I have a new life ambition: to be a driver for an NGO in athird world country.

So, we have sort of gotten our Toyota Land Cruiser running.It is a high clearance, four wheel drive (though that is not working yet),massive tired diesel beast. I have never driven a large SUV and thought theywere pretty silly in the states. Now I’ve drunk the koolaid. When our LandCruiser is running, I love driving it through the mud and slog of the awfulroads around here. I haven’t gotten stuck yet.

At the moment, there is only a couple of us that can driveit, and one is usually out on his motorcycle so I have become the unofficialdriver. I also am the only one that can get it started, having spent a lot oftime with the mechanics trying to get it working.

Here are some of the advantages of being a driver out here:· Challenging work. Slogging this beast throughthe mud and keeping it operating is a major task.· Rewarding work. When I get from point A to pointB there’s a sense of something accomplished.· Driving a real 4x4 (even if the four wheel driveis broken) through terrain we call Normandy because it’s so messed up is just areal pleasure.

But alas, I will never meet all the requirements of adriver in a third world country. Sigh…

So, Corinna and I no longer have a house in the mountains. We were really house sitting for two years in it, and it's become likely we cannot fulfill the house sitting responsibilities because it's becoming very likely that we will not be able to stay in Malawi for more than a month or two longer. There is a good chance we'll return here, but in the meantime, opportunity lost.

Reading this piece just made me close my eyes and think "I should have thought of that". It is talking about Conditional Cash Transfers, the hot new way to work on development issues. Of course, one could also say that the real objective is wealth transfer, something I'm not opposed to. Anyway, quote below:

Seeing a child like a state: Holding the poor accountable for bad schools -- Guest post by Lant PritchettSUBMITTED BY ANONYMOUS ON TUE, 2012-01-03 19:24In the early 20th century Helen Todd, a factory inspector in Chicago, interviewed 500 children working in factories, often in dangerous and unpleasant conditions. She asked children the question: “If your father had a good job and you didn’t have to work, which would you rather do—go to school or work in a factory?” 412 said they would choose factory work. One fourteen year old girl, who was interviewed lacquering canes in an attic working with both intense heat and the constant smell of turpentine, said “School is the fiercest thing you can come up against. Factories ain’t no cinch, but schools is worst.”

The recent expansion of the “ASER-like” simple assessments of literacy and numeracy skills of all children in a village based approach provides an accurate, and chilling, picture of just how little learning is going on inside schools in many poor countries. The ASER data can show the learning profile, the association of measured skills and grade completion, by showing what fraction of children who have completed which grade can read a simple story (expected of a child in grade 2) or do simple arithmetic operations. Take Uttar Pradesh in 2010. By the end of lower primary school (grade 5) only one in four children could divide. Even by grade 8, the end of upper primary only 56 percent could. Similarly, by grade 5 only 44 percent could read a level 2 paragraph and by grade 8 still only 77.6 could. A large plurality of children, even of those that had persisted and been promoted through eight full grades or primary school—roughly 8000 hours of available total instruction—were either illiterate or innumerate or both.

Even these children can however see the disparity in accountability between them and their teachers. The regular civil service teachers in Uttar Pradesh are massively privileged: making over three times the market wage, no accountability, not even to show up for work, and able to mistreat students with impunity. Data from the 2005 India Human Development Survey (Desai, Dubey, Vanneman, and Banerji 2008) show that 29 percent of parents report their child was “beaten or pinched” in government schools in the previous month. Worse, a child from the poorest group of households is almost twice as likely to be beaten or pinched in a government school than a child from the richest group of households. This is in contrast to private schools which show no income favoritism in beating. Studies consistently find absence rates of regular teachers in government schools in UP around 25 percent—not to mention low rates of effort when in attendance.

Recent research (Atherton and Kingdon 2010) shows that if somehow UP in 2009 had been able to replace its regular teachers making around 11,000 rupees a month with contract teachers working for 3000 rupees a month that UP could have saved more than a billion dollars (Roughly 600,000 primary and upper primary teachers times 8000 rupees monthly wage differential (11000 less 3000) times 12 months divided by 45 rupees/$). This replacement of regular with contract teachers would appear to double child learning per year as the estimated “contract teacher” impact on learning, controlled econometrically as finely as possible for cofounding effects like selection using student and school fixed effects, is roughly the same as an additional year with a regular teacher.

Suppose you are a child from a poor household approaching adolescence in Uttar Pradesh who has struggled through years of schooling without learning anything, been promoted from year to year with no attention to your actual learning, perhaps even regularly beaten or threatened by teachers. You might consider dropping out of this “fierce” thing called school.

But wait. The development technocracy with its latest rigorous research methods and can-do, expansion of “what works” attitude has the solution to your drop-out problem: they will threaten your mother. This is a wildly new popular class of programs called “conditional cash transfers” which has spread from its origins in Mexico and Brazil to over 30 countries. The design is simple, use some targeting method to determine eligible households and offer the eligible households cash (often paid to the mother of the household) but only if all their school aged children stay in school. These conditional cash transfers, to no one’s surprise, have been rigorously proven to reduce child drop-out.

For the state and those that see for the state and like the state, see the problem of child drop-out is a problem of the household not complying with the state’s objective to universalize enrollment. The obvious solution is to make the poor child and poor households more accountable to the state’s narrowly drawn objective of increasing enrollment. That the real goal was to properly educate the child gets lots in the counting. Once the problem of education is re-defined so that the state can easily see and measure it as schooling then forcing a child back into a disastrous school counts exactly as much in increasing enrollment as attracting children to stay in school because they are learning.

Of course in cases like Uttar Pradesh it is obvious the reality is that the functionaries of the state are not accountable to citizens for adequate, or even humane, service delivery. However “seeing” that teachers should be more accountable for a quality of schooling experience that would retain students however requires seeing what even a child can see, but which the state has no interest in seeing, and hence no capability to see. Holding powerful teachers accountable, while cost-saving and learning increasing, is politically difficult. Even giving poor people a choice in where their children attend school is politically difficult to get by the educationist lobby. But holding poor people accountable is always politically easy.

Of course when CCTs force children back into school the children might not learn to read and might not learn to divide, but they will learn an important, if tragic, life lesson: when you are poor the state has power and you do not.

Mark Lawrence, International Program Manager... just spent an hour bailing out a flooded, half-sunk boat on a crocodile infested river.

Yup, definitely moving up in the world...

So, as luck would have it Corinna and I have arranged to have a weekend/vacation home in the mountains.

Don't worry, it's ok to be jealous.

So, the place is a 3 bedroom, 2 bath house with a long front veranda, living room, kitchen, cooking hut, garden and a good bit of land. It sits on top of a hill overlooking a farming valley and forest reserve, and we can watch sunsets from the front lawn. There is a live-in guard and gardener and his family. I really like all of them, and they are very helpful. The place is amazing. Here's some photos:Front Veranda

Living Room

View on a somewhat hazy day

The Garden, planted with Rape and banana

The backside of the house with the cooking hut

Getting a mango snack from the front yard

We like it here - even if I look a little bedraggled

Watching a rainstorm blow in

Me peeling a mango on our veranda

One of our banana trees will have nice ripe fruit soon.

Relaxing after a busy week.

Corinna has posted an update with a Christmas letter saying what we did for 2011. I'm amazed at all we've been doing! You should check it out here.

Last night I was having a hard time sleeping when I heard a strange sound. I thought - could that be? No way... that couldn't have been a lion roaring, there are only 2 lions in Liwonde National Park.

Then, right after, I heard groups of elephants trumpeting and moving around. It was incredibly loud and woke up Corinna. We weren't sure what all the fuss was about.

This afternoon, I talked with one of that staff here who confirmed that yes, there was a lion prowling nearby and it did in fact roar. He thinks the elephants were trumpeting to raise the alarm against the lion or perhaps to scare it away.

This thing called life is pretty crazy.

I’ve done an appalling job of giving any information aboutmy situation here, so let me do that. We live in Mvuu Camp in LiwondeNational Park. Mvuu means Hippo in Chichewa, the national language of Malawi alongside English. The camp is a rustic environment with really great amenities –good food, bar, beautiful patio, swimming pool. We don’t regularly partake inthose amenities because we are staying here as part of our relationship withour partner organization, Central African Wilderness Safaris, but it is a greatplace. The park is also beautiful – all the pictures I’ve posted of animalshave been taken in the park. In fact, there are hippos, elephants, monkeys,baboons, warthogs and impalas all around our house. The other night I couldn’tsleep because of the all the hippos and elephants eating outside the tent(hippos munching grass is quite loud!)

We are staying in a permanent tent house with a wood beamstructure supporting canvas and netting. We have electricity and internetbetween 7 am – 12 pm and 6 pm – 9 pm. We also have running water. We primarily work at Nanthomba Primary school, and alsosupport and work with 3 other primary schools and a Health Clinic that ourorganization built and transferred to the government of Malawi. To get to theschool, we take a boat across the Shire (pronounced Sheer-ay) river and thenhire a bike taxi (think budget richshaw where you just sit on the luggage rackof a bicycle) for the 2 km ride through the edge of the park to Nanthomba,which is less than a kilometer from the national park.

Our program has after school activities, in which we teachtrades to primary school students and sell the products to meet the cost of theprogram, as well as income generating activities that are just meant to coverthe costs of the school but for various reasons we do not heavily involve thestudents. I am in charge of the tin smithing and permaculture after schoolactivities. On the income generating side, I am also in charge of supervisingour gardening activities, maintenance activities, and research into anear-future poultry program, as well as developing new initiatives. Corinna isin charge of the bead-making, tailoring and music afterschool activities, aswell as the mushroom income generating activity.

To leave the area to partner with another organization,grocery shop, travel or whatever we take a dirt road (or sometimes a path). Wegenerally take an hour bike taxi ride to the nearest town on a paved road andthen pick up transport from there.

So now you know a little bit about our life here!

This being Thanksgiving, I thought I’d put together a listof things to be thankful for. Today was just a normal working day for us(actually a rather exhausting one), but on Saturday we will be celebratingThanksgiving with some chickens, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, braisedcarrots… it should be good.

Anyway, here’s the list. I am thankful for:· Having a supportive family· Friends that reach out to help me from across thecontinents· Just having heard from a friend in Mali (How Imiss my friends there and hope they are reaping an excellent harvest rightnow!)· The availability of Soya here· The opportunity to go to amazing places aroundthe world· A loving girlfriend· My new Malawian friends· Living in a national park· That the hippo we hit in our boat today did notget angry and attack the boat (he was submerged under water and we hit himpretty hard!)

What are you thankful for?

So, apparently after 2 years I still don't understand how blogging workings. My account just told me I should check my spam folder for comments, and I accidentally checked my regular comment folder instead (whoops) - and found dozens, if not hundreds, of comments I had never seen before.

Double whoops.

I was under the (apparently) mistaken assumption that I was receiving an e-mail when someone posted a comment to my blog.

Triple whoops.

So if I never replied to some message you tried to write me, it's because I'm dumb. I know to check that from now on, and if your old comment has any relevance to today, I'll reply via e-mail or facebook or some other bizarre new-fangled method of communication. If you've despaired of writing me insightful messages because I'm an insolent jerk who never replies, you're right. But I can change!

Malawi Safaris, a set on Flickr.Photos from our safaris in Malawi

Corinna wrote a good description of our first day of work with HELP Malawi on her blog, and rather than duplicating effort I am aiming for efficiency. So basically, I'm taking the easy way out. See it here:

Corinna's blog

So I know it's been 2 and a half weeks since I left and I haven't posted a thing since Johannesburg. Well, we did safely arrive. Until last Tuesday we were living in a different house with no access to the internet. A week ago we moved into our house and have started settling in, but last Thursday the internet went down and just came back up. So, internet will still be spotty, I think.

Once i've caught up on work from the past week I'll be aiming to put up some pictures and give a description of my new home.

Well, Corinna and I have arrived in Johannesburg, South Africa! After 23 hours on planes and in airports it's nice to stay the night in a nice hotel before the day-long trip to Malawi tomorrow.

Well, it's official. Corinna and I have both accepted positions as National Program Manager/Program Development Manager at H.E.L.P. Malawi, a non-profit organization based in (surprise surprise!) Malawi.

This organization has some innovative ideas that they have applied to a school in southern Malawi. Even more importantly, they are interested in sustainable development. To that end, we will be in charge of implementing, managing and improving revenue generating programs that will eventually fund the operations of the school. I'm really excited for this opportunity!

We will be living in rural Malawi but with amenities like internet and electricity so I should do a much better job of keeping in touch!

Amazingly, we leave on Tuesday - meaning we will have been in America for exactly one month!

So, after a couple of months lolly-gagging around, making Spanish and French friends, working on farms and just doing all sorts of things to bum ourselves across Europe, it's time for Corinna and I to head on home.

Tomorrow we board a cruise ship for America. It's a long one, so I'll be in California on the 25th. Looking forward to seeing everyone, and I'll keep folks posted once I have my particulars, like a phone number and an address.

See you soon!

Mark

So, reflecting on my time, here's what I love about Mali that I will dearly miss:Friendliness: everyone is many, many times more friendly and welcoming than your average AmericanMy friends and, truly, my Malian family: I've become incredibly close to people here, who have been so kind to me.Street food: so cheap! so good! What will I do without my Furu furu? My achetke? My egg sandwhiches? My sho and juga? Probably get less diarrhea. But I'll pay the diarrhea price for achetke any day.No pressure, high stress: If someone tells you that being a volunteer is stress free, that ain't true. But it's good stress: it comes from within, pushing you to do well, and it comes from without, challenging your language and cultural integration and knowledge of your surroundings. But there really is no such thing as pressure hereThe fruit: Ok, here in Mali there isn't that much, but there are delicious mangos and guavas briefly (up in the north by me, down south they are plentiful). And in Guinea, Ghana, senegal, etc? I dream about it. Straight up.Animals: what am I going to do without all the goats and chickens and cows and donkeys wandering around? I'll be lonely! Also, goat is delicious! Why don't we eat more goat in America?Simplicity, simplicity, simplicityThe village: I love living in village! We could throw out 90% of our crap in America and not miss a thing.Joking: Everything is a big joke here, EVERYTHING. Fart jokes abound. My dad would love it.Having my own personal tailor, and being able to wear the most ridiculous (to us) fabrics.Being. A. Rock. Star. No kidding. I'm the only American, only Westerner, only non-West African living in a 30 k radius. Everybody knows me. Children organize parades to take me down the street to lunch. Let me tell you, it's kind of nice. Things I won't miss about Mali:I'm sure you're expecting lots of physical hard ship, but honestly I don't mind. Bring on the no electricity and heat and hauling water and desert and ruined buses. Turns out none of that really matters at all, nor (for a single person with no kids and no need to be connected) is even that inconvenient really.Always having the same conversations: People have fixed ideas about Ameriki. It takes a lot to change those ideas.Bureaucracy: 'Nuff said.Malaria, ameobas, heat rash, ant bites, termite attacks, scorpion stings, etc...Foolishly set up non-governmental organisations & projectsBroken promises to villagers (not mine)Corruption. Watching my good friends suffer, get sick and sometimes die because they had the misfortune to be born in such a poor, inhospitable place.

So, there's a vast network of Peace Corps blogs that new folks use to figure out what the heck they're getting into. With having a slightly, er... unusual service over 2 countries I'm not sure if people coming to Guinea and Mali would ever find this one. If your just one of my friends you may want to skip over this one. But anyways, here's some pointers:

Packing:

You don't need it. Leave it at home. You can apply that statement to almost anything you want to bring. Remember, people live here already, so if it's necessary, you can buy it here (and almost certainly for a lot cheaper than in America. A few things I AM glad I brought (or wish I brought):

a tiny laptop: it helps with PC work a lot. Small is better, you have to carry the damn thingIpod, Ipod chargerconverter from American to french wall plug systemrechargeable batteries (you can find batteries here, but it cuts way down on waste and there's no good way to dispose of batteries here)a decent backpack to schlepp your crapchinese folding fan: it'll save your life on transport on hot seasonrazor blades and shaving creamportable hard drive - it's easy to have electronics fail here, it's good to have back ups.Almost anything else would have been cheaper and easier just to get here. Some things that people often say are important to bring that I disagree with are:good knife: my Malian one was cheaper, easier to sharpen, and lasted betterfancy camping clothesreally, any sort of camping equipment if you're not a die-hard camper who is determined to camp in Africa. People don't camp here. American nice clothes. Peace Corps tells you to bring a nice outfit for functions or whatever. Don't. You probably won't go to many, and if you do, you'll be wearing that sweet new Malian complet you just got made.General advice on being a volunteer:Stay at site, stay at site, stay at site: Many volunteers find it hard at first at site; there's unfamiliar food, people, customs, language, daily routines... basically, every part of your life will be unfamiliar to you. And that's stressful. But here's the thing: if you leave because when you get a little stressed out, it's never going to become comfortable so you'll always be leaving. The staying at site for the first three months things is particularly important, but it continues to be important throughout.Don't box yourself in. So Peace Corps recruits you to be a volunteer in this one area, but there's nothing preventing you from really doing whatever you want once you get there. So use this freedom productively by finding out what interests local people, is achievable with local resources, makes sense and interests you, and do that - even if it's not in your job description. One of the best parts is you get to make your own job description.Remember: you probably came to your post to meet local people from that culture. Never forget your goals. It's easy to fall into the "volunteer trap" where you spend more time with Americans (volunteers or expats) than you did with Malians, or Guineans, or whoever. Go the path less traveled.If your not happy and productive, go home. Lot's of volunteers won't leave service even if they're miserable. But if you're miserable, you're not going to be productive. So you're not helping yourself and you're not helping anyone else. In fact, some people would say you are doing a disservice to the people at your site, because they end up disappointed by lack of progress, and less likely to take future risks to improve their livelyhood.Remember, stay at site!Bonne chance! ala k'i ko nogoya!

In my last week here in Mali, I've decided to put up something once a day or so, as a way of saying goodbye.

Before coming up to this point, I was never sure how I would feel about leaving Mali. I once was with a volunteer during her final hour or two at site, and she seemed to feel relief at the idea of getting out of here more than anything else. Many people seem to feel that way. At the time, I couldn't imagine being relieved to leave, but I also knew that this has been one of the most difficult places I've lived, and one of the most difficult - perhaps not in the usual sense, but difficult - jobs I have ever done. There's been times that the sheer challenge of life here was more than I wanted to bear, times when I was so frustrated with the culture here that I would do anything to get away from it.

In the end, I've come full circle to where I had hoped I would be now from my hopes and expectations of 3 years ago when I applied. I love Mali, and West Africa in general, in a way that nowhere else I've been or lived has ever matched. Life here is daunting - lack of water, limited food, extreme heat, poor materials and everything breaking down under the twin forces of sand and heat - but immensely satisfying and rewarding. Everyone is in it together and I've made better friends here than I ever imagined I would. I'm proud of the work of done; there is nothing as satisfying as successfully accomplishing your goals in an environment like this.

In Mali, when saying good bye for an indefinite, long time, one shakes with their left hand. The left handed shake is a cultural faut pas, an impoliteness that you must come back to correct.

I'll be back.

Hey everyone!

I want to thank everyone who has sent letters, e-mails and packages for all their support. I guess I'm wrapping up relatively soon (in a couple months) and, well, in Africa 2 months is very soon. So please refrain from any more packages as it's possible they would not arrive before I leave. Letters tend to get here quicker, and also aren't such an investment, so that's fine for maybe another month or so.

After that, it's back to e-mail!

I mentioned how frustrating I found the New York Time's article "Mali Rankled by Rules for Life in Spotlight". In my first post, I discussed my frustrations with the article itself, but I also percieve a more underlying difficulty.

I've noticed that often people will blame their circumstances or troubles on things outside of their control here. Now, I'm guessing that's a pretty universal problem, but it can be particularly frustrating when you are attempting to empower people to sustain a development project. This article is a great example, in that the article claims that people are frustrated that they are placed under rules by their leadership that come with being a UNESCO World Heritage Site, but are not seeing the benefits. The article also states that the benefits accrue to a small elite, including the Imam of the mosque and his advisers. This is hard for me to know, but seems plausible. Wouldn't then the appropriate place to direct anger and resentment be to the leadership who is siphoning off the rewards of tourism, rather than the organization that helped funnel tourist dollars into Djenné?

Often people will blame France (who played a horrible, atrocious role in the colonization of West Africa but I don't see much evidence for them continuing that negative role) or the United States or the west in general for the situation in Mali. If only we contributed more, or contributed differently, or changed this or that policy, things would be better. But Djenné is a good example of how a benign foreign presence can not resolve all problems, though it can assist strong, positive local leadership in resolving those problems.

I understand people's rationale here. Criticizing the developed countries or the UN is safe. Criticizing your national - or worse, local - government is dangerous. When I discuss the unrest in North Africa with Malians, I see a people rising up against corruption, mismanagement and totalitarianism and demanding their rights. Yes, it is awful that people are being assaulted by their own governments, but they must forge on. Most Malians, on the other hand, see people being assaulted by their own governments, and pray that this instability doesn't reach Mali. Accountability is a scary concept to apply when you don't know what the president or army might be willing to do to you.

Plenty new photos, and some videos available at my Flickr website. Many of them are from our trip to Ghana, though there are some random other things as well. Also, if you have facebook, Corinna tagged me in a bunch of photos there.

Speaking videos, I can do this sweet dance:

I did it for our independence day celebration. Men do it, and women give away head scarves to their favored dancers.

Also, how awesome is this:

So, one of the sadder and more frustrating parts of living in Africa is how hopelessly wrong our media gets it's portrayals of life, conflicts and politics. It's no surprise that American's views of Africa are so distorted when they read such crap in the paper (and watch even worse crap on the nightly news).

This New York Time's article "Mali Rankled by Rules for Life in Spotlight" is a perfect example, especially because the city discussed, Djenné, is less than 25 miles from my town and I have been there more than a dozen times and have many friends there.

The article discusses frustrations within the city of Djenné over their status as a UNESCO World Heritage site.

The first problem is that the article is factually incorrect at times and factually misleading at other points. For example, the article states that the art of hand-making mud bricks is dying out because of lack of raw materials, such as rice husks and tree paste, when a cursory look around Mali would reveal that the vast, vast majority of houses are made of mud bricks. The real issue is that people now make bricks by wooden form instead of by hand, presumably because it is vastly easier.

Also, the article states that rooms are not big enough to accomodate double beds and that families want to add armoires too, but the mud architecture does not leave enough space. I have been in more than a dozen homes in Djenné, all or nearly all of them historic, and have never seen a bedroom that small. The article implies that this is a common problem in Djenné when it seems more likely to be a problem particular to one of the two interviewees in the article.

Finally, the article implies that UNESCO's designation and subsequent projects are responsible for the raw sewage that sometimes ends up in the streets in rainy season and the trash that is everywhere. But these are problems everywhere in Mali. In Segou, one of the tidiest, most modern cities in the country, there is sewage in the streets as everything overflows from rainy season and trash can be found all over. In fact, trash is a major problem in my town.

In reality, it's easier and safer for the residents of Djenné to complain about UNESCO than to complain about the leadership of their town. The town is not going to change because of UNESCO's actions; it will only change when the residents demand accountability from their leaders. This article, by failing to fact check even the most basic statements given by their interviewees, promotes misinformation in America and allows Malian leaders to avoid responsibility.

I seem to have been writing posts and then forgetting to upload them later when I actually have internet! Silly me. Hence the deluge of posts right now and the relative paucity in the past few months.

Anyway, I tried not to duplicate but one that I did in fact post might have snuck in there. If so, enjoy reading it again!

So waaay back when, perhaps it was July, I was sitting in a bus heading back from Segou when I was approached by another American. It seems she had been a Peace Corps Volunteer and was returning to Mali to visit old friends and whatnot. She had been entrusted a letter from another former volunteer to be delivered to a family in Djenné, and as I live not far from Djenné I agreed to deliver it. It wasn't until much later that I looked more carefully at the envelope and realized it was addressed to "The Host Family of Tenenba". This, as information goes, was pretty inadequate. It didn't say the name of this host family, or what quarter they lived in. It didn't in fact list any Malian names. It only had the Malian first name the volunteer had taken, not even their last name.

So I couldn't contact Peace Corps - they generally know us by our American names - and I had absolutely no idea who to talk to in Djenné, which is a city of roughly 15,000 people. In Madiama I could just ask "who's friends with the white girl?" and be good to go, but Djenné has a fair number of white tourists around. So I asked at random, which, predictably, didn't gt me very far.

So I set the letter aside, promising myself I would come back to it when I had a bright idea. Then part of my rough collapsed during the rains, soaking a lot of my papers, including the letter. Then crazy mice started eating old correspondence of mine and then dying because it turns out a mouse can only digest so much bleached white paper and cardstock.So when I randomly found someone recently who knew the old volunteer in question, there wasn't much left to deliver. But today I delivered the remains, which turned out to once have been 4 photos that had been glued together by the water damage. I would have felt bad for the condition of the letter, but that's what all my stuff looks like too.

Getting to see a host family reminisce about an old volunteer was really enjoyable. It was clear that, regardless of the volunteer's project work, they had made an impact on this one family and had successfully learned something about each others' cultures. The family insisted I now had somewhere to stay any time I was in Djenné and gave me fresh milk and rice and sauce for lunch, which was very nice of them. They were shocked that I ate Malian rice and sauce, which was confusing. What had the four volunteers that had lived with this family eaten?

So one day I was sitting at the side of the road waiting for a bus. I had been sitting for some hours, hoping to flag down any transport I could that was heading in the right way, when my friend Fak?r? said that there was a toubabouce (white guy) coming. I looked, and at first thought he was wrong and there was an albino swaddled in a turban coming. Then he got closer and I realized the turban was a dirty, mange-y white beard and it was in fact a white man.

He was biking down the road in an ancient road bike loaded down in every possible way. There were bags hanging off the rack on back, bags tied on top, bags hanging off the front, bags on the handle bar, a 1 gallon water jug stored in the center of the frame. He wasn't moving very fast. He pulls up, spouting rapid fire German at me. I'm stunned, and would likely not have responded to him even if I did speak a lick of german. Just to be clear, I was way the heck out in the middle of no where. What was this guy doing here?

Finally he decides that my blank stare means I don't speak German and tries English (an odd choice in a franco-phone country, but then, he was an odd fellow). I - just - manage to confirm that I do speak English before he is off, talking a mile a minute. It seems he is a guy who has been biking around Africa for the last 20 years and decided to bike up to Timbouctou, but turned around because too many people were telling him he'd be a damn fool to bike through the desert where there were folks wandering around trying to kidnap germans. So now he had time on his hands and was sort of meandering around Mali, offering to help wherever he went, though I couldn't imagine that was going very well since he didn't appear to speak any language intelligible to people here, including French.

Eventually, he realizes that it is a bit odd that he found me randomly on the side of the road and asks me "What are you doing here?"

"What do you mean, what am I doing here?", I reply. "I live here."

"What do you mean, you live here?"

"I live here. Well, not here, here. I live a few kilometers that way."

I point off to the North. We both lapse into silence, each of us looking at the other like they are absolutely bonkers.

"Right then," he says, "where can I get some food? I only ate a banana since yesterday."

I give him directions to the next town, watch him bike off, and then turn to my friend: "Ça c'est bizarre."1

I thought it might be enlightening to compare my different experiences in West Africa after returning from Ghana and passing through Burkina Faso.

So, some broad and likely misleading generalizations:

• In two and a half weeks, our transport never broke down in Ghana. This might not sound like much, but we were traveling most days. And really, the only time in the last year and a half that I have gone two weeks without a car or bus breaking down is when I haven't traveled for two weeks. Honestly. As an example, once we left Burkina Faso and entered Mali, there were four seperate breakdowns between entering Mali and arriving at my site.

• Not only did transport not break down, but it was fast, efficient, clean, not overcrowded, sometimes air conditioned and cost the same as similar transport costs in Mali and Guinea. This was frankly astonishing. I could accept transport being better in Ghana (and for the most part, Burkina Faso as well) since the standard of living is higher, but that they can offer a service a hundred, a thousand times better for the same price is frankly mysterious, especially given the intense competition in the transport industry in Mali.

• Chinese food, and in particular, Chinese fast food, is considered haute culture in Ghana.

• Ghana seems to take more pride in it's history and culture than anywhere else I have been in West Africa. There are numberous museums throughout the country with well-presented, interesting and informative displays, where as Guinea has no museum to speak of and the museums of Mali are not of the same level. The only place of similar quality in terms of the ability to explore pre-colonial and colonial history that I have been to is Senegal, but people in Senegal did not seem to take the same pride in their culture and history. What was even more interesting is that there were a significant number of Ghanaians exploring these cultural sites, whereas other places I've been it is just foreigners and a handful of Africans from other countries

• Ghana is predominantly Christian but has a signifcant Muslim minority in the north of the country and has higher levels of religious tensions than Mali, which is predominantly Muslim, or Guinea, which is predominantly Muslim but with a much larger Christian minority and incredibly smooth relations between the two. Of course, Ghana's religions get along much better than many of the other surrounding countries.

• In Mali and Guinea, if someone approached while you are eating it would be rude not to offer to share. Throwing away food is unthinkable. In Ghana, it seemed to be rude to offer to share a partly eaten bowl of rice with stranger.

• Coconuts, when taken still fresh off a coconut palm and eaten taste almost nothing like coconuts you get in America or in Mali. They are amazingly refreshing, filled with juice, the meat is soft and succulent and has none of the bitter flavor of the cocnuts we're used to eating.

• Beer appears to be watery, bitter and with a weird chemical taste, and yet somehow still a delicious treat throughout West Africa. Except that love of my West African life, Stone!

In the past, I've made the mistake of not updating about something until I could upload pictures, which leads to delays of some months. So this time, I'm going to make a different mistake and do the update without the photos - i.e., the best part.

Corinna, Yik and I went to Ghana for Christmas and New Year's and had an amazing time seeing a whole different side of West Africa. We did a pretty good tour of the country, seeing a lot, though certainly not all, of the major things to see and spent a lot of time on the coast. By the way, the coast of Ghana is where it's at. Warm, clean waters, beautiful beaches, waves if you want them or tranquility of that's your preference, coconut palms everywhere, the most delicious pineapple I've ever tasted, canoes coming in with fresh fish, scenic forts and castles moldering on hill sides and even $5-10 lobster if you want it.

We spent Christmas on the beach and New Year's Eve in the capital, Accra and a good portion of the rest of the time moving up and down the coast sampling some wonderful spots. We took land transport to and from Ghana

Now, Ghana is still Africa and so we kept waiting for the other foot to fall - transport breaking down, being unable to get places, strange, inexplicable problems or hassles propping where you least expect it, no food, bad food, no water, water that you rnot sure you should be eating, realizing you are paying the same prices for something as you would in America even though you are decidedly not in America - and it really never fell, at least not too hard. (We did laugh one time on entering a restaurant adorned with beautiful pictures of all the food they served only to find out that they didn't have any of the items on their menu, they only served fried rice, a Ghanaian urban fast food staple. Yep, still in Africa).

We met up with some other foreigners and expats and heard the usual frustrations people have here, exasperated as usual by a lack oof understanding or willingness to accept the culture here, and I tried the best I could to listen since we all need to gripe about that kind of stuff sometimes. But at a certain point It seemed necessary to interject and add "foolish us, we've been looking around and seeing practically paradise".

Ghana is known as the "Black Star" of Africa, after it's football team the Black Stars and it's relative economic success brought on some wise decisions early on, relatively successful integration of different ethnicities and religions and abundance of natural resources. Being there gave me so many thigns to compare with Mali, which is relatively successful politically but endowed with so few natural resources, and Guinea, which is incredibly richly endowed with resources but econimically crushed under the weight of dictators and corruption.

Sometimes Ghana could be a little disconcerting, such as seeing Africans on jetskis whizzing by poverty stricken, collapsing fishing villages. But it would be overmuch to focus on the contrast between the two. Instead, it helped me to contrast this image with those of other places, where the only people economically secure enough to enjoy this sense of leisure is rich foreigners, and the poverty stricken, collapsing fishing village is just the same, or poorer. It would also be disconcerting to enter a place seeming entirely Western, only to discover that it still wasn't quite home. This happened when we entered the new, shiny shopping mall of Accra, fancier than many of the malls I've been to in the states, and ate at the food court only to discover that we couldn't get food from different establishments and then sit together - we were supposed to sit in front of the restaurant we bought food at. This seemed ridiculous. Isn't, after all, the whole idea of a food court that you and your friends can choose to eat different kinds of food together? But just because something is borrowed from America, doesn't mean it has to stay exactly the same. In all, Ghana gave me a great sense of hope. This is what development really means, what developing countries are becoming - not only somewhere where you can verifiably see progress made, but in the very air there is a tingling anticipation of future advancement in the air.

Villagers in Mali don't really have that much interaction with foreigners, or even people from more than a few hundred kilometers away. Being surrounded by only your own culture does not equip you to explain cultural practices or nuances, you just display them and children learn them by, well, osmosis really. That makes cultural exchange interesting here, because often times I'll be trying to figure out the meaning behind a practice, or it's raison d'être, or even just what exactly we're doing and my questions fall on deaf ears. It's just not the kind of question that ever gets asked.

For example, Corinna and I are both often called Coulibali. Coulibali is a last name here, and it's pretty normal to call someone by their last name. The thing is, our last names are Keita and Konatε, respectively. And the relationship between the Keitas and Konatεs (who are basically from the same origin) and Coulibalis is what is called a "joking cousin" relationship, where Keitas and Konatεs will say that Coulibalis are no good, they eat beans, they eat dogs or cats or donkeys, they are thieves, etc., and the Coulibalis say the same thing about the Keitas and Konatεs. Example dialogue follows:

Coulibali: You Konatεs are no good!

Konatε: Yeah well, Coulibalis only eat beans! They never eat any meat, just beans!

Coulibali: Dog's taste good to you, you Konatε!

Konatε: I haven't seen my dog lately. What, did you steal it? Coulibalis are no good!

Coulibali: I didn't steal your dog. See, Konatεs are always lying!

etc, etc, etc...

So no Keita or Konatε would ever accept being called Coulibali, and it's not culturally okay to call a Keita Coulibali or vice-versa. So it's been always frustrating on a variety of levels when people call us Coulibali. First, it seems like a reminder that we're not from here, that our last names don't really matter. But it's really important to Malians that we integrate culturally as much as possible, and we have worked really hard to understand Malian culture and integrate with it. And then, it seems disrespectful in that no one would ever call a Keita Coulibali here, and since we're expected to live according to Malian culture, it seems like we are being disrepected.

I've tried hard to find an explanation for why people do this, and failed continually until recently. It may be hard to understand outside of the culture here, but it could be literally infuriating to have people constantly mocking my name, not by saying I eat beans or am a thief (which would be fine), but by calling me Coulibali. Finally though, Corinna and I were walking and a shop owner called me Coulibali and corrected him and asked, as I have asked others many times before, why he would say Coulibali. He said that the Coulibalis were the founders of the kingdom of Segou, the kingdom that united most of present day Mali under the leadership of the Bambara ethnic group in the late 18th and early 19th century. Calling a white person, who obviously does not really have a Bambara surname, is really a sign of respect.

Oops. Would have been good to know that a year ago.

Unless a Coulibali does it of course, because they are donkey eating, farting, thieving liers. Hey Coulibali, do you like your dogmeat grilled or in rice and sauce?

So back in September I went on a hiking trip with Corinna and our friend Dorian to Dogon country. Sorry it took me so long to blog about it, but it can't be done justice with pictures and pictures requires a decent internet connection.

Dogon Country is a series of cliffs running 100 km in the north of Mali near the border with Burkina Faso. The people there are are for the most part the Dogon people, who split off from other Mande people such as the Bambara (the largest ethnic group in Mali) a long time ago, possibly around the time Islam began to penetrate Mali, but also possibly long before that.

I've heard two stories: that when the Dogon came the other people in the area had already moved on, but also that when the Dogon came the Tellem people were still around. The area was richly forested and the Tellem were hunter gatherers that went into the forests to hunt and returned to the cliffs for shelter. They lived high in the cliffs and were said to ascend to their homes by way of putting magical substances on their hands and feet so they could climb straight up the walls, and bridging vast canyons with rope bridges. Their houses are incredibly inaccessible, like nothing I have ever seen. This picture is of the MOST accessible ones, but it is also the best photo I have:

The Dogon cleared land for farming in the valleys, and eventually deforestation drove out the large animals, and with them, the Tellem. But the Dogon adopted compromise villages that were still high in the rocks and unaccessible, but more accessible than the Tellem. This protected them from outside influence and leaves an outstanding glimpse into life here for the Mande peoples before the influence of Islam, Christianity and trade.

We spent three days hiking and learning about the culture and receiving some of my deepest, and most intriguing glimpses into animism, the religion that predates Islam in these parts. The people were great, the scenery was gorgeous... and the hike was grueling. I loved it, but of course I was there for three days. There are people there that spend 6 days of the week walking between villages as traders. For some villages, there is no access for any sort of transport at all, not even a donkey, so everything must be transported by hand. Women and children in some villages haul EVERY drop of water they use 500 meters or more up a cliffside to the village. And at harvest time, every scrap of the harvest must be hauled up the hills. Its truly an amazing and difficult life.

Here is a couple more photos, but there are many more here to check out:

One of the things I occasionally hear is that aid is ineffective because of any number of reasons. People may admit that there are folks that really need help, but we do such a poor job giving it that we should either start over from scratch or give up.

Well, the problem with such doom and gloom is that it's nonsense. There has been real progress around the world fighting poverty, even in the most challenging area, sub-Saharan Africa:

Our main conclusion is that Africa is reducing poverty, and doing it much faster than many thought. The growth from the period 1995-2006, far from benefiting only the elites, has been sufficiently widely spread that both total African inequality and African within-country inequality actually declined over this period.The speed at which Africa has reduced poverty since 1995 puts it on track to achieve the Millennium Development Goal of halving poverty relative to 1990 by 2015 on time or, at worst, a couple of years late.If the Democratic Republic of Congo converges to the African trend once it is stabilised, the MDG will be achieved by 2012, three years before the target date. We also find that the African poverty reduction is remarkably general. African poverty reduction cannot be explained by a large country, or even by a single set of countries possessing some beneficial geographical or historical characteristic.All classes of countries, including those with disadvantageous geography and history, experience reductions in povertyI strongly encourage you to read the rest of this report, "African poverty is falling…much faster than you think", as it is pretty short and challenges a lot of conventional thinking on Africa.

er... of fire. no, of baby!

So I recently went to a (relatively, by village terms) wealthy baptism and also a baptism of a poor family. My teacher friend, Kulu, had a baby boy. My counterpart, Fakoro, had a beautiful little baby girl. I thought it would be a good time for some compare and contrast. Also, some photos (mostly of Fakoro's baptême).

So, a baptism here (ideally) works like this: the baptism is the 8th day after the birthday of the baby (generally it falls on the same day of the week, which I always find confusing... isn't that only seven days?). Early in the morning, the oldest, most respected men of the village gather together to name the baby. They normally consider the wishes of the father, though it is ultimately their decision. (Every third daughter is named by the mother). The father has to bring money and dates to give to each of the old men, which typically costs in total around 10-20 dollars - substantial money, especially after paying the midwife or doctor. The men pray for the baby, bless the baby, call out a name and shave the baby's head. (In bambara, a baptism is called a denkundi, or baby shaving). The old men also give a small token gift of money to the father.

Later in the morning, the women gather with the new mother to offer small gifts and small amounts of money. The baby is passed around among the women and admired, while the mother generally insists the baby is ugly. This is because many people believe by giving the baby a name that means something ugly or saying the baby is ugly they are highlighting the blessing that a baby is. Afterwards, the women sing and dance - it is beautiful and fun and full of joy at the new life.

Meanwhile, the men gather and drink tea, eat peanuts and chat until the women make them a big meal at the expense of the father. He will kill chickens, a goat or even a sheep depending on how wealthy he is. The party lasts all day. This is pretty much* what my friend Kulu is, since he has a state job and is thus pretty wealthy in the village.

My friend Fakoro did the old man stuff in the morning - that's obligitory - and the women stuff is free and organized by women. But he couldn't throw a party for the men as it was too expensive for him.

*I said that's pretty much what my friend Kulu did but there was one exception. Kulu is one of 2 Christian families living in my village, everyone else is muslim. It's never a source of tension or problems, up to this baby. Kulu was concerned about naming the baby, because he wanted him to have a Christian name but also wanted him to fit into a muslim village. My friend Niete sensibly suggested naming him something that worked in both religions and was similar. So they decided on, I believe, Daouda/David. But the old men didn't follow his wishes and named the baby Mohammed. Kulu wasn't very happy with the decision, but there was nothing he could do about it. Likely the baby will acquire a nickname, and then Kulu will rename the baby when he moves.

(and yes to your anti-malarial drugs)

So, I can now confirm that having malaria really, really, really is no fun. I started feeling the effects Sunday morning and luckily figured out what was going on pretty quick and got on the right meds. Now I'm not yet malaria-free, but I feel much, much better. I'd say it ranks up there in there in the worst I've felt, but it seems like I got off relatively light.

Anyway, I'm fine now, just stuck in the capital for a few days until all my blood work comes back perfect. And yesterday, as you may have noticed from the massive number of pictures I uploaded, the internet is back up. So expect to hear some from me.

Some new photos are up of various hijinks, and some videos too. I've been having a hard time getting them to upload recently which has slowed up some posts I wanted to make.

More on their way.

September 22 is the Malian Indepence day, and this is year 50 (photos). A little before the fête I was in the capital, Bamako, and the attitude of both volunteers and Malians seemed to be very negative towards the fête. Even the international news was saying what has Mali really accomplished in 50 years? Is this really something to celebrate? I went back to village before the fête to celebrate there, and having left all the new concrete and buildings behind it wasn't too hard to see what Madiamans have gotten in 50 years. They went from no schools in the entire commune to a primary school for almost every village and a secondary school in one. There are chatêaux which give clean, safe drinking water in 2 villages. There are many wells and not a few hand pumps. There are two dirt roads and one paved road. The population of the town has increased enormously. There is a community health center. Call me crazy, but isn't this progress? I don't recall Europe going from feudalism to modernity in 50 years, and they didn't have the devastating effects of colonialism to deal with.

Generally, I don't think that villagers fête (party, celebrate) - their idea of a fête is to do the exact same thing they do every other day. I'll say Bonne fête! What are we doing today? And people will heerily respond nothing! There's no food!

But it turns out I'm wrong. Madiama kɔw (the people of my village do know how to throw a party! Villagers from all 11 villages commune came the night before and there was lots of music and dancing. In the morning, there was music, dancing and games. There was "bobbing" for sardines, raw milk and other treats, sack races and a bike race to a neighboring village and back. The bike race turned out kind of dangerous; since the bikes don't have brakes the bikers just crashed into the crowd at the end of the race. The winner's face found a tree. He had to be carried to accept his prize, but after a few minutes he was back to himself.

One of my favorite parts was the troop of hunters that came from Bankassi, another village in my commune. There were many of them, dressed in mostly traditional hungers garb. One, Lasinε, was the singer and he sang very well. Another planed the ŋɔmin, an instrument similar to the guitar. Their music was beautiful and throughout the day they fired ancient muskets (often!). Many times the muskets jammed, and I was a little worried about a misfire killing people. It became clear that I wasn't the only one concerned when my friend Fakɔrɔ was convinced he took some shrapnel to the head (he was fine). The charges were massive; each one sounded like a canon.

Later, I was asked to dance in a circle with some of the other men. We danced to drums and a filε (wooden flute), slowly at first and then the tempo almost imperceptibly built. Women gave headscarves to the men who were dancing well until the air was filled with the flashing colors of dozens of headscarves. I collected so many scarves and danced so long my fist was locked around them. After a long time the tempo hit a feverish pitch; the sky became flashes of pink, green, blue white and black from the scarves. We all cheered, exultant, to cries of "i ni don!" and É ye donkε de!" You and the dance! You danced very well!

I love to cook, but ingredients in an African village on the edge of the Sahara are limited - unless you want to make the village staple of to (and you don't want to, trust me). So here's some tricks I've learned:Need butter? Mix milk powder, water and peanut oil. Keep adding ingredients until the consistency is like oily, funny looking melted butter.Need flour? Sift it through a piece of mosquito netting several times. It WILL be chock full of bugs and worms. Even the best mosquito net sifter won't catch the eggs, so you have to sift every time - and enjoy eating the eggs!Speaking of eggs... if you find some, buy them. All of them, no matter what bird they come from. Eggs are extremely hard to come by, and will last a month or more without a refrigerator (who knew!)Whatever you're making, add lots of garlic and onions. 10 months out of the year, that and okra are the only veggies happening. Of course, for a moth or two even the onion runs out. Maybe chop up some vitamin pills in your chow...Remember, stale bread is better than no bread at allOn water: It's going to be dirty. If it's so dirty as to clog up your water filter, boil it instead of filtering until you can get a new filter. It'll still be dirty, but you'll feel better about drinking it. If it's brown, drink it down!Small amounts of bleach in water = good for you, as it kills bacteria. Medium amount of bleach in water - makes you really gassy and uncomfortable. More bleach than that poisons you.Gatorade. To make your own Gatorade: 1 liter water, 8 tablespoons sugar, 1 tablespoon salt, 1-2 limes, squeezed. It is easiest to make just after rainy season, when limes are plentiful. But it is most important to drink during hot season, when limes are nowhere to be found. It tastes bad without the limes. On cold things: In the absence of electricity, a big clay pot does a surprisingly good job of providing the illusion of cold water. It's worth it to bike with a cooler and a block of ice 4o miles or more to have cold water at the end.Using the power of the sun: In the heat of the day, you can make tea by putting tea bags into a glass container and leaving it in the sun. Be careful on hot days; you can burn yourself on the glass. For an extra treat, add lime juice and sugar and place in your big clay pot to make "iced" tea.

So, it's a year and a bit since I became a Mali volunteer, which is as good an anniversary as any, I guess. Spurred on by lot's of reflections from my fellow evacuees (a year since coming to Africa, since becoming a volunteer, since evacuation, etc...) I figured I'd say a couple things.

First, I'm not going to say anything trite about how hard the evacuation was or any of that. It was a lot harder on the Guineans who stayed there, of course, not to mention those that died or lost a loved one in the violence. Guinea is approaching another election deadline on October 24th, and for the sake of everyone there I hope that they occur f reely, fairly and peacefully. I have a deep respect for all those who have pushed for change in Guinea, and I hope the government will see through it's promises and start on a brighter path.

Coming to Africa, I wanted a "vrai" experience. I was more interested in local language then French, knowing even then the French would sharply limit my ability to interact with those in my village. And I wanted to be out there - I wanted to focus as much time as possible on meeting and getting to know my West African counterparts, rather than interacting with Peace Corps. And I had a romantic notion - that I recognized as foolish even back then - that I wanted to be the first volunteer, to establish my own rapport with the people in my site.

Well, I got all that in spades coming to Madiama. I came here without local language skills (thanks for that french after all, Guinea!) and slowly, painfully built up my Bambara skills so that now I rarely speak french - or English, for that matter. And I left behind the support network of my fellow Guinean volunteers, without really an opportunity to build that with the volunteers of Mali. And I ended up pretty far out there, where I can really spend some quality time without much interaction outsite.

But of course things are changed too. I'm working in a sector for which I recieved very little training. Dating Corinna was a surprise - both of us insisted we didn't want to date in Peace Corps even as we began dating. But, in addition to all of her merits as a person and girlfriend and friend, I've been surprised to see her as a whole new window on Mali and, of course, Guinea. From turmoil, I have had great luck. I wish that on to my all of my friends in Mali and Guinea.

Despite reports of this blog's unduly demise on facebook, I assure you it's still here! I always link on facebook when I put a post, but if you do not see posts there you can also find them at mark-en-afrique.blogspot.com.

Thanks for your concern, it's good to someone's still reading! (If a blog fails to post in a forest and no one is around to read it, what sound does it make?)

Massive termite mound

Originally uploaded by lomamaestroTermites. I hate termites. If I'm not careful, this'll be my house!

Massive termite mound

Originally uploaded by lomamaestroTermites. I hate termites. If I'm not careful, this'll be my house!

Massive termite mound

Originally uploaded by lomamaestroTermites. I hate termites. If I'm not careful, this'll be my house!

This is a video of a friend of my planting okra seeds. Okra is a crop planted only by women that can earn a bit of cash for the women. Except for plowing, which is usually done by an ox-pulled plow (and sometimes done by hand) almost all farm labor is done by hand, like this. People spend most of their time in the fields from July to December. Some people even have houses in the fields.

Speaking of plowing by ox, here's pictures of Corinna and I trying our hands at it:

I gave a training recently on Moringa in my town last week which went really well. It was a little unorthodox, but I'm really happy how it turned out. Corinna and the new volunteer Devon, who is somewhat near me, came out for it. Here they are coming with the tree brigade!

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Moringa is a tree originally from India that does really well in Africa. There are many uses for it's leaves and seeds, and it does really well with long dry seasons, heat, and a general lack of water. In a word, it's perfect for Madiama but hasn't been introduced here yet. Typically, volunteers will raise a crop of Moringa and give them out with information about the plant. Unforunately, most villagers never actually use the tree after that so there's no lasting change. So, I decided to do something else.

I planted these Moringas about 3 months ago, and recently they were ready to move from their bags into the ground. We started talking them up around the town and got people excited about the trees. We planted one in my compound for future volunteers and as an easy place for someone to come by and check out the tree. After we had a good buzz going, we started taking orders for trees.

See, we weren't giving these away; we were selling them for 75 CFA (about 15 cents) a tree. This made them affordable to my villagers, but meant that we would only get those who were truly interested in exploiting the trees. See, anyone would want a free tree here, but now these people are making an investment.

I also wrote a guide to Moringa in Bambara and French to distribute to literate members in the community. We sold color copies (there are lots of pictures) for 200 CFA (~38 cents) and gave away black and white copies to anyone who bought a tree. When we gave out the trees, we gave a series of small trainings about how to plant, care for and harvest the products of the tree to anyone who took a tree. Here is a few people recieving training:

We sold all of our color guides and all of the trees we planted, about 100. The money went to they pepiniere (tree farmer) who raised the seeds with me. There are many more people who want to buy trees, so we immediately planted a new round of seeds.

Not only did we get lots of interest, but when I asked people to tell me what they had learned they were able to tell me, in their own words, all the information we gave them about Moringa. Of course, the real test will be as we watch over the next few months to see how people care for and use their trees.

You can find the rest of the pictures of the training here.

The association I helped organize got an NGO to come give literacy training to my villagers. It's really helpful for villagers to be literate in Bambara - they end up in high demand on various village committees and groups so they can keep records. Since I had a (very) small part in helping this get off the ground, they invited me and Corinna to the awards ceremony and had us give out gifts. I'm giving out a box of soap above. Here's Corinna giving out 3 pagnes (about 4.5 yards of fabric):

And who says you can't have fun at an awards ceremony:

So, every year in the muslim calender there is a month of fasting, called Sunkalo in Bambara or Le Mois de Karem in French (both are literally (the month of fasting). During this period, muslims do not eat or drink from sun up until sundown.

In village, this means that everyone wakes at about 3:30 am to eat and drink water, then fast until about 7:00 pm to eat a big meal. Last year I tried fasting, but immediately got sick and had to stop. This year was more successful - I'd say I fasted about 2.5 weeks out of the 28 days, almost all of it right at the beginning. I fast because it's enjoyable to break fast with people, not out of any necessity. I ate with both a rather well off family and with a prtetty poor family during the month of fasting. With the rich family, we would start the fast with a bowl of rice and sauce and perhaps some lookwarm, sugary tea. With the poor family, we would start the fast with to (a sort of pasty bland starch made out of millet) and water.

With the rich family, we broke fast with a glass of lukewarm sugary tea. Then we would eat a small bowl of diced meat in sauce or scrambled guinea fowl eggs with rice cakes or bread. Then we would perhaps have a soda or juice. Then we would drink seri (rice porridge). Afterwards maybe we would have some degue (a sort of curdled milk with millet seeds) and drink some tea.

With the poor family, we would break fast with gingembre (a spicy juice made out of ginger root), and dablini (a sweet habiscus tea, served room temperature). Then we would eat to with honey. After that, we would drink some seri and maybe drink tea.

One interesting tradition in village is that people give sugar to the poor during sunkalo. So I bought a big bag of sugar to give out to friends and the poor in my village. Here is my friend Fakoro helping me to divy up the sugar:

At the end of the month, there is a celebration called in Bambara seli fitini (literally, small celebration). It's celebrating the end of the fast and looking forward to seliba (big celebration) that comes in a month. On seli fitini there is a big prayer and everyone gathers in their best clothes. The rest of the day is spent eating and greating all your neighbors. Here is Corinna, Fakoro and I in our best clothes on seli fitini:

This is why I don't eat much meat

Originally uploaded by lomamaestroSo, this is the meat counter in Segou where you can get meat. It's a big step-up from the situation in Madiama, where I tend to avoid anywhere that meat it prepared.

This also explains while people boil the dickens out of meat whenever it's in sauce.

It's always difficult to get a good perspective on the village because you can't really see more than one house away - it tends to be winding mud lanes. So the other day, I was on my roof making some repairs from rain damage and took some pictures of Madiama from the air:

So, I've been in Bamako, the capital, for a few days. I'm doing mid-service medical checkups (don't worry, nothing's wrong it's just procedure).

I've sort of gotten stuck here far longer than I wanted to while I try to meet with Peace Corps folks on some work things, which has been frustrating. But on the upside, I've gotten many pictures uploaded!

I'll try to put up a bunch of blog posts explaining some of these before I leave.

Fakoro's seben

Originally uploaded by lomamaestroI want to talk about another animist practice, Sεbεn. I mentioned it briefly, but not in any depth. You can see some pictures here. The other day I spent several hours with the leather workers who make these fura for people. Fura means medicine, but medicine here includes not only traditional medicine as we would think of it, but also spiritual charms and gifts for the gods. Basically, if your illness comes from spirits or gods acting malignantly toward you or a rival cursing you, as was traditionally thought, it makes sense that medicine would include spiritual means of protection.

Basically, words of power are copied (in arabic, typically) onto paper which is tightly folded up and then folded into a piece of leather, which is sealed and made into a necklace. This type is most often bought by parents or relatives for their childrene or nieces and nephews. The person chooses their words of power, so they could ask for health or wealth or good marriages or strength. Hardly anyone speaks arabic, and it's even rarer to write arabic, so this is often done by the Maribout, who is an Imam (Islamic spiritual leader) who is also knowledgeable about traditional animist practices.

Women will sometimes wear Sεbεn with leather belts that can either (depending of the benediction) aid or prevent pregnancy. Men will sometimes where ones that increase their virility.

Sεbεn (literally: writing) can be also put into rings that stick way up on the finger, worn most often by men.

I made one for my nephew, Asher, hopefully he'll get it soon! I've attached a picture of my homologue, Fakoro, with his Sεbεn.

My friend Shahnaz gave me some more information about polygamy in Islam. Thanks Shahnaz! I'm glad to hear from someone more knowledgeable than I:

That’s interesting that polygamy is being practiced there. Yup you’re right that Islam allows up to four wives, but that is not the complete story. In Islam, monogamy is actually the rule, and polygamy- the exception. The verses in the Quran that refer to polygamy, only allow it in times of war or EXTREME hardship in a society, such that there are widows and orphans who have no where or no one to turn to for care, shelter and food. So polygamy was allowed only in these circumstances to help these women.

Also – divorce is a right all women have in Islam… and I’m sorry that Hadiara doesn’t feel like she has that option, which I can understand due to cultural pressure

On the whole, it is sad how a culture can misconstrue what a religion actually teaches for its own advantage, and for reasons of power and control… and ufortunately this happens all over the world.

Of course, religious practice is influenced by culture a great deal. Many people do not have direct access to the teachings of the Quran because they are illiterate, and also the Qurans that are around are generally in arabic. Very few people can read or speak much of anything of arabic. And I should say that polygamy is common here, but still most men only have one wife. Also, sometimes a man will take his brother's wife when his brother dies to provide for the widow, which is intended to help the woman.

What people say here is that a man is allowed to take up to 4 wives if they are able to take care of each wife and their children equally, as well as love each wife equally. In practice, all the women I talk to say that very few men are able to provide for the wives they have, and if they can, they do not love them equally.

I also want to clarify that I did not mean to imply divorce is not allowed here. Divorce is legally recognized by the state (although very difficult) and is possible religiously according to the interpretations of Islam here. It is extremely rare. I have not heard of a rural woman getting a divorce anywhere in Mali, though I am sure there are cases. The woman I knew of was in Guinea, where the culture is more relaxed. I would say it would be very culturally frowned upon, though probably possible, in my village.

I actually just found an English version of the Quran, so I'm looking forward to reading that and learning more about the religion. In any case, thanks for the information, Shahnaz!