it's time to pray wheer of fish!

En Mer on the Pirogue! 023
Originally uploaded by Mikey Holmes.

For those of you who don't know, one of the parts of this program that was the strongest drawing factor was the internship component. Something I had been having limited progress with for some time - until now.

The original hope was to get my feet a bit wet with the world of food security. This is described in a number of ways in a number of different places, but it's not a new idea. At its core, it's a holisitic way (meaning they understand the complexity of this issue and are examining it from a perspective that includes anthropologists, nutritionists, economists etc) of looking at food systems (food production, aquisition and consumption) with the ultimate aim of ensuring health of people. What's especially neat is that after some decades of arguing about what nutrition means and how it should be addressed (caloric intake vs vitamin content etc) groups have been working towards preserving traditional diet but perhaps increasing the nutritional value of these traditional foods through changing or enhancing techniques at each of the three levels of food systems.

So what?

Well I had a great meet with the potato lady (she spent some time working with the international potato council that keeps seed banks of 90%+ of the world's potato breeds - now that's power) who is getting started on a slightly different project but has put me in the right direction of contacting some folks over here. If nothing else, I'm gonna hang out with her more.

So if none of the alleys that have presented themselves work out, one remains - one that may end up being the most promising.

A buddy who found her internship the second or third week that we were here was writing an article on the largest fish market in Dakar. In walking around and talking with folks, she ran into a guy that wanted to take her out on one of the traditional fishing pirogues but she didn't feel comfortable going by herself so she asked the biggest, beefiest, most-intimidating guy in the country to go with her... me.

My brother came along to double check that they were good folks before i got on and they ended up being the same sect of this brotherhood of islam so he knew they was good people.

It was amazing! We went more than 10km out in the ocean and I caught just as many fish as they did! And after telling them about being a student and wanting to learn as much as possible while i'm here, they insisted that i come out with them again and make a habit of it. Anyway, they're great buddies now and I should be learning a fair amount about fishing by line in the ocean! And, I checked it out with the folks in charge and if nothing else works out, that's gonna be my internship.

Anyway, the picture is of one of the guys' mom's cleaning table, one of the ones i caught is there on the block. She didn't want to be in the photo, so she just ducked down! you can see a bit of her blue bum just to the right of the chopping block.