Playing Hostess

This Thursday was our first dinner at the house for our Tostan colleagues.

In order to get to know everyone better, we’ve decided to host a few dinners at our house for the staff. Last week I sent out a beautifully written (okay, maybe there's some bias in there...) email explaining the premise of these dinners:

Hello friends!

Some of us have been here a year or longer, others are just starting out, but we’re all so happy to be a part of the Tostan family. At work, we have the pleasure to work with many of you side-by-side on a daily basis especially within our own departments, however we’d love to get to know each of you better.

As a thank you for welcoming us into the Tostan family, we look forward to inviting each and every one of you to the volunteer house. If we could, we’d have the entire Tostan family over together for a massive celebration – unfortunately, though, our house and our kitchen are not as large as our hearts. We will be hosting dinners for the Tostan staff by department over the coming months, and we hope that you all will be able to enjoy a delicious family meal with us soon.

Have a wonderful weekend,

Ashley, Alisa, Elke, Els, Kelsey, Kyrra, Matthew and Meagan

(I particularly like the line about our kitchen and our hearts!)

For our first dinner, we hosted the departments of Monitoring & Evaluation, IT, and Human Resources. Unfortunately not all could join us - but we're hosting at least 2 more dinners that they are more than welcomed to!

Overall, It was a fabulous menu with fabulous conversation amongst fabulous people.

Here are a few photos from the evening!

Els' magnificent spaghetti bolognaise à la Sénégalaise (meaning served on a communal plate!)

the group :) 

a very well destroyed plate

enjoying Senegalese juice after the meal: bissap (hibiscus), bouie (from the baobab tree) and ditax (a green fuzzy fruit)

as you can tell, the watermelon bowl didn't quite get made - maybe next time :)

Wack Ba, our IT director, and me