noticed shea butter as an ingredient in various soaps and lotions and things. Shea butter is extracted from the shea kernel which is located inside the shea nut which is located inside the shea fruit which comes from the shea tree. Shea is only found along a strip of West and Central Africa and is mainly a woman's domain. Rural women collect fallen shea fruit on their ways to and from the fields during planting season. They then store the nuts until they have time to process them into butter, which is used for cooking, skin care, hair care, and in traditional medicine. Since shea butter making is the woman's duty, development projects concerning shea are a great way to target improvements in the lives of children since (theoretically) women spend the money they earn on family needs. Unfortunately, Malian women have been practicing bad shea storage and processing methods for... well forever I guess. Unlike women in other areas of the "Shea Belt" (for example, Burkina Faso and Ghana), Malians store their nuts in pits and smoke them on ovens - practices that lead to mold and carcinogens in the final product. That's why big European and American cosmetics companies won't buy Malian shea butter.
Good thing Mali PCVs like myself are changing the world, one shea butter training at a time. I had 83 women show up in my village for two days of shea butter education and demonstration. It was quite the party. Hopefully, in addition to having a good time, the women will go back to their respective communities preaching the gospel of boiled (not smoked!) nuts and slowly work on improving Mali's shea reputation in the world. See it all in action here.
Also here:
2 comments:
this, by the way, is awesome. like truly and absolutely awesome. and you're allowed to stay in africa until the end of when you're supposed to be there if you keep helping people. there, i said it: america needs you.
83 people at your formation!! That's awesome!!! Just reading your blog since I started mine up again and I had a link to yours.
Love, Djeneba
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