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!

Our friends in Mauritania have been catching that Neem fever as well. We just got some pictures from our partner non-profit group on the ground in the capital of this Saharan nation. Lots of young trees were distributed to families in the sandy shanty towns of the capital city Nouakchott. These trees were raised from seeds with support of JustNeem’s 2007 revenue. A big Thank-you! to all of you for making this happen. Here are the pictures!

Each woman gave one of her shoes to the pile; these were then randomly place by trees. The tree your shoe landed on was the one you got to take home! So in a few months or a year perhaps, each these families may have some shade in their courtyard where the women cook, the families eat, and the children play. And maybe by the next year, they’ll have some vegetables growing under those shady trees, too!