Meetings, Meetings, Meetings Everywhere

So with all the fun thing we've been telling you about, you may be saying to yourself, "did they actually DO anything educational/productive in Senegal?"  In fact, we did a lot of educational/productive things, mostly in the form of meetings.  A lot of meetings. 

Everyday our 6 policy groups would split into two larger groups and head off to different meetings with key policymakers or stakeholders.  Our meetings were grouped in "streams", with usually 3 meetings in each stream.  The groups in stream A  and stream B varied from day to day, depending on the schedule, which was a good chance for all of us to mingle and share interests.  Typically each group in the stream would have arranged one of the day's meetings and would take the lead in running it, but everyone was encourage to get involved and ask questions.  

Over the course of the week our groups met with representatives from large international organizations (the World Bank, UNDP, UNICEF, USAID, IOM), Senegalese government ministries (Environment, Gender and Family), local NGOs (Christian Children's Fund, Tostan), and embassies (France, Spain, US).  Each policy group had 4 or 5 meetings during the trip, which allowed them to hear multiple perspectives and get a deeper sense of the issues at stake.  

At all of our meetings our hosts were gracious, welcoming, and happy to answer our questions.  However we did notice that at the meetings with female, Senegalese representatives that we were much more likely to receive snacks and tea/coffee.  No such hospitality was present at USAID, where even asking to use the restroom seemed like a huge inconvenience.  But overall we could not have asked for more productive, useful meetings and kindness and support from our hosts.  

Now some highlights from meetings:

*Seeing the minister of a senegalese cabinet department dramatically entering the room in a flowing, black, high-collared cape, and then sitting silently in the corner throughout the meeting.

*Hearing another government official met Alan Deardorf (one of the professors on the trip) at the end of a meeting and saying "Deardorf? Alan Deardorf? My god, we use one of your economic models everyday! Its the centerpiece of our whole strategic plan! I wish I had met you earlier!"

 

*Eating chocolate croissants and exchanging stories from the field with the women of Christian Children's Fund in Theis, a small city outside Dakar.

*Being reminded repeatedly of President Wade's age (82) during a meeting with a member of another political party.  His words: "Did you know he is an octogenarian? An octogenarian!"

*Sitting in the conference room at the offices of the International Organization for Migration, staring out the window at its stunning view of the beach and cliffs, thinking "I want to migrate here."

*Finding out that an alum of the University of Michigan was working in the room above us at USAID. (Go Blue!)

*Discovering that the Senegal office of a large international organization spends almost its entire budget making maps unrelated to its subject area, then being shown (and later emailed) those maps by the office director. 

*Observing our French-speakers turn into professional translators.  They all have a future translating at the U.N.

*Watching Tony Chen (the other professor on the trip) try desperately to remember all 6 of our policy areas when doing introductions at meetings.  It was like watching someone try to remember all seven dwarves.