I posted some pictures at

http://columbia.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2116280&l=686b2&id=102028

I want to post more before I leave tomorrow, but I don't know if I'll get around to it. I feel like I'm not making much progress on all the things I came in to take care of.

I'm back in Bamako (and Internet connectivity) for the first time since staging. Its been a pretty amazing weekend (I'm going to call it a weekend because it feels like one).

I've been really happy with how much I've gotten out of being at my site so far. A lot of its trying, but I feel like I've been dealt the best possible cards given the circumstances. Basically, my job is to just hang out and do whatever I think constitutes learning about my site (This is the official first 3 months policy, I will have a real job/project/goal eventually). I have a host family who is very kind, I don't have anyone asking me for money or medicine, people tired quickly of hanging out and staring at me. Someone asked me in a letter if I miss anything, and quite honestly, other than certain people and certain types of conversations, I don't.

Being in Bamako now makes me think about that answer a little bit- I definitely needed the break, I needed the rest from biking and from fetching water. I needed the food, and, as one PCV said over lunch the yesterday "to look at Tubab things". When the country director came for site visit she asked me what the hardest thing had been so far, and I said being worn down, having a cold for 3 months, having to admit to myself that I physically can't do everything that I want to do and that what I can do is far below what the average woman does in my village everyday. I'm glad that I did try doing everything in the first months. Its been eye opening to think that, without having done anything particularly special in my life, I have a choice about doing these things whereas the people in my village do not. Even if somehow I was morphed into the average Malian woman without an American passport and possibly an overbearing husband and 6 children, I could probably find a way out. I speak English, I can read and write, I know how to use a computer- I probably wouldn't be stuck, whereas many people here essentially are.

So, in the spirit of Thanksgiving: Thank you Mom and Dad for giving me an education. Thank you powers that be that stuck me in a developed country.

There are so many stories that I want to share, random things that happen, things I've thought about out here, but there's no way I could ever possibly communicate it all. Basically, I'm happy and well and full of good food at the moment. If you still read this, leave a comment or send me an email...I'd like to stay updated on your lives even if I'm perpetually 3 months late.

I'm back at Tubani So for the last leg of training before I get to move into my new village for good. The last week of homestay was particularly busy. Hopefully I'll be able to post some pictures soon. In quick summary:

- We completed language training

- Built a soak pit for our village with the help of PCTs from two nearby homestays

- Ran a health sensitization activity with a group of women in our village

- Celebrated our language teacher's birthday by making guacomole, tortillas, and cake (all made on a propane stove and tiny charcoal stove)

- Taught ourselves and some local women to make mats, bags, and potholders out of scrap cloth that the tailor was throwing out

- Hosted a goodbye party for the village in which we cooked Zame (a Malian rice dish) and 20 Kilos of beans (which meant sorting through 20 kilos of dry beans) worth of chili

- Unfortunately, attended three funerals, two of which were for children

I'm trying to catch up on current events now. The New York Times had a heartening article about UNICEF finding a decrease in child mortality. The article might only be available under Times Select subscription: http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/09/14/on-the-ground-steve-radelet/

What is behind this dramatic fall? According to Unicef, “much of the progress is the result of the widespread adoption of basic health interventions, such as early and exclusive breast feeding, measles immunization, Vitamin A supplementation and the use of insecticide-treated bed nets to prevent malaria.”

I was also directed to page 28 of A Cabinet of Medical Curiosities by Jan Bondeson (http://books.google.com/books?id=DPM8z2yDt2cC&pg=PA42&lpg=PA42&dq=lizards+living+in+human+stomach&source=web&ots=lE4hlbfUk0&sig=LVmVWpvaJsly06Mir51DxofMWPU#PPA41,M1).

Malians believe that lizards and frogs are bad because they can somehow enter a persons body (often in colorful ways) and live there and/or eat their soul. This morning for example, I left my homestay site only after a short yelling match between myself and my homestay family over the life of a 6 inch, brown lizard that unbenownst to them had been living in my room. The lizard wound up being hacked apart with a daba (a short hoe like thing they farm with).

Anyhow, A Cabinet of Medical Curiosities contains a chapter on the history of this belief.

I finally uploaded pictures of the site I'm going to be living at for two years. Its in the region of Kayes, near Koulikoro. The link is here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/lisa.ribaudo/SiteVisit

I made a vegan coconut cake for my host family two nights ago (the words for salt (kogo) and coconut (koko) are similar in Bambara, so when I told my family I'd need salt and some sort of fruit for an "American cake" they brought me coconut)

Anyhow, it was good and easy, so here's the recipe:

- two cups flour

- one cup sugar

- quarter cup of oil

- however much coconut

- tiny bit of salt

- water until its cake batter like

- palm full of baking powder

I put the batter in a covered metal bowl and then put than on top of a tuna can inside a large, covered pot. When we made the pineapple cake for Dauda we used a can lid balanced on gravel to elevate the small bowl.

That's it for now.

I'm leaving to go back to my homestay village in 15 minutes, so I'm not sure what of the 50 million things that happened in the past week I should record.

My site visit went really, really, really, very well. My counterpart is a 35yr old guy who is the secretary of the local farming collective. He dresses like an American and laughs often, I can't think how best to describe him, but there's something familiar and comfortable about him. I have similar warm feelings about his wife (he only has one) and the wives of his brothers that live in the same concession. It was nice going into the site visit having some language rather than sitting dumbly in whatever chair they told me to sit in for the first week- which is what happened to everyone at homestay.

The village has about 400 people spread out over a 2k area. There are two mosques- an old one and a new one that they use. The area around the mosque is a bit more foreign to me. My homestay site was conservative but not particularly religious. I'm a 15K bike ride (about 1h10m) from the nearest volunteer, who is in turn only 3k from the next volunteer. I'm in an interesting situation since both of the other volunteers' banking and consolidation point are in Kita while mine is Bamako. This works out for the best since it means I can be in touch with people in both places.

My job in the village is to improve their access to water. Right now all of their wells go dry 6months out of the year and 3 of their 5 pumps are broken, which means the women have to walk 1K to get water several times a day from the working pump. The surrounding villages have the same problem and I'm supposed to work with them too. Not really sure what I'm going to do yet. Look for funding to help them get it fixed? Provide technical training so they can fix them themselves later on?

The kids also drink straight from the open hand dug wells when there's water.

The village was really welcoming. On the first day my tutor took me to the chiefs house to meet with about 20 men. He had written a short speach explaining who I am, where I'm from, what I did before Africa, that I'm a volunteer, that I'm not a walking source of money. Later that night we had an identical meeting in the dark with a group of old women in the village.

On the second day I met with hmy language tutor in the morning- a man from the Dogon region of Mopti who doesn't speak any english and Bambara is his third language. Thirty minutes into the lessong three women from the village showed up to present me with a chicken, which I awkwardly accepted and then spent the next 2 hours going over the proper things to say when presented with a chicken. Meanwhile another women took another chicken to my homologues house- the intention was that I would eat one in the village and take the other with me to Bamako. I told my homologue this wouldn't be possible, hoping that they would give some of the second chicken to the kids. The result was that I had chicken four meals in a row.

Fresh, free range, chicken with a little onion and garlic is delicious.

When I left on the last day I was told that the village had given me 100 eggs, which I also should take back with me to Bamako. I didn't think I understood them at first and they had to write it in my notebook. I told my homologue's wife that I couldn't possibly bike 15K with 100 eggs and she said she'd take care of it.

People here have amazing balance, they can bike with anything.

We're being herded out the door. I'll be back to internet on the 6th. I've sent some letters a month ago that still haven't made it to their destinations.

What classes are you taking?

Today I had cross-culture, safety & security, some sort of needs assessment workshop (not really sure), brick making class, and a discussion session on being a woman in Mali. Yesterday was about the same with the addition of a health class. Phase I of homestay consisted entirely of language classes. They're going to start weaning us off that now by adding in more water sanitation sections.

How is your French and your Bambara?

Improving every day.

When do you start fixing the water?

In 2 months, assuming I'm sworn in, though as part of training we're going to build a wash area in one of the training areas.

Do you still notice the heat?

Its not actually hot right now, but then again I'm always cold. Mali has three seasons: rainy, cold and hot/dry. We're in the middle of rainy i.e. mosquito season.

Do you feel dirty?

Our families are pretty insistant that we take at least two bucket bathes a day, some volunteers take three. The water I bathe with is from a well and could be cleaner, but for the most part I feel like I'm maintaining Western standards of cleanliness. Mostly I don't want my host family to think I'm dirty so I make a big show of sweeping out my room every morning, washing my clothing at reasonable intervals, and washing my hands with soap about ten times a day.

It still happens occasionally that I'll wash my hands, or in one case go to the nege to take a bath, without the family noticing. They then suggest that I go wash my hands/take a bath. I try to explain that I just did it, they look confused and then I end up washing my hands again.

Rather than dirty I've felt constantly sick up until coming back to Tubani So. Its strange to me that something should exist here that makes pretty much every Westerner ill upon arrival. I feel fine now which hopefully means I've finished adjusting.

Is the family you are living with very religious/observant?

They're muslim, but I've never seen anyone in my family praying. On my first day my 16 yr old host sister was reading a battered single page of the koran with a bambara translation. There's a mosque in my village and you can hear the call to prayer five times a day. The host father of another girl taught me the names of the different prayer times and exagerated getting ready to pray to show me the process. Other than that religion hasn't really come up. There's a picture of Jurusalem in my photo album with Dome of the Rock in the background, but they don't show any recognition of it or Jurusalem.

How is the role of women different from men/different than their counterparts in america?

Many, many, many ways. First off, polygamy is common which I think creates a whole host of heirarchical issues that I can't grasp yet. I can only really speak to what I've seen in my homestay village with people from the Bambara ethnic group- I think women are treated with a lot more reverence in other ethnic groups.

Basically the women in my village stay home and cook, gather firewood, prepare things to sell in the market, wash, haul water etc etc. The men go to the fields and take care of the animals.

The Malian men in our culture sessions insist that women are highly respected here, even revered. They say that poligamy makes sense because there are more women than men- its a support system.

Men and women don't eat together. I'm constantly asked if I have a husband.

The female body is definitely viewed differently here. From what I can tell, any breast that has ever nursed is public domain, but my shoulders are extremely risque. Making sucking noises in reference to breasts is completely okay. Women touching other womens' chests, also okay.

Does your family use fires in the house for cooking and heating?

My village uses little charcoal stoves that require constant fanning. I've also seen pots set up on three rocks with a fire under them. I've only seen cooking outside so far, though I've seen some stoves running inside cooking huts, mostly to heat water I think. No one sits in there with the smoke.

I have a petroleum lamp that hte Peace Corps gave me for light. It seems pretty clean, but I had a coughing fit once from sitting too close to it. Mostly I leave my lamp outside for the family to use and make do with my hand crank flashlight. The family also has flashlights that they use sparingly.

On an unrelated note, most families seem to have TVs hooked up to car batteries, though I've never seen the one in my family turned on. My site is a lot more rural than most. A lot of the other volunteers managed to get hooked on a Brazilian soap opera thats popular here.

How is the water system/pump?

There's a well in the middle of almost every concession. The one in my family is uncovered with a slightly raised concrete base. The water smells a bit and sometimes has sticks in it. I asked my family if they drink the water from the well and they said yes, but I wouldn't gaurentee that they understood the question, or else they might have thought that was the answer I wanted. At any rate, I think I've seen them use the water for cooking. I bathe with it and wash my clothes with it. I think my family is okay, but in some concessions the bathroom area (nege) is uncomfortably close to the well, especially since most of the kids go in the yard anyhow and all the livestock is kept only a few feet away.

There's a brand new schoool in the village that was put in along with a teacher's office, a pump, and some latrines by some organizatiom two years ago. Its a nice little complex and my house is the closest to it. We have language class outside near the pump so I can see most everyone who visits it between 8AM and 5PM. In the morning boys fill containers to take out to the fields on donkey carts. Occasionally I'll see a group of women gathered at it, but for the most part it seems underutilized. Hopefully its getting more use early in the morning.

I personally get my water from the pump and then take it to the language teacher's house to filter and chlorinate it.

What do you want me to send you?

Letters! and newspaper and magazine clippings. Anything else is excessive- I'm pretty sure I can find most everythign I want in the "Tubab" stores in Bamako. Mostly I just want to stay updated on new technology in the states, new scientific findings, current events, some pop culture.

If you really really want to send something send American candy or food mixes that I can share.

That's it for now. I find out the location of my official post training assignment tomorrow and then I head back to homestay. I think I get back on August 18th. I'll post a time when I'll be on AIM when I get back.

I'm sitting in the cafeteria of Tubani So, the Peace Corps training site in Mali, trying to figure out some way to coherently summarizethe last two weeks. One of the older volunteers pretty accurately described how we feel right now by saying its like standing in the middle of an intersection in a duck costume yelling "me here! you help!"...basically, we stick out and live in bright bluehouses.

My homestay is in a small farming village about a 30 minute bikeride from the nearest village. I feel like I've expereienced so much in the past two weeks it hard to go back and write about my first impressions. My senses are shot, everything is so different.

There are three other trainees in my village plus our language instructor. We got to out homestay visit and the whole village came out to greet us. The kids were disconcerting- it was like being a celebrity- they all wanted to touch us.

We were led to four chairs kind of in the middle of everything and told to sit. We didn't really know what was going on so we just sat on stage staring out at everything for awhile. Eventually a little drum band started playing and a dance circle formed. They encouraged us to get up and dance and we did. After a few minute of that two guys in African masks came out and performed a rain dance. We presented kola nuts to the head of the village, read a short speach in Bambara that our instructor prepared and listened to a series of blessing and thanks for coming to the village.

It was crazy just sitting in these weird Adirondack chairs just smiling at everyone and not really knowing what was going on. Eventually we were told it was time to go to our houses. Our stuff was unloaded from the van and immediately we all had a million kids fighting over who got to carry what.

My house is the furthest house from the center of village, the closest to the school and the one pump in the village. On the first day it was unclear who lived in the house, what relation people had to each other etc...I just found myself in the center of a crowd of kids heading away from the village. House isn't really the right word for where people live here, its more like compounds (peace corps calls them concessions).

My host father has four wives (the max allowable by Malian law) and (I think) a total of 23 children from them. There are 26 people living in his concession now- which is a field about 50m x 25m surrounded by mud one or two room houses. All the animals (cows, donkeys, chickens, sheep) the family owns stay penned in the center at night. There are a few mango trees inside as well. It think its a bit bigger and nicer than other concessions I've seen.

All Peace Corps trainees get their own room which comes equipped with a trunk containing medical supplies, a lamp, sheets, a medical kit, bike lock/helmet/pump, hand fan, broom, blue paint job...I can't think what else.

Hanging my mosquito net was the main activity of the first day. One of the women brought a chair into my room (the room only has a bed and a trunk) and insisted that I sit while all the men stood and discussed the net in Bambara and ran around looking for nails and a way to

hammer them into the mud walls. It took awhile, but eventually got done.

I can't even remember what happened after that. The first few days of class were a whirlwind...we learned a ton of Bambara very quickly. Theres one sixteen year old boy in my family who I think was assigned to take care of me- every night he asks me to take out my book and goes over the vocab with me. I can't tell what his motive is exactly. Most of our learning sessions just consist of him reading through random Bambara words in my book, as if he's trying to learn to read. At the same time he treats me like his own personal Tubab (Tubab meaning white person, literally meaning "doctor" in Arabic), and seems to get a kick out of sending the other kids away. It will be nice when I can understand whats being said around me better, for now though any help I can get is appreciated.

The first few days two things got to me- 1) The flies that are EVERYWHERE. We used to ask our language teacher where to put our garbage- orange peels to plastic bags the answer was always "in the nature". 2) The constant presence of kids following us, wanting to carry our stuff, peering in the windows while we were having class. The flies were terrible, the kids were just disconcerting. Why are six and seven year olds in charge of their two and three year old siblings and allowed to wander off wherever following us?

Anyhow, before we left for homestay one of the older volunteers told us that we're better than reality TV for the village and it seems to be true. We learn a few songs, a few dances, perform a few tricks (whistling with my hands is a crowd pleaser, I've also learned to whistle loudly with two fingers) and they love it, particularly the kids, who don't seem to get much attention otherwise. I'm constantly reminded of the saying "it takes a village to raise a child". Everyone in the village knows where every kid belongs and every adult as the right to discipline any child...hence a lot of seemingly unsupervised kids.

Now at the end of phase 1 of homestay I'm used to the flies (though I brought a bag of garbage back to Tubani So with me), but I don't like the fact that we're still communicating at an elementary level and therefore treated a bit like children. We don't really have any visible skills except the ability to play the clown and entertain- we can't farm, we can't pound millet, we can't wash our own clothes- what are we good for?

Other highlights...the market in Sanankoroba where we bought chickens and took them home to kill/clean/eat, having kids follow me back from school saying "we learn, we learn" because I've been teaching them the ABCs, biking the rough roads to the nearest village, getting stranded there because it poured and the roads flash flooded and the water washed over the bridge home. We ended up waiting until it went down to ankle deep over the bridge and then waded through the current. A few hours before that we watched people wading through up to their waists with all of their stuff on their heads.

It will be nice to have a few days without being followed around and constantly hearing Mabele! Mabele! (my Malian name) and having to greet every person on the street. Greeting in Mali is LONG and you have to do it with everyone you know. For example, in the morning:

I ni Sogoma Good morning?

- nba

Here Sira How was your night?

- Here Doron

Somogow be di? How is your family?

- Torro t'u la

I ka kene? How are you?

- Baasi te

Xi ka kene? How is Xi? (where X is the set of people you know and i is defined from 1 to infinity)

- Torro t'a la

Ala ka tile here caya May god increase the peace of the day

- Amiina

- Ala ka dugu here be May god hear your blessing

Amiina

There's a whole different script for night and during the day. I'm also constantly being offered a seat when I'm staying only a minute and then having to sit and listen to rapid conversation in Bambara. I've mastered the phrase "i menjo, n menjo" (You stand up, I stand up) in response to constantly being told to sit.

I can't say that I'm blown away by what I've seen of Malian culture (what I've seen is equivalent to what goes on in one extremely rural farm village) but I've had some really good experiences here. The people are very welcoming, very friendly, community centric. Its frustrating constantly being followed, but at the same time that's their way of taking care of us. No one has tried to take advantage of me in any way. I even had a woman follow me across the market to return my Nalgene.

Its nice having classes at Tubani So now. Yesterday we had culture, health, safety and security and water san. Today we're learning how to make bricks and pour concrete in water san (weather permitting). Its not hard to learn something new everyday.

Send questions/letters/email links/suggestions.

I'll try to post one more time before I leave with more details about the water/waste management situation in my village and my best prediction for the next time I'll be online.

I’ve been in Mali for about four day now. We’re leaving for our homestay village tomorrow morning so I want to update with my impressions before then.

Philadelphia:

Pre-service orientation in Philadelphia mostly consisted of cultural sensitivity exercises and nuts and bolts safety information. Overall, it was very well run and I think they did a great job preparing us to leave.

There was one exercise that I thought was particularly effective in which we broke into a large group and a small group. The large group was told that they were part of a community that could only respond yes to questions asked with a smile and no to questions with a frown and that we could respond to things said by the opposite sex. The small group was told that they were being sent to a community that had a problem and they had to figure out what it was.

The result was mainly that the large group ended up kind of staring at the people from the small group and giving nonsense answers as the small group kept trying to find out about a problem that didn’t exist. A silly exercise, but surprisingly realistic. When we got off the plane in Bamako, Mali a group of trainees was standing around the entrance to the airport when some airport staff walked by and gave us big hellos. We responded hello, they said hello again without walking away and then we just stared.

The only other thing of note about Philly was that I got and finished Harry Potter (shoutout to JWeg!), so now I don’t have to worry about being distracted by it later on.

Mali:

I actually haven’t seen much of Mali yet. After arriving at the airport we strapped all of out bags on top of vans or loaded them into a truck and headed off to the Peace Corps training site, Tubaniso, where we’ve been ever since. We drove in at night, but from what I could see from the van there were still a lot of people sitting out by the road selling food or drinking tea. The buildings reminded me every one or two story cement structures that I’ve ever seen in developing countries. The road in was very good.

Most of the buildings here are mud brick huts with straw roofs or open air hangars where we have classes. I think the reason for this is mostly to get us used to living with few amenities rather than the inability to provide them. The health clinic and other buildings like that are pretty well equipped and every building, including the pit latrines, have working lights. The whole compound has wireless Internet.

The hut I’m staying in is round, about 15ft in diameter, with a fan, a light, and one electric outlet (220V). The only other items are three beds (each with a mosquito net) and a bucket for washing our clothes. There is one “normal” western toilet in the health clinic, but its off limits unless we’re sick. Otherwise we use individual pit toilets or “nygen” which also have showers in them. Typically Malians take sponge baths, but that’s what we have for now. They’re not too bad, but I did panic a little when I first saw them.

There are about 80 trainees in this training group and we’re all staying in groups of three except for the three married couples who get their own huts. We’re divided into four sectors- Health, Water Sanitation, Natural Resource Management, and Small Business.

I think that covers all the basics on amenities.

Food

We had our first traditional Malian meal yesterday (eating on the floor out of communal bowl with our hands). I can’t say that I took very well to it. Its not like Ethiopian food where food is picked up with pieces of bread. If I get there and don’t feel like its sanitary, as a guest I can ask for my own bowl. People tend to stick to their own part of the bowl for everything except meat, which is piled in the middle, so I think that might be okay.

The taste of the food so far is really good. There are a lot of very basic starchy stables that I can fall back on (rice, millet). Yesterday we had mai which is fried millet, a bit like funnel cake without the sugar, froufrou, which is a spicy bread, plantains, the best mango I’ve ever had, French fries and a few other things I can’t remember. One was an okra sauce with cinnamon and the leaves of some tree. It wasn’t bad if you like okra.

Training

Training is still mostly health/safety/culture related. Shots I’ve had so far: MMR, Yellow Fever, Polio Booster, Meninjitus, Hepititus A (1 of 2), Hep B Booster, Tetanus and Rabies. I’m also taking weekly Mefloquine (Larium) for malaria. I’m trying to type with one hand now to keep the plug for my laptop in place (which is the fault of my laptop which anyone who has ever seen it will understand)

We had one training exercise where the Americans and Malian language teachers split up and made lists of stereotypes about the other culture. The Americans mainly listed things we’d heard from family and friends before coming (dirty, sick, want to marry an American to get a green card (which the Malians thought was completely absurd). Things on the Malians’ list were influenced by their mostly knowing Peace Corps Volunteers and tourists: rich, brave, adventurous. Also on the list were dirty, homosexual and feminist. When asked about dirty they responded it was because we don’t wash five times a day (as Muslims do) and we use our left hand (which they consider unclean. I’m trying to constantly imagine that I just stuck my left hand in something disgusting so I don’t reach for anything with it).

Not much else. All the teachers are extremely nice and enthusiastic. They gave us African dance lessons at the cultural festival yesterday, which I imagined a lot of people from Columbia would have enjoyed.

Upcoming Homestay

I just found out that I’m staying in a village not far from Bamako. My host father will be Salif Samake (Samake means elephant). I’m waiting in the refectory right now to meat him for lunch so I don’t think I’ll have time for much more. All I know of my project so far is that I’m assigned to a Bambara speaking region.

More to come soon. Much love to everyone- EMAIL ME and you’ll get more details

Temperature and precipitation data for near Bamako, Mali. Temp is in month vs deg F, Precip is in year day vs. mm.

The first post is always awkward. I've never blogged before, so stay with me.

Next week I'm leaving to start my adventures with the Peace Corps and, in spite of everything I'm leaving behind, I can't wait to see what awaits.

I'm hoping that this journal will serve two goals: first and most importantly as a way to check in and let everyone know I'm okay when I have access to internet and secondly, to fulfill the third goal of Peace Corps service which is to help "promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans".

Laura in Mali posted more details about the Peace Corps and its mission and information about Mali and our staging and departure. There's a directory of Peace Corps volunteers with blogs here and a link to this one should eventually wind up there. Half a dozen others from my training group are already posting.

Its not likely that I'll have regular access to internet and email, but if you want to send a letter, the generic form for volunteers in Mali is:

Name, PCT

Corps de la Paix

B.P. 85

Bamako, Mali

I'll try to keep my contact information update on the right side of the screen.