All About that Food: Part 2

More food-related news from the past three months...
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Hearth Project

November 10-20

Last year I did a hearth project with my counterparts after starving season to address the high number of children "in the yellow," or at least one standard deviation below the acceptable weight for their age. It was a big success and so we decided to do it again this year. For 10 days, 10 women and their children came to my counterpart's house. They were divided into groups and took turns doing the cooking and donating logs for the fire. They and their children then ate the food together and practiced supervised feeding. However, we improved on last year's model this time around. With my better language and understanding of the village, I was able to have more input and was more hands-on, which felt good. This year we gave talks to the women about what healthy foods were, what categories of food they fell into, and what parts of your body they helped through the complet model, a strategy developed by volunteers that relates go, grow and glow foods to the three essential parts of a complet, the traditional ensemble worn by Senegalese women. We also gave talks on preventing and treating diarrhea and I gave one on nebadaye powder, a nutritious and easy to make powder from the leaves of a tree commonly grown in Senegal, complete with samples. I also kept track of the cooking and did my best to compile recipes of the foods we served.

I started to write all the recipes down here, but then decided it was too much. Check out my brand new "recipies" tab on the top of this page!

After the 10 days, all of the children had gained weight. We will continue to track their progress every 15 days for the next two months. Check out the pictures of the project here or in the pictures tab.