This past March, I visited our partner NGO in Nouakchott, Mauritania, just like I did last year. I once again was blown away by their warm welcome towards me and the wonderful time we had together. This time I lived in a compound, a cluster of one-room houses, with neither running water nor electricity.
The first night, we came home in the dark, and I had not paid attention in the morning to where I had put the matchbox to light a candle for light in the evening. If it had not been for my dear neighbor, who let me use her flashlight to help me get my bearings in a new place, I would have had a terrible time making my bed in the pitch black room I had never slept in 
. And of course, I never again left the room in the morning without putting the matches in a place that I would surely remember in the evening . Here is a picture of my room:
During my time there, we held a small Neem soap making workshop. It was quite an adventure from gathering all the equipment we needed to teaching the handling of Sodium Hydroxide. Full of anticipation, we watched the finished product come together.
See some pictures from the workshop…
SOAP MAKING WORKSHOP
We started out discussing safety measures and had lots of fun with it, as you can see
Then we prepared the molds for the test batches,
stirred the soap,
poured it,
and — ta da!! held the finished product in our very own hands!
Tags: Neem, Nouakchott, soap making
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