Fareed Zakaria, the editor of Newsweek, recently published 'The Post-American World.' While I have not (yet) read the book, I did read his excerpt in Newsweek titled 'The Rise of the Rest', which you can read here.

I think in the larger picture--global politics, history- the organization of the world's major players, and how those players interact, is changing; the European Union now forms a political bloc, China, India, and Brazil are major economic forces in the global market, in sum, the United States as the lone superpower are ending; as Zakaria states, we are shifting from anti-Americanism to post-Americanism with this rise of the rest.

Which is why, now, the United States, and more broadly the world, needs the Peace Corps more than ever.

The United States, as the richest and most powerful nation has spent a long time setting global priorities and policies. You often see white people, passing in Land Rovers, possibly stopping to hand out clothes or food supplements.

It is especially significant, then, when you are a 70-year-old Malian woman, and there is this new American girl that lives with you, one much like the people that pass in those Land Rovers. Except she asks if she has bought the right soap for washing her clothes, and where to burn her garbage, and how to get to the village 1 km away.

Peace Corps is a humbling experience, to say the least--a village helps you learn a language, a culture, a way of life that is 180 degrees different from everything that you have previously known. It is only after the village has helped you that you can then help them. Unlike the bags of food and Land Rovers, Peace Corps isn't paternalism. Living in a village for two years, having their problems then become your problems. This is exchange; and mutual exchange and cooperation--these are the traits required if America's future is to be successful.

Peace Corps is something that shakes you to the core regarding who think you are and what you think you know. As our own Country Director commented, in Peace Corps, we have come out of Plato's allegorical cave. With an intimate knowledge of the previously unknown and irrelevant, it's impossible to go back to where we came from, to the former perspective of that American and First World life. Am I still an American? Yes, of course. But I cannot express the sadness I felt leaving my village--leaving people who taught me a language, how to make tea, how to properly tie a pagne. I am leaving people who want me to tell them when I have found work, when I will marry, and when I will start having kids. They want to know these things because they have now become my family and my home.Further, I recognize that my work is not done. As I explained to my village friends why I was taking pictures of people eating a farming and their daily life that is so routine to them, but all but unknown to every non-African--there was a sudden realization of what I was doing. "Tell them" they say, "explain how it is, how it really is and how we really are. Because you have lived here with us. You understand. And you must help them understand too." I'll post an excerpt, made in 2000 at Peace Corps 40 year anniversary, from journalist from Bill Moyer, that makes this statement beautifully:Sometimes the soundtrack of memories deep in my mind begins to play back the Sixties, echoing the incongruities of those years. I hear the sounds of crowds cheering and cities burning; of laughing children and weeping widows; of falling barries and new beginnings...

But something survived those years, something that bullets could not stop. An idea survived, embodied in the Peace Corps.

...John Kennedy spoke to my generation about service and sharing; he called us to careers of discovery through lives open to others. There was music in this discovery. It was for us not a trumpet but a bell sounding in countless individual hearts, a clear note that said 'You matter. You signify. Make a difference.' Romantic? Perhaps. But we were not then so indifferent toward romance. We watched and cheered as each Peace Corps Volunteer waged hand-to-hand combat with cynicism, and won.Today, 40 years later, they keep on winning.

...They come-these men and women--from a vein of American life as idealistic and the Declaration and as gritty as the Constitution. I am reminded of an interview I had with Henry Steele Commager, the renowned American Historian. Reviewing the critical chapters of our history, he said that great things were done by all the generations that preceded us. And-said Dr. Commager--there are still great things to be done...here at home and in the world.

So there are. But if from the lonely retreats of our separate values we are to create a new consensus of shared values; if we are to exorcise the lingering poison of racism, reduce the extremes of poverty and wealth, and overcome the ignorance of our world; if we are to find a sense of life's wholeness and the holiness of one another, then from this deep vein which gave rise to the Peace Corps must come our power and light. ..."The dream we must seek to realize," writes author Michael Venture, "the new human project, is not 'security,' which is impossible to achieve on planet Earth in the 21st century. It is not 'happiness,' by which we generally mean nothing but a giddy forgetfulness. It is not 'self-realization,' by which people usually mean a separate peace. There is no separate peace. Technology has married us all to each other, has mude us one people on one planet. There is no such thing as going alone. Not anymore. Our project, the new human task, is to learn how to sustain, and how to enjoy this most human marriage." America has a rendez-vous with what my late friend Joseph Campbell called 'a mighty multi-cultural future.' But we are not alone. We have guides--160, 000 Peace Corps Volunteers who have advanced the trip. They have been going where our contry is going. Out there in the world, as John F. Kennedy might say, is truly a new frontier. ***

Peace Corps has never been more relevant. The world needs Peace Corps not because developing nations need assistance in building schools, weighing babies, and teaching English classes. We need Peace Corps because we need to learn to be at home in the world.

"... But they also need to have a mind for the poor."

I encourage you to read the President of Rawanda Paul Kagame's entire speech on Aid and development:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0d1218c8-3b35-11de-ba91-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1

Also of interest, Kagame made a public address regarding Rawanda being reopened to the Peace Corps:http://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.media.press.view&news_id=1462

and finally, an article about a year ago critisizing Peace Corps:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/09/opinion/09strauss.html

As I'm nearing the end of my service, completing final reports, re-drafting my resumes, performing all of the formalities that the first world demands, myself and my other Peace Corps volunteers are forced to answer the bottom line: to put it bluntly (as Americans are prone to do), what exactly did you do over there? Is Peace Corps doing any good?

I understand the question, but it is still upsetting to hear it--it takes a moment, 3 or 4 seconds, for one to take a deep breath, to remember what you, too, were like in a culture which operates according to a very different conception of priorities.

To answer the above two questions, we as Peace Corps volunteers are forced to confront the development component of our job, that first goal which says we are here to help our Host-Country meet developmental goals.

As a health vounteer, my work revolves around health development: malaria prevention, sanitation education, reproductive education, etc. And I bump up against other developmental organizations fairly regularly: our health center distributes mosquito nets that are donated by aid, a German NGO comes through and for one weekend and distributes medicine, USAID gives food supplements to malnourished children. This is, according to sources and my own experience, the form of most aid.

But what I do, what my work is--how can I even begin to explain? How do I answer? Let me provide you with an example of a 'typical' day in my village: yesterday I helped my friend sell rice and sauce at my village's Tuesday market.

I told my friend one day, exasperated, "Whenever I cook rice and peanut sauce, the sauce just isn't good like when a Malian woman cooks it!" She laughed, and responded, "market day, I will teach you again, and then you will know exactly how to cook sauce like a Malian woman." So I start my day by helping my friend sweep clean the hut she sells rice from, and then chopping onions with her eleven-year-old daughter. While cutting, we chat all the while about last night's rainstorm and the intricacies of peanut sauce (I add tomato paste to mine, is that okay? What if I can't find Okra powder?).

While the sauce is cooking, some more friends stop by: "Fatim! Why are you not at the health center? Are their vaccinations today?" I tell her no, there aren't vaccinations today, but I thought I remember her being told to the health center next market day. She repeats what the doctor said, and I tell her, "yes, yes, that's next market day!" I continue, "...and the other woman in your house? Her baby is 2 months old now, her child needs to start vaccinations too." Ah, yes, she has forgotten that he is already 2 months old. She leaves, wishing me a peaceful day, and also promising me that she will be at the health center the next market day.

After the sauce is cooked, I meet another friend of mine to ask if her saving's group is meeting this week: last week, we treated five woman's mosquito nets together, and now the other five women want to treat their nets too.

Finally, I join another set of friends--four boys between the ages of 15-17- to make tea until dusk. "Man, I'm tired" I tell them, and they laugh as I tell them that my morning of making rice and sauce is what has exhausted me. Two of them will be in highschool in Bamako come October, and I tell them, half-joking but half-serious, "how will you focus on school in the city! There are so many beautiful and smart Malian women, you do know where to buy comdoms in Bamako, yes?" And they laugh, although nervously--I know one has a 'girlfriend' in our village, something that Malian parents, who select their child's future wife, tend to frown upon.

I then come into Bamako to stare at an evaluation report--number of children completing full vaccination series, number of people employing preventative health measures. I understand the rationale, the need to measure and evaluate what is working and what isn't.

But to us? As vounteers? We laugh a little bit as we fill out our reports; it's not what you get done, but the way it gets done. Peace Corps' first goal is tough to seperate from her second and third goals--mutual cultural exchange between your Host-culture and American culture-because that is the way good development happens. To us, it is refreshing to hear Kagame, to anxiously watch Rawanda, mostly because we feel like he gets it--he is a leader that is not merely looking for a handout that a Western Nation, eager to prove it's 'generosity', is only too willing to give.

I would argue that aid can be done properly. For example, Doctor's Without Borders builds and renovates health centers, including the very one with which I help. But without properly trained staff, a nice and clean facility is useless. It was only after my village kicked out incompetant staff and asked me to help work with new personnel, developing a patient file system and consultation hours, that my village has begun to make good use of the facility. Similarly, the doctor in the village 50 km north of mine was hoarding food aid destined for malnourished children. With a new doctor, and a Peace Corps volunteer, the health center has begun to distribute food to those children who are malnourished, as identified through regular weighings.

But those white people who drive up in Land Rovers, hand out medicine, and then leave? The donated mosquito nets, that sabotage the motivation of someone every buying a net on their own initiative? The training sessions which are attended for nothing other than the free lunch and drink--all so some bureaucrat can check off a box, number of nets distributed, number of villagers trained?

The current state of aid has been called neocolonial or paternalistic or classist. I think, quite simply, most aid is disrespectful--it treats people as data points, or these noble poor which need taking care of, and which the rich world will continue to take care of because we have yet to treat the Third World as equals confronting a set of borderless problems--HIV/AIDS, global warming, the energy crisis. I would argue with respect to consumption patterns, waste-reduction, and self-sufficiency, it is the First World that needs helping from the Third.

Aid needs to have a mind, not a heart; and that only happens when we give another culture or country the dignity and respect one would one's own culture. Treat people as an end in themselves, do things the right way- that is genuine development.

Some suggested titles that are critical of aid:Dead Aid, by Dambisa Moyo The Road to Hell, by Michael Moren (RPCV Kenya)

And finally, aid done right:

Small is Beautiful, by E.F. Schumacher Two Ears of Corn, by Roland Bunch Helping Health Workers Learn, by David Werner Pedagogy of the Oppressed, by Paulo Freire

I have avoided up to this point speaking about some of the more troubling aspects of my time here. But because I have been asked by a number of people, I will speak on yet another cultural subject to the best of my ability.

In response to several inquiries, yes, my village performs female circumcision. When my language improved, at about 8 to 9 months into my service, I began asking: "I've seen the ceremonies for male circumcision--what about the ceremonies for female circumcision?" And they responded honestly, "ah, yes! We do that too! Boys around age 8 or 9 or 10, so they will become big and strong, and girls around 4 or 5, so that they won't 'wander' from man to man." Several times after this exchange, a Malian will often ask me the same thing: "Are boys and girls circumsized in America?" I tell them that many boys are, but not all. And that no, women are not circumsized.

Practiced in nearly all of sub-Saharan Africa (the very south and south-west countries are excluded), female circumcision has recently gained widespread press coverage by health organizations, feminist organizations, and human rights groups. In Mali, some 90% of women are circumcised. Techniques vary from scratching the clitoris with a razor blade or blade of glass, removal of the clitoris and labia minora, to a full removal female external genitalia, including the labia majora. The least intrusive form, scarring or removing the clitoris, is the type practiced in my village and also the most common form of excision. Elderly women who are from the blacksmith caste perform the ritual.

Most villagers see nothing wrong with the ritual--after all, males are circumsized, why shouldn't females be circumsized? My villagers tell me it gives strength to men, chastity to women. I've read more technically advanced anthropological reports that claim circumcision as gender differentiation; to the Bambara ethnic group, all people are born hermaphrodites. So male circumcision is the removal of the 'female' genitalia, while female circumcision is the removal of the 'male' genitalia.

After all, Americans have their own ways of gender differentiation--women typically have long hair, men short hair. Women wear skirts and dresses tend to pierce their ears, men wear tuxedos and suits, and generally do not pierce their ears. This is what we do, these are the reasons we do it, so why is there a problem with some minor African rite of passage?

Human rights groups often cite the brutality of the practice--several women will usually hold the girl down while a third performs the ritual with an unsterilized razor blade. Sure, it is brutal, but male circucision ain't much better--a male blacksmith using a sharp edged rock while two other men hold his legs down. There are other such 'brutalities' here too--giving birth without anaesthesia, the pulling of an infected tooth, burns that women often suffer from cooking every day over a fire. These 'brutalities' are simply realities in a place where technology is far away. Is female circumcision brutal? Yes, in your eyes and mine, but it's just 'one more thing you do' here.

Several months ago, I opened up the topic to a friend of mine, whom I sit and chat with every night. I talk to him about his daughers, how I think he should try to keep all of his kids in school, not just his sons. Uneducated himself, he immediately agrees, responding, "all my kids will go to school. They will read! They will write!" His second wife recently gave birth to a daughter, and I asked him, gently, "will you circumsize her? Many people in Bamako are chosing not to circumsize their daughters." I felt I was in safe waters, but he then became baffled and defensive: "Of course I will circumsize her! What kind of father do you think I am? One that will all my daughter to become some prostitute?" I let the matter drop.

Typically, even when a Malian is in agreement, having the practice talked about by white people smacks of cultural supremacy--this is our culture, who are you to tell us how to live? The reaction would be similar, if not identical, to having an African or European ask an American to just stop driving cars everywhere and take public transit or walk--after all, what with global warming (which I do think is real) and dwindling oil supplies, why haven't we stopped driving our cars? Besides convenience, I think the automobile, the American method of personally getting yourself from point A to B is something so embedded in our own culture, that we, too, get pretty defensive about our vices.

I have discussed circumcision with the doctor and vaccinator of my health center, and the director of our school, and they all will privately admit to the problems of female circumcision and the need for it to stop. As volunteers, we have also met with Malian health professionals in Bamako who think the practice is barbaric and should be stopped. Yet it was recommended that we not talk about female circumcision, of putting a white face on a cause that should be strictly African. While I have said little about the issue in my own village, other than discovering the practice, many African-American health volunteers, in their unique position, have started a dialogue with villagers about why they perform the ritual, while African-Americans (and even some African countries!) do not.

Like development, genuine change must come the people themselves. Case in point: Burkina Faso passed a law in 1996 outlawing female circumcision, driving the practice underground rather than ending it. While the current situation is frustrating, the number of young Malian professionals I see opposed to the practice makes me hopeful that there can, and will, be a change in the culture.

Sorry folks, sorry for the break in posting! It has not been for a lack of things to say, but merely a lack of a computer as a means to say things.

When compared to the developed world, I have rather large communication gaps--no internet, phone, or print material until the next major city. Sure, this is an occasional nuisance, but my living situation does have one up side: I was granted a village...on the paved-road(!).

Yes, in my situation, you take what you can get.

But take a 10 minute walk on the 5 foot wide dirt path to my other village. While not far in proximity, there is something distant about the village as a whole: there are no stores, no school, no mosque, no televisions, and perhaps 2 or 3 mopeds in the 300 person village. The most elderly woman in this village 1 km in the bush, never venturing to the paved road, speak a slightly different Bambara than my own neighbors. Much more, they have never even heard the French language.

Several months into my service, my friends from this village invited me to the Animist celebration just before rainy season. I was having a pretty good time, watching one of my friends paint with mud onto white cloth for the upcoming celebration. That is until her kid presented a recently cut and bloodied toe. "Give that to me!" she shouted at no one in particular. She yanked the child's foot towards her, and rubbed some mud into his wound, then told him to go off and play, herself contented, myself, stunned and shocked. I asked around to find out if this was normal--"well, sure, you need to stop the blood, and dirt does exactly that. After all, we are black, you are white, you use soap, and we use dirt."

Since that first encounter, I have since discovered that it is not unheard of for an Animist to rub mud in an open wound, use chanting to excise a "bad spirit," perform a sacrifice for revenge, or to push upward on the roof of a child's mouth when she is very dehydrated. My Animist village also doesn't treat their water or sweep their living area regularly.

In fact, my own village reels at their poor habits:"They drink to excess, they eat dog meat. They are Bambara and therefore dirty!" This is what my predominantly Muslim and Christian village says when I asked why they did not rub dirt into open wounds.

But in what sense are they dirty? From a health perspective? Or from a moral perspective? As I reflected upon their statements, I suddenly wasn't sure if the two weren't one and the same. Muslims are big into washing, and rinsing before praying. Christianity itself is couched into terms that equate cleanliness with salvation. The post-modernist in me aches at how every action has been broken into racially coded oppositions: black verses white, rich verses poor, science verses spirts, clean verses dirty, good verses heathenistic.

What is it that makes my two villages so different?

Quite simply, my village is on a major road. There are always truck drivers who stop in my village for gas or for prayer call, city-dwellers which come from the city once a week for market, and NGO workers/ tourists driving to Kayes and Dakar, Land Rovers fogged from the air-conditioned interior. Village-locked residents chat with truck drivers, see and buy goods from outside vendors, and gawk at the white NGO workers. Twenty years ago, Protestant missionaries stopped along every village on the main road. Fifty years ago, Catholic missionaries stopped in every village on the main road. Many many years ago, Muslims came south from the Middle-East to spread Islam...again on most of the main travel routes through Mali. While most of my village is too poor to go anywhere, the paved road alone has Westernized certain tastes, attitudes, and beliefs in my village. As a result, most messages about health and hygeine resulted from a Coca-Cola ad or a religious missionary, not from a doctor or a vaccinator-- everything is a result of imitation (proper behaviour) and not information (proper knowledge).

And of course me and my thoughts are part of this Western-construction too. I have been raised since infancy to value rationality over religion, to judge the clean and well groomed as morally better than the dirty and unkept. Think of your own childhood and how you were trained to wash your hands--it was not until much much later when you learned the reasons for your behaviour.

I've had to remind myself that there's nothing inherently clean about religion, or dirty about a lack thereof. My Animist friends have constructed themselves in opposition to white people and Theists, and all those behaviours and attitudes that I also endorse. But how to explain handwashing and sanitation in terms that are not from a rich,white, Western paradigm, but rather, from terms that can be considered universal? "Children shouldn't die," I tell them. "And in general, people shouldn't needlessly suffer. I don't care what you are or how you are living. You can roast kittens on spits and believe in any number of benevolent spirits, or even no sort of spirit if that makes sense to you. But I know that children should not die. I know that dirty water and dirty hands make my stomach hurt, that uncleansed wounds often don't heal properly. And no belief or disbelief in a God or Gods will change our own shared observations and experience."My adult-women friends are still skeptical of soap and sanitation. True, I myself coming from a position of faith in observation and experience, another sort of religious value to which they are only just beginning to understand. But the kids are unbiased, open to the strange habits of the little white woman who dresses like the Malians."Fatim washes her hands with soap," they shout, splashing the soapy water before eating. "She says it kills the bad spirits!"I laugh to myself. I think that actually, their explanation isn't so far off the mark after all.

I often spend a few minutes before I go to bed every night chatting with the old woman with whom I share a compound. Last night we were interrupted by the town crier--paid 500 CFA for every message he shouts, he came to the second of the four shouting areas, pounded his drum three times, and then shouted his message:

Villagers! Listen up! Last night, someone lost a cellphone at the dance party! If found please return to the chief of the village, no questions asked!

He then repeated his message as is the customary two times, and then shuffled off to the third of four shouting points and my neighbor and I resumed out conversation.

Such is how information is relayed in my small African village. In my village, there are four or five televisions (hooked up to car batteries) and nearly every family has a radio. There is no cell phone reception. I can rattle off the names of all the men and women who are literate. So the best means of sending information? After radio...well, paying the town crier to deliver your desired message. Or simply word of mouth, referred to as the 'bush telegraph.' After all, there's really nothing better to do.

But what's odd is the juxtaposition between technology and poverty--the irony that a town crier must spread the message of a missing mobile phone. At night, when there is no moon, everyone walks around with flashlights and the two store owners hook up a flourescent light to a car battery. Or for example, I'll ask my women what time they hold their Association meeting. "Afternoon," they tell me, and then pointing upward, "when the sun is at about that point in the sky." At the public telephone, men and women will regularly give the store owner a piece of paper with the telephone number they wish to call: the store owner must dial the number since many villagers cannot read numerals.

It's not possible to label this First World infiltration into the Third straight away as a 'good' or a 'bad' thing; I think most of us can agree that vaccinations are a good thing, that telephones are a good thing. On the flip side, I'm regularly frustrated by the families who I see buying soft drinks (250 CFA or 0.50 USD) or cell phones (15, 000-30, 000 CFA) who have malnourished kids--in Mali, you can feed a family of five for about 300 CFA.

I often find my work at this messy intersection of the technological west and the rural non-west. For example, vaccinations are performed every Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday morning at our clinic. Vaccinations must be kept cold, therefore, the vaccinator and I commence when enough people show up; the vaccinator can then take out the medicine, knowing he can get everyone through before the medicine goes bad in the hot African heat. Women, frustrated and impatient, will often leave to cook lunch when we don't start soon enough. How much easier vaccinations would be if both the clinic had reliable refrigeration and families owned clocks. And of course, if people were able to read said clocks.

In a similar vein, women come to prenatal consultations at least once per trimester, twice in the third. Like in America, I write on each woman's card the date when she should return. Anything relating to a date is tricky here--there is what is called 'the white person's calendar' which is what the developed world runs by, the Bambara calendar, about a month off the white person's calendar, and then the Muslim calendar. Not that any of this matters of course, because most people don't have calendars, and if they did, women can't read them. To bypass all of this confusion, I'll write the date on her card and say "come back after three markets time." And then at the beginning of prenatal consultations, look at every woman's card, and send away the women with a date that has not yet arrived. After all, being told to come back in three or four markets, I would most likely lose track too.

Development organizations are aware of these hurdles and trying to address them. For example, clinics sell tablets to impregnate mosquito nets with repellent for up to six months. While the instructions are written in French, development organizations--including USAID- have tried to accomadate rural africa by accompanying each written step with a very explicit picture of, say, an African Woman measuring water, of dissolving the tablet in the water. I sat down with my neighbor to help her treat her mosquito nets, and she was completely baffled by the pictures. Why? She went to Qu'ranic school for five years and her long deceased husband only read and wrote in arabic. Looking at the instructions, she continued to move from right to left (as one does when one reads Arabic), trying to make sense of the pictures, and then just became confused. The pictures are helpful, yes, but in a village where most people have never seen a book or maganize, they just don't do it.

This is the value of a Peace Corps volunteer. I often feel like I am a liason between all the development efforts of the First World--vaccinations, modern medicine, mosquito nets, etc- and the reality of the Third World. I have simply treated mosquito nets with many people personally, walking them through the instructions since they were too mystified by the shiny, glossy pamphlet. I have explained to friends in my village that I think in some instances, using traditional medicine (very popular in my village) is fine, but in certain severe illnesses, you can not waste time, and must treat yourself with more expensive modern medicine. And I myself have fallen into the flow of being in a village, where time passes by where the sun is and how many markets have passed, rather than a time or date.

The next night, the mayor's office has paid the town crier to announce vaccinations which will be 'just after breakfast', and then the theft of someone's moto. My old woman and I listen, then I blow out my lamp and we're plunged into darkness. Tomorrow, I will get up, eat breakfast, and go to the clinic, hopefully on time to set up for prenatal consultations.

After all, I don't have a clock either.

(Malian hot season is now in full swing. I finally cracked the day it got to 110 F.)

"Hey, fat woman, move over!!"

I imagine if an American bus driver yelled this to one of his riders on a packed bus, the bus company would find itself with a lawsuit by the week's end.

In Mali, I don't think I've ever not heard this phrase yelled in a crowded bus. Or any other slew of things Americans would be shocked about--fat woman, ugly woman, old man, old woman, peul woman, crazy man. I am often referred to as the little white woman.

At first I thought of this as being tactless. Then as un-politically correct. Now I don't see what the problem is with it at all. After all, they're just calling it like they see it, right? Who are you to take it personally?

In Mali, there is both a distance and closeness--every thing both is and isn't personal. For example, any reference to your size, age, attractiveness, skin color, ethnicity, intelligence, and disability is up for grabs. Anyone can say anything about these things, and a Malian has no idea why you would take offense or be hurt. I have heard mothers called their own children ugly. To their faces. One day in my village, the crazy woman dropped a bucket of water, and the deaf woman started pointing and laughing. If you trip and fall, a Malian will point in laugh, then call over other people, who will also point in laugh. After all, it is funny.

But lets take another routine instance: Malians buy sodas from glass bottles, requiring a deposit upon purchase, and then the return of that deposit upon the return of that bottle. My friend, the clinic's vaccinator, didn't have the deposit on him for the bottle, but as the friend of both the store owner and vaccinator, I will vouch for him--"Trust him" I tell the store owner. "If he is friends with me, he will return the bottle." Any number of things are accomplished this way--price negotiations, a prime seat in a bus, someone helping you with lost luggage at the airport. Things do or do not get accomplished because of your level of friendship with someone, the personal understanding you have between you.

Yet Malians have a way of taking the person out of personal. Even a favor system isn't necessarily because of personal influence. You'll do me a favor because of all the people I know. And then if you mess up, I will tell all of my friends, who will also tell all of their friends.

What on the surface is a favor system, is really a series of actions based on entirely on friend or family relationships that have gone back and back and back. So for example, why does this entire family refuse to use the clinic? Because the old doctor's first son is married to this family's third daughter. I might ask, why do you always give medicine to this family for free?" "Ah, because he's family!" And they will rattle off some obscure chain of relations, then end with the phrase, "so it's personal!"

I have learned in Mali not to take anything personally. After all, I am little, and I am white. If someone passes me in the city and greets me as white person, I'll greet them right back, since here, being white is my most outstanding characteristic.

But in my village? That's another story--that's personal.

Also, to fill in my lack of photos, my brief hiatus from blogging was due to a trip to Senegal, among other things.

I waved from across the Atlantic.

When I'm sick or need, say, a tetnus vaccination, I usually would call the nearest health center, schedule an appointment, and pay the necessary fees to a nurse, doctor, or clinic staff. When I need to pass an important exam--SATs, LSATs, MCATs, take your pick- I study, appear at the appropriate testing center, and receive my results a month or so later.

In Mali, you call up your friend who owes you a favor; he'll give you the necessary tetnus vaccination, malaria injection, or IV drip. Never mind not only that he's not only not a doctor, but he didn't finish highschool. And just before or after important exams in my village, you'll find many of the female students frequenting their instructor's house, often at night (I don't think it's to make tea).

Last week, I wrote briefly on the micro-view of giving and receiving help. There is something I love about the fluidity of aid, that most 'help' is never considered a big deal the way it is in the US. Yet this same practice which mutually helps everyone get by also has some problems on the macro level.

For certain situations in the US, I'll call a friend, such as bringing in my mail while I'm on leave, proof-reading an important manuscript. Yet when I'm sick, I go to a doctor, if I have financial problems, an accountant; I might not know him or her very well, and I have to pay a small fee, but I take for granted that these professionals have my best interests at heart. In the US, I have a basic 'trust' in this impersonal system. And if this system runs afoul, I have faith that bad doctors will not practice for long, that an accountant who steals money will be convicted and appropriately punished.

In Mali, it's not that people don't like strangers or aren't friendly. They're very friendly, in fact. But right now your friend is going to give you an injection that will make your malaria better, and he'll let you pay him later to boot. Never mind that he learned to give injections just by watching his friends, or that the medicine is expired. After all, at the local clinic, you pay a fee for the doctor, and then another fee for the medicine. Then there's the fact that the clinic's director didn't properly store the new tetnus vaccine and the vaccinator just finished his training with the Red Cross. And why should I pay for a vaccine anyway, since last year I got that vaccine and mosquito net for free?

When you speak with citizens from the USSR or any of Eastern Europe, even today, there is a fear of doctors and lawyers and police because such public servants were affiliated with a corrupt State, a State which didn't represent the people's interests. In Mali, there is none of this Soviet-style suspicion of public institutions. Rather, there simply were no institutions to begin with. So Madou, a few houses over, just started set people's broken bones when there was no one else to do it. You didn't pay him, but you did help him out next rainy season by giving him a few bags of millet. And people were satisfied, so everyone started getting broken bones set by him and just repaying him with food or labor. And up to the present, there is still this guy named Madou who sets broken bones--he has no medical training, I don't think he's even literate, yet if I broke something, my village would most likely trust Madou over our clinic's new doctor.

But now, with a set of budding institutions and infrastructure, the informal system still makes more sense to Malians. There are at least two other 'doctors' in my village who dispense medication and medical advice for doing repairs on their house or food. This means the clinic loses money, which it needs in order to pay salaries and buy medicines. But the clinic will not let you take credit, since giving out credit was how the clinic institutionally fell apart the first time around. So between receiving no medical treatment or having a 'friend' give questionable treatment for free, which should I recommend? Likewise, school teachers are poorly paid or just not paid to start with when a village runs out of money. So a teacher might pass you anyway since he knows you're smart. Or demand a small fee or 'favor' for passing an important exam--after all, you rarely get your own results in the mail anyway, so why study?

People have been operating in an environment of poverty for so long that everyone mutually helps everyone else, often with no money attached. But where is the line between 'appriate aid' and 'corruption'? Between quality hospitals and schools and police and and an ineffective untrained bureaucracy? In my own village, it's impossible to point people out and say what he or she is doing is purely corrupt and selfish or purely good and altruistic.

So where to go from here? I love the attitude of Malians--that my mother here feeds me free of charge, because she knows I'll buy her bread and develop her photos when I go to the city. That I don't have to worry about a dog or a securtiy system because I know my entire village makes sure I'm safe and would punish anyone who harmed me. I love that there is no shame in saying 'I can't do this, come do it for me.'

But I think an improved infrastructure (trained doctors and teachers) will create more confidence in public services. Further, if people begin to make more money and overall literacy increases, Mali will start to seriously attach monetary units to goods and services. Finally, no-strings-attached aid needs to end. Currently, mosquito nets are provided free of charge, the World Food Program provides porridge powder for small children. This is not only unsustainable, but villagers actually refuse to buy nets or make their own cheaper porridge since they know they can get it for free. I do think mosquito nets should be subsidized and malnourished children given extra medical help and attention. But Mali must start to attach monetary value to goods and services if it ever wants to get out of poverty and dependence on foreign aid.

How to have it all-- the rural warmth and immediateness of personal help? The efficiency and standard of a well organized public institution? And finally, the unbiased oversight to regulate it all? Until that time comes, such is the way we get by in Mali.

I woke up in my village, an unremarkable day just like any other. I walked to the market to buy breakfast and chat with some friends. Sitting next to my friend on this particular morning, I noticed how casually she chatted with a man about the weather and the upcoming market. She gave him some breakfast, free of charge, and then he smiply left, each person giving the other blessings for the day.

Let me explain now why I find this remarkable: my friend chatted with a man with legs so grotesquely bent upon themselves that he could barely even scoot on the ground to ask for some food. Routinely, especially on market days, you'll find the sick, the handicapped, and the insane demanding money or food in my village. In a larger city, this is considered normal.

As an American, how would you respond if a crazy person wandered into your house every day and demanded lunch? I remember in my youth a certain mentally unbalanced man who occasionally wandered the supermarket. Never doing anything other than wander the aisles and mutter to himself, he always caused staff and customers much consternation. I think most Americans, when confronted with the unstable would call the police, or as in the supermarket, draw straws at would escort this subhuman away from civilized society.

Yet in my village, two or three such people do wander around the village or into someone's house most days. And as Malians, they always provide lunch, a chair or mat if he wants to sit down, and wish him or her well as they would any normal person.

For Mali, this behaviour is not remarkable--no government compensation is offered to injured or handicapped people. So if you are classified as such (unfit to produce your own food as Mali's agrarian economy necessitates), your family must support you. Or you must turn to the wider social network...and beg.

But this culture of begging, the processess and attitudes toward asking for help, goes much deeper then simply demanding a handout. Americans specifically have a tough time asking for any sort of help since it implies something less than self-sufficiency. There is a great deal of shame with the idea of dependence, shame from admitting we can't carry a heavy bag to admitting we can't pay the rent after driving up our credit card debt.

Further, in America, knowing the recipiant of help triggers another emotional response: there is shame on the recipiant's part, but also pity on the donor's part. I think this is communicated in that feeling we might get when we see someone in a wheelchair or when we speak with the caretaker of an autistic or retarded child--there is something that passes between the two people, which I cannot adequately explain, but the two people are never equals; rather, it is as though someone in a wheelchair is fighting a seperate struggle, that physically and mentally abled people constantly sanctify the chronically weak or the sick.

So the recipiants of food or monetary aid tend to be anonymous--we have canned food drives during Thanksgiving, or a money collection for an organization that gives aid to families dealing with Cancer. The World Food Program sends out bags of porridge powder regionally, but never even meets the doctors or health staff who distribute the food aid. I've yet to meet anyone who admits to benefiting from a food bank or zho received a big check from a charity. As Westerners, we rarely meet recipiants of our help, unless you find yourself on Oprah's holidy season episode.

Yet regarding the crazy and disfigured residents in my village, there is neither shame nor pity. 'Helping people' is just something we do, it's how we live, and it's never considered 'special". I marvel at how the kids at the elementary school make it an adventure getting the wheelchair-bound kid home every day or how the one-legged man will shamelessly stagger through the village, him yelling at you to move a bit to the left so that he can pass. Or even the farmer who didn't get the timing right during planting season and had a bad harvest, asking his neighbor for money so he can buy meat for Tabaski. It's strange now to look at magazines like Reader's Digest or Women's Day, which feature stories such as "Neighborhood pulls together, so that recent victims of house fire might have a merry Christmas too." Have we really become that alienated from each other? Must we praise and make each other into heros for doing what any person should unquestionably do?

Crazy, disfigured, deaf, and poor, we're all just people trying to get by. So why should someone should be martyred in some personal struggle over another?

After two nights of not sleeping--the first night, the election, and the second night, a 20 hour bus ride back to Bamako, I'll give you a photo update of the past few weeks:

Several weeks ago, a bunch of us went hiking in the Western Kayes region of Mali. Here's the view from the top.

About a week later, I finally met with a friend of mine in the closest city and bought some Bogolan fabric. Bogolan is a traditional West African mud cloth: cotton fabric is painted on with mud, the goes through a washing process to produce the image on the left.Most makers on the street have a cheap knock offs, but my friend still makes authentic Bogolan that has a reputation for authenticity and quality at US University Anthropology Departments: he busted out his portfolio and showed me some shows and lectures he gave in the US. This is my first tapestry I bought with the design in the center being the Bambara symbol for Alligator. He's currently working on a second tapistry for me with the symbol for lion--noteworthy for me since my Malian last name means 'lion'. This past week, a group of us hiked up the Rose Dune, just off the Niger River in the eastern-most part of Mali. Note how the southwest of Mali (above) differs fairly significantly from the eastern-part of Mali, just off the Saharan desert. No more are the vast fields of millet like in the south, but cow-herders and camels gradually become the norm. In the markets I had to hunt for Bambara or French speakers, since the default languages are Sonrai and Tamasheck. The northern folk are strictly herders and/or nomads. The landscape and people gradually change, with some mix of desert/livestock raising and savannah/farming, until you arrive at the southern area of Mali with strictly farmers. This, of course, is changing. Global warming has caused the rains to come nearly two months later, and dried up watering holes on which the nomads rely. As the Sahara creeps further downward, groups will be forced to give up the nomadic life and become farmers. Even in my village, smack in the central band of Mali, is beginning to undergo tree-loss due to desertification. The next night, we watched the election results come in on CNN international--shockingly, in Peace Corps, there are many political junkies like myself, so it felt like we were waiting up for Santa as we napped and anxiously sat around for exit polls and returns to start coming. At 4:02am declared Obama the winner (Ohio and Virginia just went blue). McCain gave his speech at around 5:30, Obama followed around 6. If there is something you want me to talk about or some burning question, don't be shy! Learning about and sharing Malian culture with Americans is part of my job! Hope everyone is well.

In America, having extra disposable income might mean you buy a better car, a new TV, as a college student, eat out somewhere besides Papa Johns.

In Mali, you get another wife.

It's difficult for me to completely understand the perspective of a Malian woman--after all, how would you feel if any married man could, at any point, simply take another wife? Yet equally shocked are Malians when they learn in America, men can only get married to one woman.

"Why?" They ask me to explain-- "Why can men only take one women? After all, men are men, and women are women, they are different!"

Such is the bedrock of the difference between me and my Malian counterparts. Aristotle (I believe) stated that one should "treat equals equally, and unequals unequally." This idea, applied to men and women, is quite in line with Malian culture.

Men are farmers, the keepers of money and masters of the house--their role is to provide for their family. Men work incredibly hard...about 4 months of the year when they're farming. Then for the other 8 months of the year they're...preparing for next year.

Women are mothers, who are responsible for feeding and clothing her family. Her responsibilities involve hauling water, pounding millet into flour, cleaning the house and the concession, and cleaning her family's clothes. If money is short, women additionally sell food at market for their own personal income, or tend vegetable gardens for food. If fieldwork increases, a husband can request his wife help with the farm work (in addition to all her household duties of course).

Men often defend the benefits of multiple wives: women can divide up housework amongst themselves. When one wife is sick, the other wife cooks. One wife will visit her family in another village for a month, while her so-spouse keeps house. Or even more often, wives and their children will live in two different villages, never really crossing paths at all, but the man will jettison back and forth between villages.

I do find that families with multiple wives are often healthier; admittedly, multiple-spouse familes tend to have more money, and practice many healthy behaviours that single-spouse familes don't practice due to Islam (no alcohol, emphasis on cleanliness). But there is some merit to what men tell me: a sick wife can always pass off housework or kids to a co-spouse and take extra time to recover, while a single wife can only request the help of her kids or a neighbor.

Because of the role that gender plays, it's a bit different moving through Malian life. First, even as a white westerner, I am still most fundamentally a woman. I'll often walk into a house in my village, any house, greet whoever happens to be present, and sit down next to the kitchen, and ask for some millet to sift of vegetables to cut; I mean, I'm a woman, so I just know how to cook, right? On one instance in a crowded van, a man climbed in with his 3-year-old son. As he got his bags in the van, I simply took his bewildered looking child and sat him on my lap for the duration of the 1 hour trip. Every woman nodded approvingly--after all, a man can't take of his own child! Yes, there is a certain amount of 'female privilege' that comes with my life here.

Yet these strict roles, the very clear existence of "men's work" and "woman's work" is a occasionally a tough area to manuver. I'll give presentations to women on nutrition, and they begin laughing at me--"Fatim! I would love to buy meat and fish, but my husband would never give me the money or let me go to market to do so." Feeding the family well, nutrition, is a 'woman's issue' but it requires money from men! Children's health is also a woman's issue, yet attaining money requires the husband's approval.

The way men relate to men, and women to women, is also quite different. I'll see a friend of mine at market, and she'll exclaim "where have you been!?! It has been too long!" Then we'll walk around the market together, holding hands. Women will also sit with each other, leaning against each other, braiding a friend's hair quite affectionately. Similarly, it is perfectly acceptable for two male friends to hug each other, or walk down the street holding hands intertwined. In Mali, spouses live in different worlds and rarely cross paths. There is much less public closeness or intimacy present between couples. Yet the intimate male-female friendships that are permitted in America are balanced in Mali by very intimate homo-social bonds: men here are permitted to be in much closer friendships with men, women with women, even after marriage. In America, a heterosexual man walking down the street, fingers linked with his other male heterosexual friend? Never. Here, it doesn't get a second glance.

I do not endorse Aristotle's statement regarding gender--treat men as men and women as women. Rather, a slew of individuals (Gloria Steinem, Martin Luther King Jr.) stated that we no longer make distinctions based on gender (sexism) and race (racism), but only consider the talents and skills of each person--humanism. You're a man yet have a talent in cooking? By all means, take over the range and make dinner! The grass needs cutting but your husband is sick? Nonsense, go out and cut it yourself. I explain to Malians that work is work, and what matters is only that it get done, not who does it. Yes, I will admit, there are surface differences to men and women. But I tell the Malians, "you need two teapots to make tea.This one is red, that one blue. They are different (i.e. color), but they are more fundamentally the same. That is how I see myself as I relate to men--different, but still, more fundamentally the same."

To successfully integrate culturally, one must not accept or endorse a culture, merely understand it. Indeed, it is an aspect of the culture I will never endorse or accept, but I do understand the differences and advantages.

My house!

My neighbor's house. And my clothes on the line.

The door and inside of my latrine, nyegan in Bambara. Also, the crucial salidaga, used to rinse hands and feet. Sam! Thanks for the pictures. Walking to the next village.

Before I begin my narrative for today, I want to thank everyone who donated to my village's pump repair project. I walked out to their village just to tell them the good news, that we could proceed with repairing the pump come October. Pierre clapped his hands together, smiled and said, "good news indeed!" I'll do my best to post pictures.

About a week ago, I was in yet another village, presenting an animation on clean water. Afterward, I decided to bike up to the nearest large city--about 20 kilometers. It had just rained the night before, and there was that wonderful cool, fresh feeling in the air.

Since it's rainy season, everyone is in the fields, and around noon, I saw a familiar scene: men were waving out, shouting the often heard phrase at mealtimes to each other, "Na dumunike!" Come eat! Around noon, you'll see five, six, seven men, crouched around one large metal bowl, filled with to and sauce. They eat, thank everyone else, then leave the bowl to drink some tea under the nearest tree with each other. Sometimes there's conversation afterward. Sometimes just sitting or napping until it cools off enough to work again.

I'll briefly relate this scene to one particular moment in the U.S. About two years ago, just returned from Scotland, I subletted a single-person apartment for the summer. I welcomed this new living arrangement; I had just spent a month staying exclusively in hostels with 10 and 12 beds to one room, with communal showers, communal sinks, you get the idea. After having nothing to call my own, I loved coming home to an empty house, making dinner for one person, sitting squarely in front of my laptop to watch movies.

After several weeks of this, I got tired of cooking only for myself, and started inviting friends over for dinners. Then on a weekend when my immediates were all out of town, I asked a co-worker to come over for dinner. I tried to convince her to break her routine and come over, saying "I can never eat the entire box of macaroni and cheese! It always goes bad!" My boss, the practical woman she is, started making 'helpful' suggestions: "well just cook half the box. Or put the cheese sauce in the refrigerator." My boss never understood why I always shot her suggestions down. I invited my co-worker over, not because everything says '2-4 servings' on the box, but to give some acceptable spin to what no American can say: "I'm lonely, and I'd really just like to have someone else."

I remember that incident in particular because there's this weird feeling of being weak or needy in America when you seek out other people. Along the same vein, everyone can relate to the elementary or highschool lunch room: you scan the crowd, finding your people, the group that always saves you a seat. Otherwise, you're forced into some other group that only grudgingly accepts you, making polite small talk, and then just wishing you'd leave.

I tell Malians about American eating habits. I explain single-person apartments, and coffee shops, about how there is a high priority on individual space and time, how Americans understand this, and will give you your space until you say otherwise.

And and they are not only shocked, but perplexed. "Why would you not invite someone to come eat with you? Why would you every exclude someone? Why would you do anything, especially eat, by yourself?". They ask me these things, and I can't give them an answer they'll understand. Malians are joiners. Everything, everything, is done together. Not only does exclusion seem odd, they consider it downright greedy and mean.

Growing up Malian, you'll probably share, not only a room, but a bed, with two or three other siblings. If you're smart enough to go to highschool (lycee), you move to the city, but rather than live in a dorm, American style, you'll live with a host family, who you pay to cook your meals, clean your clothes, and who will function as your family. Even after highschool, if you're a woman and not yet married, you'll live with your brothers or your family until you find a husband. As a man, you live with your parents and grandparents, and if they have died, take over as head of the house. It was a startling realization when I put the obvious together: Malians are never alone!

One Malian, a Muslim I believe, explained their collective attitude as such: "Only God is One. Man? Independent? Never. What makes us human is that we are in this together. Whatever 'this' is, we can't know, we are not God. So it is everything that we do--farming, eating, celebrating, mourning- we must do these things together."

I still need to retreat for several hours every day, to have my own space. But now, I will read American publications and novels, nearly gagging at the 'individualism' that has come to define America. So much of American culture is based on exclusion: what you do or don't wear, who you do or don't know. Your affiliations. Your personal politics. Everything is categorized so that every person can sit and consider themselves 'independent' and 'unique.'

Biking up to Kolokani, I pass a third group of farmers. They all simultaneously yell for me to come and eat, twice as is custom. And again, as custom dictates, I reject twice by saying I've already eaten. I think back to the American cafeteria experience, to the shame I felt trying to invite my co-worker over for dinner.

But in Mali? Come! Join! Everyone! No shame in including everyone.

Part I: my educational post for the day

Since I typically pick a theme that I hope people will find interesting, this time, I thought I'd pose and answer some general questions I've been getting from Americans. When I now speak with Americans, I forget which things are considered odd or unknown by Americans. Some questions from Americans-and answers to those questions.

Where (and how) do you eat?

Malians eat outside, sitting in chairs or stools close to the ground, placing a single communal bowel in the middle of 4 or 5 people. Houses are generally too small, dark, and hot to even sit in, much more eat a meal in, so nearly everything happens outside in the courtyard. Malians generqlly don't have tables at which to sit, eat, chat, etc.

What is your bathroom like?

My 'bathroom' is a pit latrine: this means that a very large pit is dug, then a slap of cement or wood is put over it. There is a hole in a cement floor with a mud wall built up around it. Nicer latrines are cement floors, since they can be swept and cleaned, while many of my neighbors have a rocky dirt floor in their latrine. Mine latrine also has a door, while with others, the wall is built up around it like a maze.

How do you bathe?

There are this 25 liter buckets available all over West Africa which is considered the standard bathing bucket, which are filled with water zhen you bathe. With this large bucket, you take a smaller 1 liter plastic cup to pour water on you to lather and rinse. Parents will bathe kids up to about age 8 or 9 right in the courtyard, while adults bathe in your latrine area. Some people have a shower/urinating area and a seperate area for defacating (obviously, the one with the hole in the ground).

I really don't mind bucket baths at all--in a place where the low temp is somewhere around 80 F every day, outdoor baths with cool water are very refreshing.

How do you wash clothes?

Remember that 25 liter bucket used for bathing? You use two when you wash clothes: one to wash, one to rinse. Yes, by hand, with a washboard if you have one.

What is it like living without electricity? Do you miss it?

It's not so much that I miss it, it's more that it's just...not there. You can't miss electricity when there are no electric appliances, no outlets, no physical evidence of there being something to miss.

What kind of wildlife is there?

Honestly, not much--I think the words of the Lonely Planet West Africa guidbook are that West Africa is an "environmental basketcase" which is effectively stripped it of most wildlife. You don't get any of the bigger animals till you get to East and South Africa.

In the southern portion of Malin, there are many snakes (poisonous and not), lizards, spiders, and insects as well as the occasional hippo. My village is right on the transition zone between desert and savannah, so there isn't nearly the variety of reptile wildlife that's found in the south; I get little gecko type lizards sunning on my window and hiding in my house, behind my trunks and such, but that's it. There ARE many many types of birds in my area: if you go out en brousse, there's blue, red, green, tourquoise birds, and several times, I've seen a bird like Zazu in "The Lion King." Also, my village tells me there are wild rabbits and wild boars.

Reciprocally, here are the most frequent questions I get from Malians about America:

Why are American families so small?

How do you wash your clothes?

What kind of food do you eat?

Why are American women so small?

Why are men only allowed to take one wife?

What do men do if their wife dies?

What's the inside of an airplane like?

How many bathrooms did your house have? Were they indoors?

Why do Americans like to fight? ("Delta Force One" and Chuck Norris are very popular here)

If Americans aren't farmers, what do they do exactly?

Where do Americans get their food?

Part II: the product of my most recent efforts over the past few months!

I've been working with a village to help them repair a pump which was built (and broken) about ten years ago. I've agreed to help them raise funds to buy replacement parts and fix it. I strongly support their endeavor for several reasons:

First, they spent the time trying to dig more and deeper wells... to find that no more water could be found at an easily reachable level. As a result, they contacted the local pump technician about fixing this pump and figuring out where to get parts to fix it. Since they have done the legwork (and are contributing 25% of the cost) I see them committed to making this pump an effective and sustainable solution.

Second, I do feel like there is a real need to have a working pump between these two villages. During hot season, there is a single well to share between two 250 person villages. Half of these women must walk 1 km to get to the well, and further, during hot season, the well is nearly 30 meters deep--my water is about 20 to 25 meters deep during hot season, a markable difference. In over 100 F heat, to haul water from that deep a level to then transport it 1 km is just plain exhausting.

Third, I've been working with these villages on the importance of clean water. With women constantly pulling water and leaving the water sack on the ground, overusing a well makes already dirty water even worse. I'm working with this village to establish a system to continually treat the wells, to at least kill the really bad stuff, but a pump will always be far cleaner than a well.

Through this project, I'm reaquesting 75% of the cost be covered by independent donations. If you would like to contribute, please do the following:

1. Go to http://www.peacecorps.gov/

2. On the left hand column, find and click on the heading 'Donate Now.'

3. Search by any means you desire, I'm in Mali, West Africa, and I'm from Virginia.

4. Find my name, click, and follow instructions.

If there are any other basic questions like in part one, or questions about my project feel free to email me (jilisham@hotmail.com) or post a comment and I'll do my best to answer.

I just completed a nutrition project with five mothers in a neighboring village. My five mothers...

...and the next day, with kids in tow. We met every morning for a week, made porridge to help wean their kids, and talked about a health topic every day. The women in the green tank top was my lead mother, helping me get everyone organized and to her house every morning.

This is Yaya, the dugutigi's spokesperson. The dugutigi, or literally village keeper, is the oldest person in the village who you go to for all important events or decisions. Yaya sells beans, peanuts, and millet from his store, behind him, and is a generally large influence, being quite old.

Initially, I was taken aback by the question the first few times. The conversation nearly always had a similar flow:

Malian: How many older brothers do you have?

Me: Just a sister. And I'm the youngest.

Malian: So only two?

Me: That's right.

Malian: And no boys?

Me: Nope.

Malian: And they don't want any boys?

Me: Well, it's not an issue of not wanting boys, it's more that it just...didn't happen.

Malian: And your parents are okay with this?

Me: Well, what's so wrong with two kids, both of them girls?

Usually, the Malian at this point is reeling, and sooner or later comes to the "Why don't white people like children?" question.

But what makes me equally angry is talking to westerners, to non Africans in Bamako or the States, who might make the opposite statement: "Why do families have so many kids, in fact, more kids than they can possibly afford, given they are so poor?"

As a health volunteer, who has many conversations about the family planning, you simply cannot have a conversation about family without coming up against these two attitudes, one the Malian view of family, the other, the American. Neither is entirely true, rather, they're coming from entirely different contexts, and given those contexts, the attitudes and resultant actions do make sense.

For Malians, whenever a woman gets married, everyone gives them blessings for lots of kids: "you're going to have kids, lots of kids, even twins!" I was first confused why everyone was telling me I was going to have twins when I got married: the first thing I would think of when having twins is how much harder it would be--two children to breastfeed, two sets of clothes to buy, money being spent at twice what you anticipated. When pressed why Malians told me this, women usually say "well, God has provided...Children are a blessing from God!" Children are a sign that God has provided, while I would look at children and immediately start calculating the expenses associated with raising that kid. If that makes me anti-family or that children are any less than a gift from God, I'm not sure; but I don't think I'm alone in seeing kids and seeing money being spent on unnegotiable expenses.

I gradually realized this is the key difference: for people in Mali, and much of the developing world, children are seen as making more money than they cost. David Werner explains the attitude in Helping Health Workers Learn. By age five or six, most boys are responsible for bringing in the animals at the end of the day, and girls, watching the younger children and washing dishes. By ten or eleven, boys are field hands, while girls haul water and help pound millet or do other cooking at home while her mother is out selling food at the market. Sure, you need to feed and clothe your helpers, but kids do an awful lot of work without being paid.

More importantly in Mali, kids are seen as a form of social securtiy. In the U.S., once you retire, you earn a small pension. Additionally, most people save money every year they work so that once you're too old to work , there's money in the bank. I've explained this foreign concept to many Malians--foreign because there is no formal pension or way to save money if you're the average Malian. Rather, children are required to give their parents money and food once they are too old to farm. The biggest fear of Malians is to be old and have no children to come give them money or food, only relying on the village to take care of them.

Finally, children are seen as continuing the family in an uncertain world. Malians are shocked that I have no brothers, exclaiming, "you must have children, otherwise, your family will be lost!!" And things happen--accidents, malaria, any number of unexpected tragedies. When you are a farmer with little to no education, kids are your greatest form of security, of knowing that even if something happens to you, your own kids are there to take care of your parents or each other.

So how does one talk about family planning in a Malian context? First, we don't call it "birth control." Like I've stated previously, control or agency is not something felt very strongly by Malians, but instead things do or don't happen because God has accepted them as such, everything from having a safe trip, to lots of kids, lots of rain, lots of money, etc. Telling a Malian to control the number of kids they have, especially a white person telling them this, ushers in the "white people don't like kids" statement.

Spacing births is something that makes sense to a Malian woman. I despise the teaching tools that are made for health educators, a picture of a Malian family with two kids, both well dressed and who go to school; sure, it's a great vision, buy you can tell that it was made by white people trying to have Mali become the nuclear family that is the Western World. Rather, I tell the women in my village, "you want to have four kids? Five kids? Fine, I'm not going to sit here and tell you to only have two kids like some Western family. But I am going to tell you to wait until the first child isn't breastfeeding before you become pregnant again, meaning at least two years between pregnancies, if not three." Having lots of kids in itself isn't a bad thing, but becoming pregnant every year and weaning your first child early is a bad thing. And I can give them plenty of analogies to support that: planting crops too close together yields poorer growth, likewise, having children too close together means each child doesn't grow as well. Using the same grain sacks year after year, filling them full with grain wears them out to the point that they rip. Likewise, a woman's body bearing a child every year simply wears out and cannot do as much work.

To truly change the way people think about kids, Mali needs to economically change: people need to have enough faith that they can save money for retirement, and that kids can finish school and later make money through work, not leave school early to provide food for the family. Sure, there's a viable arguement that having only as many kids as you can afford will help, but there is a case to be made that poverty is the cause of large families, and not the Western attitude that poverty is the effect of large families-- an attitude hidden in the "don't breed them if you can't feed them" mentality. Distributing condoms, birth control pills, and depo-provera injections will not have nearly as large an impact on family planning as an economic system in which people think they have a chance to make money and have a secure future. My job I feel, where Mali is right now, is not to sit here and tell women to have two children and to send them all to school since I think education is the only way to break out of subsistence farming. Rather, my role is help women access how they can safely have an many children as they chose.

Several weeks ago, I vistited my sitemate, Howa Traore in Nara, just south of the Mauratania border.

Much of the cattle are driven down from Nauritania, stop in Nara, and much later, pass through my village before making it into Bamako. Note how just five hours north, Nara looks like this...

While passing my village, you're more likely to see at least a little green, in the form of mango trees and lowlying shrubs. Note both trees in the bush and among the fields:

My village is right on the edge of the transition between the desert of Nara and Mauritania (no trees, all sand) and the lusher south of Mali, Sikasso, where rains begin a full month before in my village.

"Rainy season is about to start!"

--"In July...God willing."

I asked the woman I buy my breakfast from every morning in order to know when to distribute some Moringa seeds to the Woman's Associations: the seeds can only be planted during rainy season because they need water every day for the first two months. Now, the peak of hot season, the wells are dry, and planted anything would be impossible until the coming two months, Ni Allah sonna, or literally translated, "if God has accepted it." Some people prefer the arabic version instead--I'll see you next week, insha'allah.

There's nothing wrong with making a reference to the divine uncertainy in the mundane. In fact, I think it's good to be reminded of our humaness, that God or no God, (I've studied far too much philosophy to be certain of anything) we don't have control over everything.

A popular song is on Malian radio constantly, no different from when American stations play a hit snigle at peak listening hours--I think the title is simply the chorus and background refrain, Geleya be, and now that my language is better, I can actually understand the gist of the lyrics:

There's hardships now

there's poverty everywhere,

but you can't cheat people,

you can't steal from people,

you must wait for God,

and God will make things better.

The song is incredibly popular, as my language teacher commented, "people are angry, people are tired, and they listen to the song and it soothes their hearts." I, too, can sympathize with the lyric's popularity. But the very solution, the very message, bothered me too--if something is wrong, you don't wait, you do something about it!

Soon, many moments like this dotted my interactions:

"How did your kid get that huge bloody gash on his head?"

"Ah...I don't know, God gave it to him."

In another village, a volunteer asked, "do this many kids die every rainy season?" The response? "God provides, and God takes away." Never mind that water treatment and displacement of gray water is also a serious contender for infant mortality during rainy season. Even the large green public transport vans often brandish the slogan, painted in bright red and yellow letters, Dieu Merci, referencing the safe journey of passengers not due to a skilled driver, but to the fate of that day.

I recognize as an American, I have a feeling of profound control every day of my life: I study so that I might get good grades, I drive the speed limit so I don't lose control of the vehicle, I wash cuts out with soap and water so they don't get infected.

But then again, I take for granted the profound control I have had, and further, my country has had, over it's own destiny. The U.S. was never colonized by the French, to then have another language and system of governance imposed without those peoples' consent. Even after independence, Mali is not economically sustainable as a country, and still relies on aid to help develop. Further, Mali is a nation of farmers; regardless of how hard you might work, crop yields depend on adequate and steady rainfall. Last year, far less rain came. Grain prices are double what they were last year in Mali and Burkina Faso, due to absolutely no more or less work on the part of the average farmer. Put into the historical context, I can understand that development, that good health, that the very possibility of controlling what good or bad things are to happen, something that I feel very profoundly, are here accepted as God's good or ill favor.

I came into Bamako to work on the start of a funding proposal for one of the smaller villages I bike out to about once a week: during hot season, both wells are dry, forcing the entire 200 person village to walk 2 kilometers to haul their water. In 1996, a church group came and installed a pump (not using local materials or consulting the local population), and shortly after, the pump broke. Digging a well or deepening the present well is also not an option since the ground water is too deep for a well to reach.

The village has proposed to me to go up to the next town, buy the locally available pipe, and repair the pump using the one person capable of repairing and maintaining pumps in my village--in my opinion, a great solution, since the village intends to use local resources and a local Malian rather for maintanence rather than resorting to any sort of charity or outside group.

The obstacle, of course, is getting the funding to cover the cost of the pipe. Can this be overcome? I don't know--ni Allah sonna.

"How many brothers and sisters do you have?" It's a fairly straightforward question, in my opinion In fact, I can answer it right here: I have one older sister. She's married, and she doesn't have kids.

Then I'll ask my neighbor. And her answer? She thinks for a minute. "Well, I don't know, lots."

I press her, "you mean you can't give me a number, a rough estimate?"

"No, there's lots of them, I honestly don't know!"

I'm finding that this is, indeed, the case. I'll bike to another village, and I'll start a conversation, telling who my neighbors are, and the person will usually respond their relation--"she's my younger sister, my older brother's wife, etc." In one of the smaller villages, everyone is in some way, related to everyone else, so in fact, it is impossible to actually know how many people are in your family.

But further, "Family" and what constitutes family is a rather involved issue in Mali. In America, you have your parents and grandparents, sisters and brothers, maybe you know your Aunts, Uncles and some cousins. But even in large American families, it's fairly easily to explain these relationships.

In Mali, the rules are different. For example, in my language tutor's house, two of his brother's kids live there to go to school. Another girl appears there every now and again during vacations because her own family's village is much further off the main road, so she just stays in my larger village. And finally, a five year old boy was given to my tutor to raise: if another family can take better care of a child, then it is perfectly acceptable to just make arrangements for that family to take your child and raise it as your own, while the biological father pops in every second or third market day.

So who's your father? Your biological one, or the one that takes care of you? Who's your family? Your host family you live with nine months of the year, or the family you farm with every rainy season? In Mali, they just would say "all of the above."

Second, there's a fluidity to Malian life that makes family difficult to define. For about a week, I ate lunch with one of my friends and her family. There was a young boy who I simply assumed was her grandson, since he was always at her house and she always fed him lunch. Then I finally asked her about him, and she looked shocked: "What? you didn't know? He lives in that house over there!!" In Mali, it's perfectly acceptable for kids to just wander around with each other, to go anywhere, and it's understood that everyone will watch them and feed them as if someone elses kids are no different from your own. It's not considered being a bad parent if you have no idea where your kid is or what she's doing, because someone will be watching him as you would do the same for everyone else.

This second reality means "work" and how that work is structured is quite different for women in Mali. It is assumed that a women has, or wants to have, kids--it's not something that's variable. So when I have a discussion that American women have hangups about making a career and a family work, that a job would take away time, energy, and affection otherwise given to a child, they simply don't understand. My language tutor stated (and I am not making this up), "how can only one woman, one parent, care for a child? It takes a village to raise a child!" Other people would just press me, saying that a woman should just take her kid to work and everyone would help watch him. In Mali, that's fine: women teachers strap their kids to their backs everywhere. The matrone regularly has her kids coming in and bugging her about things. Even as the strange white woman on public transit, I'll take some woman's kid on my lap in a second while the mother straightens her bags or leaves to buy water. Now imagine that happening in any office space or public space in America. The Malian and American conception of "work" and "home", of "public" and "private" couldn't be further from each other.

Now that hot season has arrived, I tend to lie outside on a mat with my neighbor and her kids til about midnight, when it cools off enough so you can go inside. She gets water from the well and then quickly says, "I'm washing" and plops down her 3 month old kid on my lap next to her two three-year-old twins. "Watch the kids, will you?"

In Mali, it's not too much to ask. After all, I'm more or less her family.

Peace Corps refers to what I do as "the toughest job you'll ever love." So what is my job description exactly? Succinctly, on a daily basis, I do three things:

1. Help the Malian people meet their goals to develop their country.

2. Share my American culture with Malians.

3. Through living and working with Malians, help Americans better understand Malian culture.

So why is this considered so difficult?

As a health volunteer, I specifically address Malian health development goals: Mali has one of the worst infant mortality rates in the world. I go to Women's Association Meetings and speak briefly on a health topic; this past week I did a demonstration of how to make Oral Rehydration Solution or in Bambara, Keneyaji-- mix specific ratios of water, sugar and salt together, give to child so he does not die of dehydration.

For a fairly accurate account of what I do, take a look at David Werner's book Helping Health Workers Learn: Werner was a health worker in rural Mexico, and his experience and advice have since been applied and adapted by health workers in most of the developing world. (His other book, Where there is no Doctor, is also my go-to first aid manuel as a resident of the developing world.)

Why is what I do so difficult? First, most of the women I work with cannot read: most left school at second or third grade, if their parents even allowed them to go to school in the first place.

Second, even some women who have learned how to read--one Women's Association studies Bambara together-most of the written world in Mali is written in French. In my village, even the number of people who can read French is fairly small, since farmers tend to drop out of school at seventh or eighth grade, while those that even make it to highschool tend to work in larger cities. French, I imagine, is a bit like triangle math to me: I vaguely remember some math teacher stressing that I would never succeed in life if I didn't know how to determine the length of that third side, but if you pressed me for some actual ratios or formulas, I'm useless. With French, many can say briefly some phrases or a greeting, but when faced with a native French speaker, they're useless.

Finally, at the end of the day, I can't make people do anything I recommend--washing hands with soap and water, sleep under a mosquito net-I need to give Malians a pretty good reason that buying bleach and treating your water really is going to improve your life, that washing your hands really does kill germs so that the women I talk to see a reason to practice healthy behaviors.

The other frustrating element of the first Peace Corps goal is dealing with other development efforts. In three of the villages I go to, I discovered there were pumps which were long ago broken, neglected, and ignored. I asked some villagers about them, and the story is nearly always the same: "Ten years ago or so, some white people came and built them, and then they broke (or they were in a bad location in the first place). And we can't fix them. So we'll just wait for some more white people to come in a drop some money to repair them."

Meanwhile, three villages have attempted to construct small dams with rocks and metal wiring in order to hold water during the rainy season. Every year they attempt to enhance these areas where water collects in order to raise the level of the water table, and the amount of water in the wells. This is development--given some better materials, this could raise the water levels in the wells and actually gardern- helping people do what they're already trying to do.

The other part of my job is a cross-cultural exchange: I have a University level eductation, and when I was assigned to Mali, I had to look up on a map to be sure where it was. This is sad, but unfortunately true.

Now, six months have passed, and I can have a conversation in Bambara, know the regions and ethnic groups of Mali, and am intimately acquainted with the specifics of Malian life.

Finally, for many of the smaller villages to which I bike, I am the first white person they've seen, and further, the first American who will ever come into their houses, and speak with them on their own terms. Even in the village I live in, where people are slightly more acquainted with NGOs, I am one of the few white people that is actually a person--for example, the volunteer before me liked fish, so when she ate with people, they always give her fish. I hate fish and meat and general. I think my neighbors thought I was kidding, ("Oh sure, the other volunteer liked meat, so you must too!"), until I came back one village over with a huge bag of lettuce and tomatoes strapped to my bike, stating enthusiastically, "Tonight, we're having salad, lots of salad!"

Integrating into Malian culture on a 24 hour basis?

Yes, it is a tough job.

She had a rare, serious look in her eyes, and I sat, waiting to hear what my neighbor, Cha-Cha, had to tell me.

"Alaima came this afternoon, and she said Komo is coming tomorrow. You can't go in the bush tomorrow, you can't!"

I was warned about this by the previous volunteer, and now I knew the extent of how serious everyone was about it: Komo is a Bambara (animist) religious holiday which occurs once during the dry season, and again near the end of rainy season. My village is nearly entirely Muslim, with a handful of Christians. One neighboring village has a fairly large Catholic minority. But as soon as you head even 1 km into the bush, Muslim, Christian, Bambara--everyone practices animism to some degree.

What Komo is exactly is what's more difficult to articulate: as described to me, the Komo comes to a village for two or three days. Women can't see it, otherwise, they'll die. Men can go outside and see it. I'm told there is beer involved, and that some villages eat dog meat, except in some villages where eating dog meat is prohibited and lizard meat is the animal of choice. I get the gist that the Komo is one man who wanders from village to village with a giant mask, and some women have demonstrated the strange noise it makes outside their doors.

What is strange, almost disconcerting, is how seriously this is believed: Alaima walked into my village, 3 km, to tell me to be sure not to come out in the unfortunate instance that I would "see it" and die. The Komo has ceased in my own village since traditional animists were nearly entirely converted to Islam or Christianity, but if you even mention it, there is the same stock warning: "You can't go into the bush! You can't see it or you'll die!"

But a more general animism runs deeper than one or two traditional celebrations. I always wear this hemp necklace that I made: it means nothing, just something that I always wear and as a result, is now one of my distinguishing characteristics by people who know me. The questions started slowly, first the family I ate with, then Ya, the girl who takes money when I call people at the phone cabine--"What is that around your neck? Why do you wear it?" I would look perplexed, saying something to the effect of "no reason, I just like it, the same reason you wear earrings or bracelets."

Finally, I asked someone in the next village over of the significance of the Malians' dry grass necklaces which happened to look quite similar to mine: "If you're hurting in that area, say your wrist or your ankle, you wear this, and the pain is gone." Several more people confirmed it: the Malians thought my necklace had medicine or special powers that gave me good health.

Similarly, Malians wear silver metal rings, not as a sign of marriage, but "as a way to protect themselves against sorcerers, which during the day turn into cats." I have been told other stories of someone who lives in the village, who knows if you steal or trick people, and at night, he changes, and if you're walking alone, he will kill you.

This is my American rationalism, shocked by the absurdity that women must stay inside for two, three days, while men drink beer, and that objects like dried grass and rings have special powers.

But of course Christians and Muslims have their own superstitions too: Friday the 13th always has a drop in airline passengers, and the number '13' is generally thought to be unlucky: there were thirteen people at the Last Supper. I talked with my language tutor, asking why Friday mornings, right before Mosque let out at noon, were particularly quiet: "when unfortunate events happen, they always happen Friday morning (the Islamic Holy Day) right before Mosque. People don't like to travel, to come out of their house until they are sure any danger or possible mishap that is beyond a person's control has past."

Malians wearing metal rings or shirts, thought to protect from harm, have ceased to have any real connection to a specific religion: these practices are now cultural attitudes that respond to the unexplainable like, say, our own irrational fear of going into a graveyard at night (ditto for Malians) or that a black cat is bad luck. I do reflect the American culture's reverence of rationalism, but I am fairly sympathetic to any culture's attempt to deal with the unexplainable and unfortunate--I've studied Jungian symbolism, tarot cards, astrology, and honestly, there are moments in Philosophy, especially metaphysics, which I felt pushed up against the bounds of rationalism.

I have yet to wear a cotton shirt or metal ring to protect myself from misfortune.

But I am certain to stay inside at night, with my window shut, and to never go into the bush without asking first, "The Komo is gone, right?"

The sign when arriving in my village.

Outside of the CSCOM, or community clinic

In the bush or en brousse, as said in French.

My two weeks in Bamako has been spent catching up with all the other Americans about our Villages as well as, well, just plain being Americans together and doing something as simple as wearing pants every day. As a result, I've neglected posting due to time and uncertainty about what to talk about. But since I just posted pictures of my mud house, my "home", I talk a little about the Malian conception of home.

I grew up being exposed to this idea known as 'southern hospitatlity': anyone who has lived in the South knows what I'm talking about. Southern hospitality is this general warmth you get talking to people, that you will be invited to someone's home, given dinner, and encouraged to take seconds. You head South, and people don't honk at you in traffic quite as much, the cashier at the supermarket chats with you a bit rather than scanning you through, and people aren't in so much of a hurry, because who can't stop for a minute and talk about your second counsin? Spend a day in Maryland then spend a day in Virginia, or go even further South and you'll know what southern hospitality is.

Now take this "southern hospitality" and multiply it by about 100, and you'll begin to come close to what Malian hospitality is, or in Bambara, jatigiya. In Mali, you can travel anywhere, be stranded without food, shelter, and not be able to speak the local language, walk into a village, somehow communicate these needs, and you will be given a host family, water to drink, food to eat, and a place to sleep. And no one will ever ask you for money. And this is quite something considering these are the third poorest people in the world. I live off the paved road where every year I'm told, Americans bike from Senegal to South Africa. Americans can do this by virtue of stopping in villages along the way to rest, because every single village gives them food to eat and a place to spend the night. The biggest difference in Mali is that the Malians won't ask you for money.

One of my language tutor's friends came over, another teacher, and they explained the root of this hospitality: "In Europe, in America, it is always reason first. In Africa, in Mali specifically, it is always the sentiment first. When you go someplace, you can't take your home, your family, with you--so we must open up ours, we must give you food, drink, a bed, and a family, no less."

I bike to neighboring villages about once a week; the first people I greet, the woman of the house, always goes and gets me a drink of water. Once, when I was returning to my village, it was getting dark very quickly, and I stopped drinking tea and stated I had to be going soon if I didn't want to be biking in darkness. The women then said, "what? you don't want to stay for dinner? to spend the night?" I had only told one person in the village I was coming that day, yet in a whim, she was prepared to give me a room in her house to spend the night and food to eat, having only just met me 3 hours earlier. Even when you leave, someone accompanies you to the road, and some of my better friends I visit often will walk with me for 100 meters or so to 'get me on the road.'

This vague feeling of jatigiya is something that does not exist in the Western World. I've posted some of the pictures of the inside of my home: it has a small front room, and a larger back room, two chairs, a stool, and a table to hold my stove and water filter. But to a Malian, this isn't close to what a home is--home to a Malian not really a physical thing--my home is the people within the four or so villages I eat with, that feeling of arriving in a village, and being met at that first house with a cup full of water.

My front door, shoes, trunk, and map of West Africa.

Water filter, stove.

Chairs, mat, books.

Door to my back room.

The jakumaden I acquired, in order to take care of the mice.

...I recall that today is the day that every American family comes together, cooks Turkey, and eats as a family--Thanksgiving. I've briefly talked about Malian food and eating habits briefly, but I'll speak a little more specifically on what exactly I eat day to day.

My community, like nearly all of Mali, is composed of farmers; everyone grows corn, millet, beans, and peanuts. The rice fields are slightly further out, so fewer people grow rice. People also have gardens and grow tomatoes, onions, cucumbers, okra, and watermelon. At the end of rainy season, the larger crops are harvested, and everyone goes out to the fields for a few hours to pull up peanuts or cut millet stalks. Once these major crops are harvested, Malian women dry and pound, (in Bambara, susulike) them: millet must be pounded out of it's outside casing and washed, beans dried and washed, and corn dried. Next, you can take your dried beans, corn, or millet to the masine in the center of town and the machine will grind them into a powder. I myself bought some rice, and had it ground into rice powder or malomugu.

Now, finally, you can actually cook what you grow. Mali, and only Mali, eats something called to: you heat water, little by little add millet powder to the heated water, and a thick porridge-like substance results after much stirring. You then ladle it out in large spoonfulls, allow it to cool so it develops a consistency like jello, then you put sauce on it. Most often, Malians serve it with tomato-okra sauce, baobob leaf sauce, or another type of sauce that's mostly just tomatoes.

When peanuts are harvested, women susu peanuts into tigadiga or peanut butter, and then most often make peanut butter sauce--tigadigana-with peanut butter, okra and tomatoes, and serve it over rice. Really good tigadigana is simply...amazing. It makes my day to have rice and tigadigana.

Following a meal, Malians drink tea. When first asked if I drink tea, I had only my American frame of reference: tea as an infusion of a dried plant in hot water, which you drink slowly only while reading philosophy on a rainy morning.

Tea in Mali is not tea in America (or at least not my kind of American tea). Sure, the box says "green tea" like in America, but Malians make their green tea with sugar and through a different process:

1. Take two little ceramic tea pots, put water and tea in one teapot and heat it until it's boiling.

2. Pour the mixture into the second teapot only to pour it back into the first. Heat some more.

3. Pour again into the second teapot and add sugar until it tastes right, pouring the mixture back and forth to dissolve the sugar.

Tea is then served in small glasses that resemble shot glasses: there are always two teapots, and always two tea glasses. Often to get the taste right, the person pours the tea back and forth between the two glasses to get the sugar dissolved and to cool the drink. Finally, the person who makes the tea fills a glass, and hands it to you, at which point you quickly drink and give back, so that he can refill the glass and pass it to the next person. Finally, this process happens no fewer than three times: if you are at a meal, you sit and wait until you get three glasses of tea.

Today I will not be eating turkey, nor will I be drinking tea. But I will don my Malian shirt and skirt made out of a blue fabric with orange autumn-like leaves while eating my cheeseburger.

The phrase oft repeated in Mali becomes a bit annoying, but in many cases, and at this point, it's something I keep reminding myself. Little by little, doni doni, you learn, and things will become easier.

Right now, my official task at site as previously mentioned was to

1. Keep learning the language and

2. Integrate into my community

Going into site, we receive 9 weeks of language training--about the equivalent of getting you to a lang 201 level for anyone who took college level language courses (or for those of us who had a good highschool teacher, placed out of them). This means you know how to greet, how to perform the most basic transactions, and talk a little about anticipated subjects such as your job description, your family, your personal interests, etc. Anything more complicated, you can just answer, but only after you think a bit and struggle to state a more complex idea or opinion.

Of course performing on an exam isn't the real world. Anyone who has gone to another country knows how different things are once put in a real context--people speak much faster and use slang. Styles of speech differ depending on the location. Think just about regional speech differences in the U.S. and how you can tell that I've lived in the south when an occasional "y'all" sneaks into my speech. Mali is no different. Volunteers going south to the Sikasso region often find Bambara mixed with Malinke. Everywhere, you find Bambara mixed with French to varying degrees. Markets up in the Mopti region become fairly complicated where some vendors speak Bambara, others Fulfulde, and others Dogon, the common meeting ground always being French.

In my village everyone knows Bambara but will mix in French words too. The Bambara they speak is also slightly different than the textbook Bambara we learned-- 'C' is pronouced 'ch' but my village likes to turn 's' into 'sh' and 'g' into 'gw'. I'm also still struggling to figure out what they're even doing with the letters 'u' and 'e'. The first three months are dedicated to figuring these things out, and for me, this process is incredibly frustrating: I'm replacing a volunteer, so everyone has forgotten how long it takes for someone to figure things out and gain a footing, linguistically and culturally.

At the end of every day, I try to remind myself that I've learned a little more. I'm learning techincal-specific vocabulary now, so I know how to talk about the three food groups, about how vaccinations are beneficial, and how to describe malaria symptoms. One incredibly good suggestion that was given for language learning was to do the things you liked to do in your own culture, and start learning the words for it. I like cooking, and I'm not a complete stranger to cooking over a fire, so I went over to a neighbor's house and we made moni together, her saying each of the steps and me repeating to make sure I understood, so later I could perhaps make moni myself. Then the Malians ask me what my favorite recipe is in America, and I tell them how I make tomato sauce in the U.S. and put it on pasta or a type of bread called pizza.

Maybe while we're cooking, I'll start to ask some of my health specific questions: what do you usually make for dinner? What can you buy lots of? What's too expensive or not available? I try and do this a little bit each day so that much later when I know families better (and my Bambara is better) I can ask about more sensitive subjects and get honest answers--How many children have died in this family? What illnesses did they have? Do you know about birth control options available? Do you know about AIDS and other STIs?

To make real progress and get to know the community, integrating is necessary: I'm no longer an outsider, but I'm someone who lives with Malians and like Malians. But integration is tough to call in many cases, because fundamentally I'm not a Malian--I'm an American, and daily I try to decide how to draw the line at how far to integrate.

I'll close with my most recent dilemma in these past few weeks. Mali, and my village, is mostly Muslim. I live two houses away from the Mosque, and most things are structured around the prayer times. Yet when asked what religion I am, I'll respond honestly that in America I went to a Protestant Church. Malians like to hear about me and my family and who I am as a person, and going to Church in America is a small part of that. There is a small Christian population in my village, and further, there is actually a Protestant church--the Catholic Mission is in neighboring Kolokani and Sirado. Missionaries at some point got to many of these small villages, originally animist, and converted those that weren't Muslim to Christianity. Animism is practiced to varying degrees by everyone in my village, but people do align as either Muslim or Christian. At first I was hesitant to go to the church (although several Malians invited me), concerned that it would interfere with integrating fully into the predominately Muslim community.

I attended Church this past Sunday when my language tutor was out of town. And it functioned much like...any other church, except in a Malian context, of course. You sing some hymns, you have prayers and concerns, an offering, a sermon, and then you give blessings as you leave for the day. As Malians, though, men automatically sit on one side and women and children on the other. Hymns are accompanied by drums and are much more call and response (and of course memorized).

I have decided I would keep going to the Church for several reasons. The congregation has two Bambara hymn books, so while everyone is singing, for once, I can look on at words, and with the repetition, learn new words. The congregation also has two Bambara Old and New Testaments. With scripture and hymns, it's also good practice for becoming faster at numbers, something I'm still not as rapid in as I am in English or French. The African blessings are also used frequently, so I get practice with the blessings too (think of how much repetition there is in any religious service!). Finally, by going, I'm sharing a bit about myself with Malians: I always respect the Muslim call to prayer times, I always wear skirts and I cover my head if the situation calls for it or it makes women more comfortable, but I can respect the Muslim community and express a little of my American self in this Malian context too.

For everyone Stateside, Happy Halloween. While the leaves are turning in America, watermelon and orange season has just stared. So good!

Before I head out, I'll talk a little bit about how mundane things are done, for example, a shopping day. You forget how much is involved in a culture until you begin to think about the process by which everything gets done.

We get at least one day in our regional city (in my case the capital) to get things we can't get once we're at site (various western food items, furniture, clothes, etc). Even though the volunteer I'm replacing left me about five skirts, I started my morning set on getting my own skirt made.

First, I went to the market (sugu). A big market (suguba) like in Bamako has everything a Malian needs for daily use: produce, eggs, meat (yes I've seen animals killed/plucked/hacked to pieces before my very eyes), bowls, shoes, clothes, hardware, and yes, fabric. Buying anything requires greeting (Hello, how are you? how's your family? did you sleep well?) before actually proceeding to the purpose of the transaction. I asked the fabric lady the price, which she stated, and since I went through the proper channels (greeting, speaking in Bambara) she didn't try to rip me off. Later in the afternoon I did have to bargain much harder for a chair.

With fabric in hand, I asked her where the tailor was. She pointed about 4 stalls down and over where I found two men each sitting at those old metal sewing machines. Again, I went through the proper greetings, then to make things easy, I pulled out another voluteer's skirt with a cut I liked and asked for the same thing. I was unsure of my Bambara at the end of my sentence, so I inadvertantly switched to the French phrase for "same thing." He asked if I knew French, and we chatted briefly about how yes, I knew some French but, little by little, I was trying to improve my Bambara and not use French.

At this point I asked a price. Pricing at first is a little bit of a nightmare: the smallest CFA coin is 5 CFA. Therefore, in Bambara, 5 CFA is referred to by the word for 'one.' Yes, this means that the word for 100 CFA is 'twenty', and 500 CFA is 'one hundred', etc. Malians think it is absurd that we stand there quickly multilpying or dividing by five: they don't realize they're not saying the number on the coin, so to them it's just like counting and not mental arithmetic. To make it more complicated, everything is bargained, so nothing has a 'formal' price: you can't pull a "look at the price tag because I don't know what you're saying" in Mali. Now, I've memorized most benchmark amounts or at least know about how much something should cost so I can guess--I can tell what cab ride distance is keme fila (1000 CFA) and most produce/food items are around mugan (100 CFA). But for large purchases or things where I don't have a price I'm aiming for, it still gets hairy. The tailor first stated the price for me in Bambara, broke it down into my memorized units when I looked puzzled, then stated it in French so I was certain of the price. After we agreed on the price, he told me to come back in three hours.

One folded piece of fabric will make a skirt called a tafe. Nearly every women in Mali wears this kind of skirt which is simply a huge rectangle of fabric tied around you and tucked in the waist like a bath towel. For a little more, you get fabric sewn on the ends in order to actually tie the thing around your waist. Two pieces of fabric, and you can get a complet made, or a matching top and bottom. I inherited a complet in this great teal fabric--

And then my family made me a complet from the independence day fabric for this year...

...which was just yesterday. I love the grassroots-ness of the independence day fabric, or the day to end violence against women fabric. I picked out the above blue and orange this morning since it reminded me of UVA.

Three hours later, I returned and he was just finishing up. Again, I greeted, and as I praised his work, he asked me and my friend's name. She stated first that she was a Traoure, at which point he said "did you eat your beans this morning?" I chimed in that she also drank her toilet water, confirming that, like him, I was a Diarra, Traoure's joking cousin. Even later in the day when I walked past him, he shouted "Diarra!" at me, and the women he was helping shouted "she's good!", affirming that she was a Diarra too. Such was my morning of buying from start to finish a skirt.

At site, I will work at my village's clinic or CSCOM: to start with, I'll go in for about 4 hours three times a week to observe, ask questions, chat with people that come in, etc. In afternoons on opposite days, I'll work with my language tutor to improve my Bambara.

Now I know you're sitting there saying, "ok, what about the rest of the time?"

Time, outside of the 5 call to prayer times (dawn, noon, 2, 4, dusk), really isn't that important. Most places of work "start" at 8am. That means about 8:45. In an office, meeting, anything formal, there is ALWAYS a pause cafe (coffee break) from 10-10:30. Noon is lunch/prayer call/tea, at which point work doesn't resume until 2:30. That means about 3. Which means, yes, you only work until the next prayer call and so the day just kind of putters out.

By this description, it looks like there aren't too many working hours in a day...which is somewhat true. There's quite a bit of sitting around doing nothing time in Mali, and Malians don't see anything wrong with that. But this sentiment is only "somewhat" true since in Mali, when things "get done" they "get done" more often through informal connections then anything ever in an office-- especially with what my work will be. Case in point, my homestay mother exercised huge influence in my homestay community: she knew when every marriage, baptism, or funeral was because she rented out chairs and showed up at most social events. So when I asked her if she could have some people over for us Health Volunteers to practice our health presentations, I came home to a concession full of about 10 members of the Sonraii Women's Association. Since every member of that organization took her seriously, they took me seriously too and tried to be as helpful as possible with my stumbling Bambara.

Likewise, I was specifically assigned to this site to work the school kids aged between ages 9-12. My language tutor is a teacher at the school. His wife is the matrone at the CSCOM and my work counterpart.

In conclusion, what will I be "doing?" As far as "doing," I will be walking into familys' compounds one by one, sitting for a few hours, drinking lots of tea, and asking, "how things are going? Did you sleep well last night?"

Coming to you from Moribabougou...

Fata on the left and Alliou on the right, host brother and sister.

This was everyone from my family I could round up at that moment. That's about half of the people who regularly live in/sleep in/ come in and out of our concession. The serious default is just an African thing: they all really do smile.

My host mother. That's me on the left.

My host mother, Fatimata, is president of a Moribabougou Women's Association and is generally important community member, if nothing else because she's incredibly old: few things outrank the respect you get from age in Mali, and nothing, not even a married man with four wives, can pull rank on you if you're older.

I've been busy working toward my language exam, but I thought I'd comment on the recent news stories about Mali--mostly, the severe flooding in West Africa.

Rainy season is nearly over, but for about two weeks, it thunderstormed every night, flooding my family's compound every now and again and sections of street. People here respond to rain a little bit how the US southeastern seaboard responds to snow: everyone stops everything and just sits at home, fearful of venturing out. My family looked at me like I was crazed when it was just letting up rain, and said "you're going to school in this??" And rightly so: two of our side streets where flooded out, and you don't want to walk through standing water for risk of some water borne parasite. Weakly built houses also have a tendency to collapse in on themselves (I checked my family's house after some houses fell in and was pleases to see they spent the extra money for secure metal beams and attachments over wooden beams and leather to tie boards together. If it rains particularly hard or for a long time, the electricity and/or phone grid is also cut, making venturing into flooded streets even more treacherous. In the southern regions of Mali (Kayes, Kouilkoro, and Sikasso), the soil or rivers can accomodate the influx of water. In the northern regions where there's only sand, entire roads are submerged under water because there's no place for the water to go. On site visit, most of our volunteers in the the northern regions had trips which involved sitting on top of the bus while the driver drove through standing water. Or actually getting out to help push the bus/car through water.

The other most relevant hazard of rainy season, other than property damage due to flooding, is that malaria will tend to be worse: more standing water equals more mosquitos. Just before I left my homestay, one of my younger sisters was sick. The word for malaria is the same thing for chills and fever, so you can never be sure if when they say "sumaya" it really is malaria. But her low-grade fever, general malaise, and the fact that I know she doesn't sleep under a mosquito net makes it pretty likely that she does have malaria. Nearly everone here has malaria to some extent. But malaria contributes to why the age five and under mortality rate here is the highest is the world: you're either strong enough to just live with the malaria, or you just don't make it. She's six. I'm terrified if when I go back and visit my homestay family in december if she'll still be there.

Fortunately, rainy season seems to be nearly over. Clouds have been coming through every night, but it no longer thunderstorms--although you can still see the lighting far away, so someone somewhere is still getting rain. Rainy season is followed my mini hot season, and then by october/november, the winds come off of the desert and it's cold season.

Just because it's rainy season doesn't mean the sun don't shine. Old toenail paint-job courtesy of my younger sister, Fata.

I am frazzled tonight, so pics only. Tomorrow, we practice building a soak pit and practice using the technical vocabulary we learned today, ie, "Standing water is bad. It is necessary that we build a soak pit!"

Language huts at Tubaniso.

Huts where we sleep at Tubaniso--three to each one.

The first, French, second English, third, Bambara. You'll get everyone at Tubaniso (trainees, kitchen staff, gaurds) with at least one of these languages.

This is how we walk to school. A cloudy day--it is rainy season.

Kyle waxes poetic to Brian about something during a break. Backdrop of mango trees and river--our classroom.

My bed in my room in homestay.