The school in Tongo is finally finished, and we had a big party to celebrate. It was also the last time we would go to Tongo, and I must say we went out with a bang.

We rented a van to transport all the volunteers in the region, and rode down the bumpy dirt road in good spirits.

the ride there

We could see the crowd from the road but had no idea what was waiting for us when we arrived. Suddenly we were thrown into a mass procession with everyone chanting "Baseba, Baseba" (my Malian name).

the procession

mary and kyle make a grand entrance

We spent a good half hour shaking everyone's hands and making our way to our seats.

shaking hands

The area around the school was decked out with flags and crowded with more people than I've ever seen in Tongo.

crowds and flags

flagpole

The crowd included a group of hunters, who welcomed us by shooting off their rifles.

Finally, after the grand entrance, everyone settled down to start the ceremony.

our loyal fans

I gave a speech thanking everyone who worked on the project, and acknowledged our homologues, Mazuru and Adama, who have done so much for us throughout our three years in Mali.

The speech was well received.

hand in the air

The mayor (who actually showed up!) said a few words about education and responsibility.

And a speech was even given by the town "griot" or storyteller.

After the speeches, it was time to party.

dancing with the old women

drummers

gunners

ladies dancing

and more dancing

After all that dancing, it was time for lunch. The week before, Kyle and I had bought 130 kilos(286 pounds) of rice, 200 litres(52 gallons) of peanut oil, 65 kilos(143 pounds) of onions, 500 maggi cubes, 3 kilos(6.6 Pounds) of salt, and a cow (actually the cow was donated by the Chief of Tongo). The menu: Malian fried rice, beans, cow, watermelon.

beans

watermelon

After lunch, we had a glorious photo shoot. We'd made signs to spell out Thank You (I ni che, in Bambara) and planned to get the kids to stand in front of the school and hold the signs. Easier said than done.

"I ni che" spelled wrong - these kids really do need a new schoolFinally got it right

The photo shoot went on:

kyle in the crowd

with the chief of Tongo

chief on deck

our amazing homologues

me and maz

the whole Famanta Family

me and the rents

kyle and the fam

alou, the brick press owner

kyle and Ba

who's got guns?

i'm so bored

through the wallThe paint on the school was not quite finished, but they had managed to put on the first coat in time for the ceremony.

the back side

the front side

the porch

the inside

the courtyardThen it was time to say goodbye.

goodbye jeneba

The women of Tongo had made matching outfits for the ceremony, and I couldn't leave without getting a photo with all of them together.

matching outfits

Then it was really time to say goodbye.

bye bye

Malians don't hug, but we said goodbye to Mariam with one last cross-cultural exchange.

hug

Then we all piled back in the van and drove away into the sunset, our hearts a little heavier.

...

When we got back to Segou, we had another party: the kind that wouldn't have been possible in my muslim village:

pig roast!

The most recent trip to Tongo gave us the walkin' blues as we braved the sludge to bring you these photos:

The roof is finished and all the walls have been primed with cement.

What remains is to put cement down on the floors and paint the walls.

The contractor estimates that the work could be finished in as little as 15 days. We've got 40 days and 40 nights left in Mali (yes, we're counting), so we should definitely see it finished. All I can say is: I'm ready.

Construction of the school is almost finished! All that's left is to fasten the roof, cement the floors, and paint it! It's hard to believe, but my stint in Mali is coming to an end as well. As I prepare for the next chapter of life, I look at this project as evidence that my time here was well spent. We are planning a closing ceremony when the school is finished, and it will be around the time I'll have to say my final goodbyes. In the meantime, here are photos of the amazing progress we've made:

Addendum: After much deliberation and soul searching, we decided to use the funds for the rainwater harvesting tanks to build an office for the teachers. In the long run, an office will give teachers an incentive to stay in Tongo (which has been a problem in the past), and it will provide a lockable place to store classroom materials like books and maps. And sadly the probable fate of the cisterns is that they would not be properly maintained and end up being unused in a matter of years (like everything else in Mali).

Building the cisterns is still a possibility, depending on what funds we have left over, but they're on hold for the moment.

The second block of classrooms is rising as fast as the first and the brickwork for both is now finished! The next step is to put on the metal roof and plaster over the walls.

The level of participation from the village has been overwhelming. Both men and women show up to work everyday and don't stop until the sun goes down. We've got enough gravel for now to finish these two blocks. Things couldn't be going better!

It's an amazing feeling to stand between the two buildings, watching the work being done, and feel such a sense of pride and accomplishment.

More photos of the progress:

Just when we thought a project in motion would stay in motion, we hit another glitch. The workers ran out of sand and gravel at the site. Since BuildOn now controls the funds for the project, we asked them to approve the purchase of more material. That's when we found out that they don't have the funds in hand at this precise moment, and we'll have to wait a week or so for the funds to be transferred and the purchase approved. Meanwhile, the village will get a break from working to go plant their fields as we wait for the next shipment.

So it goes!

I can't believe how fast this school is shooting up! We're up to the windows on the first block!

The foundation is finished for the second block, and the walls will start going up later this week.

At this rate, we're very optimistic that it will be totally finished before we leave in November. Keep your fingers crossed!

They say you're supposed to measure twice, cut once. Whoever came up with that obviously never worked in Mali. Here it's likely to turn out double: measure 4 times, cut twice. At least that's how it happened at the groundbreaking in Tongo.

The Mayor didn't show up (he now says he's coming to lay the first brick...), but we kicked off nonetheless. We measured the footprints of the buildings manually by tying strings to metal rods and stretching them across the ground, using geometric cunning to make sure the lines were square:

Once the area was marked, pick axes and shovels sent dirt flying as a team of volunteers from the village got to work digging the foundation.

All the construction materials arrived in Tongo. We unloaded the truck and took an inventory:

Everything came that we ordered, but upon further inspection we deduced that the number of metal roof sheets (determined by the supplier) would not be enough to cover both buildings. We could either pay for a few more sheets plus their transportation from Bamako to Tongo, which would put us over budget, or we could reduce the size of the classrooms. We chose the latter and set about re-measuring the building footprint, filling in the old, and digging the new.

As an architect, I'm quickly learning an important lesson regarding when to accede to changes and when to stick to my guns and uphold the original design. At this point, the school that will be built is, in physical appearance, far from what I initially imagined but, in concept, still right on the mark. Due to limitations in the technical skills of the construction workers in Mali, as well as budgetary considerations, we've changed many of the details of the design such as using concrete columns instead of I-beams, sitting the roof directly on the wall instead of raising it up, etc. The key concepts (sustainability, cost-effectiveness, transfer of technical skills) are still manifest in the use of compressed bricks, rainwater harvesting, and training of members of the village.

We are also 'breaking ground' in another sense. BuildOn specifies that 15 men and 15 women from the village work each day. However, Tongo is a Muslim village and the men were initially not comfortable with the idea of their wives leaving their household chores to assist with the school construction. After several meetings with the village elders, we came to a compromise that the women would be responsible for supplying water for the work site. This means working along side the men to draw water from the well, fill up large barrels, and generally keep water in stock. So not only is this the first use of compressed bricks and rainwater harvesting in the area, it's a small step toward woman's empowerment in Tongo.

At only 19 days off schedule (or 2 years, depending on how you count), we've set the date for the groundbreaking ceremony for this Wednesday. The Mayor of Cinzana will come for a quick photo opp, we'll all eat some rice, and work will begin! The windows and doors are finally all finished and making their way to Tongo as I type. We have 12,954 bricks and 900 bags of cement. We've got a full work force lined up and on the starting line. It's go time.

(ps I got a new camera so pictures galore are coming soon!)

In the course of a week, I managed to break Kyle's camera (by trying to film a dust storm) and loose mine, so we are without photos until I can get another one. This means I can't show you pictures of the 5000+ bricks we've made so far. Just imagine an ocean where each wave is a single brick. There's a pier at one end, which is actually a giant stack of bricks. In the foreground is the brick press, it's arm like the mast of a ship, diligently churning out brick after brick.

This is the scene in Tongo now as we prepare to start the foundation and really get going with construction. Excitement is in the air (along with frequent dust storms - cameras beware!)

With over 2000 bricks and counting, we've begun preparing for work on the foundation by bring truckloads of sand and gravel to the site.

Group Jaba-Ji (Onion Sauce) is still in the lead, although Tiga-Diga is inching closer. More as it happens!

Brick making has officially begun and is now in full swing! The first 3 days were spent training men in the village how to use the machine and how to properly mix the dirt, sand, and cement.

The first brick! (Isn't it beautiful?)

After the training, the men were divided into 3 teams, which I nicknamed: 1) Group Tiga-Diga Na (Peanut Sauce), 2) Group Jaba-Ji (Onion Sauce), and 3) Group Saga-Saga (Leaf Sauce). The teams would alternate days to split up the work and would compete with each other to see which could make the most bricks in a day and overall.

Meet the dream team: Group Jaba-Ji. After Tiga-Diga set the bar high at 372 bricks the first day, Jaba-Ji took the reigns the second day:

They worked with enthusiasm and gusto and by the end of the day turned out a whopping 378 bricks!

Then they took a much deserved break:

When I left this morning we'd made just over 1,000 bricks and counting. Only 11,000 more to go!

We got the prick press to Tongo in the back of a truck, and have successfully "installed" it on the work site.  This consisted of cementing it into the ground so it won't wiggle around.  Now it needs to cure for a few days, then we'll start training the village on how it works!

Look familiar?  Yes, those are the leftover bricks from the well project, being used as flying buttresses.  I also see a striking resemblance to another structure....

We found another brick press! 

It seems that we've actually gone full circle, finally locating the brick press of a time long ago. I don't think I've ever told this story on the blog, so it seems time to share the epic of the brick press:

It all started in February 2008. But I didn't know that at the time. I didn't start really planning this school project until at least April. I was curious if Malians knew about compressed bricks (if you don't know what they are at this point, please educate yourself).  I started asking around if anyone knew of construction that had been done or brick presses that might be in use in the country.  I met a mason who told me he'd used one once, many years ago, while working for someone named George Samake, but he had no idea how to contact him now.  A month or two went by without finding him before I registered that George is an odd name for someone in Mali, unless he is a Christian and thereby associated with the Catholic mission.  So off I went to the catholic mission and after a few weeks of missed connections, I finally found George.  Yes, he had done a project with compressed bricks about ten years ago. Did he still have the machine?  No, he had rented it from a friend named Joe Kieta.  Can I get in touch with Joe?  Sorry, Joe died five years ago. ...but his wife, Madame Kieta, works in town at the bureau "gene rural" (pronounced in french).  So off I went to the bureau "general" (my french is still a little faulty), where there was no one by that name.  I did, however, encounter Madame Kieta's sister (!), who led me across the street to the correct office.  Yes, Joe was her late husband.  Yes, she had a brick press!  I got her number and we agreed to meet the next week to look at the machine, which was collecting dust in her back yard.That weekend I attended a wedding for Adama's wife's sister, who was marrying a man named Yaya, who turned out to be a contractor.  Has he ever worked with compressed bricks?  Yes.  Does he know where we could find a brick press?  Yes, he has one in Koutiala.  Can he give us a good price?  Agreed.  I called Madame Kieta to tell her thanks, but we're going with someone else.  Fast forward to April, 2010.  We're ready to start making bricks when the deal with the press falls through (remember Blacky?).  So I go back to the bureau "gene rural" (the correct one this time) to find old Madame Kieta.  Yes, she still works there.  No, she doesn't have the machine anymore.  She's sold it to a guy named Alou Kieta.  No, she doesn't have his number.  Dead end. Rewind all the way back to February 2008.  I attended an architecture conference in Bamako about building with dirt.  Here I met a man who worked with compressed bricks and who gave me a brochure for his organization.  I put it in a folder and forgot about it. Until yesterday. Fast forward (is this making you dizzy?) back to 2010.  Racking my brain to find another lead on a brick press, I suddenly remember this brochure.  I pull it out, blow off the dust, and who's name, phone number, and email are written on the front?  Alou Kieta.  I call him and meet with him that same day; he's easy to work with, gives us a great price, and voila! We have a brick press.

I'm happy to report that the design for the school (henceforth known as the "Yellow Submarine") has been submitted for consideration to be published in Architecture for Humanity's book Design Like You Give a Damn 2. You can see the entry and more about the competition here:http://openarchitecturenetwork.org/projects/tongoschool

Wish it luck!

We'd be making bricks now if it weren't for Blacky.  We organized a meeting in Cinzana today to finalize plans with the owner of the brick press.  We'd already agreed on a price to rent the machine per day and just wanted to iron out the details.  That's when Blacky changed his mind.  Now, I've never even met this Blacky character, so for him to hold up the entire project was not a great introduction.  Thus far, we'd been working with Yaya, who's Adama's wife's sister's husband and who we thought was in charge of this machine.  Turns out, he's just the messenger.  And an expensive messenger to boot.  Each time he's come for a meeting we've had to pay his transport and of course he can't take public transportation like everyone else, he's gotta drive his gas guzzling car 100K.  So Yaya shows up and says 1) the price has changed and now includes a fee per brick, a transportation fee, fees for skilled and unskilled labor per day, and oh yeah, the price we'd agreed on to rent the machine has also gone up.  and 2) all of this is non-negotiable because Yaya doesn't actually own the machine, can't bargain on behalf of the machine's owner, and has mysteriously lost this guy's number.  So, enraged at wasting our time, we scrap the meeting and eat lunch.  That's when Yaya suddenly relocates the number for the machine owner and voila: our first encounter with Blacky.  us: "what happened to the price we agreed on?"blacky: "I increased it."us: "why?"blacky: "because I don't need your money to be able to eat and I can charge whatever I want.  take it or leave it."us: "fine. we'll just find another brick press.  jerk."

So that's where we're at now.  While we should be making bricks, instead we're looking for another brick press in Mali that's willing to charge a reasonable rate.  Maybe Blacky will come to his senses but he doesn't seem like some I'd like to work with for the next 6 months!

dimidium facti qui coepit habet 

He who has begun has the work half done (Horace)

Monday, April 12  (Day 1)

The day started in a taxi to the bank with $20,000,000 cash tied up in a black plastic bag.  We deposited the money into an account that would be used to purchase all the materials for the school project, and hopped on a bus to Bamako where we would buy the cement.  The ride to Bamako from Segou is roughly 3 to 4 hours, depending on the quality of bus, number of flat tires, and conditions on the road.  It's about 120 degrees inside and the windows don't open.  It took us about 3 1/2 hours.  Not bad.  As soon as we pulled into the bus station, we got a call from BuildOn saying they'd changed their minds, and would now like to purchase the cement in Segou (which we had wanted to do in the first place).  Since we were already in Bamako we took advantage of the availability of ice cream and ham sandwiches, and spent the night in air conditioning.

Tuesday, April 13 (Day 2)

Bus back to Segou.  1 flat tire.  4 1/2 hours.  120 degrees.  Not bad.

Wednesday, April 14 (Day 3)

Met with the cement vendor in Segou, negotiated the price of cement, the cost of transport, and struck a deal.  $14,323 for 1100 bags of cement.  $573 for transport to Tongo.  Not bad.  The payment would be made by wire transfer into the vendors bank account.  He seemed unfamiliar with this practice and slightly anxious but he eventually agreed and ordered the truck to start loading. The biggest truck they had could only carry 800 bags, so it would take 2 trips.  The truck arrived around 4pm and was loaded with 800 bags (40 tons) of cement in about 3 hours.

We sat in the front of the truck for the 35 mile ride to Tongo and the sun began to set.

When we arrived in Tongo it was nearly dark but we were met with enthusiastic cheers and greetings as what seemed like the entire village crowded around the truck to help unload.  The chief told me his mind had settled after the long delays and he was excited about the work that we were starting.  "This will be very good for the village," he said as bag after bag left the truck and was stacked in the only room in Tongo with a cement floor and metal roof.  

We finished unloading the truck and in true Malian style hospitality we were invited to eat dinner before we left.  By the time we were back on the road it was after 10pm.  Riding back we took the sand road through the fields, the only light coming from the trucks headlights.  It was one of those rides where everyone is quiet, lost in their own thoughts, and the world seems infinitely beautiful.  Not bad for a day's work.

Thursday, April 15 (Day 4)

There were still 300 bags of cement that needed to be transported to Tongo.  Again the truck came around 4pm, was loaded, and set off with us in the front seats.  Again we were met with a crowd in Tongo and the unloading went quickly.  Again we stayed for dinner and drove back through the fields at night.  Again, not bad.

Our encounter with Noma disease last month brought us to a specialized clinic outside Bamako where they care for patients and perform surgeries.  Impressed with the work they did, Kyle and I wanted to spread the word about both the disease and the treatment center.  So last week we rounded up a group of 10 malians who work in health clinics in and around Cinzana, and we brought them down to Bamako.  We were met by the clinic's head doctor, who had organized a tour of the facility and a presentation explaining what Noma is, how you get it, how you prevent it, and how you treat it.  Now these health workers can spread this knowledge through the rest of the region, limiting the impact of this terrible disease.

As we wait with bated breath for the school construction to commence, the temperature gets hotter and hotter.  It got up to 120 degrees today - hard to believe for those of you still laden with snow!In the meantime, we've been keeping busy with smaller projects.  This week we repaired a pump in the school garden in Cinzana that had been broken for nearly 10 years!  The garden is tended by schoolchildren who sell what they grow to buy pens and books for class.  Now that the pump is working, we'll fix the fence around the garden, and help finance seeds to begin planting.

Then of course these are those very small projects, like teaching kids to burn ants with a magnifying glass, to keep us busy:

For the sake of candor, I feel obliged to write about the bad was well as the good regarding this epic school project.  First let me say that we still expect to start buying materials and making bricks any day now.  We've been saying that for almost a year now.  Here's where we're at:  Kyle and I raised over $20,000 (thanks to many of you) toward the cost of the school.  We then partnered with the organization BuildOn to fund the remainder of the budget and help oversee construction.  BuildOn cannot finalize their commitment to the project until we know all the details of the budget, i.e. total cost of the project.  We can't finalize the budget until we stop making changes.  Which should be any day now.  Last week, we thought we had a final budget until it turned out the total cost of the project was nearly $80,000 - much more than we expected.  The original goal of the design was to introduce the technologies of compressed earth bricks and rainwater harvesting, to develop a LESS expensive alternative to Mali's standard cement construction.  But so much had been added to the design that this benefit was no longer discernible.  Thus we began the process of value engineering.  We have since settled on a scheme that keeps the original goals of design intact and takes out the unnecessary expensive materials (like I-beam columns and metal roof trusses).  These changes brought the budget down to $60,000 which is a much more manageable figure. 

 But we're still not out of the woods.  Construction in Mali has to happen in within a precise window of time based on seasonal changes and farming calendars.  It's very difficult to continue projects during the hot season, the rainy season, or during the harvest.  Even if we start construction now, there's a chance we'd be encroaching these seasons before we finish, pushing the project's completion back even further.So that's where we're at.  Pending finalization of the budget, we should be starting any day now.

Postscript - If anyone knows how Madonna manages to pop out $15 million schools in Malawi so effortlessly please let me know.

Noma (derived from the Greek "nomein" meaning "to devour") is a devastating gangrenous disease which attacks children, quickly destroying their mouth, nose, and face, and which can prove fatal after just a few weeks. Without prompt treatment, mortality rates from this disease are as high as 70-90%. I won't post pictures.  If you are curious and have a strong stomach, search "noma disease" in google images.Why am I talking about Noma disease?  It's a long story that starts about a week ago in Cinzana.  Kyle and I were packing our things to go back to Segou when Adama, Kyle's host father, shows up with a young couple and their newborn baby.  The baby has a cleft palate and the couple wants to know what we can do to help them.  Not wanting to give them false hope, we say we'll look into it when we return to Segou. Later that day, while leafing through an old Rolling Stone magazine, an ad serendipitously catches my eye:

Smile Train is an organization that provides free cleft surgery for children in developing countries.  I shot them an email.  Their quick reply brought news that not only do they work in Mali, but there was a team of Canadian doctors coming to Bamako the first 2 weeks of February to perform free surgeries!  Within a few days we were on a bus to Bamako with mother and child, headed for the hospital.  The baby, less than 1 month old, was severely malnourished and underweight (only 3 lbs!).  The doctors told us they couldn't operate on the cleft until the child was in better health.  They arranged for them to stay at the hospital, free of charge, while the baby was given a strict regiment of proper nutrition.  In the meantime, we had been contacted by another family from a neighboring village that had heard about the project.  They had a daughter in need of cleft surgery, and they met us at the hospital in Bamako.  Upon examination, the doctors informed us that the girl's condition was not actually a cleft palate, but rather an infection called "Noma."  Half of her mouth and her entire cheek had been destroyed by the disease.  Due to the severity of her condition, she was transfered to a special clinic outside Bamako designed specifically for Noma patients.  There she will receive free treatment for the infection and eventually free surgery to reconstruct her face.

In the developed world, children who acquire an infection of this sort are simply treated with penicillin and cured.  The disease has been virtually eradicated in America.  In countries like Mali, the same infection, when combined with malnutrition and poor oral hygiene, often causes death.The moral(s) of this story: 1. Don't take your health (or your healthcare system) for granted.  2. There are groups out there doing amazing work.  I don't often make plugs like this, but if you're looking for a good place to make a donation, I recommend Smile Train, a light at the end of the tunnel.  

BuildOn, the group we are working with on the school project, was just featured in a 2 part segment on the Today Show.  Learn more about them and what they do stateside:

Going from Mali to America and back to Mali, it's hard to decide which feels more like a dream.  I got to spend the holidays home with family and friends and had a wonderful time, ate good food, and generally lived it up:

Now I'm back, and I'd almost say it seems like I never left.  I got quickly back to work on the school project, and progress is slowly being made!  We had a big meeting at the mayor's office in Cinzana with all the key players involved, many of whom were meeting for the first time.  Now that we're all on the same page, the next step is to finalize the budget, which means negotiating.  No one in Mali can ever just say what the price of something is.  Sometimes getting prices can be like talking to a small child: " How much is cement?" "I don't know, how much IS cement? How much can you give me?"  Infinitely frustrating.  But we're all still optimistic about starting soon.  It's amazing to think that this dream of a project which started almost 2 years ago as an inkling of an idea, is now so close to being actualized.  Exciting!

In the meantime, life in Tongo goes on.  The garden project is a total success.  The women have planted tomatoes, onions, peppers, cabbage, papaya, okra, and whatever else suits their fancy.  They show such pride in their accomplishments, and compete for the most luscious plot: 

I've also found a little spare time to relax by the river.  Kyle and I went fishing and caught several plastic bags, an old shirt, and a huge mango tree (twice).  We think we need to go a little farther upriver...

And apparently I'm famous now - check out these links about the project:

http://architectafrica.com/Mali-School-in-Tongohttp://theroofabovemyhead.blogspot.com/2010/01/escola-no-mali.html

DISCLAIMER: The Views Represented on this Website Are Expressed as a Private Citizen, and Do Not Necessarily Represent Those of the Peace Corps or the U.S. Government. THIS IS BULLSHIT! Just when Mali starts to make progress on equal rights, the president pushes it way back. It's so disheartening!The following information is taken from an article on BBC news: The president of Mali has announced that he is not going to sign the country's new family law, instead returning it to parliament for review.Muslim groups have been protesting against the law, which gives greater rights to women, ever since parliament adopted it at the start of the month.President Amadou Toumani Toure said he was sending the law back for the sake of national unity.Muslim leaders have called the law the work of the devil and against Islam.More than 90% of Mali's population is Muslim.Some of the provisions that have proved controversial give more rights to women.For example, under the new law women are no longer required to obey their husbands, instead husbands and wives owe each other loyalty and protection.Women get greater inheritance rights, and the minimum age for girls to marry in most circumstances is raised to 18.One of the other key points Muslims have objected to is the fact that marriage is defined as a secular institution.Mali's current law specifically states that a wife must obey her husband, and that is the way things should stay says Mahmud Dicko, president of Mali's High Islamic Council."We're not trying to make women slaves. Not at all," he says."It's just the way our society is organised. The head of the family is the man, and everyone in the family has to obey him."It's like that to create harmony."Tens of thousands have turned out at protests in Bamako in recent weeks and there have been other demonstrations against the law across the country.

The rains started and everything went from brown to green almost overnight.  But the beauty of the lush grasses does not offset the fact that the rains have come too late, and not enough.  For a country that is already facing a food crisis, the onset of a drought is desperately grim for those living off of the land.I'd like to share something one of my fellow volunteers wrote, which sums up the feelings in Mali so eloquently:

Waiting for Rain by Jessie LunaI’ve often enjoyed awkward pauses in conversation, laughing inside at the clumsy silence hanging between two people. This evening, however, the pause lingering in the air presses against me like a growing balloon, and there’s no inner smile to break its taut skin.“I ni su Yaya. K’u jooni? Pi-ar-denni?” I’ve crossed paths with my close friend Yaya in the faint blue afterglow of twilight, and his white smile glows at me in the darkness. We exchange greetings, which flow naturally between us, overlapping, advancing and retreating like waves. When the tide ebbs, I complain about the topic that no one can avoid,“I was sure rain was going to come this afternoon. The wind kicked up, the sky darkened, and then it vanished.”“I thought it was going to come too.  I really did.”“How many millimeters have you measured this month?”“Not even twenty. Last year we had more than 200 by this time. I’ve never seen anything like this. No one has.”            His words drop into the night air and leave only a hole, a gaping silence that I don’t know how to fill. I look up at the emerging stars, that lovely sight that has become ominous in its unabashed verification of a clear and cloudless sky. It’s been twelve days since the last rain fell in M’Pedougou, and everything and everyone watches the sky in angst. The corn plants, poking their puerile heads out of the ground, complain amongst each other in soft parched murmurs about the drought and the noisome clouds of dust.            The silent balloon pressed against my flesh starts to hurt, but I don’t know what to say to Yaya. He rescues me with a gentle, “A be na nogoya,” It’ll get better. We’ll get out of this. I nod and affirm his blessings, and we continue on our paths. The silence, though broken, still clings to me and I can’t shake off its sticky tendrils.            What if it doesn’t nogoya? What if this is a symptom of global warming, and Mali (and the world) is in store for more and more extreme weather events that will disrupt our ways of life and of living? I look up at the sky again, trying to locate the shreds of guilty silence still weighing on me in the darkness. The sticky part of the silence is the part gnawing its way into my conscience: the awareness of my own contributions to that unseen but present layer of greenhouse gases. The stars wink down at me through these layers, and I remember with greater guilt that I’m going home soon. Back to the land of gas-guzzling cars, heaters, air conditioners and TVs and rampant, blind, blithely rapacious energy use that we use to entertain ourselves and to make our lives “comfortable” and “easy.”            Standing here in the dark on a well-worn footpath in this small African village, I have felt no greater shame. It will be Yaya, the man with the warmest smile I’ve ever known, who will have to sell some cows this year to help his family get by. It will be Alimatu, my host mom who tells stories late into the night, who will have to scrape at the dry earth with her short-handled hoe to re-plant crops when the first planting has died of thirst. It is these people, who have worked outside under a blistering sun their whole lives, who have never known the luxuries of light switches, running water, refrigerators, or cars in which to zip down to the 7-11 for a slurpee and a bag of chips, who will suffer (first) through the consequences ofour behavior.The true irony lies in their desire to be like us. They are people who traditionally lived only off the interest of their “natural bank account,” leaving the principal alone so their kids would have something to live of off. Then they see and hear of America, which is eating away directly at its principal and proclaiming itself “wealthy,” and they are envious of our wealth. It’s normal, it’s only human, but it’s also tragic. How can I go home and go back to the American life, after seeing and knowing what I do now? Now that I know that when I hop into a car or buy food shipped from across the country, doused with fertilizers, and processed in a fume-emitting factory… that in merely participating in the American lifestyle, I’m (in an indirect way, but as part of the larger problem) making the soil just a little bit dryer for my dear friends Yaya and Alimatu. They won’t blame me. When I leave they’ll thank me profusely with heaps of peanuts and chickens for coming to “help” them, and I’ll smile guiltily and glance up at their dry skies. That will be an awkward pause that sticks with me for awhile.

Sorry it been so long since my last post!  So many people  have asked me to keep posting, so here it is!

I came back to Mali in May after a wonderful month in America seeing family and friends and eating good food.  Now its back to work and back to "toh."  It's rainy season here now, which means that it's hot during the day, with torrential downpours at night.  But with the rains come lots of vegetables that are now available at the market!  Yum! The school project is finally becoming real and work is happening fast now.  We've teamed up with a group called BuildOn who is helping us iron out the details and we'll start making bricks in november! (Inshallah!)In the meantime, I've been keeping myself busy!  One of the highlights in recent weeks was my friend Solo's wedding in Cinzana.  All the guests were instructed to buy the same fabric and have an outfit made (see below).  So my teammate Kyle and I each had something made and rocked it at the wedding.  However, the wedding was a 2 day affair.  We showed up the first day wearing the "uniform" only to discover that we'd jumped the gun and were the only ones.  We went home and changed.  After the ceremony, which consisted of everyone cramming into the Mayor's office and watching the bride and groom sign into the registry, there was big meal, followed by dancing.  In the afternoon, everyone showed up wearing the matching outfits.  So we went home again and put them back on.

(the party was BYOB, or bring your own bench!)

Another fun occasion was going to my friend John's village for the dedication ceremony of his completed women's garden project.  Malians really like to give long speeches on formal occasions, and this was no exception.  After listening to words from the chief of the village and the mayor, John also gave a speech in Bambara to thunderous applause.  We were treated as distinguished guests, adored by the kids, and given a gourmet meal of beans.

The last time I was in Bamako, I took a trip to the "Jardin Zoologique" (or Zoo).  Although the park was surprisingly well maintained, and they had more animals than expected, conditions in the zoo were a little depressing.  The cages were small and the animals looked terribly malnourished.  

The low point was a dead manatee in a broken tank.  How or why they ever brought a manatee to west africa is beyond me...  

But the highlights included a baby elephant, and a brontosaurus!

In between all these exciting events, I've just been hanging out in Tongo, Cinzana, and Segou.  As may of my fellow volunteers start heading back home after finishing their 2 years, I'm preparing for my 3rd and hopefully best.

As always, comments, emails, letters, and care packages are greatly appreciated!!!

Some of you have been begging me to update the blog, so here it is.

...I'm still in Mali. That much hasn't changed.

I'm still trying to build a school. There've been a lot of twists and turns and grovelling and promises of NGO partnerships and setbacks and developments, and the latest is that we've raised over $15,000 so far, which is substantial, and thanks to all of you who had a part in that. It also seems like we're going to able to work with BuildOn to fund the rest of the project and help with its construction. So that's great news! But because of the Malian climate, it looks like we won't be starting construction until January 2010! So I've decided to stay a third year to finish the project through to the very last brick.

In the meantime, class has resumed in Tongo, the cold season has come and gone, and it's HOT. The well has been dug, and is 99% complete. The only thing it lacks is a lid. We plan to start building the latrines for the school in another month, and we just put up a real fence around the women's garden so the ckickens can't get in and eat all the good stuff.

I also helped Kyle, my closest volunteer, paint a world map in his village. We quickly realized that most of the kids (and even the adults) couldn't even locate Mali on a map, much less America or other countries, so we held a couple mini-geography lessons.

We also realized that Malians go nuts over marshmellows, which they pronounce as marshymellons. We had a great time teaching them how to make smores. If anyone's looking for good ideas for care packages, send marshmellows, grahm crackers, and chocolate!

That's the update so far. I'm heading off to Paris in two weeks to kiss Seth under the Eiffel tower, and then rumor has it that I might be making a guest appearance in the US in April............ Keep your fingers crossed.

In the meantime, here's a picture of a 2 year old driving a motorcycle:

After much delay, we've started making cement bricks for the well:

We're still in the prime months for farming, so men in the village are taking turns working each day, so that no one's crops get neglected. We've made 1088 bricks so far, leaving 912 to go (which they're working on while I'm here in Bamako).

The curved bricks are formed in a small mold, one brick at a time, and then left to cure. Since my village really has no experience working with cement, it's both heartening and harrowing watching them climb the learning curve. If the mixture is too wet or has too much sand, the bricks will slump over and deform once they leave the mold. In fact, just like snowflakes, no two bricks are exactly the same. As a perfectionist, it's comforting to know that they will all be hidden inside the well, 30 meters below ground.

It's been a great time so far, finally getting to start some 'real' work. Each day the crew shows up to the site equipped with wheelbarrow, shovels, cement, a charcoal stove, tea, and sugar. Everything you need for a day's work. They take turns making bricks, making tea, and napping the wheelbarrow:

As soon as the rains stop (next month, Inshallah!), we'll start digging the well.

The school project is also moving along quickly! After working with a contractor, trying to convince him of the importance of using local materials rather than tons of metal and cement, I've put together a rough budget. For 6 classrooms, a large rainwater harvesting system, and 4 composting latrines, it comes to about $60,000. The local commune has pledged to pay an unknown percentage, and a local NGO has pledged to pay another unknown percentage. For the remainder, however much that may be, I've got to find another source of funding. There's a peace corps program that allows family and friends (and anybody else) to donate to volunteer projects, so don't be too surprised if I hit ya'll up in the near future to donate! More info to come as soon as some of these unknowns become known!

Sorry for the excruciatingly long delay in posting; I know everyone has been waiting on the edge of their rolley chairs! In addition to projects keeping me busy, I've been entertaining some delightful visitors. My sister Amy flew in last month, and agreed to help me plant some trees at the site for the new school. While this sounds like a simple task, it proved to be a quite epic adventure. We bought 4 mango trees in Bamako, and by the time they reached their new home they had ridden on 8 different forms of transportation! We checked them under the bus (1) from Bamako to Segou, which broke down somewhere mid-way, and finally dropped us on the side of the road around 3 a.m. just outside Segou. With no taxi in sight, we hired a "push-push" driver (2), (similar to a wheelbarrow), to walk them, and our luggage, to the hotel. On the way there we hitched a ride in a good samaritan's car (3), with the trees poking out of the trunk. The next morning they rode in a taxi (4) to the bus stop, and then under the seats of a bachée (5) to Cinzana, where Kyle (my closest fellow volunteer) lives, and where we'd find the road to my village. Once there, they (both Amy and the trees) were piled onto a donkey cart (6) to Kyle's house, where we spent the night and had a fantastic chicken dinner.

The next morning we were up at sunrise to load them onto the roof of a van (7) that would drop them off in my village, 20 kilometers away.

While the trees sped down the road, Amy and I made the trip on bikes, arriving 3 and a half hours after them.

Once in my village, we took the rest of the day to rest, greet the chief, and clean up my mud hut. The next day was spent measuring the footprint of the new buildings on the site and staking out the spots for the trees, which were brought to the site tied to the back of a bike (8) and planted the following morning.

With the great mango epic concluded, Amy and I headed up to Mopti to see Dogon country. We did a 3 day hike up and back down a cliff, through animist villages and ancient granaries, then enjoyed a brief though scenic boat ride on the Niger river. (Amy might be able to tell you a different version of the story, but I'll leave that up to her.)

After the trip we hauled it back to my village, biking another 20K, to kill a goat and throw a party. Now, some of you might know that I'm not a big fan of small children, and I've spent the last year training them to stay away from my house. Amy, being a good-hearted kindergarten teacher, spent the entirety of the party tickling, playing frisbee with, and giving stickers to the little kids. A whole year of hard work ruined in one day. They keep asking when she's coming back...

I had a couple weeks after Amy's visit to work on projects, although some inevitable setbacks kept me from getting much done. Even though we can't start digging the well until after the rainy season, we can start to make the bricks now, saving some time later on. I purchased 60 bags of cement in Cinzana, and arranged for some people from my village to come pick them up on donkey carts. When the day arrived, I got a phone call saying that another baby had died in my village, and we'd have to wait until the next day to transport the cement. The next day came and we loaded up the carts. A few hours later I got another phone call saying that it had started raining on the road, and some of the bags had gotten wet. They weren't too badly damaged, so we arranged to start work the day the well technician was scheduled to come. The day came, but the technician didn't. He had come down with malaria, and would be unable to start for a few days.

In the midst of all this mayhem, after some delayed flights and a little confusion about dates, my boyfriend Seth flew in. He survived the 20K ride to my site, was greeted by the entire council of elders, and received a warm welcome from the chief, after whom he was named (Isa Coulabaly). Since he's here, I'll let him tell the rest in his own words:

Hello everyone; Seth here. The trip to get here was certainly eventful. After missing my connecting flight in New York, I spent the night at JFK waiting to get put on the next flight to Casablanca. Unfortunately, that meant waiting around until 8:40 p.m. Luckily, however, I met an exceedingly nice Moroccan man and his family who had also missed the flight, which made the time pass easier. Getting into Casablanca at 8:30 a.m., I had (after a little help from Hicham (the gentleman I met in New York) to get me to the right gate) an exciting 16 hour wait for my flight to Bamako. Not having foreseen some of the difficulties of international travel, I was not prepared for the fact that the airport did not accept plastic currency. Luckily, I had a bag of trail mix in my carry-on and enough American money to buy a bottle of water. Needless to say, I passed the time mostly by sleeping. My travels ended at about 4:45 a.m. when I got to the Bamako airport and found Mary waiting for me (luckily, as there was some mix up about when exactly I would be arriving!) with a taxi to take us into the city.

Since that initial difficulty, it has been a wonderful trip. Mary was kind enough to ease me into Malian life so as not to overwhelm me right at first. We spent the first day in Bamako, enjoying air conditioning and good food. I was able to meet some of the other volunteers here and find out a little bit more about the Peace Corps life. Then, we headed off to Segou, where I was once again pampered by getting a ride on a Peace Corps shuttle (with comfortable seats and air conditioning!). After Bamako, Segou was a nice contrast: While Bamako is a big, bustling city, Segou is much easier to take in. We spent a day there as well, enjoying good food once again and air conditioning at the hotel. The next day would begin my real Malian experience.

Getting out to Mary's site, we had to wait at a stand for whatever available transportation came our way. Mary always says that one thing she has learnt here is patience, and that certainly held true in this case. While we waited, I got to try my first real Malian food...rice with peanut sauce from a street vendor. It was actually quite good, and I even tried a little bit of cow stomach. Amazingly, our luck with transportation held, and we were able to catch a ride with two guys in a nice jeep. Even more astonishing, the passenger of the jeep had spent two years studying entymology in Columbus, Ohio. A small world indeed! The car dropped us of in Cinzana, where we were greeted by the sight of a celebration for the Japanese ambassador's arrival to the village. Probably the starkest moment of that party was the crowd of men with old muzzle-loader rifles firing their guns into the air; the noise was unbelievable!

After spending the night in Cinzana (my first time under a mosquito net, as well as my first experience of eating Malian fashion (with my hands)), we prepared for the trek out to Mary's village.

Considering the fact that the longest consecutive ride I've taken on a bike since I was a child has been about a mile, then 12.5 miles out to Tongo was a slightly daunting proposition. It is a beautiful ride through the country (even if at the time I was not in the best condition to appreciate it), and it was a pleasure to finally see Mary's village. The people there are beyond nice and spent no time in making me feel welcome.

We spent the next couple of days at her site, relaxing during the day and greeting people at night. It was a little strange to hang out with people when I have no grasp of the language, but of course Mary made it easier on me. I got to enjoy the Malian tea ceremony quite a few times, which is a fascinating processes to watch, and delicious to indulge. After a few days, it turned out that we had to return to Segou to purchase some materials for Mary's project, which entailed another bike ride to Cinzana, after which I got to experience another form of transportation, the reconditioned charter bus.

Spending another night in Segou, we returned to Cinzana the next day, replete with wheelbarrow and shovels. As we walked with them down the early morning streets of Segou, we received a multitude of humored stares and comments about the white people walking with a wheelbarrow. Luckily, a passing donkey cart was kind enough to pick us up and take us to the place where we could find a bachée to transport us and the tools to Cinzana, The wait was a short one, and luckily the bus was going past Tongo, so we were able to get the driver to drop the stuff of at the village while we spent the night in Cinzana, biking back to Tongo the next. This bike ride was the easiest, and the most beautiful. We left in the afternoon, so we didn't have to worry about beating the noon heat and were able to take out time and enjoy the scenery. After spending another day in Mary's village, we came back to Segou (another bike ride...50 miles in six days!), where I finally met Mary's friend Amy. We had a fun night, including a walk down to the river for sunset and sharing a drink with a crippled poet of Mary's acquaintance.

The next day, we came back to Bamako by charter bus, then went for a quick trip to Siby, which is about an hour south of the city. Siby is a truly beautiful part of Mali, up in the mountains with some wonderful opportunities for hiking. The way the wind and rain of carved out the rock is truly beautiful, and there are apparently some gorgeous waterfalls in the area, although we didn't spend enough time there to really experience them.

Overall, the trip has been amazing. It is nice to finally experience first hand what Mary's has been talking about during the past year. The people here are among the nicest I have ever met, and I can honestly say that I like this country (although I'm not sure that I could live here; it makes for me even more impressive what Mary has done). I'm glad I came during rainy season, as I'm fairly certain I wouldn't have been able to function had the weather been any hotter. I'm sad to have to leave tomorrow, but I'm happy that I was able to make this trip and see a part of what that past year has been for Mary. It has definitely been more than worth it.

I mentioned that I submitted a proposal for funding to dig a well. WELL, (*pun intended*), just after I submitted it the price of cement nearly doubled and the American dollar dropped yet again. Since the funding comes in US dollars, this would have been a bit of a problem. So I un-submitted the proposal and adjusted it for the dynamics of our global economy. This delay, however, pushes the project back into the rainy season when it is not advisable to be digging wells. After rainy season comes the millet harvest, when everyone has to work in the fields. So we may not be able to start the well until September. But no sweat - it gives me time to finalize details for the school construction, teach my village the joys of compressed stabilized earth bricks, and maybe read War and Peace.

I feel like I sometimes sugar-coat things when talking about my experiences here, so in this post I'm gunna tell it how it is and say a few words about harassment. Being a young, white, unmarried woman is not an easy thing in this culture. Every conversation with a male Malian goes one of two ways; in the first scenario, he asks if I'm married, I say no, he asks if I will marry him, I ask why, he says he wants to marry a white woman, I say no, he asks if I'm racist. In scenario number two he asks if I'm married, I say yes, he says where is your husband, I say he's in America (or Bamako, or Segou, or wherever), he asks if my husband is white, I say yes, he asks if I'm racist. I say, yes, obviously I'm racist since I chose to live in Africa for two years doing development work!

In addition to marriage proposals and accusations of racism, lets talk about physical harassment. The other day I was buying sugar at a boutique, and a man grabbed my ass. I turned around and yelled at him, and then he LAUGHED. And the other men sitting around watching also laughed. I don't know which was more infuriating - the harassment or the absolute lack of respect conveyed by the laughter.

Later that day, walking through the city, I was followed by a group of children chanting "tubabu" (white person) and asking for money. When I said 'no' and walked on, they began throwing rocks at me. I turned around and yelled at them, and they laughed.

These bad apples, of which there are many, make it necessary to approach every situation with caution, and make it difficult to trust even the good apples, of which there are also many. It's easy to forget, after a bad experience, about the abundance of wonderful people I've met here and it's easy to write off all Malians as peccant and offensive.

This kind of harassment has never occurred in my village. There, I feel like a welcome addition to the community. Everyone knows my name, and shows me an incredible amount of respect and hospitality. It's a welcome change after leaving the anonymity vexation of the city.

It's been so long since my last post I don't even know where to start. There have been a lot of developments with my school project. We're definitely going ahead with it and my village couldn't be more excited. I think I was hesitant at first to get going because I wasn't sure if it was something that the village really needed or it was just my own interest in doing a construction project, but after many community meetings I'm convinced that it's definitely a beneficial project for the village. I learned that the construction of a new schoolhouse in Tongo has been on the "5-year plan" of the commune for a long time, but there was never enough resources and organization to make it happen. Some things have already been set in motion, though. Last year the village secured a plot of land and had it surveyed. They led me out to the site and I was amazed to see that they had already staked out exactly where they want the new building and already built a house for the new teachers! I also met with the mayor of the commune who was incredibly enthusiastic and agreed to do what it takes to hire more teachers. There are currently 2 teachers in Tongo, and the school goes from the first to the fourth grade. Yet since there are only 2 classrooms and 2 teachers, first and second grade students attend in the morning and third and forth grade attend in the afternoon. The "premier cycle" of the educational system here is 6 grades, after which you pass on to second cycle, then high school, then college (if you're lucky and not needed to work in the fields). But the closest school with fifth and sixth grade is 20 kilometers away. Most students in Tongo complete the fourth grade and never go on past that. So the plan is to construct a 6 room school house with 6 teachers. The building also incorporates a large rainwater catchment system to be used for irrigation in the garden. The design is finished, and I'm now in the process of pricing all the materials. Everything is going to be built by the community and everything except the sheet metal and columns for the roof is local, sustainable material. We're using compressed earth bricks and a rammed earth foundation. I'm even trying to convince them that we can make some window screens out of a calabash.

The first step now is to get water. I just submitted a grant proposal to get funding to dig a well on the site, which we can hopefully finish before the millet harvest. We're scheduled to start construction of the school in January and it would be nice if we had water on the site first!

I definitely feel like I'm challenging myself with this project, working as architect, contractor, and construction manager. The hardest part for me is knowing when to admit that I need help with things and then asking for it. I'm also realizing that the level of community participation that I advocated in my thesis is extremely difficult to achieve - at least much more so than I expected! Coordinating illiterate villagers to take up responsibilities like putting together and managing a budget is a task that I never anticipated or addressed in my thesis, but which I now realize is one of the most useful skills that I can transfer.

In the meantime, I'm still having a great time here, filled with innumerable wonderful experiences. I just got back from a brief trip to Bamako where I ate so much delicious food! Now it's back to snot sauce as I return to my village. Although I must confess that I'm kind-of starting to like the food... It's hot season here, which is pretty close to unbearable. Even the Malians don't move out of the shade between 10am and 5pm. I hear it's spring in America? How's that going for ya'll?

Senegal was amazing. I couldn't get over how developed it is; Dakar is like a little new york city.

Our team did pretty well at the softball tournament, but our biggest success was our uniforms: dogon hats and bogolan shirts - very Malian.

Between games, I got in a lot of good beach time, too.

Ah, the beach...

I also got to explore Dakar a little, and went to the African Art Museum (IFAN), whice is supposed to be the best in West Africa. But if this is the best, I'd hate to see the worst. I was mostly disapointed by the 'modern' art section (although happy that they even HAD a modern art section).

The rest of the museum was mostly displays of masks and costumes used in ceremonies.

One display in particular was especially interesting. ...When I first got to Segou, and was furnishing my house, I bought a blanket at the market that was really neat looking - black and white checkers and really soft. It's been on my bed ever since and was great during the cold season. However, I learned at the museum that it is, in fact, the burial blanked used in traditional ceremonies. Oops.

The way back from Dakar was possibly the hardest journey I've ever made. Not because it was tough to leave behind the beach and all the good food, but because transportation is TERRIBLE. On the way there, I was reading a book on international development, emphasizing the importance of developing the infrastructure for landlocked countries to have access to shipping ports. Ironically, the road was so bad that I could barely focus on the words on the page.

On the way home, I had planned to take the train all the way to Bamako, and was really excited about the idea of seeing the country side in such a romantic way, but it derailed on it's way into Senegal and was out of service. So I was stuck on a hot bus for 4 days that kept breaking down, was stuck on the side of the road several times for many hours, and generally sucked.

I did get to at least SEE the train station, though, and got to go inside one of the old cars. Maybe next year...

But I got back to Segou in one piece, and decided to extend my vacation by a few days and go see the village across the river where they fire all the pottery that's sold in the market here. We took an hour long boat ride, and got there just in time to see them lighting the fires. Rather than baking the pots in a kiln, they stack them on the ground, cover them with sticks and grasses, and light the whole pile on fire.

I just got back from Bamako, after attending the TERRA 2008 INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON EARTHEN ARCHITECTURE! It deserves all caps, because it was just that exciting. I met hundreds of people from all over the world who love building with dirt as much as I do! Who knew? And they all wanted to give me lots of money to build this school that I'm working on. So yay! It was all fantastic. We talked about different ways to build with dirt, different ways to preserve earthen structures, what additives to mix with earthen mortar, how to stabalize earthen structures with bamboo to resist earthquakes, and so many other fun topics! And it all happened right in my own back yard: Bamako!

So here's the update on the school project:

This is the condition of the current school:

The village is totally stoked about the idea, and I'm trying to keep them included in every step of the process. When I get back to site, I'm going to work for a day with the kids in the school to draw pictures of what they want the new building to look like. Then we're having a community meeting to look at the kids drawings, my interpretations of them, and get any other input that people feel strongly about.

We're leaning toward using compressed earth bricks, because the village wants concrete, which is expensive and not really available locally, over adobe bricks, so we settled in the middle with compressed earth bricks. I'm still looking for engineers to help with the water harvesting system.

As for the women's garden, things have started growing, and a few of the plots are doing great. We're having a little trouble with chickens getting in and eating everything, so the next step looks like we'll have to improve the fence, either by getting a metal fence, or planting really thorny bushes all around it.

All of the millet harvesting is finished, so the village is now busy with adobe brick production to fix up their houses before the rainy season:

I'm off to Senegal in a few days, to play softball, lay by the beach, and eat fish! I couldn't be more excited.

p.s. This is the inside of my house (since I've never posted a picture of it):

Cozy, huh?

I gotten a lot of requests to translate that last line, so here's the story that goes with it: I came into Segou for new years eve, and took a boat ride on the river to watch the sun set with some friends. While we were on the boat we saw some fireworks (Malians celebrate new years, too!). I tried to ask the word for fireworks in bambara: A be fo cogodi ni tasuma be sanfe? (translation: How is it called when fire is in the sky?). And the answer I got was "Tasuma be sanfe" (fire in the sky). This might be a 'had to be there' moment, but it says something about the literalness of the language that continually cracks me up.

Anyway, I'm back in Segou having finished another round of training. I'm really looking foreward to getting back to my village, as I now have several exciting project ideas that I need to go over with them. I've been talking to Engineers Without Boarders (another volunteer service organization) about collaborating on the construction of a real school building in my village (made out of more than sticks and leaves) that incorporates large scale rainwater harvesting for irrigation in the garden. Nothing is certain yet, but the project would take care of several of my village's biggest needs - education, access to water, and small scale income generation (i.e. selling the produce from the garden), so I'm working hard to make it happen.

I don't know when I got so busy! I'll be back in Bamako in a little over a week to attend a conference on Earthen Architecture, then I'm off to Senegal for the West African International Softball Tournament (WAIST). Lots of fun ahead.

Please keep me posted on how all of YOU are doing!

Sorry for the short christmas post, but, as promised, I can write more often now that I'm in Bamako for a few weeks, with all the luxuries of the modern world. We tried to watch the OSU game last night, huddled together under discarded refugee blankets at 1 in the morning, but it wouldn't stream fast enough from the internet, so we gave up. I heard they lost anyway. Tonight we're taking advantage of the CNN access here to watch the New Hampshire primaries. We'll take what we can get.

What brings me to Bamako, other than internet and CNN, is the second phase of technical training. In between football games and catching up with all the other volunteers, we're learning methods for digging wells, irrigating gardens, composting, etc., and also how to find funding for such projects.

I mentioned refugee blankets - yes, it's freezing here! I didn't take them seriously when they said that cold season was coming, but it's true! I'm wearing sweaters and sitting around fires to keep warm.

A be fo cogodi ni tasuma be sanfe?

After Tabaski, I headed down to Bamako to spend Christmas with some friends. Warm weather and the pace of the big city snuffed out much of the holiday feel, but we celebrated christmas eve toasting wine and cheese cozily at our hotel. Even though Bamako offers 'real food' such as hamburgers and ice cream, we ate our Christmas dinner at an egg shack, and headed out to watch some live music. That's when it hit me. I spent the rest of christmas in the bathroom, humming carols.

(disclaimer - this post is not for the weak stomached!)

I survived my first Tabaski and am back in the city having JUST finished a 50K bike ride. (The internet cafe is air conditioned, so it's a good place to cool off!)

Tabaski started out much like Ramadan: everyone wore their best clothes and prayed together in a field (see previous picture), but after the prayer everyone rushed to the village center for a mass slaughtering of sheep. Since every family is required to kill a sheep (in memory of the sheep Abraham killed instead of his son), we're talking somewhere around 30 sheep, necks slit, in a pile, twitching on the ground. I'll spare you all the pictures. The rest of the day was spent cooking and eating. Everyone in the village also felt compelled to give me a pile of their meat, and by the end of the day I had amassed over 10 kilo's, piled into a bucket. Keep in mind that when I say meat I mean every part that once belonged to the animal: bones, stomaches, intestines, everything. Now some of these are actually quite good; the liver's tasty, as are the kidneys. But the stomach I just can't stomach. I ended up giving a lot of my loot away to other families. The meat fest was followed by a lot of dancing and drinking of tea, late into the night.

Now I'm getting ready for christmas in the city with other volunteers and, hopefully, with a little less meat.

Happy Thanksgiving! I just got back into town after spending Thanksgiving with some other volunteers. We actually managed to make a complete thanksgiving dinner, with turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, green beans, fruit salad, even pumpkin pie! It was amazing. We bought 2 turkeys (alive) cut their necks (facing mecca, of course), took out feathers and organs, and cooked 'em up. And to think that I was once a vegetarian!

But it's back to work tomorrow. It's "cold season" which means there's a lot of work going on. By cold I mean sometimes it gets down to the 70's, at night. Yet people in my village are starting to walk around in hats and puffy coats!

Now is the time of year when everyone is harvesting crops, and here that consists mostly of millet. I've gone out to the fields a few times to help, but mostly I've been constructing structures to store the grain (cereal banks, I guess), made out of mud. They have a really neat method of stacking interlocking wet mud bricks into circular forms with a single window. It's pretty fast, and with 3 people you can get one up in about two days.

I'm also getting chickens next week to raise for the eggs (and for a steady source of protien)! So between the garden, the (free range) chickens, the lack of electricity, and riding my bike everywhere, my carbon impact is probably the lowest it's ever been. (Minus the bit of petrol I use in my lantern.) All the farming here is done without machines, too; it's picked by hand, carried on heads, and then transported by donkey cart.

That's pretty much the update. I feel like I've just about settled in, although there are still plenty of random events (like having a picnic in the middle of a millet field, gathered around a single bowl scooping up handfulls of toh and snot sauce) to remind me that, oh yeah, I'm in Africa...

The end of Ramadan, the men praying together.

Dance party!

At exactly noon every day, all the goats in the village (that's, like, several thousand goats!) gather in front of my house on their way out to pasture. You have to see the video to really understand how crazy it is.

A bunch of volunteers met up to celebrate halloween in the city. There's no pumpkins in Mali, so we carved watermelons (which, surprisingly, ARE in Mali)!

And the garden is coming along quickly. We finished the fence in a day, with the help of half the men in the village who showed up to dig holes, cut branches, and tie sticks together. It looks great, and we're going to start planting as soon as I get back to site.

That's the update for now. Life goes along at a slow pace, yet my thoughts run as fast as ever.

Village life is still surprisingly busy. The women really want to start a vegetable garden, so we're diving right in, head first, while it's still a good season to start planting. I found 30 women to form a committee, and put them in charge of deciding what to grow and where to buy the seeds, and I arranged with the chief to give us the plot of land. I felt just like a real architect as I went out to measure the site and sketch a plan of where all the plots will go. But there's no tape measure, so I had to do it Malian style by measuring out one meter (the length of my feet to my bottom rib) and then tying knots in a rope at 1 meter intervals. But I couldn't figure out how to make a perfect right angle until just this morning when I woke up dreaming about finding the hypotenuse of a right triangle, and realized that was the answer I was looking for. And luck would have it that the dimensions just happen to be 30 by 40! Thank you Pythagoras. So we're starting construction of the fence tomorrow when I get back. I'm in the city now, catching up on the stories from other volunteers' villages and eating 'real' food. Which brings me to the subject of food. I'm learning to cook all over again as my ingredients are limited to millet, rice, onions, salt, various leaves, and the occasional tomato. I'm getting pretty creative, but the only other alternative is the afore-mentioned playdoh and snot sauce, which I want to aviod if possible.

We did have meat for Fitr, at the end of ramadan. I watched as they killed two cows, skinned them, and divided up all (and I do mean All) the pieces. We had a big fiest at sunset, and the next morning the entire village gathered in a field at sunrise to pray; men in the front, boys in the back, and women off to the side (and me, standing with the young girls, looking on). Then we drank coffee, ate candy, and had a dance party for the rest of the day. It was quite a good time. The next day I was snapped back into reality as another child died, the 4th in the village since I've been there, and I had to go make the proper blessings to the family. When you hear statistics like "6,000,000 children under the age of 5 die each year from malnutrition" (or, like, 16,000 a day, if I did the math right), it's hard to fathom until you see the reality of it. If you add the next 2 leading causes of death, waterborn diseases and AIDS, the number goes up to around 40,000 a day. From preventable causes. (...stay with me, I'll get off the soap box soon...) I'm excited about the work in Jeffrey Sachs' Millennium Villages, one of which is only a few kilometers from my site. The basic idea is that if you pump enough money into an area to bring up everything at the same time (i.e. education, health, agriculture) that it has a much better chance at sustaining itself than a village receiving aid in only one sector. It's an experiment (a very very well funded experiment) and I'm excited to see how it works over the next 2 years.

I could write for another hour, but my internet time is up. Thank you to everyone who's sent me emails, snail mails, and packages! They are so appreciated; keep them coming! Blog comments are also appreciated. How else do I know if anyone is reading this thing??

oh, where to start? I moved into my village, set up house. A bed, a floor mat, and some pots and pans are about my only furnishings so far, but I put that interior design degree to use, made some curtains, and decorated the termite infested walls a little. Its about as cozy as a mud hut could be. Ive been super busy the last two weeks getting to know everyone in the village, and settling in. Ive also done an incredible amount of manual labor. I didnt know the bambara word for architect (because there is no word) so I told my village I was a house builder, and theyve been putting me to work! I built a soak pit for my waste water, helped build a small addition to the school (out of sticks and rope, like robinson crusoe), and built a porch off my house so I can sit outside in the shade.

Ive also been doing some baseline surveys to figure out what the village needs (and figure out what I should be doing for the next two years). Aside from sanitation needs like soak pits, access to potable water, and trash management, the women are really interested in starting a collective vegetable garden, which I think will be a fun side project. On a much larger scale, from what Ive seen, there is also the need to develop the infrastructure for the village to host a market once a week, as they have to travel several hours to the closest market town. The chief is really excited by the idea of a market, as am I, so Im doing some work to figure out the economics of how it would work, etc. In short, Ive got a lot to keep me busy!

My new address is:

Mary Althoff

Corps de la Paix

B.P. 117

Segou, Mali

West Africa

I love to get mail and packages! Send junk food, candy, spices, seeds (veggies and flowers), and pictures of ya'll. And can somebody send me a potato peeler? Just one please, though, so pick a delegate.

Training is almost finished. We left Missalabugu yesterday with heavy hearts on both sides. It was delicate, also, to explain again to my host family that even though I've been living with them for 2 months and they've been helping me learn the language, cooking for me, and washing my clothes, that now I'm going to go do projects in ANOTHER village. I'm not giving anything to the village that has given me so much. I learned how to say the equivalent of 'it's not up to me' in Bambara, but I still feel a little remorse. I did get to do one little construction project just before we left: a wash area and soak pit next to one of the community wells.

A soak pit is basically a hole filled with rocks that water drains into and can then be absorbed back into the ground, rather than running all over the place. And the wash area is a small concrete pad where woman can come to wash clothes, rather than making a bunch of soapy mud in front of their houses. Even though we were pretty rushed, both came out pretty well and the village is really happy with them. We also did a sensitization session about hand washing and sanitation - a little taste of what I'll be doing a lot when I get to my village.

Then we threw a big farewell party! We bought 20 kg of beans (enough to feed the whole village) and cooked them up with tomato, onion, garlic, and lots of hot pepper. It was tasty, but the truth is that we really just wanted to get them to eat beans for the protein. See, Malians are a little bit like 3rd graders when it comes to beans... They insist that eating beans makes your fart, and farting is totally totally unthinkably rude, so they don't eat beans. They all like beans, and beans are the same price as rice, which they eat all the time, but they can't seem to get over the stigma of farting. So we told them it was "american food" and they ate it. Everybody seemed to like it, and even if they didn't, they ate it anyway and it was more much-needed protein than they normally get in a month. Ramadan started a few days ago and everyone is fasting from sunrise to sunset, so we ate the beans in the dark. And then we had a dance party to some malian music.

On a bit sadder note, my 3 year-old host-brother died last week, of malaria. It was the second infant death in the village during the 2 months we were there, the first being of malnutrition. The day of his death everyone in the village came to my house and gave blessings, men on one side women on the other. We all sat in silence for half an hour or an hour, while the elders in the village took the body to be buried. Then everyone kind-of went about the rest of their day as though nothing had happened, and it wasn't mentioned again. It was staggering. There are so many tragic realities here that could be easily avoided through education. We don't know how good we have it.

(On a happier note, yes, that IS a new yorker magazine!)

I finish up my technical training this week and then move to my site. But I've got internet all this week, and don't really know what else ya'll want to hear about... so flood the comments with questions! In the meantime, here are some nice photos I've taken:

Where to start?? The last week feels like several years worth of experiences. I visited the village where I'll be living for the next two years. It totally fits every expectation (good and bad) that I'd imagined. It's a really small village, about 400 or possibly 500 people. It's "in the bush" meaning far far from civilization. Needless to say there's no running water or electricity. The morning routine of taking a shower (which is repeated again before dinner) involves waking up with the sun to the sounds of roosters and donkeys (and if you've never heard a donkey, consider it a blessing), then I walk to the well with my bucket, hitch it to the rope, and drop it down. I'm going to have arms of iron soon, because, man, that bucket is HEAVY to pull back up, even with a pulley. Then I carry it on my head back to my house, and take a bucket bath. All of this is done in total silence, as you're not allowed to greet anyone until after you've washed your face. Once clean, I come back out of my house and greet everyone. This is not just a simple 'hello,' but rather an extended interview process with every person encountered. The dialogue is totally scripted and, loosely translated, goes something like this:

A: you and morning

B: N-say, you and morning

A: peace in the night?

B: only peace

A: are you in good health?

B: no troubles

A: is your father in good health?

B: no troubles

A: is your mother in good health?

B: no troubles

A: is your family in good health?

B: no troubles.

A: N-say

B: N-say

A: N-say

B: peace in the night?

A: only peace

B: are you in good health

A: no troubles

etc....

Then you move on to the next person and start over again. There is no variation. Even if your father is dying of malaria, you have to say 'no troubles.' There's also really no translation for "N-say." If you're a guy you'd say "N-baa" instead, but it's really just like a "yeah, man."

I can see that I'll have no lack of water/sanitation projects over the next two years. There are so many obvious things to be done, and more that I'm sure I don't know about yet. There are several wells in the village, all of which I'm told go dry after the rainy season (which we're in now). Also, many of the houses have negens (poop holes) that drain right into the street, which is muddy and covered in green slime where mosquitos like to breed. The village has been waiting for a volunteer for a long time, and I can sense that they're incredibly motivated. The hard part might be finding times to work; the women (just like in Missalabugu) work in the fields and cook all day, as do many of the men. The older men tend to sit around most of the day drinking tea and taking naps.

The food is terrible. Everyone eats a dish called "toh" for breakfast lunch and dinner. It's basically a grey paste made of millet that has the texture of play-doh and tastes like feet. Then they put a green snot sauce on it and eat it together out of a huge bowl.

I enjoy the communal aspect of eating, but there's no way I can choke down toh for every meal. So the last morning I was there, I borrowed a little stove and pot and made an omelette. The people in the village were so fascinated they started bringing over eggs for me to cook for them, and soon I had a small omelette restaurant going. It was unbelievable.

My house is totally pimp. It's made of mud, but it feels like a mansion. I've got 4 rooms, a negen, and a big courtyard with a tree. I've already decorated and furnished it in my head, and I've got plans to start a garden in the courtyard to grow some vegetables.

It's also pretty easy to get to Segou (the closest big city) from my site. I have to bike for an hour and a half to get to the main road, and then catch a bus into town (which is about a 30 min ride). But Segou is really an amazing city. It's much cleaner and more compact than Bamako, making it nice to walk around. It's also right on the Niger river, so there's some boat traffic and some terrific sunsets.

I spent two nights there with the rest of the volunteers in the region, eating pizza and going out to the dance clubs - quite a contrast to the slow pace of life in the village. Then on the way back, the bus made a stop so that everyone could get out and pray by the side of the road.

(this is the mosque in my village)

I can’t help but compare everything here to India. It’s the same in so many ways, yet lacking in certain details, the most noticeable and ruffling I attribute to what I see as a diminished appreciation for beauty, in an abstract sense. In Indian villages, even though poverty and sanitation are just as bad, there was always time to draw a pattern or a mandala on the ground, and there was a certain pride in appearance, a respect for design. I don’t quite see that here. It might be that it’s there hiding in a form that I’m not able to discern, but I find myself more stricken by the poverty when it’s mixed with this acceptance or lack of ambition for something better. They have nothing. And even if they have potable water and a lower infant mortality rate after I’m gone, I’m wondering how to give them beauty that’s sustainable.

I'm back at Tubani So (with electricity and internet!) for the next few days. I finally found out where my permanent site will be in Mali: Tongo. It's a really small village south of Segou, which is a pretty big city. I'm going to visit on Monday to see my house and meet the chief. Then it's back to Tubani So for more technical training, then back to Missalabugu for another few weeks for more language training. I'm really amazed at the amount of Bambara I've learned in such a short time. I've gone from cave-man speak (I. Water. Get.) to actually being able to have pretty decent conversations with people. We had language testing yesterday, and my Bambara is now actually better than my French! It helps that there are no verb conjugations, and very simple grammar.

Other than constantly feeling like I've been hit by a train because of the heat, I've been surprisingly healthy so far. It's a challenge to find protein in the village, because all they eat is millet mush or rice for every meal. (Hence, it's no wonder that so many of them are malnourished with bloated bellies). So I've been eating a ton of peanuts (which my family farms), eggs, and the occasional fish, served whole. They also make this sauce from leaves and peanut butter which sounds gross, but is actually kind of like Indian saag if you use your imagination. I've been trying to help with the cooking as much as I can, both to learn myself and to encourage them to eat more veggies and protein. And when I'm really craving something other than mush, we fry potatoes in oil and have make-shift french fries. Totally yummy.

I'm amazed by the hard lives of the women in my village. They wake up with the sun, pound millet for an hour, cook breakfast, go to the field and farm all day planting peanuts one by one in the relentless sun, come home to pound more millet and cook dinner, wash clothes and dishes, go to bed and do it all over again. It makes my 10 hours a day of language training seem like leisure.

This is my room in my family's compound. It's pretty pimp compared to some of the other houses. (I guess that's what you get when you live with the chief...) We've also got a tv that they hook up to a car battery, and watch brazilian soap operas dubbed in french, which no one in my family speaks or understands. We also get the news occasionally, which makes me realize how totally out of touch I am. There was a brief story about some bridge that collapsed in America? What's up with that?

This is Lisa (my fellow trainee) and I after biking to the bigger town down the road.

...and this is the bridge between Missalabugu and the town. We biked over there, and then it started pouring rain. The water rose almost 2 meters above the bridge, so we were stuck for two hours waiting for it to go down. A man with some sheep tried to cross while the current was still going over the bridge, and a sheep got carried away down the river. Woosh. Just like that. Baaa!

This is my village!

There's 4 of us staying in Missalabugu for training. It's a really small village, with only about 250 people, most of whom are children. It's also pretty isolated; we have to bike for 30 minutes over rugged dirt roads to get to a slightly larger town where we can buy a coke or fruit. From there, it's a 20 minute taxi ride to get to the market in the next town.

The day we arrived, we were greated by the entire village with drums and music. Then we were taken to a shady spot with four chairs where the chief formally welcomed us. We presented Kola nuts to the elder of the village, recited a brief speech of "we're happy to be here, our mothers and fathers greet you." and then everyone formed a circle and two men in wooden masks and hula skirts did some crazy complex dance moves. It was pretty amazing.

Life has quieted down a lot since then. In a typical day, I wake up with the sun and roosters, bathe, eat breakfast (I've taught them to make scrambled eggs and toasted bread), then go to "school."

This is my classroom. It's just 4 chairs under a tree. We spend all morning here, come home for lunch, go back to school, come home for dinner, and then go to bed when the sun goes down. There's no electricity or running water, so there's not much you can do after it gets dark.

Last week we went to the market and bought 4 chickens to have for dinner. We tied their feet together and brought them (alive) back to the village. Uor teacher cut their throats and de-feathered them, then we cut them open and took out the guts (most of which we ate!). I haven't been served a goat head, but I've now eaten chicken kidneys, livers, fish heads the look like snake heads, and lots of random mush.

Learning Bambara is endlessly amusing. There are so many compound words that totally crack me up. For example, the word for arm (bolakala) is hand + stick, a butt (bobara) is poop + bowl, and anus (boda) is poop + door. The word for freckles (alakadabaji) literally means ink dots made by Allah's feather pen. Mr. D (konoboli) is stomach + run, and petrol (taji) is fire + water. The cardinal directions are also funny: north (kokodugu) is the village of salt, south (worodugu) is the village where you get Kola nuts, west (tilelan) is sun + lay down, and east (koran) is mecca.

My host family is really wonderful. Polygamy is very common in Mali, so the dugutigi (chief of the village) has 3 wives. They don't make much distinction between who's child is who's, and just pass the babies around from naked boob to naked boob. It was a bit shocking at first, but like everything else, I'm getting used to it.

I've been given a Malian name: BaSeBa Tarawele, which they think is much easier to pronounce than Mary. I'm named after the chief's mother (ba = mother) and everyone tells me that means I'm the mother of the whole village.

More pictures to come when I get another break from training!

I just found out that I'll be staying with the chief in Missalabougou for my homestay!!! And there's a good chance that I'll be served a goat head for dinner! How exciting is that?!?

This is the training center, Tubani So

And this is my one-eyed pet tortoise, winkie!

...we had our first class specific to water sanitation this morning, and I couldn't be more excited!! We're learning about soak pits, wells, irrigation, pumps, and other joys.

My roommate decided to leave yesterday, which was probably for the best. We've now lost 2 from our training class, so we're down to 79 trainees. (That's total, for all of mali. Only about 12 of us are in water/san.)

We leave tomorrow morning for our "homestay" in a village, which means I'll be away from the internet for up to 2 weeks.