Howard Buffett comes to The Gambia

Last week was a rather interesting week at the WFP.  Howard Buffett, the son of Warren, came to town.  He has a farming background and has been a WFP Ambassador Against Hunger for several years and visited The Gambia as part of a multi-nation tour of Africa.  Needless to say, the WFP office here was in a tizzy before he arrived.  We had to choose three schools with decent school gardens that were relatively close to  airport so we could get him back to the airport after a whirlwind visit, less than 24 hours. I was not invited to the dinner the evening before or the meeting at the vice president's office.  Even though I was not there I thought I would include a picture taken in the her office.  She is the woman in white in the picture.  I recently discovered that if you double click on the pictures in the blog, it will bring them up in bigger format.  I would recommend doing it with this one just to see the detail in the picture.  At the back of the room you can see a picture of President Jammeh. 

I had to throw one more vice president picture in because I got a kick out of it.  In this picture Vitoria is presenting a computer to the vice president to represent the equipment we will be presenting to the regional office.  Everyone in the picture is looking at VItoria and the VP except Mr. Buffetts new assistant who is looking at the camera with the stock Hollywood glamour pose.

The remaining pictures were all taken during the part of the visit in which I was included.  We ended up going to two schools with good school gardens.  We had to tell the third school we would not make it. When we arrived at the first school the student body was lined up along the driveway singing a welcome song and clapping to the music.  The girls were all on one side and the boys were on the other so Mr. Buffett went down both rows slapping the girls' hands and fist bumping the boys.

Then he and one of the teachers held hands and kick stepped their way back.  As you can tell he is not a very formal kind of guy.

The first place we went we got to the school was the school garden.  One of the first things that Mr. Buffett did was to grab a handful of dirt, rub it through his fingers, and smell it.  He was not very impressed with the dirt -- needed more organic matter.  That made me smile because I had recommended composting at every garden I visited in December.

In the picture below, our WFP country director Vitoria is with Mr. Buffett.  She recently cut all her hair very short but used to have elaborate braids etc.  Since having the braiding done takes hours, I would probably do the same if I was in her place.  The stick that has leaves on the top of it, in the lower left of the bed they are looking at, is cassava.  To harvest it they cut the plant down and eat the roots.  But then they cut the woody part of the plant into pieces and stick the pieces into the garden.  They root and create more cassava plants  The one in the picture has just started the process of growing into a larger plant after having already been part of a larger plant.

In my post on my trek I showed you a school kitchen that was not being used. This one is in full swing-- the cook was making benecin, a Gambian dish with rice soaking up a sauce -- a Gambian verson of dirty rice.  Mr. Buffett and Vitoria both took turns doing the stirring and then turned it back over to the cook.  As you can see she has some good muscles in her arms from stirring these giant pots.



Here is the school store of WFP food and equipment.  The rice is front and center, the peas at the back right, the salt in the middle of the back and the oil is in the boxes.  These pallets are the latest and greatest WFP version -- not enviromentally sound but won't break and allows lots of air flow around the food.

We visited math class and Mr. Buffet sat himself down in one of the children's chairs which the children got a big kick out of.  They had were doing fill in the blank number math problems and, on the most complicated one, kids were doing random guesses.  Mr. Buffet stuck up for the student sitting next to him and called the teachers attention to the fact that the boy had given the right answer.  The man in the blue robe is the Minister of Education who came with us on the visits.

Then it was time for a program.  The children performed a drama (they love dramas) that was focused on school feeding.  The boy in the suit at the end of the table is playing a man from the WFP giving the parents and children the news that they will be receiving WFP school feeding.

The drama ended with the kids getting a food bowl with Vitoria joining in.

The PTA made a short presentation and then began to dance accompanied by drums.  If you look at the left of the picture you can see one of the drummers who has a whistle in his mouth.  Blowing a whistle while drumming is often done in group performances.  As you can see, Mr. Buffett jumped up to participate.

When the festivities were over we hurried off to another school.  This one had a beautiful school garden and also a banana orchard.  But they are no longer receiving school feeding.  WFP does not have the funding for their region.  The dirt was not good there either -- more composting needed.

Here is a Gambian teacher at work.  He was doing phonics and it was pretty interesting to watch him.  He had a string suspended across the classroom with different letters on it.  He would arrange the letters into a word, have the children sound out each letter and then sound out the word.

In one of the classrooms Howard noticed 3 children who had US Flag school bags.  He had them walk out into the yard and took pictures of them with the bags.  I have no idea where they got the bags but it does make a cool picture.

Some singing and dancing by some boys and girls at the school.

As part of the festivities some of the boys bought up a present for Howard.  When he opened the box they had given him a giant papaya they had raised as well as some bananas from the orchard.

Below is the WFP crew who went on the school trip along with Mr. Buffett and one of his assistants(the one in checks).  The background is a map of The Gambia painted on the side of one of the school buildings.  After this was taken we were off again --  some of us to the airport and the rest of us back to the WFP.

All in all in was a pretty interesting day.  He makes an excellent ambassador for the WFP.  His primary  focus was the kids and he loved being with them.  I had all of a 20 second conversation with him.  He asked me where I was from.   When I told him Portland, Oregon, he asked me if I had ever heard of EcoTrust.  I told him I lived across the street from the EcoTrust building.  He said he used to be on the board.  End of conversation.  I don't know exactly how many countries he had been to on this trip but I know there had been quite a few.  Nice to watch a philanthropist in action.  Probably the most fun thing in our preparation was getting the staff to say his name right.  They all wanted to pronounce it like Boofay.  Luckily we Americans were there to save the day.