Today was a great day. For the first time, I have begun to feel at home. My headache from speaking French 24/7 has started to go away but I’m still waiting for my tongue to catch up with my mind. Actually, I’m still waiting for that to happen with my English, so I may be waiting for quite a long time. Overall though, it’s been wonderful to be working in a French environment and I am increasingly thankful that I opted to polish up my French in such a fashion instead of spending +$20K at Thunderbird to attempt the same.

Mmm, mmm good

Chez Balbe
Today was another success in that we found a local charamawa place in which to frequent. For those who don’t know, a chawarama is sliced beef on pita, covered in a yogurt kind of sauce and stuffed with fries. They are the lebanese version of a gyro (or tacos arabique as they were called in Mexico) and constitutes Senegal’s primary form of fast food. Anyways, we found a small hole in the wall shop run by Ibrahima Balbe and we definetly will be returning often. On our next visit, I’ll be sure to take pictures to better share the experience.

Cyber Louma, marché Sandaga, Dakar

Cyber Louma
Today was also really good in that I think I found a great open source/web based accounting package for the Cyber Louma. One of my main projects with DFI will be working at the Cyber Louma which is basically a computer lab with phone services, etc. What makes the Cyber Louma importantly unique is that is based in Sandaga the big market in Dakar and its primary purpose is to serve the needs of the merchants/commercants of the market. One of my goals is to offer some basic business services, starting with a simple inventory tracking program to offer these merchants. The ultimate goal is to make the Cyber Louma self-sustainable at which point it could potentially be replicated across Senegal and other countries in Africa by DFI and other USAID sponsored projects. Before that can happen, I need to get a sense of the current financial health of the center. The staff there is currently doing a good the books with an Excel based system, however, a robust accounting system in the long term is needed. So far the leading candidate is WebErp. What I really like about it besides its price (free) and the robustness of its features is that it is being actively developed by software companies from developing countries like South Africa, Costa Rica and Pakistan for their clients who can’t legitimately afford ERP systems like SAP or People Soft. Thus, they’ve taken the ERP challenge in their own hands and have done a very good job thus far. Enterprise systems for the bottom of the pyramid… you gotta love it.