In case you're wondering, I haven't done a pullup yet. I have been working out lots and lifting weights but I think it's going to take me the whole year to do a pull up all by myself. I just wanted everyone to know that I haven't quit or anything, it's just not that exciting to post updates on my pull-up progress when I can't even do one. BUT I did do 35 pushups yesterday (not in a row), so that's awesome. More significant updates to come....

Temporary employment is pretty sweet. For example, you don't get evaluated, so you aren't expected to meet any requirements and you don't get any bonuses so it's pretty easy, especially when it only lasts one day! My first temp. job was with AED, Academy for Education Development, I just did some hardcore data entry for three days and basically came home with the worst headache of my life hoping I would never have to look at a computer screen again. Then I took the transcript for the National Black Commission on HIV/AIDS National Black Women's Conversation on AIDS. That was overwhelming for so many reasons. First, I'm not a stenographer so I was pretty dead after typing 30 pages in one day of speech. Second, the event was incredible, I've never been in a room with women like that. There were several women there who are HIV positive and have turned their situations into something valuable and meaningful by talking about it and helping other women who don't have their strength learn how to live with their disease.

Right now I'm fulfilling a month-long commitment with CEA, Consumer Electronics Association (people in this city like acronyms!). It's a great job where I'm using real skills and being trusted to manage my own time and carry out a certain number of tasks without constant supervision. It is difficult to work 8 hours a day and still have a life. The office is in Crystal city which is about a 40 minute metro ride away and this can be really exhausting. As much as I appreciate public transport it's really convenient and without it I don't know how I'd get around, but my fellow riders seem to have the brains of peanuts.

There are rules to riding the metro:

1. No food or drinks, cigarettes, etc. on the metro.

The other day some schmo not only had food but it was also a drink, SOUP, on the METRO, he was eating SOUP during RUSH HOUR! No one said anything but next time, I'm totally going to be the hall monitor for the metro police.

2. "These door are not like elevator doors, they will not open automatically if your arm or bag gets caught in it when it's closing." That's what the announcer lady says, yet still people jump in at the last minute and get their shit caught in the door slowing down EVERYONE's day on the metro because we have to wait until all the doors can close before taking off.

3. Don't crowd the motherfucking train. If the train is full, and the announcer says there will be another one in two minutes, fucking wait. Because by the time you and all your selfish childish friends get in or out the other train will have arrived. Seriously. I challenge a class of first graders vs. commuters to follow these basic rules and see who does better.

Also, my favorite metro story of the week happened on Monday. I had an interview with the USDA by the Smithsonian so I was taking the Blue line from Crystal City. There was a large group of elementary school kids all wearing matching rain ponchos that were red, green, yellow and blue. They were all chatting and very excited. The train announcer called out that the next stop was Arlington Cemetery the entire group erupted in applause. Thank you children, for making my week!

I thought when I reached this point I would feel more ready to leave. I'm in a state of total bliss with Mali and Malians right now. I keep meeting wonderful people and doing new things and I'm feeling a little bit like I don't want to leave. Trust me, I will but it's not going to be easy. I've also met a lot of Americans recently who I will be so sad to leave too. It's funny because normally I a really short fuse with Malians but lately, the last two weeks, I love every Malian I meet. I'm so enamored with Mali right now that I am actually questioning whether or not I want to leave. I think at this point I'm just scared. When I'm finished with Peace Corps it's kind of a big leap into a different life that I can't predict. I don't have a job or any concrete plans. I want to move to DC but I don't have any source of money when I get there, or a place to live or a job...so that's kind of daunting at the moment.

Saying goodbye to my close friends was harder than I expected. It was certainly more emotional than I would have predicted especially from Malians. My homologue is my best friend in Mali, she has taken such good care of me and I really think I would have been lost without her. She partly my confidant but also treats me like I'm one of her kids which is a prettys special thing here. When you say goodbye in Mali you give blessings and they tell you to greet the people in the place where you are going, then you shake hands with your left hand. In Mali you always do things with your right hand. It is rude even to hand someone something with your left hand. You shake with your left hand when you leave because you are intentionally being rude, so that you will return someday and right the wrong. Also, they say that when you shake when your left hand you are giving your heart to the person, since your heart is on the left side. When I finally said goodbye to my homologue we hugged then shook hands with our left hands and she got sad, and started to cry. That was really hard. I've been doing this little tradition and it's really making me emotional. I'm doing this rollercoaster emotional thing and it's really hard. Saying goodbye to my fellow Peace Corps volunteers is sad too. I know I'll keep in contact with them but being here is so much different than the States. We have shared this amazing experience and by saying goodbye to them it's really emphasizing how different my life is going to be after I leave here.

I am leaving on Saturday to go to The Gambia then I will be heading to Dakar and flying out on the 29th. I arrive in Spokane at midnight on August 30th. I'm going to be pretty busy while I'm but I want to try to see as many people as I can. If you want to hang out just let me know and I'll do my best. I know it sucks that I'll only be home for a month, but I gotta get my life rolling so everyone can come visit me in DC! I'm not going to have a party in Spokane so just call my mom and schedule a time to come over for dinner. This way we can have one on one time!

Today is my two year anniversary in Mali and I've been trying not to think to hard about my departure but it is fast approaching and saying goodbye has become a more complicated process than I would have liked. After I told the first few people when I was leaving site I decided that I wasn't going to tell anyone else. Obviously my host family and coworkers and neighbors all know but the people who I run into daily (like my husband at the post office) just make my life more difficult when I tell them I'm leaving soon and do not know when I shall return. I'm also at this point where I don't want to leave, which is strange to realize, but I just finished reading this wonderful book about the Lost Boys of Sudan called What is the What. It is a fabulous story and really gives a good picture of the transition an African would have to go through when moving to the States and I'm realizing I'll have to make those same transitions, in a much easier way, but nevertheless, it's stressing me out.

I have also been glancing at the blogs of several of the brand spanking new trainees who arrived off the 'boat' on July 10th, and it makes me feel nostalgic for what I am about to finish and what I have done and also sad cause I really want to do it again. I also looked at another volunteer's blog today and they had all these amazing pictures of their travels in Sierra Leone and Guinea-Conakry and if I could stay and just travel I would definitely do it.

Right now I'm trying to pack up my stuff because I'm sending all my furniture to a new volunteer's future site tomorrow. Then I have a friend visiting from Senegal then I'm hopping on the Peace Corps shuttle to Bamako with Fili, my dog, and delivering her to her new adoptive parents (ex-pats working at the embassy) and then getting all my stuff together to leave Mali. I'm not really sad to leave, I'm definitely ready, but knowing that I won't see most of my Malian friends for a long time or ever again is hanging over my head. The children in my host family the other day were asking "When are you coming back?" like it's in a few months. Saying goodbye to kids is the hardest because you know if you do see them again they will be grown up and changed and maybe not even remember you. At any rate, things are winding down here and I'm very excited to be home. I arrive in Spokane August 30th at 11:58 pm PST. Abigail and my mom and dad will meet me at the airport then we will go straight to Taco Bell's 24 drive thru (they still have that right?) the to bed in a real bed and not on a foam mattress!

It's taking a while to get this wedding blog posted, I'm working on it, but it's a very long blog so soon it will be up! Happy Bastille Day (a little late)!

My Malian last name isn't altogether common and in some places people even say it doesn't exist in my ethnic group so when I'm out of the Kayes region I do a little bit of Coulibaly name-dropping to stay popular. I'm sure many have you have read about this before, but here in Mali we have a tradition called Joking Cousins. It is what makes Mali so lovely. Malians are the nicest people in West Africa, maybe all of Africa. This practice of making fun of people with certain last names has leveled the playing field for Malians since the days of yore and made everyone equal. Equally capable of eating beans and being my donkey.

When I'm out of my region and people don't get excited about my last name I simply say that I am a Coulibaly, Diarra or Traore, the most popular and fun last names in Mali. You might all think that I don't have any pride for my last name and you're right, I don't. My last name is Doerr and I'm kind of Italian, German, and Danish (and I also like to think, slightly Canadien) but here in Mali I am of one of the smaller ethnic groups are traditionally leave Mali for better places, so I try out other suits. I mentioned this to another volunteer and he balked at me and said that he had no respect for "fair weather Coulibaly's." If you are to be a Coulibaly you are to always endure the jokes that Coulibaly's receive and never evade this birthrite. I promised I would never do it again (and then I broke the promise repeatedly when he wasn't around). I tell you all this because I attended a Football match. Oh, by the way, for all of you Americans (which I assume is everyone who reads this) "football" is the international term for "soccer."

Before the game Christina, Ryan and I went to the market to get a Mali flag poncho made for Ryan and the excitement for the game tempted us into buying a few other things...like Mail pants, headbands, earings, sunglasses, flags and shirts. By the time we left we were exhausted and fully outfitted in our colorful clothes!

The football match was epic, Mali vs. Ghana in the pool play qualifiers for the World Cup in 2010. Ghana was favored to win the game but it was supposed to be a close game and if Mali won that game it was probably a sure thing they'd be headed to the World Cup in South Africa. Was I excited? Well, not really, I was excited to get dressed up in Red, Yellow and Green and be a hysterical fan. (As it was, Ghana's colors are the same as Mali's colors and apparently the mascot for Mali is an Eagle, so no one could really tell who anyone was supporting unless they had a black star on them, because Ghana's flag has a black star in the middle.) Anyway, the point is, I don't really care about soccer or sports in general, but when I go to a game I always have fun supporting who everyone else is supporting or the team with the cutest players. Mind you, I am a competitive athlete when I'm playing but as a fan I'm a little bit of a dilletante.

The game was incredible, you've never enjoyed soccer until you've watched it with a stadium full of Africans. Mali did not win they lost 2-0 but two weeks later they played Benin and won! YAY! I was reminded to post a blog about this because our team, yes the US does have a soccer team, played Brazil today for the championships of the Confederation Cup and lost, which is sad news because they were supposedly the underdog, and doesn't everyone love and underdog story? If they had won they probably would have made a movie out of it and Americans would have maybe started being interested in soccer instead of...say...Nascar.

They're cleaning out the latrine river behind my house for the first time in two years (probably even longer than that. I didn't know it was so deep because it's always been full. The black dirt on the side is what used to be in the ditch.

Looking the other direction, this side has yet to be cleaned, I'll be surprised if they clean it.

These kids wanted me to dance while they banged the drums. Nothin' like dancin' naked during hot season next to a latrine river.

Half cleaned out, half still disgusting.

Papi caught a rat!

I just returned from my Close of Service Conference in Bamako which was a 3 day conference to prepare us to for going home. We also found out the specific dates of our departures which was very exciting. I am officially an RPCV (returned Peace Corps volunteer) August 22nd! But I might go on a little trip to Senegal and Gambia before heading home at the end of the month. Either way, COS conference was a great time to reflect on the last two years, so I thought I'd highlight a few things I do differently after living in Africa and few things that are probably exactly the same:

Different:

1. I wash my laundry with my hands (I'm too cheap to pay my guard to do it so I do it myself)

2. I spend a lot of time sitting on little stools.

3. Eat with my hands. I'll tell you this is a very difficult task to accomplish and I still spill a great deal of my food on the ground.

4. Eat out of a communal bowl (Susie and I insist that when we're in DC once a week we eat Malian style, whether it's Malian food, sitting on the floor or out of the same bowl - saves on doing dishes)

5. I yell at people when they stand directly out in the sun.

6. When I hand something to someone I say "hooon!"

7. I shower 4-5 times per day (depending on the season, year round at least 2 times per day)

8. I eat beans regularly.

9. I sleep under a mosquito net.

10. I can sleep anywhere, obviously I have places I prefer to sleep but you never know where you'll end up needing a nap here in Mali.

11. I can go days without sleep.

12. I can ride on a bus for days at a time and not complain...as long as I have my own seat (i do not, however, appreciate station wagons and will complain the whole way if I have to ride in one).

13. I have no problem using a latrine.

14. I carry sunscreen, heat rash powder, and a knife with me everywhere.

15. I always want to buy a new bucket.

Same:

1. Still impatient. I know you all think I might be able to shed this frustrating quality but it will not happen. I'm just as impatient with Americans as I am with Malians, if not more so, so get ready for the old Emily.

2. Toilet paper. I don't know who uses the Selidaga (plastic teapot filled with water for rinses your behind after you use the bathroom) but I DO NOT. I think toilet paper is necessary at all times.

3. I still spend too much money on clothes.

4. I'm still lazy, if I can get someone else to do my errands for me I will.

5. I still talk a lot and now that I can talk a lot in Bambara I think I annoy my Malian friends.

6. I still love cheese, in fact, I eat Laughing Cow cheese plain, regularly.

One of the things we talked about a lot at our conference was how to relate to people when we get home. How, for a month or so, it's not that bad, then after a month it stops feeling like a vacation and all the things we could handle abroad start to overwhelm us here. Most of the people I am here with went back to the states but I didn't and being gone for two years is going to make it even harder for me to transition. Heather asked me yesterday if I was nervous and I am, not to see each of you, I can't wait for that, but I know I'm going to have trouble relating to you. I've had a pretty exciting life for the last two years and switching back to America mode will not be easy. Be patient with me and I'll try to be patient with you! 3 1/2 months to go!

1. be good looking. (acne, sweat, sweat stains, it's just not the place/time to start your modeling career)

2. wear underwear (i'm not trying to be gross, you really can't, doctors tell you not to, and if you do, you end up with boils or something worse. yeesh.)

3. sleep 8 hours a night (sweating while sleeping wakes you up)

4. take naps (again with the sweating while sleeping)

5. stand up straight (so mostly laying on the floor, but not sleeping, too long in one position is not possible)

6. anything between the hours of 9:30 am and 8:00 pm

7. sit anywhere without sweating so much that when you stand up you look like you wet your pants (EVEN IN AIR CONDITIONING)

8. not LOVE AC

9. wear make-up, shoes (covered shoes), socks, jeans (these must be surgically removed if worn), gray or khaki clothing, polyester or leather.

10. go without 4 showers in one day.

11. eat without sweating (sometimes when i eat, i eat so fast that i sweat and get chest pains, but now, no matter how slow i eat i sweat. and i have to rest for longer afterward, it's practically a work out while i'm eating)

12. expect people to do their jobs (my friend went to the post office today during normal working hours and the ladies working there just wouldn't go get her packages and TOMORROW is a holiday, so she'll have to wait until monday.)

13. forget to drink water (it's so hot that you don't even realize how much you're sweating)

So, i know i complain about this a lot, but i don't think you understand the gravity of my situation here. when i go on vacation to the beach, i bring a coat. other volunteers complain about the heat too and when i go to their sites i'm cold. kayes is the hottest city in the WORLD (by 1 or 2 degrees). nevertheless, the harmattan winds are in rare form this year so take pity on me. and while it may be 90 in DC...it's 116 here on a good day, so just know if i were with you, i'd be freezing. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kayes)

DAD, i did not feel like using proper capitalization, i'm sorry.

This is the video from Ryan's village where the women sing and pound onions on the rocks. So amazing!

Today is Election Day here in Mali and I had the amazing opportunity to watch democracy in action. Malians were voting for mayors (not for president). As I walked to my friend's house to meet her and walk to the voting place many people stopped me and asked me if I was going to vote. What excitement! What pride! What is wrong with these people?! I can't vote in Mali. I told them this and they laughed. This, however, did not make me any less excited to watch the free people of Mali make decisions about their leaders DEMOCRATICALLY! I was thinking this as I walked right through a puddle of disgusting gray, murky water and decided that, perhaps, in Mali, Democracy has a different smell than it does in the United States. Liberty, freedom, pursuits of happiness, etc. are all at the end of roads full of gray, murky water. Gross. Okay, anyway, I finally made it to the voting place, I went to my friend's house and was then escorted by 5 small children to the school where people were voting. I don't know what I was expecting. I suppose the actual act of voting is pretty boring everywhere (except in Iraq where they all got their fingers painted blue) and without Wolf Blitzer and Chris Matthews elections are just people making check marks and then reading the newspaper the next day. Nevertheless, I had pumped myself up for a very boring morning.

My friend was helping people sign in to vote and so I sat outside and watched for about 5 minutes. There weren't any fights or brawls, there wasn't an uprising or riots, it was all eerily organized. I suppose I should be glad about this, but you would all have a lot more interesting things to read if my day had been more eventful.

The great thing about this is it does show democracy in action. Malians are just as capable and excited about voting as anyone and when it comes down to it, just as organized. Apparently Malians vote for the person they know no matter how corrupt or dishonest they are but that's not necessarily corruption. It's just Malian, I suppose. Apparently there's a rumor that the current president might try and change the constitution so he can run for a third term. In 3 years, when that happens, I'm sure there will be an exciting story. Until then, rest assured that someone is the new mayor in a bunch of little villages in Mali...and that Democracy here smells a little like burnt plastic.

The regional meeting we had this year was to replace the In-service Training we normally have every April in Bamako. The purpose of the regional meeting was to meet partners in each region and develop relationships between them and Peace Corps. It was also to develop closer relationships with volunteers and their counterparts. The advantages this meeting has over our usual April IST is that we didn't have to travel as far, the meeting can be tailored to the needs of volunteers in Kayes and it's a smaller group of people so everyone gets more attention.

All in all the training went well, it was a huge pain to plan, and as it was the first year, we didn't have a lot to go off of, but I think next year will be even better. I know some people were frustrated that we couldn't do some of the activities sooner (like at their Jan. IST), but I know that I gained a lot from it and I only have a few months left here, so the new group who have a year left, will have plenty to do between now and the next meeting. Anyway, I met some great people from Kayes and have a couple of meetings scheduled already!

The day after the meeting I went to Bamako for a quick trip to do some medical stuff but I was thinking while I was on the bus on the way back today that y'all needed a little Mali Transport tutorial. My bus ride this morning was probably the best one I've been on since I've been in Mali. The only bad part was that I had to get up at 3:30 am in order to get to the station on time for our 5 am departure. Since everyone who bought tickets was early we got to leave the station early. Gana transport is an anomaly when it comes to transport companies.

You have to buy tickets in advance (you can buy them up to a week in advance) and before everyone can board they call out your name and check your ticket before you get on. Most companies only allow you to buy tickets the day the bus is leaving. Many still call out names but it is never as organized as Gana. Once I was on the bus I managed to snag my favorite seat (the one by the back door, so no one can sit behind you and you can recline your seat!). Then I blew up my neck pillow (given to me by my lovely older sister), put my headphones in and dropped off to sleep. After a bit the AC came on so I wrapped up in my previously packed bedsheet and cuddled up next to the window (and involuntarily, my seat mate). This was on a brand new bus. About 1/3 of the way through the trip they turned on a movie (yes, there is a TV) and we got to watch Blade in English with German subtitles. Seemed appropriate. I slept through most of the movie but caught the middle of it when they brought me my complimentary croissant and soda. I slept soundly for the 7 hour trip. That's right 7 hours. On my very first ride to Kayes it took 16 hours. SIXTEEN! That was when there was a 130 km stretch of unpaved road. They finished that about 4 months after I arrived and then lowered the price to get to Bamako. That same bus ride it rained most of the way and leaked through the roof and windows on to me. I was also alone with my homologue to whom I could barely speak because my Bambara was so bad. Anyway, development is sometimes faster than you expect and shows up in places you don't expect. When you get off the bus you give them your ticket and they locate your checked bags for you (you can't get your bags without your ticket, so very very organized).

So here are some pictures of other modes of transport in Mali:

Above is a bus I took from the town of Dialafara to Kayes, it took 5 hours to get 150 km. The inside of the back was gutted and they put benches around the walls. The middle was packed with heavy rice sacks and bidons filled with palm oil, gasoline or water. The roof isn't as packed as usual. It isn't strange to have the load on top be as tall as the car itself. If you look closely you can see my pink bucket hanging off the side! The great thing about these cars is that they allow a great deal of dirt to come in so when you get off you look like you've been mud wrestling. It take 2 or 3 showers to get totally clean and at least 4 loads of laundry to get all the red dirt out. These rides are particularly cozey, on this one a little boy slept in my lap.

This is a picture taken from inside a Peace Corps car (see the radio antenna?) I'm pretty sure someone asked "Is it dead?" Well, it was. Those bamboo cages on top are filled with live chickens and guinea fowl.

Here's another picture of some sheep on top of the bus. Right before one of the big Muslim holidays, the one where everyone is supposed to sacrifice a sheep, every bus is loaded with sheep going to Bamako to be sold. Sometimes even the insides are filled with sheep instead of people.Mom, if you think I over pack...what about this?

This is what an average bus looks like in Mali, not so great considering it looks like they put it together themselves. These kinds of cars are usually only used for shorter distances. In between village and towns. The larger charter buses go from city to city.

This is the bus station in Bamako for Gana Transport. Behind that blue gate is where people stand when they are waiting for their names to be called. On the left are a conglomeration of people selling food, snacks and accessories.

Many many people use donkey carts to move stuff and people. They use them for garbage collection and for general transport. Sometimes they even move livestock in them.

This is a Sept Place (Seven Places). So...that means there are 7 seats. But Malians don't work with proper logic, they stuff 9 people in these and the last time I took one there were 10 people stuffed in it.

The TRAIN! The Kayes region is known for two things, how freaking hot it is and the train. This train goes from Koulikoro (a town north of Bamako) all the way to Dakar Senegal. It's not that reliable and as you can see from the photo below, not all that comfortable, but it's the TRAIN!

I just love the sheep on the roof. One of the guys tried to get me to pay him for taking this picture...I said if anything I'd have to pay the sheep, but I don't think they mind...and he let it go.

My friend Nicole getting comfortable in the backseat of a Bashe (also called a Sotrama). This is what I was talking about before when I said they gut the inside and put benches around the walls.

Q: Why have we stopped?

A: We're out of gas.

This is a typical conversation. You'd think after doing the same leg of road over and over they'd figure out how much gas they'd need to get all the way there. Oh well.

Packing up boats with mattresses and cargo to head up to Timbuktu and Gao!

Moto taxi...he was posing with his cigarette, he's not really that cool.

Me in the back of a moto taxi!

Emily's wheels! And you can bet that's real fire (a combination of how hot it is here and how fast I ride!).

Also...Election day is Sunday, so I'm going with my friend when she goes to vote! All the communes are electing new Mayors!

I just returned from a little vacation in Northern Mali. I decided I needed a break plus I wanted to go see one of my friend's sites. Ryan used live near me in a train town about 3 hours (by train) south of Kayes. He extended for a third year to live in a village, because his first two years were not in a village and he wanted that experience, and he ended up moving across the country. His site is right in the middle of Dogon country, as it happens, so on my vacation in Mali I was also a tourist.

We spent an extra day in Bandiagara, which I like to call the "gateway" to Dogon country. Bandiagara is a medium sized town that happens to be where all the roads to the Dogon villages come from. In most cases you can get to the villages from other routes but it's the most common starting point for Dogon trips. When my parents and sisters came we went through Bandiagara. The roads then branch out like a spider web from there. This map shows it all pretty well (Pays = Country in French):The most touristy villages are below the cliffs. If you take the road that goes towards Bankass you can hit these villages. These villages have lots of campements (hostels) that allow the traveler a very authentic, yet comfortable stay in the villages. In these areas the villages are relatively new because many of them used to live IN the cliffs. There are old mud ruins still in the cliffs.(Abigail and Me in January in Teli, an old cliff village in the touristy part of Dogon country)

Apparently the Dogon people were trying to flee from Western Mali and found refuge in the cliffs. Now there are only a couple of villages where the people still live in the cliffs. The other popular tourist villages are on the top of the cliffs looking out over them.

Ryan's village, however, is nowhere near these places and after two trips to the touristy areas it was a refreshing experience to be in the untouched part of Dogon country. Ryan's village is north of Bandiagara on the road to Kendie where we later went for market day. We got up early and piled into a horribly overstuffed van that was bright orange. Malians prefer the clown-car method when packing transport. First put in the rice sacs then proceed to board in no particular order or plan. Usually the people who have to get out first logically places themselves at the bottom of the pile. Always fun telling the sardines to unpack the car. We walked into Ryan's tiny little village and were met by greetings that I am not familiar with. One of the coolest and also frustrating things about Dogon country is that there are so many languages. We passed through several villages over the 35 km ride from Bandiagara and, while these villages are no more than 4 or 5 km apart, they speak completely different dialects of Dogon. In some cases the different villagers cannot even understand each other's dialects. My Bambara was not really useful here (except among some of the more educated villagers). I did learn to greet...well to greet in the morning, I never quite got the rest of it.

We got to Ryan's house which I will describe later and dropped off our bags, filled up water bottles, plugged the ipod into the portable speakers and headed off to market. We listened to "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me" and Eddie Izzard stand-up while we trudged through the bush. We climbed up a short cliff to get cell phone service and check messages then headed back down into a cute little village that will forever remain my favorite of all Malian villages.

(Climbing down from the cliffs where we found cell phone service.)

The village we reached supposedly had a pump but when we got to it, the pump was locked so we decided to go ask the village chief or someone who spoke Bambara if anyone had the key. Pump water comes from such a deep water source that it's potable right when it flows out of the pump, so we were going to fill up our water bottles then head on to the next village, but this didn't work out like we planned.

(These are kids walking with us from the pump up to find someone with the key.)

This village was so great because when you were walking into it you could hardly see it. We had come in from below between some cliffs in a little gorge where the villagers keep their gardens. I didn't see the houses until Ryan pointed them out to me. We hiked up into the village and found the chief but apparently the man with the pump key had gone to market. We rebuked them for not allowing their village unlimited access to clean drinking water then begged for them to give us any that they had already pulled and stored. They gave us water, but the origins were curious, so we thanked them then considered how we were to make home with out dying of thirst. (The village from above)

We decided to hike out a few minutes, eat some of the pb&j we had brought with us, and filter the water through Ryan's shirt (his wasn't necessarily the cleanest but I couldn't take mine off because a troop of children had followed us out of the village) and then bleach the water and let it sit for 30 minutes. We just assumed we'd be fine now and deal with the ramifications of drinking dirty water in a week or so after the parasites has successfully moved in. We walked on listening to Eddie Izzard and occasionally running across people from Ryan's village leaving the market town we were heading to. When we arrived in Kendie it was about 4 pm and it was similar to the last village, surrounded by fields and places safely atop a little butte like it was a fortress. We went to the pump in this village and found that it was actually and Artesian well (An aquafer that has a natural pressure to it so the water doesn't have to be pumped out. The water continually runs until there is not more pressure, which is a very long time).

We filled our bottles and bleached them to be safe (Ryan wasn't sure if it was an Artesian well) and then climbed up into the fortress. We walked through some narrow streets then exited to see this:Market day! We took stairs down into the market, the coolest market I've seen in Mali and bought some food for dinner and breakfast the next morning. Where I live there aren't any small village markets. In the Northern part of Kayes the villagers come from a lot more money and therefore have better transport and access to better food. In Kayes, there is a big market everyday, whereas in other big cities in Mali there is a small market everyday except for one day a week. In the surrounding villages there are also weekly markets to supplement the villagers' needs. I always get really excited when I see markets because I'm so deprived of these small village activities. We took transport back to Ryan's village, ate dinner and talked until we fell asleep.

The next morning we got up with the sun, we were sleeping outside. It's hot season now so it's really awful to sleep inside, especially in villages where there's no electricity for fans or AC. We made eggs for breakfast with Moringa leaves and then get ready for a short little trip to the onion gardens and the dam. Walking out there was nothing more than a stroll, so it was easy and the temperature was pleasant (it was probably in the high 90s but we're so used the heat that even the high 90s can feel cool to us).

(Looking upriver, there are cows getting a little drink as they roam across Mali)

(Downriver you can see the lush green onion fields climbing up the banks.)

(Ryan on the dam with some children trying to greet.)

Even in this village that was only about 3 or 4 km away and they had different greetings that Ryan didn't know. We sat on the top of the dam and watched the villagers walk down to the river and fill up gourds with water then walk back up and water the onions. Why do the Dogon people grow onions if there is so little water and onions use a lot of water? I think it's because onions keep so well. All other vegetables (besides garlic maybe) go bad very quick after they ripen so all the work watering them is fruitless, as it were, if they can't keep the veggies without refrigeration until they need them later on in the year. There is also a special thing Ryan's village women do with the onions. Everyday, after they've harvested all the onions they could that day from their personal onion beds, most of the women go down to where the river is dry during hot season. There are fabulous black sandstone rocks that look like giant stairs. On the biggest areas the women lay out the onions (after their green stalks have been cut off) and let them dry all through the next day. The following afternoon as the sun is going down they push all the onions together with their feet and make a huge pile (not unlike the piles of leaves we make with rakes in the fall). Then 10 or 15 of them get in a circle and with special mallets that look like pestels but have only one blunt end they pound the onions. Ryan and I got to help them do this, it was one of the coolest things I've done in Mali. As we pounded the onions we shifted in a circle. Beating the mallets on the hard rock and mushy onions the women sang songs in their dialect of Dogon. They even sang songs about Ryan and me, but we didn't know what they were saying. They would stop periodically to look at my hands to make sure I didn't have blisters, I said I didn't even though I did because I wanted to keep helping. After the onions were all mashed they pile them into buckets and take them home where they roll them into baseball sized balls and then let them dry and sell them in the market. That night we ate chicken, listened to more NPR (including an interview with our beloved Obama) and then did some yoga. I stopped the yoga before Ryan and took a shower. As I was getting ready for my shower I spotted something evil and crawly and instead of being calm and mature I screamed "SCORPION!" even though it wasn't a scorpion. Ryan jumped off his yoga mat and helped me search for the not-scorpion. Actually I think it was one of the super fast moving tarantulas that eat scorpions. Malians say that if you see a spider then you'll probably see a scorpion. And then we DID! The little tiny white scorpions are actually the most dangerous ones here, but none of them will kill you, unless you were really sick and somehow it stung you on your spinal cord or right inside your heart, which I'm sure is impossible. The spiders are also harmless, but beyond frightening, especially for how fast they move. This is a gigantic version of what I saw: http://www.awfulgames.com/fun/camelspider/

I'm still getting the heebie-jeebies. Okay, so after the next day Ryan and I headed back to Bandiagara for the night then into Bamako, the rest of the trip was less exciting and not worth reporting on my blog.

These are pictures of Ryan's house and latrine. In Dogon there is rock everywhere. The reason why there is so little water in Dogon country is because in most places it's impossible to dig wells. They need high tech drilling machines or dynamite which aren't easy to come by or affordable. Most villages have wells or pumps that were donated by NGOs or something. Since they have so much rock they put it to good use. The make bricks! All the buildings are made of mud and stone bricks. The roofs are made of mud and wood posts.

The latrines, however, are made of cement and rocks. When I say latrines I mean two latrines. In Ryan's village there are two. He has one and so does the teachers. Because there is rock everywhere, and, as I said, it's difficult to dig holes in rocks, the Malians just walk out into the bush and do their business. No need for a latrine. Ryan's latrine is actually only for defacation, you're supposed to urinate on the floor of the shower which is next to the latrine (down an itty bitty staircase). In the best built latrines there is a drawer for the underpart of the latrine that can be opened when the latrine is full and removed and used as fertilizer. (Uncle Art was telling me that at George Washington's house in Virginia they have latrines like this, they used the waste to fertilize the garden!)

Okay, so now I'm back in Kayes. I've been here for about a week and I'm pretty busy these days. On April 20th and 21st we're having our First Annual April Regional Meeting. Normally we have an In-Service Training in Bamako that lasts a week, but this year they decided to start a new thing. The great part about this is that it caters to smaller groups of volunteers and the technical training can be relevant to the region they are in instead of broadly talking about all of Mali. After reading this post you can see how diverse Mali is both culturally and geographically so these regional meetings are a great way to improve our training. Anyway, Peace Corps asked me to plan it because I'm the most available second year volunteer in the region. It's been fun and difficult and I'm getting nervous for the actual meeting, but I think it will go well. I've learned a lot and have been able to help Peace Corps out.

I'm also still working with Moussa Kone, my tailor. He and I decided that it was better to not go forward with the school right now because his business needs some work. He is very competent but he doesn't have any staff who he can rely on when he is not there and he's still doing some tailoring which takes away from his time running the business. We've talked about getting him a new shop so that he can sell clothes from a front boutique and have tailors in the back and he needs more money to do this. I suggested we start making bags to sell to tourists so this is our current project. Hopefully Susie will be coming to Kayes in May to do a quick formation for Moussa's tailors on some basic business skills so they might be able to help out with accounting stuff. All in all, it's going really well and I'm getting some awesome clothes made.

There's something about the red, green and yellow that makes all the rastafarians of the world smile. I thought you'd all like a little lesson in telling the difference between the flags of West Africa especially those that look pretty much the same.

Let's begin with Mali, please note the order of the colors as well as the YELLOW color in the middle, you would not want to get this confused with Guinea-Conakry. And, if you use the wrong color you'll probably get into more than one argument with Malian patriots (YOU DON'T EVEN HAVE A WORD FOR YELLOW IN BAMBARA, WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE?!)

Guinea-Conakry: notice the golden tint to the middle color and the order of the red and green have been changed. I'm sure there's some sort of reason why that is, but it's not obvious from the flag.

Senegal: I was recently on a bus and saw this flag hanging from the rearview mirror (yes, the bus had a rearview mirror, not sure if it had a rearview window), and I thought "it's a Ghanain flag...the star is just faded." No, no no, it's just a green star.

Togo really went all out with this one:

Guinea-bissau...mixin' it up, wouldn't want to get you confused with the other Guinea who actively confused its flag with with that of Mali...Senegal...and Ghana.

Okay, so when you flip it around it looks like the mali and senegal flag, and Africans aren't as particular with rectangles as Americans are, so it's hard to tell which way it goes sometimes...nevertheless...here is Ghana:

Cameroon is copying everyone because it's so far away, it's trying to hang on to the better part of Africa and leaning away from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Congo-Brazzaville, Central African Republic, Angola...and other places where there is no Peace Corps and no peace.

Burkina Faso: In Mali we like to call Burkina a smaller, duller, cooler, calmer, cleaner version of Mali and I think their flag justly represents this assumption.

And now Benin, a wonderful country with a very dull flag.

God Bless Africa and their wonderful colors and flags. I hope we all learned a lot today. If you want to find out real information about the meaning of the arrangement of each flag I suggest you ignore everything on this page and visit wikipedia or some other source with slightly true facts.

My husband is the rather large man who works at the post office. I forget his name, but we banter in order for me to be sweet to him. I rarely flirt, even with Americans, in this case there is a counter between us which prevents creepiness. He is a gentleman, however, and he knows I'm not just there to see him, so he usually gets to the business of giving me my packages pretty quick. When I haven't been around in a while he'll say he's mad at me and the direct translation is "we're fighting." I will apologize and pretend to feel guilty and then take my leave.

This phrase "we're fighting" is a common thing people say in Mali. Fighting is usually done in the most childish manner possible and often very loud and public. Very different from Americans. It's not usually violent, mostly just yelling and gesticulating. Nothing in Mali makes me feel more uncomfortable than fighting.

Two times I have witnessed horrible fights among my host-family members and I do not look back on these moments fondly. It's not something that's funny later.

Tonight I was again faced with an awkward situation. I went to my homologue's concession, which is now my host family. I've decided. I eat lunch there now and my favorite 20- something, Fatim is there. She's my only friend who isn't married, my homologue is her aunt. I walked into their yard this evening and there was this obvious thick silence. There were several old men and a couple of women sitting in a circle having a very serious discussion. No one greeted Mariam (me). I went to find Fatim and it turned out they were discussing her. This is normal in Malian culture, to have other people sort out a problem for you. I didn't figure out what they had been fighting about, but I sat there for an hour listening to them because I felt weird leaving without saying anything to anyone. No one except Fatim even paid any attention to me. I think she got into a fight with another girl in the family, a cousin. I don't know what happened, but the people having a discussion were saying Fatim's name a lot. I could only follow it a little bit, either way, I was restless. I left with a lump in my stomach. I'm so glad Americans don't fight like that. Or if they do, they keep it hidden from me. If you ever want to fight with me, please do so without involving the whole village. :) also, I'm very strong, so it would not be wise to provoke me.

Every time I have a zit I have to go through a detailed dialogue with Malians. On most high acne days every Malian I meet needs to have the conversation and often times it provokes a dialogue among Malians while they point at me and speak in soft voices.

Yesterday topped the charts. I went to the market in the morning and I felt as though every Malian were staring at me like I had an extra eyeball. There was lots of whispering. Malians who I actually talked to said, "It's hot lately, your face gets red in spots when it gets hot out, right?" I just shrug most of the time and say, "no, it's just me." Then they say, "oh those mosquitoes are bad aren't they?" Seriously, when was the last time anyone you knew got a mosquito bite on their face. Kids get them, but I'm gonna be 25 soon, so I can add to my list of abilities "can swat mosquitoes away from face." I mean COME ON MALIANS! The greatest thing is that they all feel the need to say it and when I finally tell them, "folks it's a zit. When it gets hot out, I sweat, when I sweat my pores fill up with dirt and oil," then I pull out my presentation using example of clean and clear ads with pictures of throbbing bumps and and ingrown hairs then I say, "my skin is white, so you can see the zits. You get them too, look there's one right there, they just don't look red on your face like they do on mine."

Then I storm off to my house to wash my face for the thousandth time that day.

To be fair my acne really isn't that bad, ONE zit and every Malian in the area seems to feel the need to tell me about it. It's like when you get a sunburn. Ya, I know I'm sunburned, I'M THE ONE WHO IS BURNED. I can feel it, I don't need every person to tell me. What would we do without these people? I don't know but I'll betcha not a single one of them will tell you when you have food in your teeth. They just don't know when to tell the truth.

Anyway, my zit has since disappeared so all is well on Mariam's forehead!

My homologue's neice's wedding was today. I got there just in time. This is a picture of their yard right when I got there. Everyone was waiting for the bride and groom to show up. They were coming from the Mayor's where they sign the marriage papers and kiss. Everyone was dressed really nicely and getting restless in the heat.

Finally the married couple arrived. They drove up in a fancy car flanked by a bunch of motorcycles honking their horns. The couple were escorted into the yard where a woman sang a song about them and talked about their future good fortune. Everyone watched and took pictures.

Then finally they got to get up and leave and go to the round point and take pictures. The setting for many Malian music videos and wedding photos are at the round points (the cement center of an intersection). In Bamako the round points are the few green places, they are landscaped and usually feature an ugly statue. While they were off doing that, we got to dance and eat! Popsicle snack before lunch. They mix ginger with orange juice, put it in plastic bags and freeze them. To eat them you rip a corner of the bag with your teeth and suck out the juice.

Kids watching the dancing.

Women dancing.

(I'm trying to get videos posted of the extravaganza, we'll see.)

Have you seen When Harry Met Sally? Obviously this is a stereotypical favorite, but it really addresses a lot of everyday issues. One of my favorite lines is when Harry says to Sally, "You're the worst kind of high maintenance. You're high maintenance but you think you're low maintenance." This my friends, describes me. I've known this my whole life...however, I've never been told this by a total stranger...until I came to Africa.

To get to Senegal for WAIST (West Africa Invitational Softball Tournament) we took a 21 hour bus ride from Kayes (many actually started their trip in Bamako, so add another 10 hours to that) to Dakar. We arrived in Dakar around 2:30 am, since we wouldn't be able to arrive at the place we were staying until later we stayed on the bus in the parking lot and slept until about 6 am. We had originally had a deal with the bus company in Bamako that they would drive us to our specific destination IN Dakar, unfortunately, this deal fell to peices early on.

That morning I decided I'd see what I could do about making a deal with them so we didn't have to pay for taxis. I found one guy and he said he'd help me but he kept disappearing. He came back to our bus a little later to get some sugar he'd left in there. He asked me to hand it to him and instead I held it hostage. As we were walking he kept saying "give it to me." I kept saying, "when you help me I'll give it to you." When he realized what I was doing he laughed and then went up to Casey (a guy friend of mine) and said, "are you married to this girl?" Casey said, "No, why?" The man said, "Because she has a lot of stuff on her back." The literal translation of "she's a piece of work" or "she's high maintenance and she's annoying me." I eventually gave him the sugar once he said he honestly wasn't going to drive us or try to help us. We found taxis and got to our destination just fine.

Casey thought it was pretty funny too. Ah well...C'est la vie.

The rocks rattled and clanked as they rolled down the sloped zinc

panels, raising a hell-sent cacophony that made my nerves jangle. I ran

outside and chased the kids away, [but they returned, chanting]

“Timoteo, Timoteo, el hombre mas feo” (Tim, Tim, the ugliest man) over and

over again.

This unpleasant greeting set the tone for the first few months in my

site. I organized soil conservation meetings that no farmers attended. I

was heckled by wiry teenagers while giving presentations in my awful

Spanish. With the help of school children, I planted a thousand baby

trees around the Santa Rosa soccer field, only to find every single one of

them uprooted and overturned a few days later. I had constant diarrhea,

lost 20 pounds, and even the simplest tasks were a struggle to complete.

I knew my psyche had been scraped truly raw when one afternoon,

coming home from a failed attempt to organize a tree nursery in a

distant village, I was taunted by kids along the dusty hill path. It was

the ever popular Timoteo chant that had quickly become my anthem, as

far as the children of Santa Rosa were concerned. I saw red; the next

thing I knew, I was chasing the little bastards up a hill waving my

machete like a maniac, tears streaming down my cheeks and screaming

in English: “I am not ugly, you little ______s! I am not ugly!”

—PCV Guatemala

I know what you're thinking...Emily has been there for about 19 months and I'm still not sure what she does. Now she's talking about coming home. Well, I have some news for you folks out there...I have a job. It's about the most exciting, fun and worthwhile thing I've done here and I'm gonna tell you all about it.

A few weeks ago, I returned from an extended trip wandering around Mali, first with my sisters and then to get over my sadness from their departure with my friend Susie. I finally made it back. To cheer myself up, because I'm all alone back at site (all my team mates were in Bamako for their In-Service Training), I went to the tailor to get some cute clothes made. I LOVE my tailor. He is very serious and critical. He had made me this fabulous shirt a while back and my friend wanted it copied with the Peace Corps fabric. He saw the print and asked if I was Peace Corps. I said I was and he told me he had some ideas. This happens from time to time and usually we get these horrible schpiels about how someone needs money bla bla bla. This was not one of those schpiels. He described some interests of his he had in expanding his business and starting a school for tailors where they would not only learn sewing skills but also get some practice in business. He did mention money, but I know how disorganized he is and I have this dream of doing Project Runway: Mali, so I said I'd meet with him.

We met and it was great. He's already done fashion shows and he's been advertising in magazines. He has the plans drawn up for his school and a budget for how much it would cost to build. He's really smart and an amazing tailor (he had tags made that he puts in the back of shirts).

Today was my first day actually working with him. We spent the morning hanging out and talking. I asked him millions of questions about what things cost and how they organize things and pay for things. He was totally compliant. He's being really patient and he's very open to changing the things that I think need changing or improving. We had a great time this morning. I started telling him about my cats and he was hysterical. I've never seen him laugh, nor have I ever seen him smile. He couldn't get over the fact that my dog and cats have people names.

Anyway, I'm having a great time with him. I'm learning a lot and I'm finally busy. It's so much more fun working with motivated smart people who are willing to work. I told him I'm not going to get him money, we're going to find ways to save and ways to make more money than we are, but I'm not getting him a grant.

Tomorrow we're teaching Emily how to sew. Even though she already knows, but I'm getting a dress made out of my Obama fabric and I get to help make it!

Also, today, I was on my way back from my tailor's and I got stuck in a traffic jam on my bike. A traffic jam in Kayes is like this. Someone is pushing a cart with glass panes down the street. He gets distracted by a tubob (foreigner) and before he knows it the cart is turned over in the middle of the street and there's broken glass everywhere. The semi truck coming towards the area stops and tries to go around, it blocks traffic on both sides and then catches on a vendor's umbrella and starts to drag it along the road. The taxi in front of me stops, then motorcycles come up on all sides. Next comes the livestock. Donkeys and sheep. These are free donkeys and sheep, because their owners are irresponsible and stupid. I was just about to explode with fury when a man selling posters walked by and who do I see...but the President of the United States. Thank you Mali, for being inefficient...because I scored not one but TWO awesome high quality posters of President Obama. The new hope for America...and Africa too!

If you want Obama fabric please let me know and I might be able to score you some. I'll do a photo shoot after my dress is done and post the pictures up here for your viewing pleasure!

Gardens!

The gardens on the river by my house.

When Malian children take pictures.

Smarty pants wouldn't smile. :(

My two favorite Malians!

A house in Goumera, yes, in the village. No, not everyone lives like this.

All you need to get a polio vaccine is a blue shiney cape and a purple pinky!

A boy and his donkey...in Goumera

Mark having fun with the panoramic setting on my camera that automatically puts the photos together!

Papi, the cutest cat ever.

Good Morning Sam and Mark...would you like breakfast in bed?

Listening intently to someone.

mmmm, egg sandwiches!

Sam and Ashley...ashley's last night in Kayes.

Steve and Mark at the Khasso our favorite drinking spot by the river!

Video: Morning walk with Fili!

i never count on having electricity. while people think i live the good life here in the city, there are many many perks to living in a village. not having running water and electricity means you don't have to worry about not having it. you have a well and a solar charger and you're all set. but here in the city, when we don't have water or electricity, our daily activities are made more complicated. in my case not having electricity is just annoying, but not having water is tragic. i do live near a river but i won't drink out of it. i don't have a well or a latrine, so if i don't have water, it means a rough afternoon. it brings a whole new meaning to if it's yellow, let it mellow...

so the other night, a few days after god gave us internet, a semi-truck was bellowing down the street and took out a power line. this is the second time i've seen this in Mali. the first time the truck was trying to turn a corner and was too long so instead of backing up, the truck started to pull down a whole power pole. we skedaddled before the worst could happen. the other night, the power line was straddling the street for a few hours before the cut the electricity for the whole area, but our was cut immediately because it was the line to our house.

this is when i really question the amenities of the modern world. how, in god's name, do we manage disasters like this when the people regulating it aren't the most effective at doing things quickly? there wasn't a fire and no one was hurt but it was a pretty dangerous situation. so, that night, a particularly hot one, i, and all the people at my house, slept outside. it was a wednesday.

all i could think this hot wednesday night was "thank god it's not friday." if it were friday we would be without electricity until monday, for sure. i've encountered this situation before. we didn't pay our electricity bill on time and they cut off our electricity AND running water on friday at 10 am. here in mali the week ends at 11:30 on friday morning, so any business you need done, should have been done yesterday. so we didn't get electricity back until tuesday or wednesday the following week. those five days were in the 110s. hot hot hot. and no water. so we had to pay some guy to go to the local faucet about 1/2 a kilometer away and bring us enough water everyday.

we ended up getting electricity back the other day by 3 pm. in less than 24 hours we were back online. miraculous.

p.s. i haven't checked this for spelling and grammar so please excuse the typos.

One of the hardest things to do in another language is describe something to people who have never seen it before. I have this problem when going to the tailor. Tailors tend to omit space for boobs, hips and butts in clothing, which is odd considering Mali has their fair share of curvy women. At the very least you can use your hands to explain your figure and point to body parts and use examples from other shirts, sometimes to no avail, but occasionally there's success.

In the case of creating a dog door, however, the outcome is much more unpredictable. We were getting new doors installed in Kayes because our old ones had holes and cracks that allowed too many mosquitoes into the house. I figured they could add a dog/cat door in the process. How complicated could this be?

The first try:

Me - the dog wants to come into the house, she can't open the door so make a small door here that she can go through. (i assume he's aware that we're trying to keep mosquitoes out.)

Outcome: he built a door that was hinged on the side and it had a lock (to keep out bad people, he said.) it did not swing so that if it were closed and the dog were inside she would not be able to go outside.

that's okay, i thought, i'll explain again. many drawings and hand waving gesticulations later and i am crowded by several more Malians.

the number one most irritating characteristic of Malians (and West Africans) is their need to be involved in everything. "too many chiefs not enough indians" does not translate into this culture. usually they don't ask to be involved. so, when in the market i'm trying to strap something to the back of my bike and someone comes and takes the straps out of my hands or pushes my hands or body out of the way to do it for me, i react with hostility. the busy body in question usually acts affronted and when i say that i can do it myself that stand by and talk to people about how ridiculous this notion is. then i ride away, smug.

in the case of the dog door we were only having a conversation, so each new person to arrive did not provoke rage in me. and i am experienced with these interactions so i decided to laugh instead of boil with each new voice.

one good thing about Malians is that they tend to you repeat you when you're talking. not to be annoying but to make it clear that they understand. you often end sentences with the phrase "did you hear me?" more like punctuation than anything. so when i described my wish to the door makers (blacksmiths, in this case) this is how the conversation went:

me - i want the door to swing (this word was more of a body gyration). the cat is small so the door can't be heavy. you could put mosquito netting in the middle.

person #1 - oh, i understand. talking to others. she says she wants it to swing. because the cat has to use the door too. and then we can put the lock here.

me - no, no lock. it has to go inside and outside, no lock.

person #2 - oh, i understand. she says the cat has to use it too. so we have to put mosquito netting on it. we'll put the hinges on the side.

me- NO, the hinges go on the top.

person # 3 - i know what she means, she wants the hinges on the top.

person # 4 - so, what's up, explain it to me.

me - NO, who are you?

person #1 - so you want mosquito netting, huh? there's already a mosquito net.

person # 5 - i know what she wants. she wants a swinging door with mosquito netting, that isn't heavy. you don't need to lock it.

me - YES.

now person # 5 explains it to them all and they talk for a while amongst themselves, totally ignoring me. they say the same thing over and over again, until finally i said "just go and try. if i don't like it you can fix it again. i'll pay you when i think the work is done."

upon their return, i was dismayed to find that the door is still too heavy. there is not mosquito netting and it's too small for the frame so even if it's closed mosquitoes can get around it. but it drags on the bottom of the frame and is now MORE difficult to open than it was before.

try number 3: they put in mosquito netting. (that's the picture that's above) (the other full doors are what the doors look like sans doggy door) but now they have messed with it so much that it gets stuck and is still too heavy to open.

they are supposed to come back today and try again. i swear to god.

wish me luck.

the best part is that Fili has developed a fear of the door. i was teaching her to use it and i accidentally dropped it on her head. woops. so even if we do get it right, there's no guarantee she'll even use it. wonderful.

FILI!

Hassimi, our guide!

The slide...so this is how kids have fun in Mali!

Breakfast under the hangar before our last walk!

Abigail and Elizabeth are dressed the same, ha ha.

Don't really know what's going on here, tired maybe?

goats eating lunch while we walk to the next village

The best picture we took the whole trip, way to go us!

every region in mali was represented in this circle, with kayes in the middle because they are hosting the event

this is the mascot for the event, it looks like a terd but it's really a snail.

Landing in the stadium!

Malians Skydiving From Airplanes with the Malian flag for a parachute!

This is what I know about Morocco: It’s cold there in December.Their tea is better than Malian tea.And it is very difficult to get a beer. Abigail took three days to get to Morocco because of record snow falls on the west coast, so Jack, Elizabeth and I met up and headed to Marrakesh without her. Marrakesh was a nice town but, I felt, a little fake. Having been to Egypt I was hoping for more of that Arab splash of excitement. It was exciting, just cleaner than I expected, I guess. And, also, cold. We spent the days roaming through the Souks (stalls) and buying too many things, drinking tea or coffee and eating delicious food. We tried to see the gardens but only found them closed. The highlight was the gardens outside of the medina (the medinas are the walls around the old cities) which were full of cacti. (my friend from my village told me a while ago that he wanted this plant, but he didn’t know the name, so he described it by moving his hands like plates, touching the fingers of one to the wrist of the other and then he said “it hurts you,” and I said “OH, A CACTUS!” so this is where we found them.) Before getting on the train we ate at KFC! We took the train back up to Casablanca (the trains there are a wonder) then to the airport and greeted Abigail just in time to catch a train back into the city where we stayed the night. We went to Fez the next morning, which was wonderful, it was exactly what I was expecting Morocco to be like and the shopkeepers didn’t harass us as much. They had great food there and we had Abigail, the only problem was the cold. J We bought more stuff, including a cactus. We spent a night in Fez then went to Meknes which has a small Medina and went through their market which was filled with locals and local stuff. I bought several Tupperware containers (one to hold my cactus on the plane) and other gifts for my Malian friends. We went to Pizza Hut for dinner which was rather disappointing then went back to our cold cold beds. The next day we ate the most amazing rotisserie chicken then hopped on the train to Casablanca (the beginning of our very long day of travel). At the airport we ate then waited for our plane. When we were waiting a Malian woman (who looked like she had come from the village) was sitting next to Abigail pealing an orange. She threw the peal on the ground then moved to a different seat. Later a janitor came by and swept up the peals while giving Abigail a dirty look. As we were boarding, the flight to Sierra Leone was getting ready to go and the line was proof, not only that West Africans understand the concept up of lining up, but also that there is nothing you can’t carry on your head. Each person had a pile or a bucket of something atop their head as they loaded into the gangplank. The flight was short but got us into Mali at about 3 am Bamako time, we picked up our bags and went straight to the bus station to hop on an 8 hour bus to Kayes! When we got to Kayes we started the 3 days in our trip where we actually got to rest. 6 other volunteers were in town too, so we chatted then ate some pasta (out of the same bowl—practicing for their cultural integration) then watched The West Wing and went to bed. The next day we went fabric shopping in the market and bought food. It happened to be the last day of the Biennale which is the Biennial Cultural Festival. It rotates its location and this year it happened to be in Kayes. I was able to go to the opening ceremonies before I left for Morocco and we made it back just in time to go to the closing ceremonies where the president of Mali spoke. It was interesting watching the dancers but the president’s, A.T.T. (Amadou Toumani Toure), speech was too long, so we took a taxi home and then walked to dinner. In Mali, we have what’s called Street Food. Women line the streets with picnic tables and benches and sell spaghetti, macaroni, beans, meat, potatoes, salad and egg sandwiches. I took them to my favorite street food vendor and filled them up. On New Years Eve we laid low for the morning, I took Jack, Abigail and Elizabeth to see the hyena. There is a hyena in a cage near my house. Some Malians captured it and keep it in there. I heard they used to walk it but it got loose so they stopped letting it out. It really is one of the most terrifying animals I’ve ever seen. We took pictures then Jack and Abigail went home to hang out with the cats and dog. Elizabeth and I went shopping for salsa ingredients. On the way back we caught a ride in a moto-taxi. I’ll post pictures. In the afternoon, I took them to the pool at the fancy hotel in Kayes. It costs $4 per person but you have to pay $40 up front. It was very refreshing, not because it was really hot, but because I thought it was closer than it was so our walk in the afternoon heat to the pool made everyone grumpy and angry so once we had cold sodas and had been in the nice cool pool everyone was much happier. That evening we went to my homologue’s house. I had made salsa and she had made beans. We mashed the beans up with taco seasoning (sent from Uncle Art and Aunt Sharon) then poured the salsa on top and ate it with our hands, I call this Malian Tacos (this is my attempt at sharing my cultural, or Mexico’s culture, with Malians. They can say the word “taco” unlike many words I’m familiar with because “taco” also happens to be girl’s name in Mali). My homologue had also made my favorite Malian dish so we filled up the rest of our stomachs with that then sat back to drink some tea and watch Marina. Marina is the current soap opera on Malian tv. It’s a Brazilian Soap dubbed in French, so I don’t know what’s going except what I can surmise from the very realistic acting. We took a taxi home, lit some fireworks, tried our best to stay up until midnight then got up at 3:45 to take the bus back to Bamako. I wanted to take everyone to the spaghetti street food man for dinner, but I was overruled so we went to Adonis where they have fabulous Lebanese and American food for an affordable price. We went to bed early and got up around 5:30 to catch a bus to Sevare and start our Dogon adventure. In Sevare we went to a really nice jewelry store and met some of my fellow volunteers and, again, went to bed early. We met our Dogon guide, Hassimi, at the Peace Corps Bureau. He took us in his junky station wagon to another hotel to meet up with 3 other people. A woman who knows one of my friends and her parents. They are all from Portland, Oregon and turned out to be joys to travel with. The first village we went to was on the plateau about half an hour from the main part of Dogon and the escarpment (cliffs). See pictures (I don’t remember the name of it.) If Abigail looks beat up in these pictures, it’s because she was nauseous all night and didn’t get much sleep. She was beat in the morning but handled the rest of the day. We had lunch in Bandiagara (the town where mom, dad and I stayed when we did our Dogon trip), then headed down below the cliffs. We left our bags at a Campement (A Campement is like a hostel. In Dogon Country they are usually built out of mud to resemble the village dwellings. They have mattresses and beds, bathrooms, bedrooms and they provide food and drinks.) then we walked for a few kilometers to the first Dogon village. A small village full of beautiful rocks and baobabs. You wouldn’t even know it was there if someone hadn’t shown it to you. It was tucked into the rock back a little ways. We got to watch the sun set and hear some interesting stories about how the Dogon people arrived in that part of Mali. When we got back to the hostel, Abigail went right to sleep, the rest of us were beat too. I slept inside with Abigail because I thought I would be freezing up top, but Elizabeth and Jack slept on the roofs. (I should put here that Abigail slept inside because she had no sleeping bag. She had no sleeping bag because I told her not to bring one because I wanted her to bring more gifts for me. J) The next day we ‘hiked’ to a village called Teli. This village is amazing because when you’re about a kilometer away you can see the cliff dwellings in the rocks. It’s pretty miraculous. (My parents and I spent much of our Dogon trip in this village.) We hiked up into the cliffs and heard another history of the Dogon people then ate lunch on the roof of a campement and played 151 (a Malian card game) and took naps. In the afternoon we walked to another village called Ende, here we were able to go through the town on market day AND this is where Jack took his first shower in Mali! The campement we stayed in had running water, toilets and sinks. (sometimes running water just means a faucet for a hose, but not here) We all slept on the roof that night, Abigail, without her sleeping bag, went inside after a couple of hours. The last day we hiked to a small village where we ate a delicious lunch and Hassimi engaged us in a game of riddles. After lunch we were picked up in his car and taken back to Sevare where we crashed, exhausted. Again we got up early the next morning for a relatively short bus ride to Segou where Jack got sick and stayed in bed, while Elizabeth, Abigail, my friend, Susie, and I went to dinner and had drinks. Poor Jack. We filled Jack with Pepto-Bismol and anti-nausea meds so he could get some sleep then we slept in and took a later bus to Bamako so he could recover. When we got to Bamako I took everyone to my favorite restaurant (the American Food Restaurant) called the Broadway Café. We had burritos and burgers. Fabulous. We also went to the tailor who PROMISED he’d have some things done for us by the next day (since their flight left so late we figured they could get it done and we paid a little extra). The next day we went to the market and ended up in the Grande Marché (death trap for tourists). We managed to get some nice fabric and get out of there without too much damage to our patience and got the fabric to the tailor in time to get clothes made for everyone (by the way, the tailor got all the clothes done on time). We went back to the shawarma place for lunch then to the American food restaurant for dinner again and we met some other Americans, most are working in Mali doing Fulbright grants. We then retired to the Hotel Campagnard for some beers before taking them to the airport. Another volunteer happened to be heading to the airport in a Peace Corps car so I got to ride with them on FREE transport! It was sad saying goodbye. If they had stayed for 6 weeks or 6 months it would have been better. Instead of going back to site, where I would surely become depressed and lonely, I decided to go to my friend, Susie’s, site for a few days. After that I came back to Bamako and took the shuttle back to Kayes through Manantali (near the National Park). I didn’t see Baboons or Hippos this time, but sometimes they’re around. I decided to head back down that way again a few days late to watch President Obama’s Inauguration. My friend’s neighbor has a satellite dish so two volunteers, Brandon, and I watched it live on CNN! I got to his site by train. There is now a new train and it was fabulous. Brandon and I took the train back to Kayes the next day. I’ve been in Kayes now for a couple weeks, hanging with my cats and dog and trying to get through the days when a project sort of fell into my lap. I had taken some clothes to my tailor and he noticed that I had Peace Corps fabric. He asked if I could help him with something and I said that Peace Corps doesn’t give money to people. Turns out he really knows what he’s doing. He has a well-functioning business and wants to improve upon the school started by remodeling it. At the school they teach kids to be tailors and business skills like math and management. WHAT?! Cool, right? Anyway, I’m trying to work my way in and see what I can do but I’m taking things slowly, hopefully I’ll be able to have another volunteer help me who will be here longer than me. Also, when I said “cats” before I was referring to Keme Saba, Papi AND Elou Trans. Elou is the cat of Natalie and Steve who are currently at IST (they come home today). She was named after the transport they used on a particularly long and difficult voyage from Bamako to Kayes. Sadly, however, Keme Saba went missing on Thursday afternoon and hasn’t been seen since. This is strange because she rarely leaves the yard, except when she walks out…and back in, with me. We thought she might have been pregnant but she was really skinny so that’s unlikely. It’s been about 6 days now, so I don’t think she’s coming back. After tonight I’ll be back to down to 1 cat, Mr. Papi, who is doing just fine. Sorry for the long break between posts. I will put up pictures from the opening ceremonies of the Biennale as well! HAPPY GROUNDHOGS DAY! Here we always hope for more weeks of winter, always! Just kidding about Keme Saba, she showed up this morning, after a week long vacation. She looked a little frazzled but I suppose everyone deserves a break!

I have some very sad news: my kitten, Phyllis, was in a horrible accident and subsequently had to be put to sleep. My guards were moving stuff around the house and accidentally dropped a desk on her. They were unaware that she was beneath it. The desk broke the end part of her back preventing her from being able to use her back legs. She was not able to go to the bathroom, so instead of forcing her to die from her injuries I had my guard put her down. I can’t tell you how sad this was. Anyway, she’s in a better place now, i.e. NOT Mali.

Fili is the stupidest dog on the planet. Maybe this seems harsh, but I’m fairly certain no one has ever encountered such stupidity in the history of dogity. This specific grievance comes from last night where I had the not-so-unique experience of witnessing her stupidity in action. Let me set the scene: I was in the office at my house listening to music and knitting like a good little volunteer when my dog got excited about some ominous noises coming from behind the bookcase I was sitting next too. I tried to convince her that it was just a lizard but I decided to take a look for myself. So, with a stick in hand and my headlampon, Fili and I investigated. I contemplated moving the bookcase but I felt this was too much over a lizard so I peaked behind it and made eye contact with a big fat black rat. These rats are Africa-sized rats; I’ve never seen one smaller than my head. (Just kidding, but for the sake of my dignity let’s pretend it’s enormous because I screamed like a little girl.) Okay, remember back when I said I was carrying a stick? I was actually carrying an old florescent light bulb that was about 4 feet long. Before using the stick I thought I’d try throwing things at the rat, so I took several Newsweeks and hoisted them strategically behind the bookcase. (All Peace Corps Volunteers have a subscription to the International Edition of Newsweek, we always get them late; I think I just received some from April, anyway, with 150 or so of us in country we end up with a lot of copies lying around. What better use than to throw them at rats?) All that happened is that the rat moved away from the magazines to the other side of the bookcase. The bookcase is in a corner so Fili was on one side, very excited because she was right (assuming she thought the movement was a rat, although I’m fairly certain she’d get excited about any noise, ominous or not), and I was on the other side armed with my fluorescent light bulb. We were a foreboding pair. Let me digress for a minute here and remind you that I have two cats, granted one is still a kitten and the same size as the rat but isn’t it their job to catch things that are kitten-sized and have tails? Given her later stupidity I will say that I was really impressed with Fili for having the stamina and attention span to stay with me and get this rat. Back to the story, eventually I moved the bookcase around a little and two things came out of it, 1) a rat that ran across the middle of the room between my legs (insert screaming here), 2) unidentified dark object with tail. Could have been a rat, this, we will never know. The rat ran onto my veranda at which point I thought my adventure was through. This is when my grown cat felt it convenient to saunter into the house for some food (cat food, not rat). All of sudden another animal starts to make noise. This wasn’t ominous; it was mating calls or something. It was coming from behind the bookcase in the hallway, I thought it was a bat (this is evidence that I should not be in the field of identifying animals by the ominous or not so ominous sounds they make, if there is such a field). Since Keme Saba (the big cat) was right there, I moved the bookcase and threw her back there instead of the Newsweeks. Turns out cats are more effective at catching small animals than Newsweeks are. It’s hard to be specific with a cat, as I’m certain she doesn’t speak my language, or she chooses to ignore me but I did not get what I wanted from this attack. I heard some crashing noises and a few thuds then silence…then Keme Saba sauntered out with a LIZARD in her mouth. This cat eats like 12 lizards a day, so this wasn’t so impressive. THEN comes the ominous noise again, while my worthless cat is preoccupied with the lizard Fili and I investigate. We (let’s give Fili the benefit of the doubt here) decided that the mating call before was probably the lizard because from the other side of the bookcase I saw a very distinct tail sticking out. RAT TAIL! I tried to shove Fili back there, she seemed like she could catch it, but she wasn’t having it. Then Keme Saba lost her lizard so I threw her in after the rat. The rat scrambled out and back into the office and back behind the bookcase where this whole thing began. Keme Saba immediately lost interest and sauntered away. (Someone please tell me how a cat has a shorter attention span than the stupidest dog in the world?) Again, armed with my fluorescent bulb and Fili I started tormenting the rat. Eventually it raced out behind the oven which I shimmied around until I could see it. Then there was a HUGE explosion! By accident, I shimmied the oven right into the light bulb, which shattered, making an explosion sound. I guess that’s why we don’t let our kids play with them. There wasn’t exactly an explosion but I closed my eyes right when the sound came so it felt like there was one. Anyway, the rat ran into the next room over where there are only beds and not many places to hide. Fili cornered it and then, here it is, the stupidest act in history, she just stared at it. I have no guts; it turns out, and I had not the ability to kill it with what was left of my light bulb so I just stared at them. It occurred to me that cats are programmed to kill rats, if that rat is right there she can’t get bored, so I went to get Keme Saba and to hide the kitten because I’m SURE the rat could have eaten the kitten. When I put Keme down right in front of the rat SHE stared at it! This is an abomination. I wash my hands of Africa! If their cats can’t even kill rats then it’s doomed. What good are pets if they can’t kill vermin???? You realize that the rat and Fili didn’t move while they waited for me to go get the cat, right? I went to get my guard, finally, who I can at least ask specifically to find and kill the rat. (Fili, the cat and the rat all waited for the next prospective hit man). He caught it after he chased it into my room and then gave it to a friend to kill. After it was dead he brought it back to me. If you could have seen my face at having been handed a dead rat, I’m sure you would have been concerned for my health. He threw the rat away. Abigail, I hope this story wasn’t too long for you. I thought it was funny and that you should all hear it. Mira, trust me, you still want Fili; rats are easier to catch in America. Plus, I’m fairly certain Fili thought the rat was playing when she was chasing it. I’ll have to train the kitten to catch vermin.

My little sister complained to me that my blog had too many words on it. At nineteen maybe she’s feeling a little overloaded with words, I don’t know, but for her sake and for the sakes of the rest of the teenagers of this world, I’ll try to keep it short.

I got a new kitten. One of our APCD’s cats had 7 kittens and against my better judgment I decided to acquiesce to adopting one of them. I was going to go get them in Bamako, but a Peace Corps car showed up yesterday and two adorable kittens were in the map box in the door. Another volunteer adopted a kitten too. I don’t know how to describe the LACK of cute in Mali, but it’s a rarity. Yes, there are lots of babies, but when they shit on you, the immediately fall into the category of leave me the hell alone, so when something comes along that is cute and stays cute, we really have a hard time handling it. There’s usually a lot of giggling and then lots of photos are taken, sometimes we even celebrate the cuteness with beers. This was so beyond cute, I almost cried, I mean the kittens were falling asleep standing up! I keep thinking how easy kittens are to take care of, I think it took 24 hours to potty train her and teach her where to find food and water. Now I can leave the house and not think about her until I get back. Babies are not like this. Babies are stupid, and like I said before, they have a tendency to shit on you. There have been moments here where my maternal instincts try to come out and I make those horrible cooing noises and ask to hold the baby, having this kitten has effectively squashed all my desires to have kids, at least in the near future. I mean, you can’t pet a baby, and babies don’t play with yarn, or chase bugs, or accidentally go on an acid trip after biting a Malian frog. (Factoid for the day: the frogs in Mali have chemicals on their skin that act as a defense mechanism, it’s pretty effective too. After biting the frog, the kitten foamed at the mouth then stumbled around for a while in a daze. Now she’s sleeping it off. Rough day for a kitten, but I think she learned her lesson.)

One of the hardest and most excruciating moments about dealing with new pets is finding a name. I hate cheesy names, sorry folks, but I’m not down with anything that ends with a ‘y’, is named after a band, or is remotely cute. (I know what you’re thinking, she’s complaining about the lack of cuteness in Mali and then she actively prevents cute from appearing. I am not preventing cuteness, I’m preventing cats from losing their self-respect.) Kittens are cute enough, but they grow up and when you give them a name like Fluffy, you start to not take it seriously and God knows we’ve got to take the cat seriously. My other cat, who is evil and hates the world, was named after the amount of money she cost. Could you imagine if someone did this to a human? You’re name would be “I have no health insurance so you were expensive” or “hospital bills, baby clothes and diapers.” Anyway, Keme Saba is the evil cats name, that means 1500 CFA in Bambara and she certainly wasn’t worth the 3 dollars I paid for her. Nevertheless, it is a unique name and never ceases to get a laugh and she has a source of pride. She can lord it over the stray cats that someone wanted her enough that they PAID for her! Now, this is key, you want the name to be clever so that you appear witty and worldly. But not so forced that you’re trying to appear witty and worldly. You also want to prevent EVERYONE from understanding immediately what the name could mean because you want a few people to have to ask what the significance of it is. You can also go the route where you give the animal a name that invokes no laughter or questions because it is just perfect for the animal. You have to give the kitten a name it can grow into, this goes back to that cute shit, no cute names, not ever, you grow OUT of a cute names not into it. We all know that cats can be bitter, evil animals if they choose so you need to respect it and give it name it can proudly tell its cat friends.

That said we named the kitten Phyllis. She happens to be named after my favorite character from The Office, and she has wholeheartedly lived up to her name. The problem now is that Malians can’t really say Phyllis or have never heard of it, so she also was given a Malian name, which ended up being Michelle, which is not a Malian name, it’s French. (excuse the lack of logic) I did not give her the name; my guard did after he scoffed at the name Phyllis, so he named the cat after another volunteer who I think he secretly loves. This volunteer no longer lives in Mali, however, so she’ll live on as the second name of a kitten named Phyllis who lives in Kayes.

Abigail, I’m certain you didn’t make it this far, so for those of you who did, congratulations and don’t forget to tell me Mozel Tov for my new kitty Phyllis. Please see photos…

Me and Phyllis trying out the Halloween costume!

Another pose!

Steve making Emily's face of disapproval.

She likes to read.

Yes, mom, i just went poop for the first time all by myself!

Sleeping off the acid trip from biting the frog.

A little foaming at the mouth never hurt anyone.

Fili harrassing the cats!

soooo tired. (natalie and steve's is the cat on the right)

Hello all, i think you're all struggling with sending packages because you don't know what to get me. Well, i'm here to help. Here's a list of stuff i like to get, do not under any circumstances feel obligated to send anything, except a letter. Feel very obligated to send me letters.

Crsystal Light Juice Packets

KRAFT mac and cheese (spirals)

cake mix (preferably the rainbox color with rainbow frosting)

brownie mix

instant chocolate chip cookie mix

reeses peanut butter cups (the normal sized ones, the small ones melt together to make a very metalic dessert)

peanut butter (crunchy)

parmesan cheese

ranch dressing (not the packets, the actual stuff)

tuna packets

chicken packets (someone here received a packet with a chicken filet in it, that would be cool)

sauce mix (asian mixes, taco mixes, chili mixes)

SLIM JIMS

pancake mix

dog treats!

okay so i hope that helps, again these are just suggestions, i don't want you to feel like this is necessary, hope you're all doing well!

i thought three weeks would be too long, but it turns out my parents are really really fun!

mom and dad didn't have the best welcome. as their plane landed an ENORMOUS storm blew in preventing them from actually getting off the plane, so while i stood in the rain and waited they sat on the airplane. after what felt like ages they finally came through customs with their huge heavy bags full of gifts for emily!

we made it back to the hotel and promptly activated the air conditioning. this is a recurring theme in our experience in mali. arrive, turn on AC, lay down. not much else to do in mali.

we spent a couple of days in Bamako eating American food and going to museums and other fun things. Mom and dad also got to meet the boyfriend which turned out to be great.

we headed off to kayes on public transport, which is a rather nice charter bus, at 5 am. when we arrived in kayes we discovered that the water and electricity at my house had been cut off due to my landlord having no more than peanuts for brains. my parents checked in at the hotel across the street, turned on the AC and laid down. :) we spent a few days relaxing in kayes waiting for my electricity and water to come back then we planned a trip out to my village. i had talked with my supervisor in advance to arrange a party that we would pay for that would include dancing, singing and eating. the night before we made all of the preparations then ate some yummy tigadegena (peanut butter sauce and rice) and fought off locusts, then headed to bed for a restless sleep in my sweltering mud hut.

The next day started out with me realizing my gas stove was out of gas so we ate some bananas and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for breakfast. Then we headed over to the CSCOM to watch everyone prepare for the party. When they have big celebrations they use this huge cauldron for cooking. The women pushed the cauldron over to the center with a wheelbarrow then started filling it with the freshly cut veggies (Malian eggplants, onions, green peppers, tomatoes, sweet potatoes and lots of spices), rice and sheep meat. They heat this all together over an open fire for an hour or two then they scoop everything out and separate it evenly over several large eating bowls. Before the rice was ready they brought us a bowl of meat, which turned out to be liver! We struggled through eating a bite or two a piece then thanked them and said we wanted to save room for zamé. Once they separate all the food out they send bowls of food to the village chief, the mayor, the ASACO president (board of directors for the health center), the women’s association and the people at the health center. Then we all got to sit down and eat up. Zamé is one of my three favorite Malian foods (actually it’s a Senegalese dish), the other two I like are rice with sauce, but it depends entirely on who makes them. Obviously these are nothing like the To and slime of homestay. Kayes area Malians have better taste in food than Bamako Malians. After we ate we sat as the guests of honor in a very large circle and watched the drummers and the cora players perform, then we watched the women sing and dance. Malians LOVE to dance, and when they dance they have this aura about them that makes them look sort of divine. Soninke women, in my opinion, are the best dancers of any of the ethnic groups in Mali, and I have yet to be swayed in a different direction. After the dancing we watched them argue over the price we should pay them. The guests of honor always “tip” the performers and the singer wasn’t too happy with her cut. Mostly the arguing is just a show, but my parents were a little thrown off by all the yelling. After all this we groggily dragged ourselves back to my house and gathered our things. We went up to the road to wait for our taxi then headed back to Kayes as the sun was setting. We arrived in Kayes just in time for tacos and a drunk Eileen and then crashed to sleep. We had to get up early to get on the bus for Bamako at 4 am. In Bamako we were tired so we ate early and went to bed early. The next morning we took public transport to Segou. We met Nicole there and had lunch with her then spent the afternoon relaxing. We started discussing how we would travel around up in Dogon country and Djenne and decided to hire a driver and guide for the trip. We spent the day relaxing at the Djoliba (the hotel in Segou that mom and dad LOVED) and shopping around town. We went to Ndomo which is the artisana where they make bogolan (mud cloth). There is a museum in the back and shop where you can buy stuff. The also show you how they make the dye and dye all the cloth and then how the paint the mud onto it. It was pretty fascinating. The next morning our guide picked us up at the hotel and we headed off to Mopti. We stopped off in San to go to the bathroom and briefly greet the girls in San, and then we went on our way. The hotel we stayed at was fabulous. It had a rooftop restaurant, a swimming pool, and AIR CONDITIONING. You can also stay there and pitch a tent on the roof. The next morning we headed off for some walking through town. We went to a big mud mosque and through the old city part of Mopti. We ended up at this restaurant that had taken huge slabs of salt and hung them on the wall and put light bulbs behind them to make some ambient lighting. It was pretty cool. We ate guinea foul for lunch at had some beers while we relaxed. Later we found our way back to the hotel and spent the early part of the afternoon relaxing. Our guide seemed to be missing a screw or two because I specifically told him to stop taking us to artisan markets and then there we were at a second market that day. After that we had a soda then got into a boat to cross the harbor (mom did it!). The next morning we packed up to go to Dogon. We arrived first in a village called Songha. The tour took us to the top of some small cliffs where the young men come every three years to do their initiation for circumcision. On the way back down our guide took us through yet another set of artisans and then we were happily on our way. In almost every dogon village there is a campement (little hotel, usually made of mud) where you can stay. In this particular village there was the nicest one I’d ever seen, and the nicest one I’d see the whole trip. It was built of stone and had solar panels and running water. Apparently it was built by some Dutch or German NGO but is now run by the village. After this we were taken into Bandiagara, which is the town in the center of Dogon. It’s kind of the hub for going to all of the surrounding villages. We stayed in a very nice hotel here. We dropped our stuff off then got into the car for another excursion. This one took us down below the escarpment. If you have ever been to Joseph, Oregon and driven there from Spokane, and you’ve also been to Dogon country in Mali, you’d agree that they are very very similar. We arrived in a village called Teli, and this is when our guide really lost points; he said we would sit for a few hours (it was noon) and wait to go hiking until 2 when it was cooler (what?!). Turns out that earlier when we told him we wanted to eat food made in the village he had become confused by the fact that we bought bread and assumed we were not eating in the village (he did not ASK us, he just assumed with his fabulous Malian intuition). After sitting in a loft for 2 hours our guide appears and is surprised that we haven’t eaten. I was livid because we had also been sitting for 2 hours with NOTHING to do because you don’t pay a guy that much money per day to disappear and to sit and look up at big rocks all day. We didn’t bring books or cards to play with because we were not told that we’d be sitting doing nothing for the better part of the day and we didn’t know we were supposed to be eating the food we brought for a snack. At 2, after finally eating our ‘snack’, our guide decided that, now that it was actually hotter, we should go hike, so mom and I walked to a nearby waterfall and watched some kids swim, and dad hiked up the hill. Altogether it took 20 minutes then we were back in the car going to another village and yet ANOTHER artisan market. Another hour and a half drive back to Bandiagara and we were sitting doing nothing again at the hotel. At least this time we had all of our things. We also got to meet up with Ryan Shaw, one of my favorite volunteer friends and have some drinks while we waited for another volunteer friend to arrive. The next morning we headed off for another day of being dropped off and doing nothing for two hours. This particular village, called Indelou, overlooked the escarpment, it was pretty fabulous and windy, and so much cooler than the day before. We also knew to bring books and I was very clear to him that we were going to eat and that if he thought otherwise that he should pipe up. Indelou is notable because it’s an animist village where there are lot of fetish areas where people do divination and other rituals. We walked through the village and he showed us which areas were off limits to us and then he took us to another artisan. Wonderful. Then we sat and looked out over the escarpment and ate lunch. Overpriced cous cous and chicken. We ran into the Peace Corps country director from Burkina Faso and then chatted with a dutch couple for a while. Both were hiking through the escarpment, which made me really jealous. (this is what I’m going to do with the sisters!) Then we got in the car and arrived back home for another afternoon of doing nothing. We were more tired this day though, so we went to bed early and prepared for the next morning. I had talked with another volunteer Beth, who lived in Sevare and worked in Mopti, and arranged to meet her in Sevare and go to her work in Mopti. She works at the Fistula center. This is a place where women stay after they’ve had surgery for obstetric fistula. Her project was to get the women to make some money to improve the facility and their daily lives. Beth showed us around then we hopped in the car and headed to Djenne. When we arrived in Djenne we were able to rest a while before heading out on the town. The hotel we stayed at the Djenne Djenno was adorable. The Swiss woman who owns it used to be an interior designer in the UK. She had the place built out of mud and designed like the mud mosques in Mali. The inside was really cute too. After we rested we trudged our way into Djenne, easily the ugliest grossest city in Mali. Again we were taken to another artisan store then we arrived at the Grand Mosque which is apparently one of the new seven wonders of the world. It is the worlds largest mud structure! It was cool, but Djenne was gross and we wanted to get out of there and back to our cute hotel. Djenne has open sewers on every road, but the roads are really narrow and it’s hard to navigate, so you are almost stepping in sewer water anywhere you go. It smells and it’s gray everywhere because every building is made of mud. It’s bizarre, to say the least. Needless to say, we were glad to be back at the hotel. The next morning we drove back to Segou and ended our tour, rather happily. We stayed another night in Segou, watching the sun set at the Esplanade restaurant and eating delicious Italian food. Another hot bus ride back to Bamako and we were done with our big travels. The afternoon we went to the Peace Corps bureau and greeted then went back to the hotel to rest until dinner. The next morning we headed out to the Peace Corps training center so my parents could get a look at where it all begins. I helped out with a training session. We went back into Bamako and ended up going around almost the entire city which was cool for my parents, but a little exhausting. They also got some quality time with my APCD, Claudine who was more than hospitable to them. We had dinner that night with Nicole at Beijing 2 then went to bed kind of early. I had to get some work done at the bureau then I met up with them at the hotel. The next day they were leaving in the evening, but I had to present at the training center. So they stayed at the hotel and packed and I came and met them for lunch at the restaurant near the bureau. We sort of hung around all day until it was time for them to go. They got a ride to the airport with Amy because she had bought her ticket through a travel agency (she was on their same flight to France), and so they road in the travel agency’s van to airport. I gave big hugs and let mom hug me longer than normal while she teared up they pulled out and headed home!

Transport in Mali is a crapshoot. The first transport I took in Mali was even a bit chaotic. Walking through customs and trying to find bags and go in the right direction was intoxicating enough, but finally getting in the buses I thought it would be calmer, but it was hot and sweaty and smelly and altogether terrifying. Once you walk off the plane into the heat, you know there’s no going back. Seeing the Peace Corps staff and current PCVs wasn’t a comfort because they had already gone through the overwhelming wonder I was now experiencing and they were used to it. I think I even resented them for being so happy. At some point my bags were thrown into a huge semi-truck and I was stuffed in the back of a van and we were off to the training center. For the early part of our training we were mostly carted around in Peace Corps vehicles, which represent the finest way you can travel overland in Africa. These Land cruisers are fully equipped, and I have to say, I feel rather privileged and a little powerful riding in them over places where most cars in Mali can’t go. (Peace Corps vehicles even have a straw in the event that the engine is submerged in mud, so that it can breath and shoot out mud.) Unfortunately, we do not get to ride in Peace Corps cars regularly. To be fair, my experiences riding transport having given me a lot to write about, nevertheless, I’d rather be in a Land cruiser.

Last week my friend Nicole came to visit my site. Her site is on the other side of the country, so she had to travel to the capital, Bamako, and then take another 8 hour bus ride to my regional capital where I met her. The transport she took was easily the most evolved bus company in Africa. Not only is it a non-stop ride the entire way from Bamako to Kayes, but they also give you snacks and refreshments on the trip. This is the Express, or in Bambara, Expressi. Normally, you get packed into big rickety charter buses and they stop at every market town on the road to your destination. Women and children with platters topped with everything from cooked mutton to bananas to curios yell from the roadside what is available. If you want to buy anything you have to reach out the window and get the attention of someone and yell for what you want. On the buses where the windows do not open the merchants clamber up the stairs of the bus and holler what they’re selling and they push their way back to the rear door of the bus. I have to say, it’s great service never having to leave your seat to get nourishment, but it adds a lot of noise to the bus-riding experience. The express gives you the illusion that you’re not in Africa. It’s a nice break from reality.

After Nicole arrived we did laundry and then went to have a beer at the Hotel Khasso. A hotel and bar on the river, a relaxing little oasis that overlooks the surprisingly manicured Malian vegetable gardens the line the banks of the Senegal River. That night we headed to bed early but unfortunately didn’t get much sleep. My dog has a “short-man’s” syndrome, in that she likes to hide in my concession and bark with a high-pitched whistle at the neighboring dogs who wonder around at night. In order to prevent her from barking I have to cuddle with her and pet her until she calms down. Meanwhile, my kitten is using my mosquito net as a hammock and tries to attack me from outside of it. This is a regular night in my house. After everyone quieted down for the night, I finally got to sleep. The next day we headed off to my village with two buckets, one filled with small mango trees to plant and the other filled with groceries, a daba (small handheld hoe for farming), our backpacks and a twin mattress. I called Dao my taxi driver. He’s rather talkative and incredibly annoying, but he gets me where I need to go. Lately he’s been trying to learn how to say my American name. This is what usually comes out “amwee.” It’s an awful lot like talking to a three year old so I just tell them to stick to Mariam.

Once we arrived at my house we were greeted by several men finishing the cementing of the walls of my latrine. This effort began last October and has finally finished. We were both exhausted after the effort of getting the 26 km to my site, so we relaxed then headed over to my homologue's house for dinner and greetings. Djeneba Bagayoko-Sogoba, or Nicole Williams, is famous throughout Mali because she was featured on Bien Mangee, a Malian cooking show where she sang a famous Malian song for the viewers. This coupled with her fabulous personality and warm sincere and usually overdone greetings makes her a favored guest in Malian villages. While Djeneba entertained my friends I laid under the stars and listened. The next morning we had planned to start working on a mud stove the next morning so Nicole/Djeneba explained to my homologue the materials she needed to get and the two of us headed back to my house to get some much needed sleep. The next morning we got up around 7 am and set out to do some gardening in my yard. We started hoeing and after plowing about 10 feet our hands were so blistered we couldn't go on, so we showered and then it started to rain. We thought it would be fine to walk to my homologue's house but by the time we arrived we were soaked. To warm up my homologue gave us her clothes and we drank some yummy millet porridge with milk. We sat in their house until the rain calmed a little then trudged back through the mud to my house. We spent the rest of the afternoon laying inside the house because we couldn't do any work on the mud stove.

Later Nicole and I went to greet my host family. That day happened to be the Baptism of the newest baby in the family. When the baby is born you go and bring gifts and they tell you the name of the baby. The baby is named after 7 days. His name is Brahima Camara. Nicole and I ate a second lunch then went for a walk around the village.

I showed her some of the more extravagant houses in my village. This particular house is probably the largest in the village, however there are other that are painted with some wild colors. People who have solar panels and televisions. I guess the idea is to work hard in France so that you can retire as a rich Malian. Nevertheless, I prefer the mud cottage to the cement palace.

Even though the people in my village live in large houses they still farm and have donkeys and wash their clothes in the dirty river and drink dirty water and complain about not having any money. On our walk Nicole and I followed the river that appears in my village only during the rainy season, and came across these guys trying to get the donkeys across to the other side. Maybe my village needs a bridge? On our way back to my house we got a little lost and then had to trudge through this disgusting waste water.

The next day Nicole and I headed to my homologue's house to begin work on the mud stove. The mud stove project was the entire reason Nicole had come to my villag, so it was exciting to finally start it. The mud stoves that Peace Corps volunteers teach people to make are supposed to save fire wood and prevent people from cutting down more trees or spending money on firewood.

Nicole was hugging my supervisor's wife for the photo before we started the mud stove. Papi and I were preparing the area where we were going to build it by flattening the mud over it. Papi is trying to help me out here, but actually he was being a little obnoxious.

The first step is to make the mud. You have to mix mud, grass, cow poop and ash to make a thick clay-y mud that won't collapse when it rains. Nicole and Harouna are mixing the stuff with their feet while I stand back and take photos! :)

Next we have to move three rocks in the order that we want them inside the stove. The pots they use will side on the rocks but will be surrounded by mud. The mud is what kkeeps the heat from releasing. Normally they just cook on rocks. After a long hot day of mudding we ate a delicious lunch then headed back home. I had hired a guy to come and cement a patio for me months ago and he decided to show up this afternoon. It actually looks fabulous! So you can see him starting out the cementing.

Later Nicole and I went back to cut holes in the mud stoves where they can stick the firewood then we added one more layer of mud that is supposed to weatherproof the stove a little more. After this, Nicole and I did a walk around the village to invite people to come to our Moringa formation we had planned for the following day. So few women in my village speak Bambara, however, that it was difficult to get the message across.

After we told everyone about the formation we took a walk over to the kindergarten to take a look at the progress on my project. They are now adding cement to the inside of the well, and should be very close to finishing the project. I have given them all of the money for my contribution and will hopefully be getting their contribution done after rainy season.

Looks like a fun job, right?

Before the cement dried on my patio Nicole and I wrote our names so we will permenently be remembered in Goumera! The next day Nicole and I carried out a formation on Moringa, apparently these pictures didn't make it online, but if you check out my facebook photos you can see them. Nicole did a great job explaining the incredible benefits of Moringa to the women in my village. As the formation went on more and more women showed up. They all expressed interest in doing another formation! YAY!

My door has some shortcomings. Nicole probably hit her head 10 times in the 3 days she was at my site. This is a picture of her after sweeping my house and below is a photo of men putting cement on the roof of a building Kayes. They literally toss piles of cement up each level. These guys noticed us and were yelling so I thought I'd take their photo.

The last few weeks have been full of activities: First I spent a few days in my village finalizing the plans for the garden project. When I was leaving to go out there I was anticipating the worst, which, in Mali, is not such a horrible way to view things. It turns out, however, that my village is more on the ball than I thought, so I gave them the money to start the well and by the time I left they had already built the fence (I was only there 2 nights). I had postponed my trip to Goumera initially because my roof had leaked majorly after it rained a few times, and my village had to get my roof fixed and finish cementing my latrine. They fixed both my roofs (I have two huts) and put grass over the hangar in the middle and built me a whole new fence which actually made my concession bigger. I had some fun hang out time with my homologue and got some good pictures of everyone. When I returned to Kayes, the whole Kayes family was in town, Andrew, Nicole, Amy, Eileen and Brooke. We had a good few days of relaxing then I headed to Sikasso to see a friend. I stayed one night in Bamako on the way down and got to hang out with my boyfriend for a night. I went to visit a friend of his who was recently married. Teachable Moment: When someone gets married there is a big party all into the night on the day of the wedding. People sing and dance and take lots of photos of the married couple. There are two parts, they go to the mayor’s office and sign some documents and there is a Muslim part of which I do not know the details. For one week the couple lives in a room and people come by and bless them and give them gifts. The man can go in and out as he pleases, but he still wears the traditional white bubu (a bubu is a whole outfit of Malian fabric for a man or a woman). The wife however, stays in her bed under a mosquito net, with a veil over her face for 7 days. An older woman will come to visit them and spend time with the woman and explain to her how to be a good wife. When I went to hung out with my boyfriend’s friend and they taught me the marriage blessings. For ANY event in Mali there is a blessing, whether it be going to bed at night or having a baby. Here are some: Weddings Allah m’a kera here ye. = May it be a success. Allah k’aw kan ben. = May you understand each other. Allak ka sen ni bolo bo a la. = May many arms and legs come from the marriage. Allah kan’a ke nimisa ye. = May it not be a regret. Allah k’aw nogow kun nogonna. = May you support each other. Allah ka kana nafigiw donawce. = May swindles not interfere. Allah ka ke furu sabatilenya. = May it be a serious marriage. Baptisms (this is actually the ceremony 7 days after the birth of the child where the child is given a name) Allah ka den balo. = May the baby have a good life. Allah ka naakan diya. = May his/her future be bright. Allah ka da hirime nogoya. = May his food be easy to provide. Allah k’a ke silame ye. = May he/she be a good Muslim. Allah k’a bugo a dogo ye. = May the child have many siblings. Allah k’a dogow caya a korow ye. = May the child have more younger siblings than older ones.

There some for sickness, death, Ramadan and Tabaski, blessings for greetings at the mosque, and Bon Voyage blessings. These blessings are really helpful actually in avoiding awkwardness with conversations regarding death and sickness. If you know someone in their family died, you say “May God pity the deceased” or “My his resting place be good,” and they say, “Amen,” and life goes on. I headed to Sikasso for my birthday to hang out with my training roomy and some others. Sikasso, entirely, is a nicer city than Kayes, it’s cleaner, and cooler and also much larger, which actually didn’t appeal to me at all. But it was definitely nice to get away from stiflingly hot Kayes. Katie gave me for my birthday a beaded belt worn under the clothes by Malian women as lingerie, it’s called a baya. Katie had some sort of stomach sickness the whole weekend, but the highlight was definitely relaxing at her house and hanging out. I was in Bamako for another week to attend a VAC (Volunteer Action Committee) meeting and do my health mid-service exam. Half-way through everyone does a physical half-way through. This is no normal physical, however, we have to give stool samples which I haven’t had to do yet, so that was pretty gross. Turns out that one of my samples showed that I had amebas, but I wasn’t showing any symptoms so I brushed it off, to my dismay, the diarrhea hit a few days later, once I was back in Kayes. I also got to hang out with Susie who had just arrived back from America after 3 weeks, she brought me Ritz Crackers and Easy Cheese, my personal favorite of Malian delicacies. Once back in Kayes, I hung out for a few days with Andrew and Nicole then headed back out to the village. I was excited to be there, but somehow in my hurry to pack forgot everything, including, tampons, my hoe for gardening, project money, Moringa seeds, my ipod, needless to say I didn’t get as much done as I was hoping to. I had a good time relaxing and chatting with people. All my Moringa trees were eaten by my neighbor’s goats, and I’ll tell ya, I really did feel angry enough at them want to cut off an ear or a leg of one of them. Currently I have no fence, but my friend is repairing it while I’m in Kayes for a couple of days. My project is moving forward, they are about 2/3 done digging the well, which means that probably they’ll be done with the whole thing in time for rainy season En sha Allah (God willing) and Allah ka soonna (may God make it happen). Everyone in my village is really excited about the Peace Corps fabric, so we’re selling more and more of it, eventually when we finish the garden we’ll do a ribbon cutting and all wear Peace Corps fabric and take many many photos. Yesterday, was the last day of school for the kids at the kindergarten, so they did and Invitation (say it with a French accent), the kids all dressed up in their Malian clothes, then they all got to eat lunch at school (normally they leave at 11:00 and eat at home), then they all got to drink orange soda (laced with sugar, awesome), then they all went to their respective classrooms where they were each given a gift (dolls for the girls, cars for the boys). At first I thought it was cool b/c I thought the village had bought the gifts but it turns out the sister-city in France who paid for the kindergarten to be built bought the gifts which actually infuriates me. Why do organizations spend money on this useless stuff, that more than likely the kids don’t need, I’ve seen kids have more fun with an old sardine can, worn out flip flops and a piece of string than you’d imagine. What the school really needs are books and learning materials and SOAP! Unfortunately, none of the bozos who work for that organization speak English or Bambara, so I’m a little stuck, when it comes to talking to them. At any rate, the Invitation was fun and also hilarious, the kids were a little bewildered and noticeably tired, because usually they are taking a nap by noon when in this case they were running around screaming (literally) and yelling for an extra 2 hours before nap time. The director of the school is also the most terrifying woman I’ve ever met, and if she scares me, she no doubt scares the 3, 4 and 5 year olds. At any rate, the Invitation was great, and I got to eat some delicious food, which is always a great thing. I’m heading back to Goumera on Saturday with my friend Nicole for a couple of nights then she’s heading off to America for a few weeks. Then my other friend Nicole is coming to my village for a few days to do some formations and start farming! The rainy season has almost started here, soon it will be raining every day and night, right now it just rains every few nights. Once it’s full blown rainy season it’s time to plant corn, sorghum, peanuts, and millet! Can’t wait! Tomorrow it will be 11 months since my arrival in Mali, can you believe it? Only 15 more to go!

some dudes putting new mud on the roof of my neighbor' s house

yay free toys that we dont need that will be broken in 2 days!!

more toys!

Papi, my homologue's son, in his Peace Corps fabric!

Lunch!

The Well!

taking the dirt out of the well

man down in the well

cooking lunch!

dishing up!

Alpha (that's his name), relaxing!

Dude on the bus reading about the candidates for the Maison Blanche (white house)!

Sometimes they're afraid of Tubobs, sometimes it just looks like they're afraid of tubobs.

Malians take great pictures (that's a baby's head in the bottom corner)

Teacher's house at the Kindergarten

Classrooms

Future Site of Garden

Hangar in the Goumera Kindergarten

Yes, this is in Mali, you can tell because the guard is asleep.

Good thing HE knows how to change a tire. It only took him 9 minutes!

When you get a flat tire in the bush you get lapped by the family on donkeys.

American Water is SOOO good!

In the village with a sad Papi

Blossom Teaching Sex Ed.

Birthday Gin and Tonic with Blossom

Birthday dinner...eat with your hands (because they might steal your spoon and give it to someone else)!

Foie (liver) yum!

Birthday beads from Katie (it's called a baiya and it's like lengerie)

I’ve just finished reading an article in my friend’s National Geographic about malaria. The article, titled Bedlam in the Blood: Malaria, explains the plethora of problems that have prevented malaria from being eradicated. Currently there is more malaria in the world than there has ever been, yet the United States and Europe have eradicated it. This is thought to be one of the significant reasons that malaria is still an issue in the developing world. The west dealt with it and has no interest in continuing to address the issue because they have no interest anymore. In the U.S. malaria was killed off by DDT, a chemical very harmful to the environment, so using this strategy again has been turned down by the environmental community. My concerns with this issue lie a little deeper than western interest in eradication. Only in the past few years has malaria captured the full attention of aid agencies and donors. The World Health Organization has made malaria reduction a chief priority. Bill Gates, who has called malaria “the worst thing on the planet,” has donated hundreds of millions of dollars to the effort through the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation. The Bush Administration has pledged 1.2 billion dollars. Funds devoted to malaria have doubled since 2003. The idea is to disable the disease by combining virtually every known malaria-fighting technique, from ancient (Chinese herbal medicines) to the old (bed nets) to the ultramodern (multidrug cocktails). At the same time, malaria researchers are pursuing a long-sought, elusive goal: a vaccine that would curb the disease for good. I really think all of this aid and interest in the disease is wonderful, but I am right here on the ground and I do not see a large need for all of that money, I don’t even see where that money is going. We had a campaign in December which the Gates Foundation funded. The event made available measles and polio vaccines, and we gave vitamin A tablets to infants and pregnant women, also the first 500 hundred children to come through received a double mosquito net. This was just for my village the availability of mosquito nets varied throughout the country. Regardless, the population of my village is roughly at 5,000, so even if 500 hundred children are now sleeping under mosquito nets, 4,500 other people do not have that opportunity. Mosquito nets are not altogether expensive, but when you have a choice of buying food for your family or a mosquito net you’d probably choose food. Another volunteer said people in her village do not even think that Malaria is caused by mosquito bites. You cannot fight that kind of problem with money. As a Peace Corps volunteer we do smaller projects to educate people about the ways that they can protect themselves. One of our big activities is building soak pits. A soak pit is a large underground pit, usually a few meters deep and a few meters diameter, nearly filled with a diverse range of fist- to head-sized rocks. The pit is covered with hay or straw and mounded with soil. The purpose of the rocks is to give it structural support (so one can still walk or drive one’s motorcycle over the top of it) while leaving lots of empty space to absorb grey water. Typically, these are built just outside of the walls of a concession and a pipe extends out of the dwelling to lead water to the upper center of the pit. Pits may be square rectangular or circular and a typical construction is shown in Figure 9.5. Figure 9.5 Soak pit Soak pits prevent excess water from pooling and creating breeding areas for mosquitoes. They are not too expensive to build and they address a problem that no organizations seem to see as an issue. The biggest problem with soak pits is that they only address a small part of the problem. In villages mosquitoes are less of a problem, except during rainy season, but in areas where there is an excess of stagnant water, malaria is continually an issue. In my regional capital, we are in currently in the hottest driest season of the year, I rarely see mosquitoes in the villages, even those on the river, but in the cities, open sewers are constantly filled with stagnant water. The waste water from people’s latrines, like dirty water from their showers, along with human waste are washed directly into these sewers. If you walk by them the smell is intoxicating. These sewers also cause significant problems to the potable water in the region, but that’s another issue. The point is medication and sleeping under mosquito nets doesn’t even begin to address the problem. Even volunteers and visitors who are taking their malaria medication properly have gotten malaria. The prophylactics are not foolproof and do not ultimately solve problems for natives because these drugs are too expensive for them to buy. Taking mephloquin for my whole life would be a dreaded existence anyway. The malaria parasite evolved a resistance to chloroquin, a formerly used prophylactic. There are larger problems that we see on the ground that large organizations are missing. While it would be fabulous to find a vaccine, people are dying today and prevention is as easy as cleaning up the streets and educating EVERYONE about how to prevent it. One of the greatest advantages to cleaning up stagnant water reservoirs in cities and large villages is that it solves a lot of other problems. Suddenly raw sewage doesn’t make the entire place smell putrid and drinking water is cleaner. Obviously this doesn’t solve all of the problems of malaria, but getting people to change their habits is much much more difficult than to clean up after them. One of the most frustrating things about development is that fixing a problem usually has strings attached or requires twenty other things to be fixed as well. Malaria, I think is simpler in that no matter how hard you try to prevent it no one can keep away mosquitoes permanently, so eventually it would be most effective to eradicate it. Right now, however, sending mosquito nets across the world and hoping they get to the right people is not enough. Stopping stagnant water problems isn’t going to solve the problem either. I was texting with a friend in America and lamenting on the conflicting relationship Malians have with the rain. The rain is good, it brings fresh water, it brings life. They cannot grow crops without it, they can’t live without it. Rainy season makes their lives easier, they can go to the stream (a dry river bed the rest of the year), to fetch water, do laundry and wash dishes, even take showers, they do not even have to water their crops. With all these great things, however, the rain brings with it horrible problems. One, of course is Malaria, but many other parasites live in tropical water, schistosomiasis, Guinea worm, giardia, dysentery, and cholera. There is no such thing as potable water in Mali. Everything that is safe for me to drink is filtered or boiled or treated. One thing I’ve learned about Africa is that nothing ever comes in moderation; one rain storm can wipe out a newly paved road, tear down a mud house, and turn dirt roads into swamps. Why not just try and stop the rain? Development is a slow boat, let me tell you, and watching it on the village and local level, it’s even slower. My village built a pre-school where children are even singing songs in English (whether they know it or not), yet my host-brother made his 12 year old daughter get married a few weeks ago. Little by little, is something we say a lot here, because that’s how everything happens, but most of the time it feels like we’re falling backwards. The few intelligent or motivated people ready to do some real work do not have the community backing that they need to actually make a difference. People are reluctant to look to the future because they are struggling so much now. The organization where I work did training for the midwives in the region. My supervisor had just attended an HIV/AIDS training in the capital and wanted to share, right away, what he had learned. He is one of those motivated people. I went to the training and found that what they were learning was too far beyond what they need right now. The women spent three days (and I’m sure were given per-diem, about $15.00 a day, on top of the $50 a day to rent the facility and $100 a day to provide food and refreshments) learning about counseling HIV positive patients. As far as I know and as far as my homologue knows (she attended), there is not a single person in my village who is HIV positive, and if there is, they certainly aren’t coming in to be counseled. The HIV rate in Mali is relatively low and insignificant in relation to other problems. HIV in the villages is much much lower than the rates in more urban areas. So, why are organizations spending money to train people to do something they are unlikely to ever do? I feel that this money would be better spent teaching these women about how to educate people in the villages about HIV and encouraging people to get tested, AND then once people start to come to the health centers with a need for counseling, train the women to counsel. There are more important and more significant topics that need to be addressed in health centers like how to do proper pre-natal consultations, teaching about family planning and birth control, education regarding sexually transmitted diseases, etc. Don’t worry I talked to my supervisor about this and explained to him my concerns. I’ve never been one to keep my mouth shut. What am I doing to help? Well, little by little (donni donni in Bambara), I am addressing these issues. However, I think it would be better to convince people who have money to do the small project Peace Corps Volunteers do, in a lot of places. Now it’s time to shower and get a days’ worth of grime off my skin. I wonder what’s swimming in my bath water tonight!

I want to meet the moron who told Africans that all Americans have a lot of money and then find an affordable way to smite him. I think it’s imperative that Malians come to grips with the idea that America isn’t paradise, in fact, what Americans consider paradise looks an awful lot like Africa. It’s no like you get off the plane, walk through customs and then suddenly you are endowed with a mansion and servants and several cars that no normal human being would want let alone afford. It’s impossible to dissuade Malians of any of this. They are utterly confused when you try to tell them that just because my dad has 3 cars it does not mean that he’s rich. This is because he has three cars. All his money was spent on buying the cars, maintaining them, insuring them and licensing them. So if he actually drives them he’ll be ruined. I should tell Malians that Americans live in their cars, but I’m certain my dad has contemplated the notion from time to time. In Mali, you don’t have to have a mortgage or flood insurance because your house is made of mud and it’s guaranteed that every year after rainy season you’ll need to rebuild part of it and you don’t have to follow any rules about building, no inspections or taxes, no mortgages. I think in most cases you have to ask the village chief to use land if it is not already yours, but I’m not entirely clear on land-owning rules here. I’m fairly certain Malians and particularly their village chiefs are not clear on the rules either. Mali has somehow managed survive on a premise of no accountability. This can be frustrating unless you go about dealing with people in a Malian way. That means publicly humiliating them in order to pressure them to maintain some kind of order. A volunteer near me decided to simply take matters into his own hands after someone’s sheep wandered into his yard and ate his garden. He caught a baby sheep and cut off its ear. I think it took everything he had and his wife to prevent him from putting the ear on a necklace and running around in a loin-cloth shouting about the injustice and his way of dealing with the matter. Unfortunately nothing came of it and now the sheep just has one ear. Apparently there is an actual way of dealing with this particular issue using the Malian justice system but it takes months and the people who manage these issues might actually have to do their job. The Malian way of dealing with bad behavior or less than average behavior is to present the person in front of the village and lambaste them with shameful remarks until things change. In the same village as the lamb with one ear, the school director presented each student with their report card AND listed off the student’s grades. If the student had poor grades the villagers would yell things like “that’s bad” and boo the student as they walked to the front of the group. If that’s not motivation to do better I don’t know what is. I think another factor contributing to their inability to feel accountable for things is that the entire system that supposedly governs them takes advantage of people when they try to do the right thing. So, if my friend who cut of the ear of the lamb had tried to go through the system properly, I imagine at some point if not many times throughout the process he would have to pay a man extra to do their job. This is not a legitimate cost for their work, technically they’re paid by the state and it’s no secret that they would not be likely to help someone unless they were being paid under the table to do it. Malians seem to accept this and, worse yet, perpetuate it, so it doesn’t ever change. Malians have kind of a sad notion of what it means to pay taxes, as well; they’re much like a great deal of Americans. If you didn’t pay taxes you wouldn’t have roads or schools or really any order institution that maintains order at all and likely half the population of America would be out of a job. Raising taxes actually makes your quality of life better. Do you even notice what they take out of your paycheck anyway? In Mali I don’t know how people pay taxes here but for some reason the big fat man/animal from Disney’s Robin Hood always pops into my head, taking money from the poor to give to the rich. I don’t think the extra kicks go to the rich I think the collector keeps it for himself. Sometimes I try to shame people with religion for saying things like that are okay and perfectly normal and good, but they don’t really buy it. One thing that’s difficult too is that hardly anyone has a regular job where they actually get a paycheck. People put up their little grass stand and sell mangos or corn and no one is the wiser. It is illegal for people to come with their buckets of goods to the market and sit in the middle of the road until you trip over them and are forced to buy their smelly fish. I once saw a police-officer very diplomatically pick up someone’s bucket and throw all their products (fish) into the road, subsequently run over by passing bikes, mopeds and cars. Why not just write a ticket? That would be too easy. This also happens about once a month, so obviously if the rules aren’t enforced women are going to keep selling their fish with the risk that their fish will end up as road kill. (That is an interesting notion, fish, as road kill. Only in Mali.) One of the greatest things about Malians is that they insist on having a bag for everything and selling every thing there is in little plastic bags. Ice, peanuts, mangoes, milk, eggs, oil, juice all come neatly in quarter, half and liter bags depending on how much you want. In fact, if you try to exist without the use of bags you’re probably nuts. There are even young boys who only sell bags. Usually these kids attend the Madrassas and are forced to work by Maribous. The kids go out and beg for money and food or sell plastic bags and give the money and food to the Maribous. It is child slavery, and awfully sad, and some Malians still send their children to Madrassas because they do not have the money to care for their children. They usually send their kids to the cities to beg so they live far away from their families at a very young age. The youngest I’ve seen is five year olds begging. They whisper words from the Quar’an to guilt you into giving them stuff. It’s strange and uncomfortable because some of those kids have great puppy-dog eyes, but you know they will not benefit from the donation you give them. Sometimes I give them food and won’t let them leave until they eat it. Okay so extension from the Malaria post from before: In our Peace Corps publication they published an article about malaria here in Mali.

“Health experts say the majority of cases in Mali are misdiagnosed, which causes resistance to malaria drugs and leaves other illnesses untreated. ‘When people are sick in Mali, the doctor will usually tell them they have malaria whether or not they test for it,’ said Fatou Faye, an infectious disease researcher and trainer at a privately funded medical laboratory, the Charles Merieux Centre in Bamako. ‘The patients then buy anti-malarial in the street and build up a resistance to treatment.’”

One more way to help prevent problems associated with Malaria NOT what big organizations are working to help.

In this edition I’m going to tell you all about how life is SO hard for Malians.

Picture this: You have about 30 cousins. They ALL live in your concession. You are always naked. You are 3 years old. There is a toy in the yard. And by yard, I mean area between the houses that is mostly mud, sometimes poop and always dirty. The toy is a car. There is enough room for two naked derrières on it and there is a handle on the back so someone can push. You are on the front of the car manning the steering wheel. There are no front wheels, only back wheels. Another naked 3 year old is on the seat behind you and a bigger 5 or 6 year old is pushing the car. As there are no wheels, the car does not go anywhere. The front bumper jams into the ground and you are holding onto the steering wheel, steering nothing, trying to figure out why you are going down instead of forward. Even though you are screaming for dear life the 5 year old behind you does not stop pushing and finally the weight of the other 3 year old behind you forced you to submit to gravity and slam face first into what can only be described as a pile of shit. The worst is not over. There is a 3 year old lying on top of you trying to punch, kick, and otherwise injure the 5 year old who has yet to stop pushing the car forward but in the process cuts off your air supply, smashes your face deeper into the shit and completely ignores you. You think that maybe the 5 year old will lose interest and the other 3 year old will then get off you, but instead an 8 year old comes and shoves the 5 year old on top of the 3 year old and thus on top of you. In the jostling you are, at the very least, not face deep in shit any longer but you are under two other kids and a small car.

Okay, so I don’t specifically remember much of this month. It went by so fast that I hardly had time to notice it. What I did notice that I’ve been here for 9 months and I can hardly believe how close a year is. We had another IST at the training center in Bamako. This time the health volunteers’ homologues were invited so that we could do some training together. We did a miniature hearth and focused our efforts on understanding the basic principles of putting together a hearth from the beginning. This was great because I was having a hard time explaining to my homologue what one was and I really wanted to do one before rainy season comes (once rainy season is here the women are too busy with working in the fields to come to a hearth).

My homologue learned a lot and became enthralled with working with volunteers. I think she finally understood what my role was and what she was capable of. She and I had developed a lot of plans for Goumera that week and are working on carrying them out. At this point we’ve been a little stalled, but I’ll get to that later. Our plan is to do a large Moringa formation in November. But now, we’re going to make a big compost pit (dug and filled by the students at the school) and then about 6 weeks from now use the compost to fill pots for planting trees. Here we use plastic bags that we poke holes in for planting trees. After about 5 months the trees should be ready to plant so we’ll do a formation all about the benefits of Moringa, which are many, and sell a tree to everyone (for really cheap to pay for the plastic bags). In June we’ll plant the trees in the bags so that we won’t have to water them for two or three months (rainy season). It’s cheaper and easier and all around a good way to teach. Plus planting the trees right after rainy season is the perfect time because Moringa have a large tap root (big fat root that goes straight down and absorbs lots of water) and if they’re planted at the end of rainy season the roots will follow the water table as it descends and develop a stronger tree with healthier leaves.

I’ve also learned about fertilizer here. The best kind is stuff with high amounts of nitrogen. The high nitrogen is in animal poop and green leaves, but it’s also in human pee. A volunteer is working on a project where people pee into containers and store their pee, dilute it then fertilize their gardens or fields with it. It’s been really successful and it’s pretty funny. I’m going to start working on that in my village but first I need to learn how to talk about it in the local language and get some of the funnels made that you need in order to get the pee into the container at my local blacksmith’s. This goes along with Moringa and gardening too so hopefully the formations will connect with Malians.

In the meantime, my grant came through for the garden at the pre-school in Goumera so my village right now is trying to find the money and supplies for their contribution to the project and then we can begin building the well and move things along. The whole project cost just over $2,000, most of the money going to the cost of building the well. It’s about 2 meters in diameter with a wall of cement and a nice steal cover.

Unfortunately, I will not be spending much time in my village for the next couple of weeks, my roof was having a rough time but I wasn’t too worried because the holes that had developed were making it breezier. I just figured as long as my village fixed the holes before rainy I’d be all set, BUT, I was wrong. As unpredictable as always and as extreme as always the mango rains came in and nearly tore down my roofs altogether. Luckily not entirely and luckily I wasn’t there, or else I’d be covered in mud. The roof on each of my small huts needs to be completely replaced and I can’t sleep there until my village has finished it. So, in the meantime I’m going to study language in Kayes, work with the woman at the orphanage to plan a Moringa formation in one of the quartiers (quarters) in Kayes and fix the garden at the family planning association so I can start doing Moringa formations there.

I’m also working hard to fix my garden at my house in Kayes, so if you send anything send seeds. I need cilantro, catnip, citronella, berries (raspberries, especially), strawberries, pumpkins, beans, snap peas, tomatoes (I planted all the tomatoes I was sent and successfully killed them all, I’m working on it though), and green peppers. I’ve planted some stuff so I’ll take pictures of it when I get the chance. I’m waiting to plant a lot of things until rainy season because it is slightly cooler. It was 115° F yesterday and only getting hotter.

Now it is May and I’m already feeling the month flying by, my parents are coming to visit in less than 4 months! I’ve helped make some fabric for Peace Volunteers here and we’re getting it printed over the next two weeks. I’ll be in Bamako again at the beginning of June to get it all ready to distribute. Shortly after that a friend is coming to visit to do some work on teaching people to use mud stoves because they save energy and costs for firewood and they are safer (prevent kids from falling into the coals) and they use local materials to make them so they’re essentially free.

I’ll try to get an update in about a month about how my plans for May actually turned out. In the meantime, I hope you’re all doing well! It’s mango season in Mali and I’m about as happy as a volunteer can be!

Hello again, I want to apologize for taking so long to make a good solid dense post about what I’m doing and about Malian culture. I think it goes without saying that I cannot recount everything or give you a perfect picture of my life here, but I’ll try.Last week I headed down to Dialafara to visit my two friends Nicole and Andrew Wallace. I had heard many things about their site, but most notably their horrible transport and the beautiful landscape surrounding their house (rather contradictory, I know). I had intended to go to Goumera for a few days to calculate the costs of a garden for which we are trying to find money, but my transport had been rather unreliable so I decided to try and go to Dialafara. Dialafara is about 165 km (100 miles) south of Kayes, dirt road the whole way. If you look on a map, which I encourage you to do; you’ll find this village partway between Kayes and Kenieba near the Senegal border. Kenieba is a large village largely populated by people who come from smaller villages to work in the gold mines. Yes, gold mines. There are four or five foreign companies who work around here, mostly along the road to Kenieba. There are also Malian companies as well as individuals who search for gold 49er style.Before I left I went to the market to get food for the Wallace’s and for me while I was there. I had my backpack and a pink bucket so I looked more noticeable than usual. I filled the pink bucket with market supplies (potatoes, tomatoes, cabbage, eggplant, eggs, peanut butter, rice and other produce) and then paid a kid to carry it, as it was rather heavy by this time, to the bus gare (station). I had to walk across town to the station (earlier in the day I had to bike around town all morning to find this gare to buy my ticket because it would be ridiculous to keep ALL the buses and transport ticket areas in the same place? Obviously, much too practical.) I was told to be at the transport area at 3 because we would then leave at 4, but as it turns out we left at six after stacking what was the equivalent in people’s belongings to 12 small cars on top. THEN we filled the inside of the truck. The truck was a semi that had been gutted and filled with seats and windows cut out of it. It felt a little like I was on the back of a traveling circus car. Luckily, I had a window and I was happy to do the whole trip in the dark as hot season has arrived and night is the only time existence is bearable. The most frustrating thing about transport is Mali is not how awfully uncomfortable, unreliable and long it is, but the inevitable stops at Gendarmeries. Gendarmeries are military checkpoints, or really just times to collect money from people who don’t have ID. We’re not ten minutes outside of Kayes (really, I timed it) and we have to stop at the Gendarmerie and EVERYONE (that means about 70 people) have to present ID to ONE guy, you’d think they could at least get two guys to do it. The way it works is that if you don’t have an ID card (for Malians it looks like a thinner brown passport) you have to pay 1,000 FCFA (the Malian currency, pronounced safe-a, stands for Centrale Financiale Afrique Franc, with some le’s and de’s in there somewhere) to move on. The gendarmerie dude counts the amount of people while he’s going through who do not show ID then collects the money from the mobili-tigi (car-dude; in Bambara, if you put a noun in front of ‘tigi’ you are usually assuming that person is in charge of whatever the noun is, for example, pomme-tigi = apple seller, jamana-tigi = president or country leader, etc.). The mobili-tigis are some of my favorite people when I travel because they are always aware of me and they usually take good care of me. Depending on the size of the vehicle, there are usually about 3 mobili-tigis, who mostly sit on the roof on top of everyone’s stuff the whole way. It’s actually illegal for them to do this, as it’s obviously a bit of a safety hazard, but I’ll come back to that. For this particular vehicle, which was about 4 times the size of the normal bus people take, there were 7 or 8 mobili-tigis. Usually there is one who sits by each door and then a few on top and maybe one in the front cab. Anyway, they collected all the money to pay the Gendarmeries and we were finally off. It took us about 3 hours to reach the first big stop where we were able to get food from the duminikeyorow (food place, literally). This is also where I bought more eggs because two of mine had broken. At this point, I was actually lectured by the mobili-tigi about having not taken better care of my eggs (ie. keeping them all in one basket, haha) and he helped me find a place to buy new ones, then he filled up my water bottle with water that he, very proudly, stated came from a robinet (faucet) in Kayes. We started off again, by now it was about 10:00 pm, and finally reached Dialafara around 1:00. I met with Nicole and Andrew and we promptly went to bed. Nicole and I spent most of the 6 days I was there knitting, chatting, napping or cooking. Andrew, who is the busiest Peace Corps Volunteer that ever there was, spent the week running around the commune mapping things with an organization called GRDR. GRDR also works in my commune but they are much further along with the program than in Dialafara. So, a brief description of the political breakdown of Mali: first there is the President who lives in Bamako in a big white house (maison blanche), then there are regions (Kayes, Sikasso, Koulikoro, Segou, Mopti, Timbuktu, Gao, Kidal and Bamako), for each region there is a Governor who lives in the regional capital of each. In each region the areas are broken down into Cercles and then into Communes within each Cercle. Each Commune has a Mayor. My Commune is rather odd because it ONLY represents the village of Goumera, which has a large population and few nearby villages. The Dialafara Commune, however, is a larger commune with many villages (not one paved road) and is just beginning the process of working with GRDR (this is a French acronym meaning something very fabulous I’m sure, but I can’t recall what it is right now). Andrew was helping the GRDR representatives map the Commune using GPS. They identify different attributes about the Commune, like whether or not they have pumps and where are the pumps, where are the health centers and schools, markets and natural water sources, etc, in order to identify what kind of needs with which GRDR can help. GRDR is a French non-governmental organization where the Commune is set up with a sister city, who helps fund a project or projects over a 5 year period. In my village, GRDR facilitated payment for a pre-school (I think this is rather ridiculous because they could have used another pump or some kind of drainage system for dirty water during the rainy season, or a new CSCOM, but instead they built a pre-school, whatever the case, it’s a very very nice facility and will be around for a long time). Any questions?Nicole also purchased a solar oven. Solar ovens, in theory, would be really good for Mali, BUT they are not. I’ll get to that in a moment, first of all, Nicole made brownies, peanut butter cookies, banana bread, shish kabobs, and rice in hers (not all at the same time, of course). It’s great for Americans because we only make a limited amount of food AND we have the money and supplies to bake things, whereas Malians pretty much make two things a day and would need at least 4 solar ovens to make enough food for the whole family. One solar oven costs about the equivalent of $80, and is only useful for making lunch because Malians usually make dinner too late to use the solar oven. While the benefits to the environment are huge (ie. they are not cutting down trees for firewood; Malians don’t really see things in the form of an investment, particularly in the environment because they wouldn’t be using firewood to heat their pots) the change would take years to happen, if at all. Nevertheless, I got to eat some good food while I was there. On Saturday morning Nicole, Andrew, their language tutor, Lamini (who speaks relatively good English), and I went on a short morning hike up to the edge of the plateau that rises just outside of the village. There weren’t really any trails most of the way to the top and we didn’t even make it to the top because it was rather inaccessible (and all I had were chacos), but we did see some beautiful rocks and nice dry riverbeds where waterfalls careen down through the valley during the rainy season. Sunday was Easter, we died eggs and ate wild boar (ham, which Lamini had paid to have killed for us all-he’s a Christian, thus, allowed to eat pork) and mashed potatoes and played scrabble. The following morning I packed up and headed back to Kayes. I flagged down a small bus in the market area of Dialafara. The bus was a gutted out maintenance van with benches that frame the perimeter of the inside. I was in the back corner by the back door. We arrived at the food place after 2 quick hours, ate lunch, and headed back to Kayes. As we were leaving Sadiola (food place), we met a policeman who stopped us because our mobili-tigis were on the roof of the bus, so we had to spend a good 15 minutes in a hot box of death (bus) waiting for the issue to be sorted out. At first it looked like the policeman was going to arrest the dudes, but that didn’t end up being the case. We arrived in Kayes after about 5 hours (2 shorter than the trip down) and I had to walk back across town to my house (I’m too cheap to take a taxi) covered in red dirt. I took a rinse shower and subsequently filled the tub with brown water, then I took another scrub and soap shower and again filled the tub with brown water. The next morning I packed again and headed out to Goumera to start writing out the costs for the garden at the pre-school for which we would like to find funding (the pre-school for which GRDR paid). I arrived and went to meet my supervisor and set up a meeting at 9 the next morning to talk about plans for the garden and costs with the headmaster of the primary school and the mayor and then I went to greet my host-family. On the way, I ran into the dude (another mobili-tigi), who owns the bus I arrived on, and I told him I left my plastic bag full of tea (gifts for my host-family) on the bus so we went and found it and then I went to meet my host-family. The funny thing about my Malians is that if I stay in my village for weeks, they get really bored with me, so when I’m gone for long periods of time and in village for short periods of time they actually like me more. I greeted all the women and kids and gave tea to the dugu-tigi (village leader/chief) and then hung out and drank tea with the women (I like woman tea better than man tea). I told my host-sister, who I had given trees to plant before I left last time that I had brought her new trees because, as I had suspected, hers had died. THEN the big news came, Dialla, my host-niece, the oldest of the girls who was not married, was now married. This came as quite a shock because Dialla is 12 or 13 years old (this is actually illegal in Mali and I had run into her dad in Kayes several times and he had never mentioned that he had sold his daughters soul to the devil). I also missed an enormous party which was also sad, but obviously not as sad as a child getting married. In most cases, when I’ve heard about this it hasn’t affected me as much, but I almost broke down into tears right there (I’m not a big crier, so this is a big deal). Dialla is one of my favorite people too because she has this very independent personality and the very thought of her staying in Goumera to cook and raise children for the rest of her life is heartbreaking. That’s exactly what she’ll do too. I arranged to go see her the next day at her new house and went home to see HALIMETOU! Halimetou is my best friend, she lives across the street. She was married when she was 14 and is now pregnant at 15, she’s getting rather large (she’s due at the end of May). She’s really excited and so am I. We talk about how big her belly is all the time. I told her I was going to buy her a baby mosquito net. The baby mosquito nets look like the cover for fancy food. So, the baby is the food and the mosquito net is the cover. She said she is going to name the baby Mariam (after me) which I think is weird because almost every baby I meet is named Mariam. I told her we should name it Emily, but no one can pronounce that so we vetoed it. I told her to call me if she starts to have any stomach pains and I would tell her what to do and come out to the village immediately. The next morning, I met with my supervisor and the mayor. We spent 3 hours coming up with all of the things we’d need to build a garden, including a well, and calling all the people who know what things cost and we actually finished it all right there in the same day. I had expected the process to take the whole three days I was there, if not, longer, but we got it all done. So, I decided to leave the following morning. That afternoon I helped my host-sister plant the trees I brought her and then helped my homologue plant trees that I had brought for her, and then spent the evening weeding my garden and preparing to leave again. All in all, it’s been a rather productive couple of weeks. I’m headed to Bamako next weekend for a week-long training then back to my site for 2 months of some serious work. I have some exciting plans, but I’ll save that for the next blog! Hiking in Dialafara

My Kitten

More Kitten

Dying Easter Eggs

Dying Easter Eggs

The village of Dialafara

Rocks!

Jakuma ani Wulu te se ka tulonke nogonfe.(Cat and dog cannot play together) Filling the compost hole

Kitty

My new house!

FILI!

A Shea Tree

Andrew and bamboo

Tree inside the rock.

More Rocks!

Planting Moringa at the Orphanage

My ride home.More planting Moringa

I figured I'd show you how we get it done, basically doing projects here falls into two categories (this is totally my creation):

1. Projects that need money

2. Projects that don't need money

Projects that don't need money usually have to do with small activities like teaching students how to garden, planting trees and showing them how to make thing like soap or dry fruit, hearths are free for the most part and so are many other projects. Just working alongside Malians can be considered a project.

Projects that do need money can be financed one of three ways. Self-help, which is run by the US Embassy. Small Project Assistance, money from Peace Corps funds, and Peace Corps Partnership (PCPP), which are projects put online for anyone in the world to donate to.

If you are interested in helping out, check out this website: https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.donors.contribute.donatenow&

I am currently writing a PCPP application so if you want to donate to mine wait a few more months and I'll let you know more about it.

If you look closely you can see a little family of baboons in the right side of the picture.

The Ferry at Baflobe

I had a little american history session with some educated Malians the other day and this is the transcript (direct translation)

dude: I want go to America.

me: You want TO go to America.

d: Yes, which is your village?

me: Washington State

d: oh, Wash-in-tone, se bon. I will come to your house, yes?

me: sure.

d: your state is named after the first president. george washin-tone.

me: yes.

d: I want to go to Kennedy's state. Which is his state?

me: Massachusetts? (turns out I was right, wasn't totally sure of the accuracy of this so then i said) but he died in Texas.

d: Oh, Texas, se bon. was george washin-tone from your village?

me: no he was from new hampshire. (duh, i have no clue) Do you know any other presidents?

d: Ni-sone.

me: huh? OH! Nixon.

d: Which is his village?

me: California? (god if i know)

d: Oh! Los Angelas?

me: yah...? (turns out he IS from california, Yorba Linda, to be specific, which happens to be right near LA; Emily: 1, American History: 0)

d: Who was president when the north faught the south? Was he tall?

me: Abraham Lincoln. Yes.

d: What was his village? (why do they care?)

me: He was from Illinois. The same place where Barak Obama is from.

d: Obama is good very good a lot good. Who did you vote for?

me: Obama.

d: oh, se bon! Who was president during the second big war?

me: (does it never end?) Roosevelt, Franklin. And also Harry Truman. When Roosevelt died Truman took his place.

d: oh, roooooosevelt. john mcun is bad.

me: yes he is.

d: are you a republican or a democrat?

me: democrat.

d: what is the difference?

me: democrats are good and republicans are bad. (so sue me, I took the low road, please tell me how YOU would translate that into Bambara)

d: do you pray?

me: yah but we dont pray like you.

d: when do you pray?

me: at night before bed and before we eat dinner.

d: how do you pray?

me: so we thank the lord, clap clap, for giving us the things we need, like the sun and the rain and the appleseeds. amen. d: amen. Where was Wilson from?

I had this conversation with the man I'm working with now in Kayes, he is a constant comedy act, definitely keeps me on my toes. He's very relaxed and his whole outlook is very Western. His name is Hamadou Maiga (Maiga for short). The other day I was in his office and he was checking his email. He received an email in English that he asked me to explain to him. He's learning English but this one was a little complicated. The email was inviting him to join an online dating service. So, the explanation went like this...direct translation:

Emily: The email is to help you find a wife. If you do not have one, or you want one, you can write about yourself and find a wife.Maiga: Oh! Se bon! I could find a second wife with this?Emily: Maiga, your wife is amazing, you can't get another one. I think this probably only works in American anyway.Maiga: Ah, but I can have 4 wives!Emily: Well, then your wife can use the dating service to find another husband. She can have two husbands, right?Maiga: No, no no no.

This is a picture of Maiga on the roof of his house with his son, Vie, in front of him.

In other news, I've moved into my new house and started working on the garden, but here are pictures of my garden at my house in Goumera (i like to call it my vacation home).

After IST I was stuck in the transit house for over a week because I ran out of money and I had to wait until my account was filled to get on back to village. In the meantime I was taking care of my new kitten whose primary function is to kill rats and keep them out of our house and discussing my interest in getting a site change.

I met with my APCD and we worked it out. I went back to my village for a few days and then she called and told me I was getting a site change. The way it's going to work is that I get to keep my house at my site and I will still be doing small projects there but living most of the time in Kayes. I will be living at the transit house which has it's perks, however it's essentially a place where any volunteers can stay whenever they want for how long they want, so there's a lot of traffic, but it comes with electricity, running water, a fan in every room, full kitchen with a refridgerator, tv and dvd player and TWO toilets. City life is a little different from village life and there are many things I'll miss about being there. But I can pretty much go back whenever I want and we already have some ideas for small projects. We're working on a garden project for the pre-school and CSCOM and doing hearths at the CSCOM.

In Kayes, I'll be working with Developpement Sociale, a Malian organization directed at running the boards of directors for the CSCOMs in the Kayes region. We've started working on a project that will train matrones (midwives) on different topics such as female circumcision, HIV/AIDS, nutrition, and pre-natal consultations. We're hoping to make it a 3-part training program that will last a year. Meanwhile, Alana Hagney is working on getting a fellowship to come to Mali to do a dental hygiene education campaign. We have a lot of activities going and meanwhile I'm studying French for an hour everyday.

Maybe that doesn't sound like much but trust me, it's hard to learn another language while still trying to figure out another one. When my tutor, who is amazing, has me translate something I think in Bambara first then I can put it into French. One of the problems with Bambara, however, is that it is insufficient for making detailed descriptions, so at the level where I am, I'm not capable of saying certain things. Having some French will help me to describe things. I'm picking up French pretty quickly, it's really wonderful learning a language and being able to walk outside and hear people speaking it.

I want to give a little shout-out to Uncle Art and Aunt Sharon for sending me the most amazing packages!!!

If you want to send things I'm thinking beef jerky and dog treats!

BTW, I have the same mailbox number as before.

whenever my host sisters and i talk about how im losing weight we always laugh and say well its okay because all the other americans are fat!

anyway, a quick update until i have time for a real good one. im moving sites. so officially i will be a kayes volunteer and unofficially i still get to work with my village, more on why later!

HAPPY LENT AND VALENTINES DAY!

Sorry for the long delay between updates. After Christmas I was at site for a fwe days before heading back to Kayes. Before my long trip I had to prepare my house and my village for my departure. Traveling is serious business in Mali. Since I have a dog, I had to discuss with my neighbors about watching her and making sure she had food and water. I also recently started a garden (where things actually grew). It has pumpkins, squash, tomatoes, pomegranates and Moringa trees. I needed my neighbor to water everything so I arranged with my water dude to come once a week over three weeks to fill the tank in my yard. Also, the mayor arranged for the mason to come fix my latrine wall and make a patio between my houses. After dealing with the logistics of being gone for 3 weeks I had to go emotionally prepare my host-family for my departure. I told my host-dad that I'd be leaving for so long and told all the women what I'd be doing for 3 weeks and tried to figure out what to bring back for gifts. I told them "100 kilograms of bananas." :) On Thursday afternoon I said "good-bye" to each woman (there are ten wives) in the family and the kids and my host-mom and dad. When I talked to my supervisor he didn't seem to much care that I'd be gone, because I don't really do much of anything anyway.

When I got to Kayes, Amy and I spent the day running errands to prepare for the trip and we packed. It felt a little like we were going on a big backpacking trip. Our bus left Kayes at 5 am and arrived in Bamako at 1:30 pm. We travelled with another PCV named Dave who took us to an American food restaurant and then directed us to our hotel. The restaurant we went to was a little like walking into America. There were lots of American tubobs and there was really nothing that resembled Mali, it was glorious. The next afternoon we left for Nicole's site in the San area of the Segou region. We arrived at the bus station too late to take the morning bus so we didn't get to her stop until 11pm. We were literally left on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere waiting to meet Nicole's friend who took us to her site. When we finally arrived safely in her village her host-dad who is a traditional healer made us this amazing tea that's supposed to keep you from getting any stomach problems (i'm certain that it works too) and then we headed to bed.

We started the next morning with oatmeal and then headed out on the town to start several days of greetings. In Nicole's village greetings are teken much more seriously than in mine. I think in my village the greetings are shorter because I can't greet in the local language very well and I'm a little lazy but also my village has a much more urban atmosphere which doesn't require the congeniality of the more bushy villages. In Samabogo (Elephant Mud, Nicole's village), everyone knows everyone, while in mine it is big enough to be sectioned off in the quarters. In between greetings we helped nicole water her garden and we studied Bambara with Amy who is just beginning studying it because she hopes to site-change to a village from the city of Kayes. I enjoy studying with her even though I'm more advanced than her because I always learn new things that I missed the first time around.As part of our greeting adventure we went a few km out to the bush to meet some of the elder traditional healers and friends of Nicole's host-dad. With this guy we discussed whether or not Nicole should get a dog and I told the story about how my dog ate the baby bird off my lap and how she keeps people out of my concession. I also cracked myself up by suggesting in Bambara that Nicole name her future dog 'cat.' Nicole and Amy were less than amused. The greatest thing about visiting these people were the hilarious gifts we got from them. We mostly got tea and peanuts and sugar but we also ended up with our very own rooster. Unfortunately, we couldn't eat the rooster because Nicole had to tell her host-family that we didn't eat me (same as her) because their food is terrible and if they thought we were vegetarians we could avoid eating there altogether. At one point someone asked me if I ate chicken (because chicken is in a different category than meat to them) and I said "yah, of course...i mean, no, no, never. We don't eat animals."

For new years eve the three of us pretended to go to bed early and drank a bottle of champaigne each that Amy and I had brought up from Bamako and tried our best to stay up until midnight. Our other activities included pruning Nicole's Moringa trees, making meals/eating the meals Nicole made, learning how to climb mango trees, or, rather, teaching Nicole how, and knitting.

We headed into San to go to the bank and relax for a couple of days before heading to Bamako for our In-Service Training (IST). There is a Stage house, or transit house, there where volunteers can stay for free. We made yummy food, bought beads and watched movies like Sister Act and Spaceballs on VHS. We managed to catch Peace Corps transport back to Bamako for IST which was free and comfortable. IST has been a series of ups and downs for me. The health sessions have been informative, but across the board they lack organization and the proper people available to translate. In most cases they're just boring, but it makes me feel unprepared for the rest of my service. I think, however, that it's hard to prepare everyone the same because our villages are too diverse for them to cover everything and every day I feel like my village is an anomaly compared to everyone else.

On Sunday, some volunteers organized an event called the Hash Run, which is a 5 km run in Bamako put on by expatriates. The idea is that three of four people are the hash (or the hare) and the create a trail and everyone tries to catch them. Afterwards there's a big party with lots of food. I didn't do the run but I was present for the food and beer.

Today, Wednesday, we went to a village to do the beginning parts of a Hearth. A hearth is a 12 days program to promote quick turn around for malnurished children. The first day you do a baby weighing to find out which kids qualify. We don't allow healthy kids to participate, nor do we allow severely malnurished children to participate, usually, because they need to be given more help than we can give them. Usually that means going to the regional capital so they can get special food for malnurished children and proper supervision. From the kids who do qualify, we invite 5-10 to participate. Everyday for 12 days we make ameliorated porridge (high protein, high nutrient porridge) for them to give to their child three times a day. While the porridge cooks we do a presentation about nutrition or something related to health and then they take enough porridge for the day and come back the next morning to do it again. At the end of the week we weigh the babies again. The idea is to show the women how quickly their children can improve over a short period of time, using ingredients that they have access to in their village. All we did today was weigh babies and eliminate those who weren't qualified. We only had one malnurished baby. She was 2 years old and she weighed 4 kg or about 9 pounds. It's difficult to see but impossible to change at our level, so we really have to focus on prevention. Tomorrow we'll make porridge and do an animation. Unfortunately, we won't be able to follow up with this village but normally we'd do it for 10 more days. One of the other strategies for Hearth is to find a woman in the village who represents the average woman who has a healthy child and recruit her to help you do the Hearth because you can use her as an example for the women coming. It also keeps women from saying that it's not possible for the Hearth to help because there is physical proof in front of them.

I'm nervous to head back to my village and try this, but that's probably normal. I'm headed back to Kayes on Monday, via the brand new train! I miss my village and my dog and being on my own schedule, so it will be nice to get back.