August 16th, 2019

August 16th, 2019

Today was an amazing day. This morn we awoke to the delightful sound of harmonic birds chirping as if nature had set us an alarm. With that sound, we rose from our sleeping chambers and embraced in the warmth of the morning sunlight, like a hug from G*d himself. As our chests’ filled with the morning air, the fresh scent of warm bread filled our nasal cavities and quickly our neurons released dopamine into our brains signaling the happiness we all felt deep in our beating hearts. We filled our empty stomachs with bread, eggs, and tea to soon fall victim to our stomach acid, to be converted to ATP to power our minds, bodies, and souls throughout our day. We then congregated at our modes of transportation, entered them gratefully, and sped off towards our destiny. The cool morning breeze flowed through our luxurious hair, acting as nature’s hairdryer. We arrived at our destination and quickly got to work, like all of those also rising for their own days’ trials and tribulations.

We began the day’s task by dutifully beginning to make our recipes. This began with the slow and steady roast of plump and nutritious sweet potatoes. The fire burned hot, like the passion in all of us. The potatoes became soft and warm and mixed with other ingredients in our recipes. The muffins then baked in the oven and became crisp on the outside, but warm soft in the center, a perfect snack. The muffins were magical, marvelous, mysterious, mystical, mushy, and made with love. The pudding was potent, powerful, pleasuring, pleasing, and packed with nutrients.

Our team of talkative translators, along with Matt, Rachel, and Kayla traveled to a local village to have the residents indulge in the delicious recipes, and gathered crucial data for our research. The team was able to conduct 55 bodacious interviews with our impactful foods. This meant we were able to complete yet another tranche of data and will attempt a new recipe on Saturday for each the flavorful foods.

After this, the team went back to the Wesleyan church to attempt another round of questionnaires. This was much more successful than the previous day. We were able to recruit a few volunteers from the church to help us control the immense crowds that swarmed the church when the news of our presence had spread like a wildfire. We were able to keep most people out of the general area which helped us to be much more productive. We were able to collect an additional 25 data points at the church which will help to bolster our muffin data and started the third tranche for the pudding. The success of the day has only put more desire in all of us to continue our work for our few remaining days here in Sierra Leone, and we are excited to see this project through to continue the good work and to continue the impact.

 

(Neena and Karli conducting interviews with mothers and their children with the help of our translators.)

August 10, 2019

August 10, 2019

Today was a great day, especially because we were able to sleep in until 11 today! Everyone was able to get a good nights rest to attack the day and hit the ground running. (Shoutout to Khanjan for that.) Our morning started with a group meeting to plan out the rest of our of time here in order to be as productive as possible and to alleviate the amount of downtime we have. After that, Kayla and Chris were able to boil sweet potatoes thanks to the Mushrooms team since our pot got locked in the bakery for the weekend. After a few failed attempts to get the fire started, we were eventually successful and had a rapid boil in no time.

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(The boiling purple sweet potatoes)

The next step was mashing them, so Neena and Karli decided to use the same mortar and pestle as we used for the ground nuts and the results were perfect. We also made extra batches of peanut butter in the way to use in the recipes later.

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(Matt smashing sweet potatoes into a paste)

Chris and Kayla took a trip to the market later that day to pick up additional food for the recipes to make for the next couple of days. Chris has a stroke of bad luck as a motorcycle drove over his foot, but he’s recovering well. Throughout the day Kayla and Karli were able to establish a good wifi connection and began to research possible grants and other money sources for the team in the future. The team also tried to establish an additional translator to help give questionnaires in front of World Hope. The team plans to bake the sweet potato cakes at the hotel in the morning, and then give them out in front of world hope later that day. As for the pudding, Neena, Seanna, Matt, and Rachel will make it at World Hope in the morning, and hand out samples to gather questionnaires outside of churches as they let out this morning.

 

 

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