I have lapsed of late in my bloggings....sorrs about that. Traveling has been insane but amazing. I believe I left off with my birthday which turned out to be just what I needed to jump start my second quarter of a cenury. The girls and I had a good time in Bangkok and then headed off towards Cambodia via Chanabury, Trat and Ko Chang. The beaches on this island are absolutely beautiful and it was nice to recharge and relax for a few days before we pushed off for the border. The crossing turned out to be less painful than we anticipated (we aren't in africa anymore afterall) and when we got to Battambang we took a leisurely boat ride to Siem Reap through the biggest lake in Asia. It was beautiful. Then...Angkor Wat. Words cannot describe how awe inspiring this place is. georgeous. Our favourite temple was about 2 hours away from everthing else but well worth it. It was completely run down and dilapidated and you could scrambl;e on the rocks and check everything out yourself which was very cool. It has also only been open for a few years as there were landmines in the area before and have just been cleared in the past couple of years. I believe it was called Bang Melea.

So after Angkor we went to Phnom Penh on an AC bus in which we got water and a snack! These Cambodian peace corps volunteers have it good! We met us with our former health boss in Mali, Cheryl who moved to Cambodia to start PC last year. We met some PCVs, swapped storties, played the usual "whose country and service is harder?" game which is obligatory when you meet other PCVs, and generally have a good time.

On the 24th we went to Vietnam, which was great, but too short lived! We were only able to get around Ho Chi Min city and ge to the Cu Chi Tunnels, but it was a nice first taste of the country and I very definitely plan on coming back.

Sooooo, now I am in Singapore! The crowning cap and glory of our trip! We got in not even twelve hours ago and it has already been amazing. My friends Kay took us out for Chilli and Pepper Crab at East Coast Parkway last night and oh, my, god. The Red House has got to be the best restaurant I have ever been to. Amazing. In every way. I took pictures. Oh yes I did. And I will put them up next week when I get back to Seattle. Next up today is Leonie Hill to visit the old Berthiaume stomping grounds, then the American Club for some dinner then a night safari! It feels so good to be bad in Singapore and to be sharing it with some great peace corps buddies, but I am also so very excited to get back to America. It's been 15 months and I can definitely feel it. It is hard to imagine that by Thursday I will be home eating sushi in front of a TV wwith my family!

Hello from Bangkok! We just arrived tonight after a wonderful and too short of a week in Nepal. Well, let me start from when we left Delhi. After viewing the Taj Mahel which literally took my breath away, we decided to go to Lumbini or Buddha's birthplace just past the Nepalese border. So we took a 16 hr train to Gorakphur, then a 2.5 hr ride to the border. From there we saw the most beautiful World Peace Pagoda where my friend Lindsay and I got up at 4AM to bang drums and chant with Japanese monks. It was amazing and one of the most spiritual things I have ever done. From there we caught the most frightening bus ride up the mountains to Kathmandu and then carried on the Shivapura National Park for a yoga/mediation retreat. Again, one of the coolest things and one of the most beautiful places I have ever been. It has now become my official happy place whenever I need a break from reality.

From there we returned to Kathmandu, an interesting town with beautiful temples as well as congested roads full of perpetually honking cars. Tonight I find myself in Bangkok kinda in shock over all of the lights, skyscrapers and general atmosphere of the place. Soooo many tourists, debauchery and just general craziness that I just don't know quite what to do with myself. We will be here for another couple of weeks as we have decided to not go to Myanmar this time around. This is a very rough sketch of the past couple of weeks, but I will promise to extrapolate when I catch my breath as well as post pictures. Up next: a crazy night in Bangkok to celebrate my big 2-5! One quarter century down! I wonder what the next quarter has in store......

So Jaqui and I arrived in Mumbai a few days ago and I thought I'd give you a little update on my travels so far. Things in this city are insane, especially after coming from Mali. We have almost gotten hit by cars on various occasions, have bumped into the millions of people who live here cuz we're just not used to tight spaces and have realised that we speak English "small-small" now. Sometimes it's just easier to say things in Bambara. We walked through the Taj Hotel (very swank and lush) with dirty feet and flip flops and realised that we were suddenly back on terra firma and the real world and we didn't quite fit in. It's a strange feeling I'll tell you that.

So then we decided to walk through the slums and the outdoor market and that made Mumbai feel a little more familiar to us. Here, like in Mali, there are random goats and chickens hanging out on the streets, your feet get dirty from the mud streets, street vendors are selling you cheap food, and the smells range from delicious to ghastly. You can, however, tell how much more developed and prosperous India is to Mali by the quality of the produce that venders are selling, the relative cleanliness of the place and the fact that instead of missing limbs and kwasikor bellies, beggers have gold bangles and pretty decent clothes on. I miss Mali like I knew I would, but life goes on and what better place to miss my home of two years than in a beautiful city such as Mumbai. The walks on Marine Drive, the fabulous shopping and the great food have definitely softened the blow. In addition we have had some insider help from a friend of mine from Seattle who has been studying Urdu in Northern India for the summer.

One cool thing that is going on in the city right now is the festival Ganesh Chaturti. This festival is weeklong and there have been drums parties and parades through lit up streets since we got here. It all culminates next week with a party on Chowpatti beach at which people will throw Ganesh statues into the sea to drown them and dance it up. I'll be sure to take lots of pics to show you guys and update on everything Mumbai before I leave next week. Until then, take care!

so I've been meaning to write for a while...things have just been so hectic. I left site two weeks ago and it was as hard as I thought it was going to be. I still search around in my bag looking for my house keys only to realise that I already gave them to my replacement. All of the parties and festivities made it if not easier then at least bittersweet to leave Kayes. It is a place I will never forgot and a piece of me will always remain there. What else can I say except that I hope to go back one day and see my family and friends and until then I will miss them dearly.

Bamako has been crazy over the past fortnight. I COSed and got a peace corps pin and a handshake from our country director; said good-bye to so many wonderful volunteers who I hope to see real soon in Ameriki-land, went to a memorial for Matt Costa, who I can't believe passed away a year ago...it seems like yesterday to me; and generally just tried to say good-bye to Mali.

There are so many beautiful and unforgettable things about Mali, but for me one recent trip kinda ties everything about Mali together for me. In between Matt's memorial in his village and my COS week I had a weekend in which I was completely free of any responsibilities (I am sooo going to miss that!) so I decided to go to a stagemates village in the southern region of Sikasso for a couple days. She lives in a tiny village called Zambala, which is about 20 Km away from a paved road that runs all the way down that region towards Cote D'Ivoire. So I leave Bamako wth two other volunteers Reneen and Jason at around three and make it to Jason's site which is about 200k away from the capital in about 3 1/2 hrs. So far so good. In fact, I was beginning to believe that the transport gods were lending us a helping hand.....and then we got off the paved road and onto Laura's road. We all piled into a bashe filled with rice and flour sacks at around 1 pm and started down a pretty muddy road as it is the end of rainy season here and Sikasso gets hit the hardest. About ten minutes into our trip, however, we get stuck in the mud. What follows is 2 1/2 hrs of Malians trying to unstick us by digging the back tires more into the road so that they can apply traction with rocks. Huh. So we finally get going after what seems like an eternity and we then we break down. The driver takes a rock and hammers part of the engine and we're off once again. Thennnn, we get stuck in the mud again. But not before it starts raining. Hard. And everyone decides its probably best if we get out of the bus and start walking towards Laura's village. So we all have to take our flip flops off because we are basically walking through a small stream and we've got our huge backpacks on and we find ourselves being totally ok with this. If anyone had said that I had to get off a bus and walk the remaining 3 or 4k in pouring down rain with no shoes on two years ago I would have laughed. No no, I would have lawwwfffed. I guess you don't notice how places change you until you are confronted with torrential downpour.

We finally get there at around 7pm. 6 hours for 20k. All I can say is my hat is off to Laura who has to deal with this 4 months out of every year. Thank god Laura was at the end of the trip with hot falafal and hot chocolate waiting for us. The ceremony in her village to celebrate the opening of a secondary school that Laura helped to build went off without a hitch and even started on time! It was great to spend time with volunteers in a village, get away from Bamako and city life and just enjoy each other. I could not have asked for a more perfect trip to end my service in Mali. It was just so indicative of how the wonderful things in Mali compensate 100fold for the things that are not so awesome. It was a great end to my two years and I could not have asked for a better send off.

As for the future...or I guess I should start with the present. Jaqui and I got on a plane to Nairobi last night and this morning we had one of the best breakfasts I've had in 2 years. Bangers and mash, weetabix with real milk, real coffee, bacon, scrambled eggs, and this is the best part, baked beans on toast. Oh and freshly squeezed orange juice. It was pretty much heaven. Now I am off to our room which has a real bathtub and a hair dryer (!) to sleep until our next flight which will take us to Mumbai. For those of you who thought I would be coming back to America soon......well....define soon. I am backpacking through Asia, more specifically India, Nepal, Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, Viet Nam and then finally Singapore before heading back to Seattle. I should be back around Nov 1st insha'allah. I will try to update my blog and pictures as often as I can, but if anyone wants anything (small) from any of these places I will do my best to pick it up. Happy Ramadan everyone and I commisserate with all you who were bummed out about U Dub's loss to Ohio, namely papasan berty. Bummer.

This week my first two stagemates and dear friends, Miguel and Rachel, are COSing. It is insane to think that we have all been here for two years together and that we are going our separate ways and leaving Mali to return to the states. While most of us are going on trips to soften the blow of our impending departure, we should all be back in the US of A by December.

It is hard to explain the mix the feelings that I have as I prepare to leave my site in two weeks. I already miss it and I am still here. I am trying to go through my day and just really appreciate every single aspect of it. Getting up with prayer call (Ramadan is coming up soon and people are gearing up...) and eating some mooni (millet balls with milk) with my friend Alima, taking a bucket bath (cause it's getting too cold to take cold showers again), going to my service and talking with my homologue, Maiga, and the secretaries, my lovely host family; I will even miss the people who work at the Post Office who give me my precious packages and see the joy on my face everytime!

My replacement arrives in Kayes next Tuesday and although I sad to be leaving friends and family and feel that the end has come too soon, I am very excited for Amy to experience all that I have in Kayes and realise how wonderful Mali is. I suppose wanting to stay here longer is selfish in the end because it would mean that another volunteer would not be able to share in the fun! It still is very bittersweet to be leaving Mali and all of my peace corps buddies. I shall take lots of pictures during the next month and be sure to post them as there are so many beautiful expressions of good-bye in Mali. When a person leaves for a long time, or indefinitely, their family and friends extend their left hand instead of their right. Malians usually shake with their right hands as this hand is the 'clean hand', the hand with which they eat, and not their left hands, the hand reserved for cleaning up after using the nyegen (bathroom). Extending the left hand to someone leaving therefore, is quite an honor as it implies that this person considers you close and is willing to touch your left hand. You might think about this too much and decide, that is not the cleanest way to say good-bye, but there is something very sweet about it to me. The expressions that Malians use to say goob-bye are also unlike those in the states and I am also fond of them. They include ''please forgive me for any rudeness/offenses towards you'' after which the Malian to which you are speaking will promptly forgive you; ''May Allah help in reuniting us one day''; ''May you remain as straight as an iron rod''; and finally when you are ready to leave you literally ask for the road. There is a real sense of creating a space for those leaving to really say good-bye properly, and as this has been an issue leaving country after country in the past, I really appreciate how it is so important here.

I will post once again when I am in Bamako seeing friends and getting paperwork done, but for now just picture me shaking lots and lots of poopy hands and smiling!

Happy belated Fourth of July! Monantali was beautiful as per usual and I pretty much spent an entire week with 55 other PCVs eating pig and drinking beer. It was awesome! Northern Kayes region (which includes me!) won the freedom olympics which included a tug-of-war playoff, tigadegena eating contest, three legged race, wheelbarrow race, and regional skits. It was the last time for a lot of us to get together and hang out so it was kinda bittersweet, but so memorable. After the festivities and a bit of rock climbing with some of my Bamako stagemates, we traveled to the capital for our COS conference, which was about 150 k south of Bamako in the Sikasso region. it was amazing to reflect over the past two years with my stagemates and although I am still pretty far away from being ready to leave Mali, I am coming to terms with the fact that at some point this does have to end and September is as good a time as any. My official COS date is September 14th after which I am planning on traveling for about a month in Africa and Southest Asia. So I plan on being back in Seattle around the beginning of November, insha'allah. I am going back to site on Tuesday and finishing up all my projects and turning in completion reports, which I hope will further push me down the realization road. As they say here, "dooni donni", or "little by little". I've uploaded some more photos of the 4th, rock climbing in Siby and my COS conference so enjoy!

This past weekend I went to Mauritania to play in a soccer game between Mali PCVs and Mauritania PCVs, and alas we lost 2-0. Meh. But I did put up some colourful (well actually they are pretty bland and sandy coloured) photos on flickr. The whole event was orchestrated for Jody Olsen, the associate director of Peace Corps, who was stopping through both countries to check out what we were up to. The ''pitch'' consisted of dirt and cow pies and there was a constant stream of cows, camels, sheep, general livestock through the field along with a sturdy sandstorm in the second half. So we definitely did not have home court advantage. It was a quick trip, I left for Bamako on Friday, we took a bus to Mauritania on Sat, played on Sunday and I was home and tucked in my bed by midnight. It was crazy, but good fun.

As for now, I will be in Kayes until the fourth at which point I will be in Monantali to celebrate our country's day of independence. Then it's off to our COS Conference in Sikasso in mid July, which I am not looking forward to because I finally have to face the fact that soon I will be leaving Mali. It's all gone by too quickly and I can hardly believe that it is the beginning of summer and that I will be leaving in four months. And then I will have to think about what to do with my life back in the real world...didn't I just do that two years ago???

hey guys! just a quick update on my project and life in kayes. the orphan association and I are working with GFK- Generation Foot de Kayes, an NGO in Kayes that runs soccer camps and training, so that the kids can have a place to play soccer and in return the association will give talk on HIV to the kids who are already members of GFK. Yesterday we had a ceremony at which both presidents signed agreements, Corps de la Paix donated cleats, shin guards, jersey, socks for the kids and two teams had a match. It was good fun and was one of those rare moments when things went off without a hitch and everyone was caught up in the spirit of collaboration and was able to take something from it. Hopefully this is a link that will last for many years to come, giving a lot of kids to opportunity to play and have fun, which doesn't happen very often around here...I posted more photos on flickr as well so enjoy!

So I am back in Mali! Kenya was a nice little pause but it is good to be back at home and working again. My apcd Claudine came to visit my site the other day (in the orangey shirt) and sat in on one of our after school classes at the orphan association. The woman to her left is Ami Diarra, probably the sweetest woman I will ever meet. Her patience and love with the kids is stunning and I adore being around her and learning from her. This project with the orphanage will be for four months and I am so excited with how it has been going. It's basically a program that will give after school tutoring and remedial classes for those kids who can't go to school every day for whatever reason (sickness, family issues, lack of family, etc) and also provides for those orphans with HIV to go to the hospital every month to get their ARVs. It has definitely already had its problems, but I can already see the community rallying behind it and getting really involved, so hopefully this will be a good sustainable project that they can build on.

so i am in kenya for the weekend and am taking lots and lots of photos....but won't have them online until next week when I get back to Bamako. This place is amazing though and a nice little break (minus the med stuff). Just wanted to throw out Chris' website of Mali photos.

www.therearefourlights.com

Thanks for doing that brother. It came out great. Talk to you all soon!

Here's a pic of the HIV association's garden in Kayes and one of my good friends Mamadou. Look how green the lettuce looks! Next up we are planning formations, or talks, about nutrition and the importance of eating healthy for those with compromised immune systems. I feel really good about these projects as the association seems really invested in tending the garden and making sure that it gets watered. Hopefully this will continue when hot season starts next month!

Another picture: taking a camel trek across the desert to a place NOT called timbuktu in case anyone asks you where I've been... Leading the caravan, Dr Trent, me, dad, Chris, my friend Kylee and Mom. anyone else wanna come visit? you could get spit on by a camel....

Yeah so I know I said I would be better at posting every month and again, it's been awhile, so here's a shiny picture to distract! we (me, kylee, jaqui and michelle) are at the chutes de felou about 12k out of kayes. It has been getting rather hot in Kayes (today it was 111F) so we thought we would reinfect ourselves with schistosomiasis and go swimming! yay!

Today I was walking from a meeting I had at L'association des Enfants de l'espoir through the open market to buy tomatoes and eggs and on to the post office when along the way I heard a familiar song: Bing Crosby's jingle bells. It was so out of context that I stopped in the middle of the street and started laughing because it took me a full minute to place it. One of my friends, Cissoko, happened to see me and wondered why I was acting so strangely. I tried to explain who it was and translate the idea of jingle bells and one horse open sleighs, but he looked at me like I was crazy. I went over to the telecabine that was playing it and asked the owner where he got it and if he knew that it was about christmas. He smiled proudly and told me that a previous volunteer six years ago had given it to him to play in December so that he could hum the festive tunes in anticipation of the christmas packages that he hoped were waiting for him at the post office. If there were packages for him, on his way back through town he would toss a bag of m&ms or mike and ike's to this guy in appreciation for Bing.

Ummm...what a fabulous idea and why didn't I think of this? That volunteer was a genius! I think I will start doing this all around Kayes. My own little personal soundtrack to my day if you will. My first stop will be the bread boutique outside my service, which will play Iggy Pop's "Here comes success" every morning as I ride into work. I suppose it's the little things that make you happy, but it certainly made my day enough to write home about.

So yes, I realise that I haven’t posted in quite some time…give or take four months. I did post photos at one point, however, and I posted some of Thanksgiving just now too. So, at this point, I will try succinctly to wrap up my fall into a nice little nutshell. Ramadan started in October and for the first time I fasted with my family. By the end of month I had taken to morning and afternoon naps just to make the day go faster so that I could eat sooner. I would wake up at 4 in the morning and shovel food in my face while watching the dawn with hateful eyes. In actuality, it was the lack of water that really was a trial so I stopped riding my bike everywhere and decided to not venture out past a kilometer radius of my house. Luckily this went unnoticed by my co-workers because they were, in fact, doing exactly the same thing. So, as you may guess, it was a fairly unproductive month (secularly speaking of course). All in all it was a successful fast and my family was very proud of me and I have to say that I was pretty chuffed with myself as well. I do find it frustrating, however, to see how Ramadan impacts child and prenatal health here and I’m sure in other impoverished Muslim countries. Despite the fact that pregnant women and mothers of infants are not supposed to fast during Ramadan, some do. In a country that is already immensely poor, the fact that these mothers stop nourishing themselves and effectively, through their watered down breast milk, their children as well, is a huge problem. It is hard to teach these women, who believe they are doing a service to their families and to Allah, that by denying themselves good nutrition they are also denying their children of a good start to life. There seems to be no correlation in a Malian woman’s mind in how breast milk is related to the health of the mother and how many calories she consumes a day. It is no surprise that, second to the hot season in April and May, the month of Ramadan and shortly thereafter has the highest numbers of infant mortalities during the year. So yeah, honestly, I think I would take a plump, blasphemous mother over a skinny, pious one any day. As an exception to the rule of not biking in October, my teammates and I did bike 30k to visit another teammate of ours in Kakalou, a charming little village that is 50% Christian and, thus, half the village eat all day long! Perfect for my birthday! Ok….so I cheated just that one day! Amber’s homologue (well, actually his wife) cooked a wonderful dinner of chicken and pasta. This dinner included both the head and the feet of the chicken and the birthday girl was the lucky one to pick up the head and gnaw on it before realizing what it was (there was no electricity…it was dark…what are ya gonna do?). This was also the trip in which I got schistosomiosis, or something resembling that, from the water at the chutes de felou. As for the holidays, Thanksgiving was spent in Kayes with around 15 of us and we spent Christmas in Kita, which is about halfway from Kayes to Bamako. I got presents in the form of packages from my aunt and Mere Bear so that was awesome! I was sent tons of DVDs of new NBC shows that I am currently addicted to! It’s kinda nice to come to the peace corps house after work and watch clean, shiny, English speaking people. Tabaski was last Saturday and I helped slaughter a couple of sheep and cut it up. I ate more meat in two days than I have in the past couple of months! For New Years we crashed a Malian party at one of the hotels in Kayes, ate cake and mingled with the peeps. By 4AM I was ready to crash and was deemed “lame” by everyone there. Is it just me or am I getting too old for this? I hope everyone in the land o’plenty had a great holiday and don’t worry….my new year’s resolution is to write more often to you guys. I just realised that I did not talk about work at all in this post so as a forewarning to you, the next post might be a lengthy diatribe about World Aids Month and my projects! Until next time, be safe!

I’ve meant to write on here sooner, but have been putting it off because I just don’t know how to express in words how our recent tragedy has affected me and all of Peace Corps Mali. Matt and Justin were both amazing volunteers and fantastic individuals and I will remember them and their effervescent spirits for the rest of my life. On a personal level I feel somewhat upset for not getting to know them better than I did and for not taking every opportunity to be in their company for they truly were an inspiration to everyone they met. It has made me realize that life is too ephemeral to put off things until later. As an early New Years resolution, I want to do what I have always wanted, and do them NOW. I want to appreciate, for what it is, where I am at each exact moment instead of always looking forward to another week, month, year. That’s my goal and if any of you in Mali see me sitting under my gwa playing cards, kick me in the ass and tell me to get moving. As for Mali, I am sad that these two guys, who were so dedicated to its people and development, have left a world that is in desperate need of truly compassionate and altruistic souls. I feel truly lucky to have met Matt and Justin and can only hope that I can live in such a way as they have shown me and everyone here.

I put some photos of Matt and Justin up on my flickr account for people to see and I also have newspaper articles I can send so let me know....

file:///F:/Photos/my%20space/mattjustin.sm.jpg

Let me begin this entry with a memory of mine that popped into my head Saturday. I started thinking about a non-particular day in high school when I together with my mom and dad (the ‘nuclear’ family as I like to call it, sans my bro who was in college at the time) sat down for dinner after a hard days work of school, airplane things, and psycho handling. At the end of the meal, when it become clear that I was, lo and behold, still hungry (shocking, I know), my father looked at me as I sadly watched him put the last chicken breast his plate, saw that he could not eat the last of the dinner and thus deny his only daughter food, and decided to give it to me instead. And at that moment I realized: wow, this is love. I think I would have to love, not like, but really love someone an awful lot to give up food, communal or otherwise.

So, apart from the fact that I have a pretty cool dad, why I am writing about this story? Well, yesterday I went to a cook out with my HIV association. It was supposed to start at eight, but as I was about to leave the house the peace corps guard, Keita, points towards the sky and said “Uh Alima, sanji bena sisan sisan. I bena taa min ani munna?”, which roughly translates to “Uh hey you idiot, the rain is coming right now. Where are you going and WHY?” I told him I was going to the hospital, which wasn’t far, and that I would make it before the rain came. And I was wrong. So, so wrong. The sandstorm started about half way to the hospital and I am surprised that neither of my corneas have any permanent scratches on them. Then came the rain, which took the sand on my clothes, arms and face, and turned them into a muddy paste.

Not a good start to the morning, but I was like, hey! There will be plenty of good eats today and that will make me happy! We, and when I say we I mean the women of course, started cooking at 9 and finished at around two. We had prepared a feast. The first course was mangoes and avocados. Second was yassa, a sort of vinegary, mustardy, onion sauce, with the tenderest meat I have seen here in Mali, served up with bread. Lastly, we killed 15 chickens, which at 2,000 cfa a pop, is impressive. To put that into perspective I spend around 1,000 cfa a week on food, or roughly 2 dollars. So in order for one to buy 15 chickens one would have to save for 30 weeks. Well, actually more than that if you plan on eating in the meantime. It meant a lot to these women and I could tell they were very proud and excited. They had even sprung for “American cola”, a local brand of soda pop and of course, tea.

So I am all excited to dig in and I go and conspicuously wash my hands, trying to set a good example for these women, when Jeneba turns to me and says, “Not yet Alima, we must wait for the men to finish.” I turn around and out of nowhere there is a gaggle of 10 famished men bounding down the steps. When they bring the bowls back for the women when there are done I can see that there is a little bit of mango left, no yassa, and about ¾ of a chicken for 8 women. Typically in Malian culture, the men eat first, then the elders, then the women and then finally, the last to eat are the kids. The quality and quantity of food in Mali is pretty bad to begin with, but when you are a kid and the last on the feeding chain, there is hardly anything nutritious left at all. Not to mention that these kids already have the disadvantage of being seropositive. Imagine how I feel about being denied food and then imagine how these kids must feel.

It’s days like today when I realise that the problem of malnutrition isn’t just about the lack of food or the obscene prices for certain foods such as produce, but how it is distributed in such as way that the most vulnerable populations, the kids and the pregnant women are basically given the left-overs. When I asked why the kids ate last Jeneba told me that the general idea here is that kids eat last because they have an entire lifetime to catch up and eat well when they are older, but the elders and the men have already paid their dues. The term reverse ageism came to mind, as did the thought that the next generation of Malians would be so much healthier if they had the opportunities that I have had and a father who didn’t quite agree with that philosophy (although truth be told, someone should have probably pushed my chair away from the table for me at some point!).

On a brighter note, I have put some photos up online of me and my teammates on the Fourth of July ALL EATING TOGETHER and watching the World Cup so check it out! Hope to see some of you in a few weeks in Sea-town. xoxo

I thought I would indulge my okaasan and give her, and you, a little taste of my work here and what exactly I do on a day to day basis. It's somewhat monotonous and ennuyant, but mom you asked for it so.....

Every morning I start my day out at 9 by going to my service, Developpement Sociale, which is basically like the Social Services of Mali. This is where I get my tea drinking on and discuss the latest fashions with the various secretaries. Often, if I have just come from the market, they will ask me how much I paid for each item, and they die of laughter when they realise that the tomati-tigi has overcharged me for my tomatoes by a mugan (roughly 5 cents) purely because I am a toubab (white person) and think that I can afford it (which technically I can, but who likes being ripped off even if it's justified??). This 'non-work' at my workplace usually lasts for a couple of hours until I have either run out of things to talk about or don't know how to tell a story in Bambara. Sometimes I will pull out a favorite story of mine just to pass the time, such as the 'one heart, one love' story in which I try to explain the concept of monogamy. By about noon I will go see my homologue, who is my Malian counterpart and helps me with work and personal matters. If he is doing a formation (a conference or educational meetings that involve animations, or short skits to prove a point) I will often accompany him and watch so that I can learn the technical jargon of health and SIDA in Bambara.

I also help in formations with various doctors and health professionals around Kayes. This past week I worked with the sex-worker doctor in educating around 25 prosititutes on the importance of safe sex, how one can contract AIDS, how to prevent its transmission as well as the other ISTs that are prevalent in Mali. At the end we had a competition for who could remember all the steps to putting on and taking off a condom correctly. The prize was copious amounts of condoms, or fugulanw nafama, which roughly translates to 'important hat'. Good times.

On the week-ends I work with the HIV association on income generating activities and one-on-one counseling. We are planning on starting a garden project once the weather gets cooler and it starts raining. Next week I will be starting a project (with the help of the Global Fund and UNICEF) with the affiliated orphan association for kids who have lost their parents to AIDS that will hopefully center around a formation for healthy nutrition.

It has been difficult being the ameriki-muso who talks about sex and AIDS all day all over Kayes for it warrents some unwanted attention from men between the ages of 15-40, but I have decided to narrow my scope down to educating women and children just for my own safety, even though I know that ultimately it is the man who makes all the decisions, especially in Mali.

The great thing about peace corps is that you can basically make your service into what you want to do. The bad thing about peace corps is that you can basically make your service into what you want to do!!! There are hardly any restrictions to the type of formations for which you can find funding, but at the same, you do have to have a lot of self initiative to get anything done because there is no one there to kick you in the ass. Have there been volunteers who have treated their two years like a vacation? Yes, but I think the vast majority of volunteers are able to shape their service into providing and tranferring real and concrete knowledge and skills to their community.

So there you go Mom; I promise I'll be better in writing about work from time to time!! I hope you and all the other moms reading this have a fabulous Mother's day...xoxo

So it's been a while since I've posted and apparantly Allah has taken aim at me for my negligence. This morning I went to the Kayes airport for my 930 flight to bamako as I had to take care of some med stuff and had an in-service training this weekend. But, low and behold the flight actually leaves at 130 PM instead so I have seven hours to kill. A nice gendarme took pity on me and let me sleep the morning away on the floor of his office. I awoke to the smell of freshly cooked goat that he had prepared for me and then promptly led me the the workers quarters of the airport to take a shower and get cleaned (and yes, I took the hint). We sat and chit chatted for a while in Bambara, French and stilted English, he listened to my Michael Jackson cd and gave me ice cold water (yum!). Finally 1 PM rolls around and we get on the ''plane''. It's an old Russian aeroplane and from the looks of things dating from about 1924. There are 20 seats, 15 of which are occupied and two pilots whose cockpit is quaintly situated in the same room as the passengers, ie there is no barrier between us and them. Everyone does some quick Allah ka's for benedictions and we ascend....very badly. I have been on many planes in my life. I have been on many small charter planes jumping from island to island in Southeast Asia when I was a kid. But nothing, absolutely nothing, compared to this 1 1/2 hour ride. I look at my watch at one point thinking that we are half way there and realise that it's only been ten minutes. The man sitting next to me and holding on to the seat in front of him for dear life and screaming at the top of his lungs every other minute. He proceeds to throw up in the seat pocket in from of him, not once, but twice. Good times. The only other toubab on the plane, a South African, is wildy throwing obscenities around the planes, much of them to do with "Africa, this god forsaken bloody continent". By the end of the plane ride 11 people have been sick in possibly every bag, pocket, or crevice on the plane (miraculously myself not included). I can see the pilots do a hail mary and an islamic prayer together and turn around each time they hear someone get sick with an apologetic shrug of the shoulders. After what seems like an eternity of clutching the seat under of me with such vigour that I can feel the muscles in my shoulders and arms start to ache and burn, we finally touch down in Bamako with everyone giving a hearty "Ahumdullaye!" or "thanks be to Allah".

As of late I have been letting little grievances get to me that shouldn't. Starting from 2:30 PM today I plan to correct this. Will I care the next time a Malian comes up to me and asks me to marry him, get him a visa, buy him a plane ticket to America? Or the next time a kid tries to grab me when I am riding my bike? Or the next time that I am on my way to the Peace Corps maison de passage, where there is a fridge, only to find that no one has replaced the water bottles that they have used back in the fridge and someone has eaten my vache qui rit, mango salad dressing, or M&Ms? Hell no!

On a lighter note, I went to Italy wih Tyson and Ingrid before aforementioned brush with death, and it was fabulous. I have put photos up on my flickr account. The link is somewhere below in another post. Enjoy!

It’s been a while since I have had internet connection because for some unknown reason it was down in Kayes for about a month. But I am in Bamako now for Post PST training for two weeks so I am trying to catch up. I’ve been in Mali for about six months now and it is slowly starting to dawn on me: I LIVE HERE. Not that I didn’t realise my geography before, but seriously guys, I live in Africa. And I am supposed to be changing the world….right? On my way down to the capital I had random realizations such as this and started freaking out, but having listened to everyone else and their sites and concerns, I can see that I am not alone in this freaking out-ness. There have been numerous people who I have heard asking “what exactly are we are doing here?”. And there are, of course, many different answers depending on whom you are asking. Goals such as learning to shuffle cards to implementing citywide sanitation programs have been kicked around and I’d like to be the first to say that both are noble and lofty goals…When I come up with my own definitive answer to why we are all here, I will let you all know. Until then, I will move on with other news.

Our girls’ soccer team is charging forward even though we have had a few incidents with some guys from the high school. When our teammates Brett and his wife were in Dakar for an ex-pat softball tournament, a group of 20 guys decided that they didn’t want us playing soccer so they literally kicked us off the field. Kylee and I wouldn’t budge and eventually one of the girls went to talk to an English teacher from the school. He came out, heard both sides of what transpired, and decided that the boys were right and that we were trying to “cause trouble”. Awesome. The next day we went to speak to the headmaster and he said agreed that we should be able to use one of the fields behind the school without being harassed by any of the boys. The next day he died. So there went that ally. Since then there have been minor altercations with various groups of boys, but we are still determined to have a girls’ soccer team. There are 12 fields behind the school and there are never all full, so it is clear that the only reason guys try to take over our field is because they don’t want girls to play soccer. SO frustrating, but if I can convince one 16 year boy that girls can play soccer too then I feel that I have made some impact on the social construct here.

With March and the start of the hot season, the entire southern part of Mali has turned into one big dustbowl. The sand from the Sahel moves into the rest of the country and blocks out the sun. It kinda looks like LA on a mid July day. Not pretty. Since coming to Bamako two weeks ago I have gained approximately 10 lbs from all of the schwarma and potatoes that are plentiful here (avocados and mangoes are in season now too!!!) Training is going well, although learning how to write a project proposal is just about as fun as it sounds. It is amazing to see all of my stage mates from all over Mali once again though and it has been fun trading stories. Finally, our country director has decided to give all Kayes volunteers two round trip tickets to Bamako a year because the roads and bandits are so bad on the way up there. So you know what that means…Free cokes and cheese sandwiches! Happy March madness to you basketball fans and spring training is just around the corner! I hope that a certain group of adults (aka my parents) are booking Mariner tickets for August because I already have a list of ballpark food on hand (kidd valley hamburger, fries, kettle corn, hot dog with relish, mustard, and ketchup, a salty pretzel, and a mac and jacs….just in case anyone’s curious).

With the cold season coming to a close this month all of the volunteers of Kayes banded together and decided, after a considerable amount of beer, that what we really needed for the oncoming hot season was to form a woman’s soccer team with the honorable Brett at the helm as our coach. It sounded like a good idea at the time: it would empower young women to come together to play a sport that is usually reserved for men in Mali and would create a certain solidarity between themselves and with us as well. A WoMAN United the sequel if you will, for those of you who remember our TASIS team. And plus soccer is fun, especially now that the African Cup is going on and soon the World Cup will start.

But then we had our first practice yesterday evening and all that development theory suddenly melted in the heat of the sun. It was hot! And I was hot! Africa hot! I think I lasted about forty-five minutes during which I drank four litres of water. And this morning when I woke up I literally had to crawl from under my mosquito net to the water robinet because I seriously thought I was incapable of standing. And it’s only the beginning of hot season. It hasn’t even got above 120 F yet. Three days a week of this? I’m starting to have my reservations (or to be more precise, my body is). I mean, I’m all about gender and development projects, but come on! Malians are constantly trying to reassure me that Africa was the first and natural environment for humans and that eventually I’ll adjust to the chaleur, but I don’t know if I buy it. There was a reason why people migrated to the north right?

Regarding the bird flu breakout in Nigeria, the official word from our PCMOs is that so far there are no plans for evacuation of volunteers in West Africa, at least not until there is a confirmed case closer to home, so cross your fingers that it stays put where it is! Hope the lights have come back on for everyone in Seattle; happy birthday wishes to papasita (belated), Mere bear and Ingrid (ice)!!!!

just a quick note to jot down the link for my photos for future reference. I have about 150, but was able to download about 30 in 2 hrs so apologies for the paucity of visual effects, but I will get it done sometimes...

www.flickr.com/photos/jenmieko

thanks guys!

Is it the middle of January already? Where does the time go? We just finished our bimonthly radio show and I swear we just did our last one the other day. Insane! Our English word of the day was ‘bandunkadunk’ and we made up a cute little skit about the cultural differences towards ‘bobaraba’ as they say here and a rather sizable derriere in the states…but here they are a fan of bobaraba. Good times.

I have been slowly gaining momentum at work, even though my Bambara is still absolutely atrocious. I have decided to restart the “visites a domiciles” with the HIV association that they stopped last year due to lack of funding, which is basically visiting each family that has a member afflicted with SIDA and offer support as well as basic nutrition facts that will promote their immune systems. My work with UNICEF is also starting to come to fruition and hopefully within the next couple of weeks we can travel to surrounding villages and implement programs that reduce mother to child HIV/AIDS transmission. There does seem to be a decidedly uncooperative atmosphere between NGOs here so there is a lack of communication that would be helpful, but slowly I am figuring it out.

I am also gaining much-needed pounds thanks to the copious amounts of care packages that I received last week. Big Big shout outs to Stevaroo, Michele H., Nan & Laurie, the Bimas and of course mamasita and papasan. You guess have no idea how much they mean to me (that is to say it means a lot to my happy tummy, but also warms the cockles of my heart). It was honestly the highlight of my week. That and having to continuously climb over a twenty-foot wall to get into my house. The Keitas, a lovely family that I live with, have decided to bolt lock the door that opens up into our communal concession every night at 10 and I usually get home after that….and so Kylee and I have devised a plan in which she holds onto my bike and I climb on top of the handlebars and chuck myself over the wall and proceed to wake up the entire neighbourhood which trying to undue the three bolts. Needless to say my family is not impressed. But my question is this: I am assuming that they bolt the door to our houses every night to keep the unsavoury out, but if two five foot two inch girls can hop the door, is it really that effective? Can they not just shut it with a normal lock and key? Is that too much to ask? But then again, I probably should not complain because Kylee has to hope over her wall and into her bathroom so I should probably be thankful huh? I think maybe I should resolve to wear my bike helmut everywhere that i go.....

Happy New Year all!!! I am having a very hap hap happy new year because, well, I am alive, and really it’s selfish to ask for anything more isn’t it? I got back from one hell of a trip to Monantali, which ended up being one of the best vacations and one of the scariest vacations of my life. But this is what I have come to expect here.

I had a fabulous Christmas with wonderful food, the company of twelve other awesome volunteers, egg nog, drinking jenga, and twister. Good times. For New Years we all decided to meet up with about 6 other volunteers from my stage in Monantali and while doing so violated the Peace Corps travel ban, but details details….dammit it’s worth it! So we all hopped onto a “train” from Kayes that was supposed to leave at 12:30, but ended up leaving at 5 pm. So it goes. It was a fairly uneventful trip except when we arrived in Mahina and had to get off the train. Imagine your worst travel nightmare in which hundreds of people are trying to get on the train while hundreds of people are trying to get off, nobody has showered in what smells like years and little kids have used whatever is lying on the ground such bags, people, or what have you, to relieve themselves during the 5 hour ride, people are shouting at the top of the lungs while randoms are climbing through the windows trying to evade the clamor. Eventually by the grace of St Christopher we finally got off and we were only missing a digital camera and bug spray from one of our bags. Not bad.

What proceeded was like something out the extras from Stand By Me. Mehina is a small train town that is divided into two parts from the Senegal River. The train station is on one side and the bashees, or converted camions that transport people to Monantali are on the other. And you have to cross a long, ridiculously scary bridge to get from one to the other. So we start walking across this bridge comforted by the fact that everyone we’ve talked to says the train will stay at the station for at least a half hour in order to shovel all the people that inevitably did not make it past the rows and rows of psyschotic travelers. But they were wrong. Oh….they were wrong. About half way from the other side we hear the train start up and we all start hauling, while a crowd of Malians gathers on the other side of the river in wide-eyed wonderment at the stupidity of the toubabs (whiteys) before them. Images of a fat Jerry O’Connell and a young River Pheonix flash through my mind. We made it across, with a couple seconds to spare granted and a chuckle when it was all said and done, but it was definitely not how I’d imagined starting out the New Year. After eating a hearty plate of beans and macaroni we jumped onto a bashee that would take us the rest of the way. The thing about this bashee is that it is used to be a truck used to carry livestock and has been converted to carry human stock by nailing in a few benches here and there and calling it good. During a journey of 45 miles, which should take about 2 hours, we got 2 flat tires and a “realignment problem” that was fixed through hitting the truck with a crowbar incessantly for an hour. The girls huddled in the back of the truck for warmth (yes it is the cold season and it was probably around 65 degrees, yet we were all freezing) while the boys did what any twenty-something group of guys would do….they went looking for wood to build a huge fire in the middle of the road while blaring Iggy Pop’s “Here comes success”.

Eventually we did make it to Monantali, which has become, for me, the mecca of Mali. The Peace Corps transit house sits right along the river about three kilometers from a South Africa dam that powers pretty much the entire country of Mali and reminds me of fishing with my brother and Grandfather in Stanley when I was a kid. Let’s call it my happy place. In one week I finished four books sitting on the banks of the Senegal and listening to the water rush over huge boulders, which can easily be mistaken for hippos as some of my teammates found out during a brief excursion in skinny-dipping. We met up with our friends from stage and listened to each of their own transport horror stories while sitting around a campfire with Pete from Vermont playing old Bruce Springsting tunes. It just doesn’t get much better than that does it?

But sadly the trip had to end and we made it back to Kayes yesterday refreshed and revived for the oncoming year and all that it might entail. I hope that everyone had an equally satisfying beginning of 2006. Happy Chinese New Year and Tabasci (a Muslim holiday a month after Ramadan that seems to me to be celebrated by unmediated slaughtering of whatever animal wanders into your concession…) I’d love to hear all about it, so drop me a line whenever your Amerikis (and skans, and brits, etc) get a chance….much love, xoxo

so the last thing that i wanted to have happen on installation day last week happened. I got sick....and was flown back to bamako after being in Kayes for a grand total of two days...awesome. but i am feeling much better now and will probably be on med hold no longer than the end of this week, so no complaints here. although when i was lying in my hut staring up at my ceiling fan watching the pattern that the lizards were making on my wall, I seriously thought long and hard about what I was doing in the middle of Africa (which becomes a really weird question when you say it over and over again...or maybe that was just the fever talkin. Regardless they were a very productive couple of hours actually and it just reaffirmed my committment to the peace corps in ways I didn't think were possible. So I've been through the worst that my body can throw at me (insha'allah) and in the end it wasn't really that bad...I just better not get malaria and amebic dysentary at the same time again in the near future or else the outcome of my ponderings might be decidedly different. silver lining: all of the awesome messages and calls from you guys and the awesome way that my teammates took care of me while i was waiting for the plane to arrive. Rest assured they will all receive a nice little bottle of french red wine en route back to site (which they better share with yours truly....I mean I'm generous, but not that generous). You guys back in the states would also get wine except for the fact that I am averaging about 6 dollars in salary a day here....so if there's gonna be any imbibing it's gonna be by me and those closest to me. No offense.

Hope everyone is having a better start to the last month of 2005 than I did. Although I was able to try a rather tasty slice of camel cheese yesterday...so things are looking up. Enjoy the cold weather, the festivities and draw a nice warm bath tonight and curl up with some egg nogg because that's what I would do if I were you...xoxo