Official Jane Kellum & Don Casalaspro Website!!!

Hi all...this will be a brief update. Andrés and I now have our official website for Jane Kellum & Don Casalaspro. Hope you like. Busssyyy...

www.janekellumandcasalaspro.com

Love to all!!!

Check out music from Jane Kellum & Don Casalaspro

Crazy life music, work, love in Buenos Aires

Hi all..well it's been a LOOONNNGGG time. Big surprise. I"ve been on a non-stop trip to music land in the last two months. Andrés and I embarked upon a album making journey that has almost come to an end. We are in the final stages of production. The album cover is printed and ready to be packaged, and Andrés is doing the final mixing and mastering of the album. We're taking INDIE music to whole new level!!!

Our album is on pre-sale right now for folks to buy before the official release date (TBA--most likely beginning of November 2010)! You can either email me directly at janekellummusic@gmail.com to pay with check or money order or go to our online store at MyFavoriteBand and pay with PayPal. www.myfavoriteband.com/janekellummusic.

Besides the music, I am finishing up a six-month intensive personal development experience which entailed a lot of "facing reality" about who I truly am. There were ups and downs along the way during this experience that I completed in a team of nine wonderful people. Accepting that I don't know what I don't know takes a lot of courage, and I'm still learning what that means.

Andrés and I are doing great and learning about love together each day...

On the work end, I've been working on a pro-bono basis as a Program Development consultant at La Casa del Encuentro (www.lacasadelencuentro.org), an organization that works to prevent and eliminate violence against women and children (gender-based violence) and especially the trafficking of women and children for sexual exploitation. Currently, we are working on a proposal that will specifically target prevention of child trafficking for sexual exploitation in the northern region of the country. If all goes well, I should be dedicating myself fully to this project beginning next year.

I've got a cat now as well so I guess that means I am pretty settled here in Buenos Aires...something I never thought could happen. That's the beauty of life (and paradox)....we end up in places "unimaginable" if we let ourselves simply imagine...

Love to all....

Jane

Official Website: www.janekellumandcasalaspro.com
MySpace: www.myspace.com/janekellummusic
Blogger: www.janekellumandcasalaspro.blogspot.com
Google Buzz: janekellummusic@gmail.com
Facebook: Jane Kellum & Don Casalaspro Fan Page
Twitter: janekcasalaspro

Workin' Life of Buenos Aires

It certainly has been a long time since I last wrote and LOTS has happened. Let's see...I made the decision to stay in Buenos Aires indefinitely because, well, love calls. Andrés and I are now happily moved into our new house with a huge balcony. We've got a cat and a stove now so I suppose you could say that I am sufficiently domestic for the time being. :-)

Andrés and I are busily working on the music. Our studio is each day closer to being ready to record its first album..yes...ours! Jane Kellum & Don Casalaspro's "Living" should be released by the end of the year. You can follow all of our musical on-goings:

MySpace: www.myspace.com/janekellummusic
Blogger: www.janekellumandcasalaspro.blogspot.com
Google Buzz: janekellummusic@gmail.com
Facebook: Jane Kellum & Don Casalaspro Fan Page
Twitter: janekcasalaspro

In my free time (ha ha), I have begun to work on a consultancy basis with an NGO called the Casa del Encuentro. It assists women in situations of violence and girls/women who have been trafficked into sex slavery. Besides case managing, I am working on writing a program development strategic plan and have two proposals in the works. It is very grassroots organization that does amazing work with these women/girls and their family and friends. This summer I"ll have another consultancy gig coordinating the Buenos Aires internship program for a small college in the U.S. My other work includes teaching language arts and social studies, math, science, and ESL to people of all ages ranging from 4th grade to adult. This piece-meal professional situation is both challenging and rewarding; while I spend sometimes up to four hours travelling in this huge city each day, I have the opportunity to understand better the life of professionals in Buenos Aires and the chance to be part of so many different projects.

I've started French once again in la Universidad de Buenos Aires and continue to practice yoga.

Uff...this is all keeps me busy just like I like it. :-)

I am still alive and about to finish my Rotary World Peace Fellowship

Unfortunately, I did not keep up with the blog as much as I wanted to during my time in Senegal. Thus, true to form, I am going to give a brief overview of the last, oh, two and half months.

After writing my last posting about inspiration, I continued to push forward with rallying support for the Maids Project with some positive results. In the end, a new organization, 10,000 Girls, has agreed to take on the project and implement it as a pilot project of the self-sustainable model that it uses in its major programs in Fatick and Kaolack, Senegal. Basically, the idea is, in addition to providing literacy, basic education, and reproductive health education, to offer vocational skills training and micro-enterprise opportunities to the girls and young women in such a way that they gain the knowledge and abilities needed to manage the project themselves and earn at least some of the funds necessary to keep in running. 10,000 Girls has already done this in Fatick and Kaolack and is internationally recognized for this approach which genuinely engages the beneficiaries as partners.

Having this organization on-board as the managing agency is important to our chances of winning a nearly $260,000 grant from the Human Network Senegal, a partnership program of the Japanese Agency for International Cooperation (JICA). I spent a solid week adapting the general project plan that I devised to meet the criteria of the JICA Request for Proposal. I think that the final product is solid and that we have an excellent shot at receiving the funds. We will know by mid-October.

Besides work I have done some travelling within Senegal and in Mali with a wonderful friend from Portland, Donna. The Senegal travels include my trip to St. Louis, the previous capital of Senegal, and the National Park Langue de Barbarie. I also visited the "Pink Lake", which gets its name from the color that it takes on when the sun hits it due to the high salt content. The local Senegalese extract the salt from its bottom for sale.

Mali was amazing and a true adventure. Think amazing people who sincerely wanted to help us out and share a little bit of their lives with us. Think travelling up the Niger River for three days on a cargo boat to Tomboutou (Timbuktu) and risking our lives to climb out the side of the boat and traverse the 1 inch ledge to the back of the boat every time we wanted to go to the bathroom. Think sleeping on grain sacks and eating a strange gruel with an unsure source of its rather unpleasant taste. Think delicious street beignets, lamb kabobs, fried plantains, pounded millet with sauce made from the Baobab tree…hmmm. Think trekking up and down through the escarpment now inhabited by the Dogon people and seeing some the most beautiful scenery: vast plains, waterfalls, fields of millet, brilliant red rock formations. Thinking riding a camel into the Sahara to watch the sunset in Timboutou. In short, it was an unforgettable trip. This is fortunate given my camera quit working after the second day. :-(

I now have only a few days left in Senegal as an official Rotary World Peace Fellow. Earlier today I submitted my final Rotary report, signaling an end to this particular stage in my life. Today I will say my farewells to my host family and tomorrow my friends at the beach are having a little good-bye get-together for me. Believe it or not some cooler weather and non-beach weekend activities are welcome at this point (yes…even the “beach professional”, as my dear friend Scott has coined me, needs a break from the sand and surf once in a while). ha ha

Thursday night I am off to Europe to travel around Spain, France, Italy, Germany, and I don’t know where else until November 5. Then in November I will return to Argentina for about a month before returning to Oregon for the holidays in December. After that, my plans are somewhat up in the air. Music pursuit is a possibility, but a job with a steady salary also is appealing (and well frankly really necessary…let me know if you hear of anything of interest particularly in Portland! ;-)

That’s all for now….

P.S. Pictures are from my trip to St. Louis, the National Park Langue de Barbarie, and the "Pink Lake" in Senegal

Inspiration

I have received many kinds and inspiring words in response to my last blog post. In addition, writing my last blog post helped me to reflect on what I could do to change my approach and attitude towards the situation as opposed to the situation itself. Since this change in attitude, some positive things have occurred:



**We may have secured space for the program.

**I made contact with a woman who made a documentary about the program. She then in turn put me in contact with an organization that may want to fund us.

**I have taken a different approach to my communication with my work partners. Building on the wise words of my friend, Mary C., in Argentina, I am approaching the communication in terms of building a relationship and not searching for "results".



Anyhow, maybe this makes sense...maybe this doesn't. However, I do feel inspired and ready to be part of this multifaceted process that is carrying me along in Senegal.

Senegal

The time simultaneosly passes slow and fast in Senegal (at least for me). That may seem like a contradiction; but, it is true. While I am surprised at how fast my first month is passing me, the pace of life is slower than say that of Buenos Aires. Here is a little bit about my experience thus far:

I live with a wonderful family, the Sambas, who have named me Astou Samba in an act of accepting me into their family. We are mostly women--9 of us to be exact--in the house with only Papan Issa among all this female energy. We share all of our meals together while sitting on their floor around a huge platter of food. The family speaks Wolof (one of the indigenous languages of Senegal) amongst themselves and patiently speak French with me. While my focus is on learning French, I am also picking up Wolof. The truth of the matter is that I am finding it difficult to learn either one of them as I spend the largest part of my day at work writing, reading, etc. in English. Thus, it takes my own personal effort to find those opportunities to speak in French.

By the way, for those of you who are not familiar with Senegal, it is a predominately Islamic country. There seems to be a lot going on culturally underneath the surface that will take time for me to decipher and understand.

Picture of our house

Now you may be asking what it is that I am doing during the day. The project on which I am working is the "Maids Project". The overall goal of the project is to support young women who have been forced to leave their villages because of economic reasons and go to Dakar to work as domestic servants. For a large part of these estimated 150,000 young women, they find themselves in slave-like conditions. The majority of these women have not received any formal education and thus, are illiterate. The components of the program (or ideally would be) French language acquisition, literacy, health education, leadership, and other skill acquisition (i.e. cooking, hair braiding, etc.). I say "or ideally would be" because I have arrived to the aftermath of more than a year of neglect of the program. I would be lying if I did not say that I was not disappointed in the lack of monitoring and continued support of this program. As it stands, it appears that the organization for which I am interning no longer wants to continue the program. I find myself in a difficult and frustrating situation because I was brought here specifically to work on a program that they described to me before arriving as enjoying the support of the organization. The reality is that I am not even able to secure space for the evening classes from the organization. I understand that in difficult times (i.e. the "economic crisis") that difficult decisions must be made. I suppose my frustration stems from the fact that it appears that someone started this project without a sustainability plan in place. Ah, yes, all of my misgivings about "development" coming flying back to me and scream to me to find another way to contribute to equity and freedom in the world. Donor whims and personal fulfillment endeavors...this is not development.

However, I am not one to give up, especially on a project that supports human rights. These young women are people--they are girls and women named Nai Faye and Astou and Dior--just like all of us have the right to freedom. Freedom to educate themselves. Freedom from violence. Freedom to make decisions for themselves about their lives. With that said, I am searching for another organization to take on the project as the lead agency in addition to funding sources. If anyone has suggestions for funding or any other ideas, I would love to hear them.

In other projects, the organization for which I am working also hosts a Living Routes undergraduate study abroad progam in Sustainable Development. I have the last couple of weeks collaborating with the professor to update the course content and required readings.

And, of course, there is the sea! I can't really complain when I can walk ten minutes from my house and be on a beautiful beach right here in Yoff. This weekend I took a short trip to the Ile de Madeleine, which is a protected nature reserve. It was so wonderful because it has a little cover with calm, crystal clear sea water where I am swam and swam for hours.

Until next time, I will continue to observe and learn.

A bien tot o (legge legge),

Astou Samba