It's a coup! Ha, just kidding, although in my opinion we would make great leaders. ;)A couple weeks ago my dad, mom, and sister Kathryn all came to visit me here in Mali! After a two-day long journey from Chicago to Bamako, they got in at 11pm and we went straight to the hotel. Kathryn's first impression: why all the dust and smoke? Answer: it's dusty and burning garbage. The next day we spend hanging around Bamako, went to the art musuem and botanical gardens, and then out to dinner with a bunch of my Peace Corps friends. On Day 2 we went up to Sevare, which is the 'city' that is ten kilometers from my village. The trip up took 10 hours, so we just ate dinner at the hotel we were at...and then the next day we were off to my village!! My village was SO nice to my family, I almost cried a bunch of times. They were so kind, gave them so many gifts, and just generally made sure that they were taken care of. Incredible. My host mom, Coumbare, kept telling my mom how much she loves me and takes care of me like I am her own daughter, and what a good and strong person I am. It meant so much to hear my people in village say such nice things about me. They were all named after people in my village. My Dad is Hamadoun Sidibe, my mom is Coumo Mugaroo, and Kathryn is Coumbare Dico. The man who Dad is named after came by, and they dressed Dad up in his Fulfulde outfit and started doing a Fulfulde dance together. Such a great time.Kathryn stayed with me for two nights at site...she is a survivor! She and I went to a dance party held in my family's honor on her first night there, we pulled out all kinds of crazy moves....like the lawn mower, grocery shopping, doing the q-tip....it was absolutely hilarious, and my village LOVED it. In general, it was so crazy to see my parents and sister do things that are normal to me now, but are so foreign to them....like eating rice and sauce with their hands, having to greet every single person we pass, drinking tea out of a shot glass. They saw my garden project, and helped the women pull water from the well. I'm so glad that they could share in my Mali experience like this.

After the three days in village, we spent a day in Mopti ('The Venice of Mali') and a day in Djenne, which has the world's largest mud mosque - it's a world heritage site. (Sidenote: here is an interesting article about Djenne that was recently in the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/world/africa/09mali.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=mali&st=cse) Overall, the Mali part of the trip was great!Back to Bamako, we then went to the resort in Senegal, about an hour south of Dakar (the capital of Senegal). It was SO NICE. Crazy nice. I did nothing but sit by the beach and eat food for days. The last day we went on a safari, which was really cool because we don't have wildlife in Mali. We saw a whole herd of giraffes gallop right in front of us! All in all, it was a great trip, and I am so grateful that my family was able to come and see my life here. Thanks family! :)

I got back to village a couple days ago after my family's wonderful visit to Mali and an absolutely glorious vacation in Senegal with my family! (blog with stories coming soon) About five minutes after I get home, as I'm sweeping out the two inches of dust and sand that has accumulated on my floor in my two-week absence, Coumbare comes dashing into my compound. "Aissata!' she shouted, 'We have a carrot thief!

It took about everything I had to not burst out laughing - I mean really, a carrot thief? But she was quite serious. While I was gone, someone began to break into the garden at night. Curiously enough, this thief does not take all the carrots - he or she digs up a bunch, takes a few, and then leaves the rest on the ground. The carrots the thief steals are not fully ripe either. Even curiouser, this thief only takes carrots. Ignoring all the cabbage, lettuce, tomatoes, onions, and hibiscus, the thief goes straight for the carrots.

Seeing as Bugs Bunny isn't around, I asked Coumbare who she thought the thief should be. She shook her head and said ominously, 'It could be anyone!' I should explain a bit about the security system around our community garden: it's nonexistent. There is a lock on the garden gate that Coumbare is in charge of unlocking each morning and locking each night - which she does religiously. But anyone could easily jump the fence, or even roll under it in some parts. It is impossible for animals to get into though. Or rather, if they did it would be quite obvious, what with a section of the fence being pushed to the ground and hoof marks. So this thief must be a person. It's not even hungry season right now, so the thief couldn't be stealing because he/she is starving. People just harvested their crops, so food is abundant.

Coumbare is insistent that once word spreads around village about the thief, the stealing will stop. In Malian culture, calling someone a thief is the worst thing you can do. Stealing is the most shameful act in which one can be caught. Until it stops though, I'm going to continue advocating my theory that it was Professor Plum in the library with the lead pipe...or perhaps, to go Clue Mali-style, Amadou in the women's garden with a diallo (hoe). I'll keep you updated...

As you can tell by the title, for the past two weeks I have been living it up on a mini-vacation in a magical place in southern Mali called Sikasso. Sikasso is magical because it has fruit and vegetables! Oranges! Bananas! Pineapple! Apples! Cucumbers! Green beans! And...(drumroll please) avocados year-round!!

I was in Sikassoville (the city) for our Peace Corps Thanksgiving celebration. And it was an epic celebration to say the least! My friend Sarah planned the majority of it, including a dinner of turkey, mashed potatoes, green beans, salad, fruit salad, stuffing, apple pie, and pumpkin pie! We all ate so much - it was delicious! The next day we had a donkey race, which I did not participate in but took many photos instead (most of them feature people falling off donkeys, ha). My region unfortunately did not win - Sikasso beat us - but Sarah won for Sikasso, so that was fun. The next day was a trip to the waterfalls, where we camped out overnight. They were absolutely beautiful! It was about a 3 hour car ride out to the village by the waterfalls. This car ride was pretty much hilarious - definitely my worst Malian transit experience. The car broke down at least three times because the gasoline kept leaking out in mysterious places. We made it though! After the car ride was a 20 minute hike, which featured crossing a bridge with no handrails - basically just a log! It was a fun experience for all of us ('Don't die!'). The waterfalls are gorgeous though - there are three levels, and we hiked to all of them. We spent the night at the falls, hanging out around our campfire and eating guacamole and tortillas for dinner. The next morning we hiked back out, then got back into the car...which proceeded to break down yet again! For the last twenty minutes of the ride there were at least eleven people crammed into a car that should fit seven. Hilarious.

Later that day, my friends Ali, Sarah, and I headed out to Sarah's site for a week. I had such a great time at her site - we made pizza, of all things, en brousse! To do so, we created what we call a brousse oven. A brousse oven is essentially one pot inside a much larger pot with rocks and water at the bottom. When you put a lid on this contraption, it acts as an oven. The pizza was so good, even better because we were eating it in a small village in rural Mali. Sarah's host family and friends were really nice. They call her 'Crazy lady' as a joke, and of course included us in that immediately (white people do a lot of 'crazy' things here, like dancing all over the place, or flossing teeth, or painting their front doors). There were several differences between our villages - I live in a Peul village, and she lives in a Senufo/Bambara village. The most noticeable difference is that people down here greet a LOT. And they greet everyone. For a long time. Peuls usually greet people they know, and even then they just ask a couple questions (how are you? how is your family? over). Down here in Bambara country, they greet absolutely everyone, even strangers, with a million and one questions. The Bambara are definitely a lot friendlier!

We had one interesting conversation with an English teacher at the school. He came over to talk with us to improve his English. We were talking about gender roles here in Mali - how men claim to do all the hard work, yet in reality sit around for probably half the day drinking tea while women do all the cooking, cleaning, and sometimes farming. We asked him if he was going to ask his wife to do all the work for him when he gets married. His response (and I'm quoting): 'I am not sure. Here in Mali, it is different. I pay my wife's family to marry her. After that, she is like my slave.'

Now, I would hope that he was just mistranslating in his head - English is his third language, after all. Even if he was mistranslating though, it is still incredibly shocking to hear something like that spoken in English. We questioned him after that, but he kept on saying that people would make fun of him if he washed dishes or did laundry. After that, I said, 'Change starts with one person! That person could be you!' (Yes, incredibly trite, but that's life.) That made him think for a little bit. At the end of the day, I'm sure that when he gets married he will teach English and his wife will do all the endless housework and some fieldwork on top of that....but I hope that he remembers our conversation from time to time and thinks about what he could do to help his wife.

Gender roles here are so hard to deal with: I see women work all day long, breaking their backs drawing water from the well, working in the fields, chopping firewood with a baby strapped to their back, carrying two buckets of water when nine months pregnant. My job is largely cross-culture: to explain American culture to Malians and explain Malian culture to Americans. I spend a lot of my time having conversations with Malians in Fulfulde about how in America, men and women are equal. That they share the work. Women work outside the home, and that's normal. But it is hard to do that sometimes, when even after long conversations where I prove my point quite succinctly with a very educated Malian man in English, he says that change won't start with him.

It is official: the garden is up and running!

A couple weeks ago, my host family and I ate our first meal from the garden: salad with lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, and onions. There is something so wonderful about eating food straight from the garden that you grew. All the kids were so excited about it - they only get vegetables once in a blue moon, so it is a real treat for them. They all fought over the last bits of lettuce in the communal bowl. I couldn't help but compare them to American kids, who I highly doubt would ever fight over who got the most tomatoes or cucumber slices. But these vegetables are better to them than candy! The watermelons are ready to harvest now too, so last night for dinner I had salad and a huge slice of watermelon for dessert! It honestly amazes me that the soil in our garden - very sandy - can produce gigantic juicy watermelons! Score one for food security!

In addition, a couple weeks ago we had a very important group of visitors: a NGO by a French couple that is building a garden for an association of Malians out in Bankass - Dogon Country. Before they began work on their new community garden, they were showing the Malians around to other gardens and allowing Malians to teach Malians good gardening techniques. They heard of our garden, and chose it as one of the teaching sites. Moussa came out with his entourage to show them around. He led a mini-session on tree planting, and each person in the group planted a mango tree! Then, completely unplanned, Coumbare took some of the group aside and told them about her work in the vegetable nursery. She basically taught them everything she had learned through my lessons and her experience! I was so proud of her! For a woman to speak in public in front of strangers, especially strange men, is a huge deal here. When I first came, she would not even ask questions if a man was leading a meeting. That day, she spoke confidently in public! Again, so proud.

Last week was the Muslim holiday of Tabaski, and we celebrated by killing a sheep and snacking on it all day long (woohoo!). The Tabaski sheep is like the Thanksgiving turkey - every family who can afford to kills a sheep. If you cannot afford a sheep, you get a cheaper animal, like goat, chicken, or even pigeon. Tabaski celebrates when Abraham was told to sacrifice his son Ishmael by Allah. At the last minute, Allah saved Ishmael and replaced him with a sheep (hence the eating of the sheep). Sound like the Christian story of Abraham and Isaac? Yup. It is the biggest holiday of the year - everyone is dressed in their fanciest outfits and goes around greeting all day and eating meat with their family and neighbors. I unfortunately had to eat bits of stomach, kidney, and liver (very gross, but it would be very rude to refuse). All in all, a good holiday!

I recently finished a book on the history of Timbuktu, and in it was an interesting description of the Fulani people - the majority ethnic group in my village. This pertains to them before the Islamic conquest and their conversion to Islam, so says little about their culture today, but it is still fascinating history. The excerpt below is from Timbuktu: The Sahara's Fabled City of Gold by Marq de Villiers and Sheila Hirtle (Walker Publishing Co: New York, 2007), p. 47-49.

"The Fulani, or Fulbe, or Peul, are an interesting people who have spread throughout the African savanna, and late in Timbuktu's life had a more or less disastrous effect on its politics. Their origins are in Senegal-Gambia, the product of admixture between native Wolof and incoming Berbers, yielding a modern people who are dark of skin with Arab or European features; indeed, newborn Fulani are often white, though they quickly turn dark. Throughout history the prickly Fulani were notorious for their fanatical views on their own racial purity and their insistence on their own beauty, even to the extent that an ordinary-looking Fulani man would encourage his wife to give birth to sons of better-looking men so as to improve the race. This fanaticism was later transferred to religion, and when the Fulani adopted Islam in later centuries their zeal gave rise to waves of jihadist warfare that roiled Timbuktu and its region for generations. About seven million Fulani are now spread out across a dozen countries.

"On the Niger, they settled somewhere around 1400 in Masina, west of Timbuktu; the Tarikh of al-Sa'adi often referred to the Masinakoi, or sultans of Masina. For reasons unknown they drew the unyielding hatred of the Songhai tyrant Sonni Ali and later, in 1498, became the unwilling subjects of the Songhai, when Askia Mohamed defeated them in battle, but they resisted to the last and maintained their own unrelenting hostility to their conquerors until after the Moroccan invasions of 1590.

"The pre-Islamic Fulani had a complicated cosmology. Most African societies, though animist, believed in some sort of supreme being, but the Fulani were more explicit than most; making them fairly easy converts when Muslim proselytizers came through in the centuries after Muhammad. They also had a creation myth that speaks eloquently, if rather cynically, of resurrection and redemption.

At the beginning there was a huge drop of milk,

Then Doondari came and created stone.

Then stone created iron;

And iron created fire;

And fire created water;

And water created air.

Then Doondari descended a second time.

And he took the five elements

And he shaped them into man.

But man was proud.

Then Doondari created blindness and blindness defeated man.

But when blindness became too proud,

Doondari created sleep and sleep defeated blindness;

But when sleep became too proud,

Doondari created worry and worry defeated sleep;

But when worry became too proud,

Doondari created death, and death defeated worry;

But when death became too proud,

Doondari descended for the third time

And he came as Gueno the eternal one,

And Gueno defeated death."

Just kidding, there are no winners. Although I have been asked to share the top five books I've read this year (from July 2009 to July 2010). This proved to be a very difficult choice, as I've read quite a few (see list in side-bar), so I decided to split it into fiction and nonfiction. So in no particular order and without further ado:

Top 5 Nonfiction Books

- Amazing Grace by Jonathan Kozol. Fantastic and incredibly thought provoking. It makes you want to do something, right now, about urban poverty in America. Living in Mali, I live with very poor people (in money, not in spirit). Having volunteered with urban poverty organizations and studied poverty in cities in college, I know it's bad. I would rather live in Mali then be poor in any city in America. People here are poor, but they don't have daily shootouts and drug dealers down the streets. Something needs to be done, I'm not sure what but I'm a fan of people actually being aware of what their actions cause. And environmental justice and non-racist city planning. And social services that actually work.

- The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan. I'm a little late to reading Pollan's books, but they are so well-written and provide thoughtful analyses of our food system. Eat local.

- Madam Secretary by Madeline Albright. Perfect book for someone who gets geeked out by foreign policy and politics. Very long, but I could have read more.

- Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond. Epic book. I've tried to read it four times, and finally succeeded in Mali.

- America's Women by Gail Collins. Such a fun book! I love the stories of the many different women she shares in this history of America.

Top 5 Fiction Books

- Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver. I love Kingsolver, and have read all of her books except for the newest one since I came to Mali. This is one of my favorites. Great story that weaves in the importance of the environment and ecology with the power of family.

- Persuasion by Jane Austen. Pride & Prejudice is actually my favorite Austen, but I felt the need to put up something I hadn't read before Mali. Love her.

- The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway. I didn't like Hemingway before I read this book. Now he is one of my favorites.

- Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. Laugh out loud funny. I was reading this in my compound and kept on getting weird glances from my neighbors because I kept on laughing.

- A Passage to India by E.M. Forster. Great book about colonialism in India.

Well, after a wonderful and much too short break in America, I am back in Mali! First of all, thank you to the so many people who made my stay in America so fabulous. I loved being home with family and seeing the friends who made the time to visit. And of course, Sam and Nate's wedding was absolutely wonderful! It was great to catch up with friends and spend time with family. THANK YOU!

Now, to Mali: The first couple weeks back in country are always rough. It's really hot, there's no good food, massive caffeine headaches keep on happening, and family and friends are thousands of miles away. Ugh, you think. Why I am here? And then you wait. You sit and sweat through hot afternoons. You try to read War and Peace, and end up reading People instead. You venture out and fumble your way through remembering Fulfulde. And it's absolutely horrible for about a day. And then you see your peeps in village, and it all comes back. Drinking tea, shooting the breeze, shooing children away, speaking Fulfulde, and laughing a lot. Emphasis on a lot. You fall back into the routine, and everything seems to be okay. At least until that unlucky nth person of the day asks you for money. Then it's all over, everyone duck and cover. ;)

All the women in my village have been badgering me for a while now about doing another project: digging another well in the garden and getting a pump installed in both the new well and the well we already have. Another well in the garden is really important because having only one well makes it very difficult to water an entire hectare of vegetables. Children as young as five stay home from school in order to help pull the water and carry it across the garden in order to keep their family's plot alive. This can take up to four hours a day, two hours in the morning and two in the evening. The pumps would help alleviate this problem as well, as it would take a lot of the back-breaking labor out of watering the garden. This project is still in the early stages, but I hope it comes to fruition during my service.

I tried helping to water one evening, and they gave me a small child-size bucket. It was hard work! I was struggling carrying my one teensy-tiny bucket across the garden, while thirteen-year-old girls beside me were carrying buckets three times the size of mine on their heads. If nothing else, at least I provide comic relief.

I've established a new inside joke with my host family, which cracks me up every single time. Every night by five-year-old little host brother, Ngara, comes into the compound and pretends to be absolutely exhausted by falling onto our mat. I ask him a question about America, like, 'Is there millet in America?' And he says, 'Oh, I was there today. I did not see any millet.' I then ask him if he say my family, and he responds yes. He has named my mom Fatomata and my dad Hamadoun, after himself (Ngara is a nickname for Hamadoun). This charade continues on through the rest of dinner until I leave. I always tell him to greet my family the next day when he goes to America. We have quite a lot of fun with it, and he enjoys being the new 'America expert' in the family.

See below links to websites featuring Malian art and music:

http://www.malichic.net/

http://www.tinariwen.com/

http://www.contrejour.com/artists/habibkoite/index2_uk.php?page=news

http://www.indigoarts.com/about1b.html

http://homepage.mac.com/melissaenderle/mali/pages/bogolan.html

Fun stuff! :)

Sorry it's been a while since my last post! Things have been (surprisingly!) busy, what with the new group of volunteers coming in and the old group leaving. So what have I been up to?

Well, we had a huge party to officially open the women's garden at the end of July. The real reason for the party was that the French woman who funds some of Planete Verte, the NGO I work with sometimes, was coming to visit. However, we just so happened to decide to have the party in the garden, then drive together to another village for lunch and a region-wide soccer match. The fete was quite the big deal! I invited Ali, Sam, and Emily (other Peace Corps volunteers and close friends) to come to the fete with me - and they were not disappointed! When we got there, the DJ was already playing the best Malian music interspersed with live Peuhl music. Peuhl music is not the most pleasant to listen to - it consists of a man playing 5 or 6 extremely high-pitched notes over and over again on a wooden flute - but it was fun to see everyone get excited about it and the dancing. Then the women and men performed a traditional dance.

After, there was a presentation of all the officials present, then they talked about the garden and my current neem cream project. Neem cream is a mosquito repellent made from the leaves of the neem tree. It's really easy to make and the women love it. This was the best part for me though - they introduced me to the crowd, so I stood up and waved....and got a standing ovation from my village and shouts of 'Thank you, thank you, thank you!' I was overcome with emotion because of the gratitude of these people, my friends, who had worked just as hard as I did on the project and were so happy that it was finally finished.

Then we planted some trees - 500 total! We planted jatropha trees, which produce oil that can be refined and used as fuel for cars, motos, etc. Five years down the road, maybe Sassolo will start exporting biofuel! Then it was off to the other village for a delicious lunch of zame (fried rice with cabbage, beef, potatoes, and whatever other vegetables are around). It was a great fete with great friends - both Malian and American.

Since the fete, the women have been very busy cultivating the soil and planting their plots in the garden! Most women have planted okra, millet, peanuts, beans, and onions, though soon they will have a wide array of vegetables to choose from. I've been out with them almost everyday helping and planting my own plot of peanuts and beans! Beans are my favorite...I can't wait until they are ready to harvest so I can share them with my host family for dinner! Growing things is fun. :) Right now we are trying to get the vegetable papiniere (nursery) up and running.

The last major thing that has been happening is that it is now Ramadan, the Muslim holy month of fasting. In Fulfulde, Ramadan is called Korka. Every adult who is not sick fasts every day from sunrise to sunset. This means they cannot drink anything (even water!) or eat any food. Some do not even swallow their spit! Nearly every adult in my village fasts except for me, and I don't simply because I am not Muslim, so the fast would lose its religious meaning and significance. Every night I do break the fast with my host mom though - which is quite the experience! Everyone has their radios turned on so that they can hear when they are allowed to start drinking and eating again. And the second the call begins on the radio, my host mom guzzles down a huge cup of water, then says a prayer of thanks and praise to Allah. After we drink a porridge made of sour milk, millet balls, sugar, hot pepper, and water. Which does not taste good at all, but the tradition is nice. Then we snack on peanuts or fried dough balls until dinner, which is usually something nice like rice and sauce. Those who fast then eat another meal around 11pm, and then wake up at 4am to eat a large meal to get them through the day. Not a lot of sleep this time of year!

I'm trying to get pictures up but the internet is super slow, so maybe in 2 1/2 weeks when I'm in AMERICA I can upload! See most of you soon! Yay!

The garden is finished now!

Huzzah! After three long months of what seemed like endless tiffs with the men in my village balanced with loads of support from the women, the garden is finally finished! The garden gates were put up a couple of days ago, and the last cement ring was put into the well yesterday. Success! The only remaining problem - naturally there is one remaining - is that the garden was not built on public land but rather on land privately owned. Privately owned by one Bara Cisse. The same Bara Cisse who was in charge of building the fence and the well. Right now he is letting the women's association use his land, but at any point in time he could reclaim it. The women could take down the fence and keep it for the association, but the well would have to remain. The roots of this problem lie in my rapid flight to America when my grandfather died. Before I left for the States, the garden was to be built on public land. When I returned, they had already had completed building the fence - on Bara's land. Apparently while I was gone he convinced the women to move the garden plot. Very sly, that one. I just found out about it last week from another friend in village. Now I'm trying to convince the women's association to save money little by little so we can buy the land from Bara. It will take quite a bit of time to save that much money though - the land is worth about $500 USD. For the time being, the women are using the land as a garden though. We'll see how long Bara allows them to do so.

In other news, we have had quite the string of fetes (parties) lately! Both Sassolo and Fatoma had their yearly founding celebrations within the past two weeks. Fatoma's was so much fun - I went with Ali and her homologue, Hawa. All the women walked up and down the main street in their finest dresses. I've never seen so many weaves and fancy braiding in my life. It was like Easter Parade, Mali-style. Fantastic. In the meantime, the men were out in the bush shooting off guns and generally being manly. Then the men all of a sudden came running down the street towards the mayor's office, with the women cheering them on. All the way shooting off more guns and playing Fulfulde music on a wooden flute with drumming in the background. It was so much fun to see everyone in their fancy outfits, jumping and dancing around (the jumping was mostly done by me every time a gun was shot. The Malians thought it was hilarious that I was afraid of guns. I think it makes a lot of sense to be scared of guns. They can kill you). That night Ali and I went to get street food - yummy beans and macaroni - and saw the beginnings of what was sure to be an all-night dance party for all the village kids. Abande, abande! Welay mido yidi ma! Bring on the Yeli Fuzzo!

I can't completely believe this myself, but I'm at the year-mark! Halfway finished with my Peace Corps service! Woot woot. It's funny - two songs keep popping into my head whenever I think about having been in Mali for a year: 1) Living on a Prayer, Bon Jovi "Ohhhhhhhhh! We're halfway there!" and 2) Seasons of Love from RENT "How do you measure, measure a year? Measure in love."

When I think about the past year of my life, especially given that I was home in May and will be going home again in September for a friend's wedding (shout-out to Sam and Nate!), I often think about how to explain my new life. In May, it was really hard to continually explain what I do to people that don't even know where Mali is. I feel like I'm two people: America Jen and Mali Aissata (Aissata is my Malian name). I changed my course drastically a year ago, and now everything that is normal to me in Mali was completely abnormal in America. I have changed everything about myself: my clothes, hair, language, home, worldview, living situation, continent, daily schedule, and live in a different reality than I did before. How can those two worlds possibly merge? Will I always be some sort of bipolar oddity?

It's funny, when people ask me what I've been doing with Peace Corps for the past year - and they expect a 5-second American-style answer - it is impossible. How can I explain that I don't work in an office 9 to 5 but I do work 24 hours a day? I have done a great deal of work but it's not tangible. I have done very few things that are measurable by American standards. How can I explain this? What have I done?

I have spoken four different languages in one sentence and was understood. I have lived in a house with no electricity or running water and bathed in buckets; pulled drinking water from a well and taken a push cart 5k to plant seeds. I have learned to meditate and do yoga on roof tops. I have watched cattle stampedes and bartered in markets. I have seen things most people have not. I have seen camels and monkeys; fires and chaos; been lost in a city made of mud and stood atop a 1000 foot cliff. I have made friends and found a new family in an African village of 400 people. I have seen thousand year old masks and learned how to make new ones. I have seen women spend their entire days trying to survive: pounding millet, drawing water, cooking, bathing children, growing food. I have taught new ways to plant trees, explained basic nutrition, and learned how to pluck a chicken. I have seen children die and accidents happen. I have experienced losses and achievements and tried to take them in stride. I have hit people and been ashamed of myself. I have created a way for my village to have vegetables, and taught skills in project design, budgeting, and management, and along the way made ever so many mistakes. I have sweated through 110 degree nights and biked through 120 degree days. I have seen slave ports and oceans, rivers, lakes, and sand that seemed to go on forever. I have climbed mountains, eaten sheep organs, stepped on mice and killed scorpions, seen spiders the size of my hand and taken transportation with a goat for a seatmate. I have eaten the best mangos in the world, and lived off a handful of rice for dinner.

I feel as though I have accomplished more this year than ever before but I know that is not true. And it's back to Seasons of Love: How can I measure what is possible in a year's time? I am constantly asking myself: is this worth staying for? Is this worth giving up my family and friends for 2 years? And now, a year later, I realize that it is. Because the past year, and all the years before it, have been measured in love. And the love in my life has only increased since I came to Mali. Yes, there are days where this feels like my personal hell, but those itty bitty moments where something wonderful happens - that is love, and that makes it worth it. But how do you explain that in 5 seconds? I guess you don't.

Oh, to be a feminist in a village where blatant sexism is both allowed and encouraged. For the past year I've been in Mali, I have kept most of my feminist views under cover. After all, this is not my culture. I'm here to learn, not impose my personal ideals. I don't know if it's because I just got back from the US (which albeit still does have many gender issues, although compared to Mali it's a dreamland) or what, but lately I've been more frustrated than ever over the treatment of the women in my village. Let me give you a couple examples:

The first was what I dubbed for lack of a better term Sassolo Day. This is a day-long celebration of the founding of my village. I was excited to go to it - I was told that there is a big dance party, and I do like to dance. My neighbor Samba told me to make sure to bring my camera, because he wanted a picture of himself with the other old, 'wise,' men in the village. The day came, and I walked out to the celebration site with a friend of mine. All the men and boys were gathered under one tree, while all the women were gathered under another tree about 30 yards away. I noticed the gender separation, but decided to pull the white woman card. I should explain that white women are the third gender in Mali. I can get away with a lot of stuff that Malian women cannot, and by that same token I am frequently treated with less respect by Malian young men (their only exposure to white women is usually from some trashy soap opera, and those rarely portray strong, educated women). So I walk over to the men's tree, all confident in my white woman-ness, when all of a sudden they start YELLING at me to stop. I do so immediately (is there a snake around?) and my friend Diampulo walks up. "Why can't I come closer," I asked. "Samba wanted me to take pictures of the men." Response: "You're a woman. You can't do that." Wrong button to push, mister. If I was in America, I would have said something along the lines of "How dare you tell me I can't do something just because I am a woman! I am strong, educated, and empowered. I will do whatever I want, whenever I want, and I have a history of strong women behind me: women who fought for the right to own property and the right to vote; women who smashed the glass ceiling of corporate America to pieces; women who advocated for women's health, birth control, and family planning; women who fought to control their own lives and now do so fabulously. Take that you sexist, chauvinistic, pathetic excuse for a person." However, I was not in America. I was in Mali. I was an outsider observing this traditional ritual. So I didn't say anything. I returned to the women's tree, seething inside. Every day these women are told implicitly and sometimes explicitly that they can't do things because they are women. No reason other than that. After the men danced around and shot off their guns (feel like a man now? you put down women and shot off a gun, congratulations), they all headed off into the bush to discuss the village's plans for the next year. Dreading the answer, I asked my host mom why women did not go. Response: We are women. We can't go. "Why not?" Because that is tradition. We are women. We can't go.

The next night, several problems involving the garden project came bubbling up to the surface. My host mom, Coumbare, is the president of the women's association. She had told all the women that they would have a garden and a well. Now, the men in the village refuse to finish building the well. Why? Because they found out that they won't be paid. Keep in mind, that from the beginning the men understood that they would not get paid because the well and labor is part of the community contribution. Now, at the hungriest time of the year, they are refusing to work unless they get money to feed their families. The ethics of it are horribly complicated -- would you refuse to do work unless you got paid, knowing that the work would bring desperately needed money to feed your family, while at the same time knowing that you are going back on your word by refusing to work? Well now all the women are blaming Coumbare for the well not being finished, when it is not her fault at all. The men, two especially, have been lying to her for day after day, saying it will be finished when it obviously won't be. She told me that the two men had also recently told her she had to stop being part of the regional women's association because they did not like her being so involved. She was so upset - "Aissata, I didn't steal any money. I did my job well. I planted all the trees, I helped with their garden, I brought in new money, I helped with women's projects. Why do they not want me involved? I'm a good person. I want to help myself and other women like me have a better life. Why is that bad?" Without me saying anything, she answered her own question: "They are men. They do not like a woman being involved." I asked her if she was still involved, and she said no, "Those men are the leaders of my village. I have to live here. I can't go against them."

Those two men now refuse to help the women finish their garden - a garden that the women will do all the work in, and then their families - including the men - will benefit from increased nutrition and a permanent food source. The women will do all the work in the long-term, the men will benefit. Where is the men's logic in this? Furthermore, the men are now saying that the garden supplies - a wheelbarrow, two shovels, two buckets, etc - belong to the men, not the women. They refuse to give the supplies back.

I do not understand. Maybe I will never understand. All I know is that if they knew what kind of woman they were dealing with they never would have tried to ruin the project in the first place. Because now I'm angry, and I will not stop until the well is finished, the project supplies are back in the hands of the women, and the women are able to plant their garden. Watch out, Sassolo.

So I wrote this journal entry back in the first week of May, but thought it would shed some light on the process of doing my project. So, voila!

The past two weeks have been spent buying project supplies for our community garden. I went down to Bamako (yay cheeseburgers and air conditioning!) to buy the fencing because it's cheaper there. I went with my friend Eliza - she is also doing a garden project at her site. Once there, I got my project money from Peace Corps out of the bank (every walked around the capital of a developing country with $2000 in your pocket? yikes!) and met up with Samba, a guy from my village who has a second wife in Bamako. We went together to the Marche Dibida, a huge market that is basically chaos central. Samba talked to a couple people he knew and then told me that only bad fence was sold there. Soooo we took a cab out to Samba's neighborhood and met up with a friend of his who took us to a 'good' fence-seller. The following two hours were a horrific and headache-inducing blend of French, Fulfulde, and Bambara. I speak French, pretend to speak good Fulfulde, and only know how to greet, bargain, and give directions to a cab driver in Bambara (I have to know enough Bambara to get around because the language I speak at site, Fulfulde, is a minority language. Most of Mali speaks Bambara.) It was a mess. But eventually we bought the fence - yay! After, the fence salesman and Samba got in a car and told me to get in too. I ask where we're going in French, Fulfulde, and Bambara. No response. Now I trust Samba, so I wasn't too freaked out, but after an hour of driving I got a little concerned. Eventually we stop - the salesman had driven us out to his garden in a village outside of Bamako to teach Samba the basics of how to build the fence. Which was sweet, but it would have been nice if they had explained. After we got back, I was super stressed about the whole day so I went to eat a chicken sandwich at a lovely establishment called West African Fried Chicken (not kidding. It's a chain based in Ghana) followed by some soft serve ice cream at a machine located right beside an open sewer. While eating the ice cream on my walk back to the PC house (and ignoring the smell of raw sewage) it dawned on me: after months of feeling like I wasn't doing anything, I finally did something productive! Good day. :)

From the BBC: (to see story on BBC, click here)

Brain Gain: African migrants returning home

Africa may still be suffering from a chronic brain drain but some of the continent's elite are turning their backs on the West and taking their talents back home according to film-maker Andy Jones.

Ghana's fashion industry has lured some African professionals home The story is as old as the hills. Man leaves village to seek riches in the big city. In recent years, the village has been the continent of Africa, the city represented by the bright lights of Europe and America. Any number of Africans seek to cross the ocean and make their fortunes, never to be seen again. But when our team travelled around Africa recently to film a new TV documentary series, we found a different story. Many of the Africans I met had worked or been educated in the West and come back. Across nine African countries and a journey of 7,000 miles from Mali to South Africa, from Ghana to Ethiopia, the story was often the same. Africans were returning from working or studying abroad either for patriotic reasons or because of the growing opportunities back home. Fashion industry These were educated Africans like Kofi Ansah, a Ghanaian fashion designer. Born into an artistic family, he studied fashion at Chelsea School of Art before graduating with first class honours in 1977. He spent 20 years living and working in Europe before returning to Ghana in 1992. Mr Ansah still travels the world, and could live anywhere, but his business is growing, his family are settled and he feels like he's making a difference in Accra. "I came to help try to develop the clothing textile industry. And I thought, if we could do it right, it could help our employment situation."

Younger people want to go away maybe to university, but then come back after gaining some experience. Mr Ansah now creates jobs for tailors and designers, models and marketers. At one of his fashion shows, we met make-up artist Nana Amu Fleisher-Djoleto who grew up in London. Her view is that not only are more people returning, but they are coming home sooner. "I'm finding now that younger people want to go away maybe to university, but then come back after gaining some experience. They're not working for years and coming back when they're decrepit." Global mobility For decades, African leaders have complained of a brain drain, losing many of their brightest and best to Western countries keen to attract highly skilled migrants. This brain drain cannot be stopped or reversed according to Jean Phillipe Chauzy at the International Organisation for Migration (IOM). But he sees other factors at play in Africa's favour. "The fundamental difference is new technology allowing African professionals in the West to transfer their skills and do some teaching," says Mr Chauzy. It is a relatively new trend with digital technology allowing African academics and other professionals abroad to support African universities, schools or individuals back home to bridge the skills gap with the West. He also sees "a pattern of mobility for people with skills" with greater global mobility allowing "countries which have the right conditions" to attract skilled professionals home either temporarily or permanently. A recent IOM report on Ghana highlighted its "relative peace, security and political stability" and found "growing incidence of return or circular migration". "Of the more than 1.1 million Ghanaians who left the country between 2000-2007, only 153,000 did not return either temporarily or permanently." Commodity Exchange For many returnees including former World Bank senior economist Eleni Gabre-Madhin, loyalty and the desire to give something back is an important motivation for returning. Inside Ethiopia's commodities exchange Her brainchild is the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange, which began trading in 2008 and which she hopes will make a difference to the lives of millions of farmers. "I'd spent years doing analysis and writing, but then the food crisis hit in 2003, and it made me think, OK we're talking about things, but we're not doing anything." The new exchange, owned by the Ethiopian government and supported by the World Bank, trades in six commodities including coffee, produced by around 12 million small-scale farmers in Ethiopia. While deals are still sealed with a traditional slap of hands, cutting edge technology ensures that all transactions are logged on computers within four seconds, with prices transmitted across the country by radio and around the world via the internet. The farmers benefit by being guaranteed a good international market price, preventing exploitation by middlemen and they get paid within 24 hours. The first two years have seen over $400m (£274m) worth of produce traded and despite a number of teething problems, the exchange looks set to prosper, with nearby countries such as Tanzania and Uganda now considering similar schemes. Ms Gabre-Madhin acknowledges there have been problems but she would like to see more people joining her in making solutions work, rather than sniping from overseas. The African brain drain with emigration outstripping immigration may be destined to continue but for those countries which can offer the security and political stability, there is a growing dividend from those who feel they owe something to their former home.

I'm aware I haven't been the best at updating this - with the infrequent internet access I do have, there is rarely time to write out an entire blog entry. In the past couple months, I led my first formation with some other PCVs and also received funding for my first project!

The formation I did with my friends Katie, Emily, and Ali came about through the Gender and Development (GAD) committee of Peace Corps Mali (on which I am my region's representative). One volunteer had the great idea of staging a 3-day long Take Our Daughters to Work Day retreat for girls in her region. The girls shadowed professional women for a day, did some fun educational games, learned skills to help them in the future, and were paired with a professional woman as a mentor. GAD helped to spread the idea to other volunteers in Mali, and soon a couple of us up in Mopti wanted to give it a try. There was one problem: we are farther out from Bamako, and thus don't have the same resources the volunteers down there have. We decided to switch it up a bit, and called it Bring Work to Our Daughters Day. Girls from Fatoma/Sassolo (my and Ali's villages), Sevare (Katie's village), and Konna (Em's village) all came to Konna for a one-day formation. We brought in professional working women from Konna and Fatoma as well. In the morning, we played some ice-breaker games and the women led a panel discussion about the importance of education and women in development. We then had lunch, followed by an afternoon of really productive group work. We put the girls and women into groups, and gave them questions to discuss, among them: What are the educational problems in Mali? How are girls treated differently from boys in school? How can we fix these gender disparities in our communities? What sustainable strategies can we start to work on? The girls gave some great answers and were really motivated to start working on educational issues in their communities -- and hopefully will continue on to high school next fall!

As for my community garden project, I finally succeeded in buying all the materials needed with the help of my neighbor, Samba, and host mom, Kumbari. Whew! It was quite the exhausting process, what with all the bargaining in three different languages at the same time (French, Fulfulde, and Bambara). Unfortunately I had to leave for the States the day before the fence was going to start being built. I really hope that my village went ahead and started - I had to leave the key to my house with them so they could have access to the materials (yes, I currently have one hectare of fencing, 10 sacks of cement, a wheelbarrow, some shovels, and 50 iron fenceposts in my house. My village decided my house was the best place for storage because I have room and I won't steal the materials. There's not a lot of breathing room). They were also going to start digging the well the day after I left. I'm incredibly nervous that it's not happening - if the well does not get built before the rains come in June/July, then it can't be build until next February because the water table will rise during rainy season. Of course my village realizes this too, it's just that they are working on many other projects right now, chief among them home repair, and my role is to kind of gently prod them along into working on this one. I'm sure it will all work out in the end though!

This is my first blog post for a long time made state-side. I came home for my grandfather's funeral, and will be in the States for the next week and a half. I heard he died around 8am a week ago in my village in Mali, and what followed was a blur of biking 15k, speeding to the airport 7 hours away in Bamako, walking onto a flight as the doors were closing, navigating a fire in Atlanta, and finally making it to Orlando where I met my dad at the airport. Though it was a really sad reason to come home, I have nevertheless been grateful to spend time with family and friends. Luckily (is luckily the right word?) I escaped most culture shock because of the shock of my grandpa's death. However, I have still noticed the vast cultural differences between Mali and America - how can anyone help it?

One of the most striking changes in America since I left is the overall increase in prejudice against those of Islamic faith. Perhaps it was always like this, particularly since September 11th, and I just noticed since now all of my close Malian friends and Malian host family are Muslim. I've watched the news a couple times since I've been back (the political spin on both sides of the aisle is a little overwhelming) and both conservative and liberal news networks throw the word Muslim around like a swear word. A friend of mine was shocked that President Obama had appointed three Muslims to government positions (the horror!). It has been hard to witness this prejudice, as I know so many Muslims that love America and wish with all their hearts to become American.

So to those of you who may harbor negative feelings towards Muslims - and here I am talking about the vast majority of Muslims who are peaceful, serve God, and love their neighbors of any faith - I ask, have you ever explained the events of September 11th to a Muslim who has not heard of it before? Have you ever heard the horror, outrage, and anger that he or she expresses upon hearing of 9/11 for the first time? Have you ever heard apologies from Muslims for acts they did not commit nor would ever dream of committing? Have you ever heard you, your family, and the American people blessed to heaven and back by a Muslim friend in the hopes that a horrific event like 9/11 would never again be repeated on American soil? Because all the Muslims that I count as friends and family have done all of those things upon hearing about 9/11. Granted they are all Malian, and had not heard of 9/11 before. But I think that just further emphasizes the idea that most Muslims would never even think of committing such horrendous acts. How can Americans stereotype the second largest religion in the world because of the actions of just a few, radical, and horrible people? How can that happen? And what does American society stand to lose because of such stereotyping and prejudice?

I am incredibly offended by the America I witness today. I want to give up and not claim it as my own. But that would be the wrong reaction. The right action is to be strong. To fight for the rights guaranteed by our Constitution for all citizens. I am proud to be an American citizen, and deeply love the democratic ideals of America. I want to fight for a better America, for an America that preaches love for one another first and respect for each others ideas second, however different in nature they may be.

So how about we all stop the hate and respect each others' religion and beliefs. Deal?

This is taken from my study of Islam in theology courses at Xavier, as well as my general observation about the culture in which I now live. For more information check out www.religioustolerance.org or wikipedia.

Islam is a monotheistic faith (that means they believe in one god). Islam literally means 'to accept, surrender, or submit,' thus a Muslim is a person who submits his/herself to the will of God. God is called Allah, which is Arabic for God. Interesting point - Christians in Muslim countries also call God by Allah. The main book of faith for Muslims is The Qur'an. Muslims believe that Allah revealed his final message to humans through his last prophet Muhammad by way of the angel Gabriel. Islam considers prophets to be people whom Allah selected to be his messengers. Hence, the prophets are human rather than divine. Other prophets mentioned in the Qur'an include Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and Jesus. Muslims do not consider Jesus as the Son of God, though they do highly respect him as the second-last prophet. The mosque is the Muslim place of worship. There are many sects of Islam, though two main ones are Sunni and Shi'a.

The famous mud mosque in Djenne, Mali.In Mali, most Muslims are Sunni and Sufi. Malian Muslims converted to Islam when Muslim traders came through Timbuktu around the 1300s. 90% of Mali is Muslim; 5% Christian; 5% Animist. Malian Islam is very moderate, tolerant, and adapted to the local lifestyle and customs. For examples, most women wear African fabric head wraps once they are married, but very few wear the veil or burqa. If women don't cover their head it is not a big deal. Polygamy is practiced in Mali. In Islam, a man can have up to four wives if he is able to provide for each of them and treat them equally (some would argue that it is never possible to do that). Polygamy is currently somewhat controversial in Mali - most women do not like it, some men do not agree with it.There are five main pillars of faith in Islam:1. Shahadah: the creed of Islam which states in Arabic: 'I testify that there is none worthy of worship except God and Muhammad is the messenger of God. One repeats this phrase during prayer.2. Salah: The ritual prayer which one prays five times a day. One washes oneself, then prays on a mat facing Mecca. In Mali, the prayer call is sounded via loudspeaker from the local mosque. The prayer caller says Allah akbar! which means God is great!3. Zakat: alms-giving. Giving is based on accumulated wealth and is obligatory for all Muslims who can afford to give.4. Sawm: fasting during the month of Ramadan. From dawn until dusk, Muslims do not eat during Ramadan. The dates for Ramadan differ each year because Islam is based on the lunat calendar. In Mali, people wake up very early in the morning to eat a large meal, fast during the day, and then have special food for dinner after dark. Break out the beans and macaroni after sunset!5. Hajj: the pilgrimage to Mecca. Every Muslim who can afford to go to Mecca is obligated to do so once during his/her lifetime.Some Sunni Muslims call jihad the sixth pillar of ISlam, though most Muslims refer to jihad, which means struggle, as the struggle to attain spiritual perfection rather than religious warfare. Military jihad is highly debated within the Islamic community. In Mali, jihad refers to one's personal religious faith.I realize this is very simplified, but it's a beginning at any rate!

Hello friends!

I know it's been a while since I last blogged, but nothing much was happening for about a month aside from it being really ridiculously hot. It is 110 degrees every single day now. I have dreams about drinking cold water. Sandstorms happen constantly. Everything I own is covered in probably an inch of dust. I sleep outside at night and wake up everything morning coated in dust. Lovely weather!

I had regional training a couple weeks ago, which I helped to plan along with another PCV. It went well, but it was very frustrating at the same time. I did learn how to dry fruit by making my own solar dryer and how to make a solar oven though! So that was exciting at least. After regional training, I went back to site for a week, then headed to Bamako to work on my community garden project proposal. I turned it in (finally!!!) and a week later I got the call from my supervisor that the project was approved! So inshallah in a week I will recieve the funding for the garden from Peace Corps!

I held a meeting yesterday with the women's association to finalize timelines and such, and they were so excited to hear that the project was approved. When I told them, they all started applauding! It felt like I had actually accomplished something. It's a nice feeling after 9 months of being here. So we've been working on determining who will help build the fence, when the well be dug, and all of those sorts of things. The best part of the meeting (aside from the general feeling of excitment since the project was approved) was that when I was finished with my schpeal and questions, one lady said, "You really do speak Fulfulde now!" And while I had spent an hour the day before writing out my script and agenda for the meeting, so it was anything but spontaneous talking, I was also answering questions spontaneously and creating new ones. It just meant a lot to hear that people in my village think that I'm improving. So little by little, the project is getting put together. Piece by piece. What I've learned so far is that things move very slowly in Mali, and so I'm taking it slow in the hopes that this project will get done correctly and in a sustainable manner. If all goes according to plan (and I'm expecting it not to) the fence and well will both be built by the end of May, just in time for farmers to begin planting! Keep your fingers crossed... :)

(the blog title means "you eat beans" in Fulfulde)

One of the most interesting parts of Mali is how they resolve conflicts and joke with each other. A lot of ethnic tension is mediated through joking cousins. These relationships are based on last names and ethnic groups. For example, the Bambara and the Fulfulde ethnic groups joke with each other as a way to avoid open conflict. Here's the history behind it: After the historic battle of Kirina of 1236 that settled the victory for Sundiata Keita, King of the Mali Empire, a national convention was called to lay out the founding principles of how Malian society would be organized. The joking cousin relationship existed before Sundiata was even born. However, he was the first leader to make it a social institution, hence giving it full powers in Malian communities.

According to oral tradition passed down through griots (village storytellers), once upon a time, two friends went into the bush to collect wood. One of the two buddies got scared by an animal. Back into the village, the one who got scared tried to make everyone believe it was he who had been brave. Soon they were giving each other a hard time. That's how the joking started and eventually turned into a medium whose goal has since been to help ease the relationship between two people at work, in the neighborhood, or within the entire community. In other words, the joking cousin relationship (called senenkuya) is used both as a game and as a social tool aiming to prevent potential conflicts that my arise from various frustrations or misunderstandings.

It turns out that senenkuya (joking cousins) has become one of the most important features of Malian culture thanks to King Sundiata's vision to broaden the scope of that relationship. Finally, the reason why Keitas tend to have the most joking cousins lies in the fact that King Sundiata Keita declared that to become a better leader, one ought to take criticism from everyone else.

You can say anything to your joking cousins. My last name is Dembele, which is a Bobo ethnic group last name. The Bobos joke with the Fulfulde. The main joke between the two of us is the Fulfulde tell the Bobo that they eat dogs. In turn, the Bobos tell the Fulfulde that they stole our cows. This comes from the fact that in Fulfulde, cows say "bobo" instead of "moo." So the cows are always calling the Bobos to come and bring them back to their rightful owners. The most common thing to say to your joking cousins is, "You eat beans!" This is the equivalent of a Malian fart joke. But it is absolutely HILARIOUS, and has been told for centuries.

After greeting a new person, you usually ask their last name. Then you begin joking. A typical encounter might go like this:

Me: Good morning, how are you?

Malian: I am fine, how are you?

Me: No problems at all here. Did you arrive in peace?

Malian: Yes, no problems.

Me: How is your family?

Malian: Everyone is fine.

Me: Did you spend the night in peace?

Malian: Yes, no problems.

Me: What is your name?

Malian: Moussa

Me: What is your last name?

Malian: Diko.

Me: Oh!! You stole my cows!

Malian: You eat dogs!

Me: Yeah, well at least I don't eat beans for every meal.

(and it goes on from here...)

And that is the height of Malian humor! It is a lot of fun to joke with people, and it provides a good way to show people that you understand their culture and speak their language.

*Parts of this blog were taken from the PC Mali Cross Culture Manual, as told by Aliou DIABATE

I'd like to share my Snapfish photos with you. Once you have checked out my photos you can order prints and upload your own photos to share.Click here to view photos

Here's a link to an article that recently appeared in the NYT about Dogon Country - the area of Mali that most tourists go to. I live about 2 hours away from the Dogon cliffs.

http://travel.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/travel/07personal.html

This song is really popular in Mali right now - everyone in my village goes around singing it, and it's always on the radio. It's about how great Allah (God) is and how good it is to praise Allah.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8SGpI47_qA&feature=related

A couple days ago I went to the naming ceremony of a friend's baby boy. Naming ceremonies are very important in Malian culture, and are similar to a baptism in that the baby is welcomed into the village family and religious community. The baby is also given a name (obviously, ha).

Naming ceremonies take place very early in the morning, so that morning I woke up at 5:30am and hurridly got dressed in my finest bezan outfit. Bezan is a really nice waxy fabric that is like a Malian gown or suit. Mine makes me feel like a princess because it's the same color as Cinderella's ballgown. Anyway, my host sister, Malado, came and got me and my host mom and I made our way to our friend's house for the ceremony.

We got to the concession and removed our shoes to enter the house. All the men were sitting outside the house on mats, and all the women were inside the house preparing the baby for the ceremony. The entire ceremony was gender segregated, with men outside and women inside. My host mom and I got there just in time for me to help hold the baby while his head was shaved by his grandfather. After the shaving was finished, the baby was passed around the room, with all the women joking, laughing, and chatting. Most of the conversation was centered on why I don't have the lip tattoo and facial scarring that all good Fulfulde women have.

When the baby had been passed around, the room fell silent as the men began to lead the prayer in Arabic. Everyone lifted their hands, going through the motions of prayer for this occassion. At first I didn't participate - while Christians are generally okay with people not of their faith praying with them, Muslims have stricter rules. For example, it would be incredibly inappropriate of me to enter the mosque, especially at prayer time. Even to observe would be offensive. But then the woman beside me grabbed my hand and said "You're one of us, pray with us," and made me start the prayer motions too. That meant a lot.

After the men had finished saying the blessing, they passed a small, circular straw mat. On it were the mother's wedding ring, a kola nut to represent the father, and the baby's hair which had just been shaved. Everyone touched it, said a prayer while holding it, and then passed it on. It was such a nice way to symbolize that the entire village would welcome and care for this child and his family. After that was finished, all the guests received three kola nuts and a piece of candy.

The baby's name? Ali, named after his grandfather.

It really meant a lot to be invited to the ceremony and allowed to participate - it made me feel like I really am a part of this community, despite the innumberable cultural and lingusitic differences. Day by day, dooni dooni, things are coming together.

Afterwards, I explained to my host family how American / Christian baptisms differ from Malian / Muslim naming ceremonies. I told her that in America, the baby is put in a bucket of water (font doesn't really translate) and then a religious man puts oil on the baby's head. My host mom was confused about the oil - "But you cook with oil, why would you put it on a baby?" Good question, good question. It also didn't help that in Fulfulde the word for fire and candle are the same, so when I said that they light a candle for the baby she probably was imagining a huge bonfire or something. Oh language mistranslations, how I love thee.

I've been corresponding with a sixth-grade class in Arcadia as part of the World Wise Schools program of Peace Corps. They recently sent me a bunch of AWESOME letters with some great questions, and I thought other people might be interested in the letters too:What is your favorite part of Mali? My favorite part of Mali is the conversations I have with my Malian friends. Malians are incredibly welcoming and love to joke around. You can see on my blog an example of a conversation I had with my host mom about the US space program. Conversations like that where I get to share US culture and joke around with friends are my favorite!Would you want to live in Mali permanently? No, but not because I don't like it here. Mali is a great country, I would just prefer to live in America closer to my family and friends for the rest of my career and travel to places like Mali for vacation. What do you do in your spare time? Read, read, read, and read some more! I also go around and chat with my neighbors, write lots of letters, and dance crazily around my hut to music from my iPod (I charge my iPod with a solar charger).Is Mali fun, or are you praying to come back? I definitely have my good days and bad days, but overall I'm very glad that I came to Mali and am enjoying my time here. I'm very excited to come home for 3 weeks in September though!Is there fast food? In terms of McDonalds or Taco Bell, not at all. Malians don't eat out like Americans do. Eating out is actually seen as a bad thing, because it means that you can't feed your family at home. There is street food, though. Women sell food by the side of the road out of huge metal bowls. There is usually macaroni, beans, rice and sauce, fries, and some kind of meat to choose from. How many books have you read? A lot! I'm not actually sure, but there is a list on my blog that has all the books I've read so far.What kinds of animals are there in Mali? There used to be a lot of wildlife in Mali, like lions, elephants, and antelope. Unfortunately most of that wildlife was killed due to over-hunting and poaching. Today there are two herds of elephants left, and I've heard rumors that you can see a lion or two in western Mali. Other than that, there are a lot of farm animals that Malians raise, like cows, donkeys, sheep, goats, and chickens. There are no pigs because most Malians are Muslim and cannot eat pork.What diseases are there in Mali? Quite a few. Someone asked me specifically how I could get sick from amoebas, and I should explain that I was actually sick with amoebic dysentary. You get this disease from drinking unclean water. I'm much healthier now though! In general, diseases caused by poor quality drinking water are common here. Also, malaria, TB, and diseases caused by poor nutrition are big problems.What language do you speak? I speak Fulfulde. Fulfulde is spoken throughout West Africa, and is called Pular in Senegal and Fula in Guinea. It has been a challenge to rapidly learn a new language, but I'm very glad that I did. It lets me talk with more people, especially the women in children. It also shows that I'm dedicated to learning about Malian culture and people. And it's a very fun language to speak! There are at least 50 different words for cow, but only one word for to want/to like/to love! I think that says a lot about the Fulfulde culture, don't you? I speak French at the organization I work with because my supervisor there prefers to speak in French. Do you get paid? I am a volunteer, but I do get a living allowance from Peace Corps (about $5 a day). This money pays for food, clothing, everything. All my healthcare is covered by Peace Corps.How much is $1 in Malian currency? Mali uses the CFA, a currency used throughout West Africa. $1 is equal to about 450 CFA.Is the Malian government corrupt? Wow, hard question. I would say that most government officials are not corrupt and have the people's best interest at heart. There are cases of government officials taking money though. For example, 25% of the Malian budget is supposed to go to education. Does it get there? Judging by the poor quality of the public school system, I lean towards no. I think that Mali is one of the better examples of good government in Africa, but it still has its problems. What is the weather like in Mali? Right now it is HOT!!! It was 110 degrees yesterday, and it will only get hotter in the next few months. There are four seasons in Mali: rainy season, mini-hot season, cold season, and hot season. In cold season temperatures get down to the 70s. There are huge rain storms during rainy season with thunder, lightening, and a lot of dust that gets blown around. There are also sandstorms and dust storms which take place during hot season - now. Everything I have is currently covered in a nice sheen of orange dust. Rainy season will come in July, followed by mini-hot season in October, cold season in November, and then back to hot season in March.Do you have electricity? Like the majority of Malians, I do not have electricity. I use a flashlight at night to see and to read before bed. I've come to enjoy not having electricity though - the view of the stars at night is phenomenal!What is your house like? I live in a mud brick house that has 3 rooms. I have an outdoor latrine bathroom (called a nyegen). I have concrete floors, a metal door, and a screen door, and all my windows are screened. All the walls and the ceiling are made from wood logs and mud.What do Malians wear? Malians are very conservative people. The women wear long wrap-around skirts called pagnes and a shirt made out of the same fabric. Men wear pants and a collared shirt. Wearing proper dress and looking nice are very important in Malian culture. If you wear dirty or ragged clothing, it is a sign of disrespect to those around you. Malian fabric is awesome! So many fun colors and prints! I have a pair of capris that are neon green and polka-dotted. I love that I can wear them here and be normal.Do you have any Malian friends? Yes, I do! My host mom and I have become good friends, and I'm also friends with my homologue. (A homologue is someone assigned to help me to do my work by Peace Corps - usually a Malian living in your village that is motivated to do development work.) I spend a lot of my time hanging out with my host family, and when I'm not with them I'm hanging out with the kids who come to my house to play.Are people nice? Yes!!! Incredibly nice!! I think that Malians are among the most welcoming people in the world.How poor are people? Do they have a lot of stuff? Mali is the third poorest country in the world, so yes, the people are poor. The majority of Malians don't have access to clean drinking water, electricity, healthcare, a year-round food source, and good education. They do have a small amount of possessions - my host mom has an entire collection of pots and pans that she displays in her house. They wear jewelry and have nice clothes, and will have tea absolutely every day. They don't have a lot of stuff by American standards, but they are getting by.I hope this let you understand Mali a little better, and if anyone else has other questions about life here, feel free to comment or send me an email!

I'd like to share my Snapfish photos with you. Once you have checked out my photos you can order prints and upload your own photos to share.Click here to view photos

Wow, so much has happened in the past month! I have not one, but FOUR projects I'm currently working on!! Absolute craziness! Here's a brief synopsis of the projects:

1) Starting a community garden with my village's women's association - this involves applying for Peace Corps funding for a metal fence, cemented well, and seeds. A brief note on the funding - I'm applying for funding through the Small Project Assistance (SPA) program. It provides funding to small Peace Corps projects through a partnership with the US Agency for International Development (US AID). Since the community garden is a food security issue - it helps the people in my village have access to healthy food year-round - my project is incredibly likely to be funded, as PC and US AID are targeting food security, specifically in Mali. The women's association is SO excited about this - every day I get questions and reminders that there needs to be a fence. We can't have cows eating our veggies!

2) Helping the women's association of Planete Verte develop income generating activities (IGAs). My homologue, Adama, came back from IST very excited about making natural insect repellant and soap with the women's association. We've been doing some test runs, and after she finishes up the budget and project plan, we're going to apply for SPA funding for the start-up costs of producing the cream and soap on a larger scale. The women will use the funds to help their families as they see fit - food, education, etc. Pics are up on facebook of our formations on how to make the insect repellant (called neem cream).

3) Creating a facebook page for Planete Verte to let more tourists know of our tree-planting project. Watch for us on facebook soon, I'll be sending friend invites to most of you!

4) I'm doing a joint project with PCVs in Konna, Fatoma, and Sevare. We are doing a "Bring Work to Our Daughters Day" - a twist on "Bring Your Daughter to Work Day." We are bringing professional women from Konna, Fatoma, Sassolo, and Sevare to Konna for a one-day formation. They will speak to a group of girls from each of those villages, talking a bit about the importance of education, how they came to work outside the home (it's REALLY hard to do in Mali. I know it's hard in America, but imagine having 8 kids and no labor-saving appliances), how they balance family and work, how their husbands feel about their work, etc. I'm really excited to hear what they have to say. After lunch, the girls and women will break into small groups, where the girls will be paired with a mentor from their respective villages. Two weeks after the event, the PCVs will facilitate meetings between the mentors and the girls in each village. Tentative date is March 14 (don't worry Sam, I won't forget your birthday haha), so super excited.

So right now I am very busy trying to get everything put together. Things move very slowly in Mali, but I'm trying to write the grant applications and figure out the funding issues in a somewhat timely manner. We'll see how it all goes down.

And now for a slightly humorous story - Last night I was watching TV with my host family (it runs off a car battery). There is one channel in Mali, so we were watching an American science documentary from the 1990s dubbed in French. No one in my host family speaks French, so it fell to me to translate it into Fufulde. Guess what it was about? The international space station and the moon landing. Now I've studied Fufulde for six months, so that alone made it difficult - but words for things like space, gravity, satellites, and astronauts don't exist in the language! Not to mention that many Malians are unaware that space as Americans know it exists, or that people have walked on the moon. Every once in a while it still shocks me that things Americans learn in first grade - the solar system, the moon landing - are unknown by adults here. Through no fault of their own, they just haven't had access to that information. Anyway, the convo between me and my host mom, Kumbari, is pretty hilarious, mostly because of my horrible Fufulde:

Kumbari: (sees space shuttle blasting off, followed by it going into orbit) What's that?

Me: Oookay. American people in airplane go to moon. The live there 2 days. They come back to America.

Kumbari: (pause) What?? In an airplane?

Me: Yes. On moon, they study moon and stars.

Kumbari: They study? They leave like that (TV is showing blast-off again)? But you came to Mali in an airplane!

Me: Yes, I did. Airplane moon and airplane Africa, not the same. Airplane moon is very big and needs a lot of fire and oil. Airplane Africa is small.

Kumbari: (Looks very relieved that I didn't have to wear an astronaut outfit to come to Africa) Ohhh. I understand. Crazy Americans, they go to the moon. (TV shows Mars rover thing) What's that?

Me: A machine. Like a computer. Machine goes to moon, no people. Machine studies. Machine writes. Machine comes back to America. American people look at machine. Now, they now moon and study moon. You understand?

Kumbari: (incredibly shocked) I understand, but a machine can read and write?? I want an American machine like that? (she is illiterate)

Me: I want a machine to speak Fulfulde! (cue canned sitcom laughter) *side note: in Mali, the corniest jokes are absolutely hilarious. People in my village will be repeating that line for the next 3 months at least.

Kumbari then explained what I said to her kids, who all just started laughing, totally convinced I had made it up. If you think about it, it is kind of crazy that we can go to the moon. Incredible. I just wish there were words in Fulfulde for stuff like that so I could more logically explain what it is. Later they showed astronauts floating in space. Kumbari's going to be talking about that for weeks - "Americans float!"

Merry Christmas! I hope everyone is enjoying the holiday season and spending time with friends and family. Since 90%(ish) of Mali is Muslim, Christmas is largely not celebrated here. Which, suprisingly, was nice. It was helpful in that for my first Christmas away from home, I wasn't constantly reminded of what I was missing since there were not any holiday lights, snow storms, Christmas radio stations, Christmas trees, decorations, etc. I did have a great time celebrating Christmas with my PC fam here in Mali. A group of five of us stayed in Sevare, made a fantastic Christmas Eve dinner of Mexican food (you can tell what I'll be eating all the time when I get back stateside by how frequently I mention burritos in this blog), went to Christmas Eve Mass in French and Bambara with a African dance party after, woke up Christmas morning to drink hot chocolate and open presents from home, then made a delicious Christmas brunch. My friend Eliza's birthday is on Christmas, so we celebrated that with birthday brownies and M&Ms. Unfortunately I was sick with amoebas so I couldn't really eat anything or go to church, but such is life in Mali. :) It was good to just be around friends and hang out. Thank you to everyone that sent presents to me here! I know it's a lot of work to do during a very busy holiday season -- I really really appreciate it!

I just got back from my in-service training (IST), a training which Peace Corps does in Bamako after your first 3 months at site are over. Since the first 3 months at site are all about language learning and community integration, IST focused more on learning technical skills that will help us do projects in the next year and a half. Most of my environment tech sessions focused on reforestation and gum arabic, a tree whose sap is used in all manner of things (Coca-Cola, the caps that cover pill medicine, chewing gum, etc). Mali already exports some of it to developed countries for use, but it has the potential to export so much more. Gum arabic grows really well up north in the Mopti region, and starting a tree plantation can be a great way for the community to earn income which can then be used for their development as they see fit. For example, supplementing their diets with more vegetables or improving water quality. The trees also fix nitrogen in the soil, thereby improving soil quality and crop yields. We also had a lot of training on how to apply for funding for our projects and write grant proposals.

In our spare time (ha) it was awesome to hang out with friends from PST and catch up. Randomly, Sean Paul came to Bamako to do a concert, so of course we had to go! It was so much fun, met some cool Malians and Gambians. We also had a wonderful Christmas / Hanukkah / whatever you celebrate party where we had a white elephant gift exchange and the Tubansio kitchen staff made us a delicious dinner. Pics are up on facebook. So great.

I head back to site soon, but will be back in Sev/Mopti for the new year. I'm really excited to get back. For the first time, it feels like Sassolo is home, and I find myself missing being there and chatting with friends. The night before I left Kumbari was very upset because she was forced to sell all of her cows and one of her friends died. It was hard to leave when my Malian family was going through such a hard time, and though I know I can't do anything to help, I can't wait to get back and just be there for them. Bad timing for IST, right? I'm also excited to start working on projects, though I don't quite know what they will be yet. My supervisor has some ideas, and I have some ideas, I think we just need to sit down , come to an agreement, and write out an action plan for the next couple months. (woahhhh action plan, what is that about? haha)

I would also like to apologize for the quality of my English - I don't speak it all the time and it is getting worse at the same rate that my French and Fulfulde is getting better. Sigh. One day I will speak a language fluently...one day...

Best wishes for the New Year!

This is a really popular song right now in Mali.

Here's the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiSVRWIIKuk&feature=related

It's in Fulfulde and features Peuhl women. I hear it all the time in village-- people play it on their cell phones, women sing it in rhythm with their pounding when they pound millet with their giant mortar and pestles. It's pretty freakin' awesome. My favorite is the "Walay, mido yidi ma!" Walay is also my new fave expression in Fulfulde, it means 'oh my!' and is derived from 'walay Allah!' meaning 'oh my God!' People say it all the time, as in "walay, that kid is in trouble," or "walay, that outfit is fabulous." "Walay, mido yidi ma" means "oh my God, I like/love/want you." Hilarious. Side note: in Fulfulde, they have very specific and very general verbs. For example, there is a verb that just means "to draw water from the well." There is a specific verb for harvesting millet versus harvesting rice. But to like, to love, and to want are all the same verb. And that can be an important distinction. But it doesn't exist in Fulfulde. Walay, I love this language and all its ridiculousness. :)

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I hope you are all enjoying the time with family and friends, and eating lots of yummy turkey! I will be spending Turkey Day with my PC family at Mac 's Refuge, a hotel in Sevare run by an expat named Mac. He is cooking Thanksgiving dinner for us, which includes a roast pig, mashed potatoes, apple pie, pumpkin pie, and some sort of fruit dish. Should be yummy! :)

So what are you thankful for this year? Having unlimited time by myself to think, I feel like I have never been more grateful for so many people and things in my life. So this Thanksgiving, I'm thankful for:

- The kindness and understanding of strangers, who are now becoming friends

- My family and friends back home

- Mail from home, and friends who make the effort to stay in touch

- New PC friends

- Skype

- Being an American citizen

- Shade and trees

- Yoga

- The variety of food available in the US

- Travel and making a new home

- Ridiculously bright colored fabric (and fabric with Barack and Michelle Obama's faces on it!! I have an outfit completely made of it, it's fabulous)

- My bike, and the bike ride into Sevare

- BBC World Service on my shortwave radio

- Electricity, running water/indoor plumbing, and the Internet once very 2 weeks

Most of all, though, I am thankful to all of you for reading this and supporting me. I am so grateful to have this opportunity, and love the challenges that it presents me with daily, but I could not do it without the support of family and friends from home. So thank you!

In this Sunday's NYT, there was a fabulous book review by Nicholas Kristof about the current debate regarding foreign aid and development. I highly recommend you check it out: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/22/books/review/Kristof-t.html

PPP-ers will enjoy the Hegel reference. :) Also, what he says about NGOs and their white SUVs could not be more true - I like to call Sevare the land of the white SUVs because you see so many driving by, each with their respective NGO logos on the car door.

Sorry that I haven't updated in a while, it takes a lot of time to write a blog entry, and though the one thing that I have in large quantities here is free time, that free time never seems to be around an internet connection.

So what is new in my life? I spent a couple days up at my friend Eliza's site - I needed a breather from mine. It was a great time, I hung out with her host family and saw not one but TWO camels! Wildlife in Mali is pretty much nonexistent, especially up in the Mopti region. There are lizards out the wazoo, but other than that most animals are domesticated. The Fulbe people are cow-herders, so I see/live in the same concession as a herd of cows, as well as sheep, goats, and chickens. Then I was off to the Halloween party in Douentza, where I was a member of The Black Eyed Peas (the band)....as in me and 3 friends blacked out our eyes with eyeliner and ducktaped the letter "P" on our shirts. Clever, n'est pas?

I've been at site for the past 10 days, working on my community needs assessment that is due at training in December. It's actually pretty hard to do, considering the language barrier that still exists. I can ask the questions, but understanding the answer is a whole other issue. I'm going to get a plot of my own in the community garden, which is very exciting. I will have fresh tomatoes soon! I have a new homologue now, her name is Adama. She is absolutely fantastic, very motivated. I think we will work well together. I spoke with Moussa, who is my contact at the NGO I'm working with, and the main project he wants me to work on is building a website for our ecotourism project...eeeks! I can do it, but there are so many questions involved, especially about the sustainability of it. And my role here is to aid Malians in developing their own skills, so I would really prefer to train a Malian in basic computer/Internet skills, and then have him/her build the website.

I just finished reading The End of Poverty by Jeffrey Sachs, which is a phenomenal book, aside from the fact that his solution is to throw money at the problem. I know that aid is necessary, but the more time I spend in Mali, the more I feel that money isn't going to solve the problems here. Malians have come to expect NGO/aid workers such as myself to come into their villages, give them something like a money, a school building, or a water pump, and then leave. This creates a huge problem. For example, in my village we have a water pump, but it's broken. An NGO came in to install it, but never taught anyone in the village how to maintain it, or created a plan to ensure that it would be funded in a sustainable manner when it needed repairs. As a result, we get our water from a well that isn't even cemented...the water is brown when it comes out of the well. This largely contributes to diseases like diarrhea, which can be fatal here. (I have a water filter, so I have a clean water supply, but I'm the only person out of 400 in my village that does.) What Malians need are dedicated and educated teachers that can transfer skills in public health, agriculture, environmental sustainability, and business development. But that takes money, so it's just a huge cycle. Sachs had an excellent point that those in extreme poverty do need the help to take that first step in development, especially in places faced with HIV/AIDS. (Side note: AIDS is present in Mali, but the percentage of people who reportedly have it is less than in the US, so it is not a major part of life here yet, as it is in countries such as Malawi.) I highly recommend the book to all those interested in development, just remember that money is not the only thing necessary to solve the problems facing the people of Africa.

The other big piece of news in my life is that I recently adopted a kitten!! His name is Winston, and he is absolutely adorable. He was Ali's (my friend 1k from me), but her allergies got to be too bad, so I recently acquired him. I will get pictures up as soon as I can...as in don't expect any for at least a couple months, things move slowly here. :)

I want to thank you all for being so generous in packages and letters! I feel very loved :)

And so sorry to respond to emails via blog, but my internet time is limited and this is the fastest and easiest way:

Katie C: Thanks so much for you email! People who have never spent a long time away from home don't really understand how much it means to hear everyday news that they consider to be boring. But to me, I'm missing out on the everyday stuff and it's incredibly exciting! So thank you, I will try to respond asap. I loved the picture of you and the kiddies. What a great aunt you are! Good luck with the college kids.

Sam: LOVE the bridesmaid dresses. Yes, I looked at every option. And I just got the pic of your wedding dress...GORGEOUS!!!! I can't wait to see pics of the actually wedding.

E: Glad we got to talk last night, remember that you are an amazing person! Miss you so much! Hugs!!

Love to you all! Have a happy Thanksgiving, and enjoy the time with family and friends!

Oct 6, 2009

So two days ago I went to the waalde rewbe (women's association) meeting in Sassolo, conveniently held in the amiiri's concession, which is also my concession. I had told Kumbari that I wanted to go to the meetings, but I guess she interpreted that as I wanted to hold/run a meeting...because when it started Kumbari just looked at me and said "Kala!" (Speak!). And I was just sitting there like crap, what am I supposed to say? So I explained in Fulfulde to the twenty women there who I was, what I was there for, what PC is, and that I would be spending these first 3 months talking to them individually to learn about them and our community, and how they want to develop. It was rough. Kumbari translated what I was saying into real Fulfulde. Then after 30 seconds of an awkward silence, an old woman yelled out "We love you, Aissata!" in Fulfulde. It was hilarious. (Side note: my Malian name is Aissata Dembele.) She then said how excited they were to have me here and that they love me already and that they can't wait to get started on projects. It was such a nice thing to say - they are so motivated! - especially after it was obvious that I was not prepared at all for this meeting. Definitely got tears in my eyes. They're so ready and motivated to start projects - I'm afraid I won't live up to their expectations. But hey, I'll give it my best shot, that's for sure.

It's funny, the conversations you have here. Hamadou (Ousmann's younger and super nice brother, age 16) was hanging out at my house (sigh) when out of nowhere he asked "Est-ce qu'il y a les noirs dan Amerik?" I was sitting there like, what does that even mean? Then it dawned on me - he was asking if there are black people in America. So I explained that yes, there are a lot of black people in America. Barack Obama, for example. (He has a shirt with Obama on it, Obama is super popular here, they call him the world's first president.) But then Hamadou asked how the black people got there. And I just sat there...huh, how do I explain slavery, in French, to an African? Surely that's part of their public consciousness, right? I didn't want to get into (and my French/Fulfulde skills wouldn't allow me to) explain that people with my color skin oppressed and enslaved people with his color skin for centuries, so I just said that black people are born in America (which has been true for centuries too). It's funny - Malians are so honest about race, in ways that Americans are not. I don't know what's better - getting told all the time that I'm white - being chased by children yelling "foreigner! white girl!"- or Americans pretending not to notice that race exists, when it obviously divides our society.

Oct 1, 2009

My first two weeks at site are over, so I went to Sevare for a couple days for a break - and to go to a meeting for a region-wide project we're doing on Oct 15th for Global Handwashing Day. A lot of Malians believe that using soap washes your luck away, so they don't use it. It's a real challenge, especially when half of the diseases they get are caused by spreading germs by hand - they eat with their hands, all out of the same bowl. When you go to the bathroom, you wipe with your left hand here. But then the left hand touches the right hand, the right hand brings food from a communal bowl to your mouth...bam, instant GI sickness. So soap is really important. We're going to do some skits at 3 different schools in Sevare - in Fulfulde. Then - this has been around a while so we can't take credit for it - we might do a demonstration where we put sticky honey on a couple kids' hands, and then have them shake hands with everyone in the class, so everyone's hands are sticky. Then they rinse with water - but it doesn't get the honey off. After explaining that the honey is like germs that make you sick, they wash with soap. Voila, honey/germs gone! It's a good way to concretize something they can't see - the germs.

But I'm back at site now. I forgot how boring sitting around can be. I finally motivated myself to go out and greet people this afternoon (it's really hard sometimes when you don't speak the language!). But I actually had so much fun! I walked past a group of five women just hanging out, shooting the breeze, so I walked up and joined them. And yeah, I can't say much, but we still had fun talking about boys and braiding hair and all that fun stuff. That's what I love the most - those moments where everyone is just having a good time and laughing, and I actually get the joke (even if it's about me, which it often is - my Fulfulde amuses them to no end, and rightfully so, my grammar is atrocious). I had nail polish with me, so I whipped it out and did my toes, and then shared it with all of them - which they absolutely loved. For a moment it was almost like I was at a pedi party with all the girls at home or something. And since American companies invest their resources in things like never-chip nail polish, American nail polish is superduper awesome compared to what you can normally find here. So good day for the ladies - their toes will be hot pink for weeks. Not exactly world-changing or anything, but it certainly brightened their day (and mine). One of them is going to braid my hair sometime soon (ouch!) - I keep putting it off because I know it's going to hurt, but I know she'll get to me eventually. She's pretty determined. But then again, so am I... :)

Sept 22, 2009

Yesterday was the big julde, the religious feast celebrating the end of Ramadan. In the morning, everyone was getting ready, ironing their bezan (really nice fabric) and finishing up their braids and henna. I didn't get either done, but probably will shortly. I'm excited! (though it will probs hurt a lot, haha). Dembele, my neighbor, ironed for a good 2 hours - all of his family wore bezan. I wore my blue complet, and everyone was super excited to see me in Malian clothes. I went over to Kumbari's (my host mom/homologue) after greeting people, and we hung out for a bit. For lunch, her younger sister cooked huge amounts of rice for all the people in the village. I went with Kumbari to pick up ours, then we carried it back to Kumbari's concession, and the whole family ate together. The zame was delicious! Kind of like fried rice with meat and vegetables. Then I came back and called Mom and Dad - we actually got to talk for 30 minutes! It was so nice to hear their voices and support.

After, I went back to Kumbari's, and Moussa (my counterpart at the NGO I'm working with) was there - apparently there was a meeting last Wednesday that I was supposed to be at - 22 people were there to welcome me to Fatoma. But Moussa never told me about it. Good ol' Mali and their communication skills. He was kinda upset that I wasn't there, but at the same time, he did wait 5 days to come and tell me I missed the meeting I didn't know about, so maybe it wasn't that big of a deal. Sigh. After he left, Kumbari and I ate macaroni, and then an hour later she served dinner - so much food! It was crazy. Although after a month of fasting definitely understandable.

Today is Mali's Independence Day - Mali has been independent for 49 years. I went to Fatoma, where there was a huge vendi (party/feast) - people were dancing, playing drums, and the mayor was giving continuous speeches. Malian flags were everywhere, and everyone was in their finest clothes again. It was a really neat display of national unity for a country created 49 years ago.

This is going to be short, because it's 6am and I'm exhausted, but wanted to update really fast before I head out to site again. So what's new...hmmm...Well, I survived the first 10 days at site! Sassolo is pretty great so far. The people are incredibly warm and welcoming, and I'm getting settled in. My job for these first three months at site is to integrate and to learn about my village. Most of my days I spend greeting...now what exactly is greeting, an American might ask? Greeting is incredibly important in Mali, and a good way to integrate into the community. Basically, for 2 hours every morning and 2 hours every afternoon I go around my village and greet people. Kind of like trick-or-treating, only in a foreign language and there's no candy involved. Other than just going around, greeting, talking, and asking questions, I spend a lot of time reading. I've read the last Harry Potter book again, but also the Foreign Policy journals you sent me, Mom, so I've been somewhat productive, right? Haha

My language is okay, I can communicate but just barely. The women are so funny when I talk to them - every new woman I meet asks the same questions: Can you draw water from the well? Can you speak Fulfulde? Can you wash your own clothes? Can you cook lunch? Most of them have never spent any time with an American before, let alone live with one, so their curiosity is understandable. It's just funny that they are so amazed when I tell them that I can, in fact, cook macaroni for lunch. I'm the first volunteer at my site ever, so I think a lot of my work will be in just sensitizing people to American culture, and vice versa. Answering a lot of questions. And asking a lot of questions too.

I'm in Sevare right now, headed back to site in 20 minutes for the day, and then I'm headed back into Sevare on Sunday-Tuesday. We're doing a regional project for Global Handwashing (with soap!) Day in October, and are planning stuff for that at the PC Bureau. So hooray!

I just want to thank all of you who read this, comment, or send emails...the support has been incredible, and means so much more than you know. Thanks for being there, sending your kind words, and being so generous in your time. The past couple days it's been rough being away from home, even as I feel like I'm really making a new home here. So thank you for the letters, emails, packages, blog comments, everything...they keep me going :)

Getting to Sevare from Bamako was quite the experience! All 18 PCTs going to the Mopti region traveled with our homologues by public bus. It was an adventure and a half. First, we blew a tire just outside of Bamako - right at my homestay village, actually. So after we fixed the tire, about 4 hours later we stopped in Segou for lunch...and the bus broke down. Initially we tried pushing the bus Little Miss Sunshine-style, but we failed. So we had to wait at Segou for about 2 hours while they found a replacement part and fixed it. The next nine hours to San and then Sevare were relatively uneventful, but forty-five minutes out of Sevare we literally hit a cow! We drove over it with one tire but then swerved so it avoided the back tire. Luckily the bus didn't flip. It was hardcore storming then too, so we could barely see in front of us. Headlights and windshield wipers are for wimps, haha. So funny though, we ran over a cow. Total travel time: 14 hours.

When we got to Sevare, the PCVs were waiting to greet us and took us to an awesome hotel. It's run by a former American missionary named Mac. For breakfast, he made us French toast, pancakes, yogurt, and fruit and granola - so yummy. The next day in Sevare we set up our banking accounts, went to the PC Bureau, and basically familiarized ourselves with the city. Finally, it was just me, Ali (the vol 1K from me - she's super nice, I'm so glad we're so close), and Katie, the PCV who was our site visit buddy. We biked the 9K to Ali's village, met with the mayor, and then we biked 1K to my village.

My village is beautiful! We don't have electricity, which is absolutely fine, because at night the stars are GORGEOUS. I have stairs to my roof too, so in the hot season I can sleep up there in my bug hut. Super excited about that! My nyegen is huge too - I'm going to put some rice sack gardens out there I think, so that way the goats won't eat my tomatoes, basil, lettuce, and onions. It's going to be awesome. When we got to my village, there was a wonderful celebration waiting for us. Representatives of the surrounding village's women's groups were there, and all the kids in my village, plus the amiiri (village chief). There was a tom-tom, and Katie, Ali, and I all danced with the villagers for a while. I'm sure it amused them, and it was a lot of fun.

My supervisor's name is Moussa, and he is super motivated and very excited to begin our reforestation work. I saw the tree plantations, and they're huge! After that, I planted an entire field of millet - quite the adventure. He also wants to plan an Earth Day-esque festival of sorts, where all the villagers will plant a tree and we'll hold sessions on environmental sensibilation and awareness - like why it's important to replace the trees that are cut down for firewood. My big project will be ecotourism though - it almost seems like more of a SED site than an environment one, so I'm going to have to do some fun reading on business/marketing/finance stuff. The women's association also wants to start a garden, and I'm very excited to work with them on it. The president of the women's association, Kumbari, is my host mom, and she is so hilarious. She's going to be fun to work with for the next two years.

On the whole, I really enjoyed site visit. We had been warned by current volunteers that it would be absolutely horrible - it's the first time that you are truly by yourself, without any other PC peeps around. But I had a lot of fun, and didn't feel alone or abandoned at all - probably because Ali was so close, but also because the people in my village were so welcoming and eager to talk to me. My Fulfulde is still a bit rough (and will be for at least the next year), but I was able to have some good conversations, and Kumbari understands my pronunciation and translates to everyone else what I'm trying to say. We had some good times together. So hooray for a good site visit, and only 2 1/2 weeks left in training!

Today I learned my site placement for the next two years! I am in a small village of 400 people about 20 kilometers outside of Sevare, in the Mopti region of Mali. I will be living with a host family, though I will have my own house with two rooms and a veranda (that means shade! hooray!) I am 1 kilometer away from a village with a larger market, which is on the Niger. So lots of fresh veggies and fish! My banking town will probably be Sevare though, which is also where the Peace Corps stage house is for the Mopti region. That means that I will most likely have internet access about once every two weeks or so, which is great.

I am so excited for my site though! The Mopti region is where Dogon country is - it's the part of Mali that most tourists go to because the Dogon people are famous for their masks, dancing, and art. They live on cliffs in these really neat houses. I'm glad I'm so close - it's supposed to be a great place to hike. My homologue is a 19 year old woman. I get to meet her tonight, and I'm so excited to have someone close to my age to work with.

Most of my work will involve reforestation and gardening. My homologue works for Planete Verte, a French NGO, so we will be implementing some of their programs in addition to my own ideas. As a secondary project, I have the opportunity to work with a women's association which makes leather products. They want to improve their product and then improve their business skills - expand into new markets and such. I don't know a lot about leather, but I'm excited to learn - what a cool skill that will be to have! And I'm glad I get to incorporate gender and development (GAD) and SED ideas into my service - it sounds pretty ideal for me. I'm traveling to Mopti for a site visit on Sunday for one week, so I will have a better idea of what my life will be like after that. I'm so ready to see it and finally know for certain! This whole moving every 12 days is getting a bit rough - I'm fine living almost anywhere in the world, as long as I can settle there and not move constantly. But I am so happy about my site - it's close enough to a big city that I'll have fairly regular internet access but en brousse enough that I'll still have the village experience. And I can't wait to start planting trees!

Currently listening to: Feist, Michael Jackson, Mariah Carey, Other Lives

Currently reading: Animal Dreams by Barbara Kingsolver

August 7, 2009

So last night, the group of eight of us in my village made the best tubab (foreigner) meal in the history of the world. Ever. We made Mexican food, and it tasted like real, legit Mexican food! Epic success of the century. So this is going to be a lot of detail, but this was such an accomplishment that I need to capture it. Everyone can either just ignore this or be amazed at our wonderfulness.

So the goal was to make burritos. We started cooking the meal at 11am. First, we seared the goat meat (cow wasn't available), and then we braised it for the next 5 or 6 hours in a mixture of water, tomatoes, tomato paste, cucumbers, garlic, onions, limes, maggi seasoning, salt and pepper, and one scotch bonnet hot pepper. While the meat was slowly cooking, we sorted and cleaned the beans and rice (technically class was happening during this time period. Obviously we learned a lot - haha). We cooked the beans with onion and garlic, and then made legit Mexican rice using tomato paste and some seasoning.

Now, for the best part: the pseudo-salsa. And I'm not just saying that because it's what I helped with. We mashed tomatoes, cucumbers, and red onions together with a little bit of lime juice, sugar, salt and pepper, and garlic. Then, we added the only avocado we could find in the entire market. It was so delicious. Words cannot describe the fabulousness of fresh veggies in salsa form.

Next, we made tortillas from scratch using flour, water, and a teensy bit of oil. We made them as we needed them, so they were fresh and warm when we were eating. And voila! the final product...a burrito made with a fresh tortilla, fabulously seasoned goat meat (it tasted like pulled pork), rice and beans, fresh lettuce, hot peppers, our salsa concoction, and lime juice! Wonderful.

I haven't been away from the States long enough to forget that most of you reading this have access to burritos almost 24/7, and thus might not understand the pure joy garnered from this meal. So just imagine that you've gone without your absolute favorite food for four weeks, and are at the point where you're having vivid dreams about it - a side effect of the antimalarial prophylaxis. Then, you have the opportunity to make it, but things rarely if ever go as planned here. So you have incredibly low expecations but are still secretly harboring a hope that you will succeed...and then you succeed in such an epic way that it's beyond amazing! Gassi sanne! (very good) What a great night, with such great friends. I haven't laughed so much in a long time. Fabulous. :)

August 2, 2009

Wow, today was such a high-low day! I started off the day with a bad case of stomach cramps, but Pepto saved the day. What a great medicine. But THEN Eliza and I went to lunch with one of her professors from SIT. He is originally from Mali, but has worked in the US for a while. We ate at his brother's house in Bamako, which was nice by Western standards. It was made of stone, 4 stories tall, air-conditioned, no flies, super nice furniture, and a real toilet!! It was incredible. Lunch was delicious. We had fried rice, fish from the Niger, eggplant, onion, cabbage, and potatoes. For dessert there were mangoes - oh, so good! After the meal, he let us relax on the couches for a bit. He was so kind. It is rare to meet a Malian who understands the culture shock and adjustment, and he did perfectly.

On the way to lunch, he gave us a bit of a mini-tour of Bamako. The University is on one of the hills, and is called the Hill of Knowledge. ATT's (the President) house is directly across from it on another hill, the Hill of Power. Protests often happen at one of those two hills, which he said are traditionally in conflict with each other. Makes sense, n'est pas? I had a great conversation with him about women and power in West Africa, which he is co-writing a book on right now. After lunch, we saw part of an amiiri (village chief) inauguration. It was so interesting - they had a 21-gun salute, lots of dancing, and I think we may have ended up on Malian TV. We also met one of his friends, who taught at IU for a while! He knew was Noblesville was! It was so funny to meet someone that knew I was from (well, almost). What a small world moment.

I was completely overwhelmed by the hospitality shown to us by Eliza's professor, though. It is true what they say about Malians - that they are the most hospitable people in the world. By the end of the day he told us we were family. This sense of hospitality just doesn't exist in the US. Or perhaps more accurately, it exists, but it is very rare for it to be genuine. In Mali, though, it's the norm. Everyone is so warm and welcoming.

As for the low of the day - when we were driving back to my homestay village, we passed a boy who had just been hit by a car. He was maybe 10 years old, and completely unconscious, just lying on the road. We saw a man pull him up by his right arm, and there was absolutely no response. If he wasn't dead before, he certainly would have been soon because of how that man picked him up. So sad. But no one could have called an ambulance. It was too late. I know I will see death a lot more frequently here than in the States, as 20% of children die before age 18. But it is still hard to see.

Despite that though, when I got back home, it turned out that there was a wedding while I was gone! (Language barrier: 1 million points. Jenny: 0 points.) I got there just as the bride was being carried out the room, completely covered in black fabric, and then thrown into a car to be driven to wherever her "wedding night" is taking place. So funny to see--lots of shouting and dancing and running around! Weddings are a big deal here, so my entire extended family was in for the night. We had lot of fun talking and chatting after dinner.

July 31, 2009

I talked to some people from home today, and for whatever reason, their lifestyles just seemed so foreign to me. Things like going out on the weekend, grabbing a couple drinks with friends, living maybe a bit excessively in general - I just feel so far removed from that lifestyle. It's just so incredibly different from what I am experiencing day-to-day. And the weird thing is, I know that I would be living that same lifestyle if I was in the US. Or I would want to be living that lifestyle, at least. It seems like a part of the past to me. But it's a lot of my friends' present. The transition and culture shock I went through in the past month has been rough at times, but I can tell that transitioning back to life in the States is going to be so much harder.

There is just an overall change in what brings me joy. It's odd to think that in just one month in Mali, I'm questioning things that once made me happy. Something as simple as sharing a joke with my host family, or having a good discussion with my host brother in French, now makes my day. A good rain makes me smile for the rest of the day. I've always valued the simple things in life, but after living with the rural poor of Mali for a month, I feel that they have even more meaning.

Jam nyelli! That's good afternoon in Fulfulde, the language that I'm learning here. I've had a couple requests for the description of an average day, so I thought I would give y'all a brief description of what I do here most days. Tomorrow I go back to my village, and will be there for the next twelve days. Most of my days will be almost exactly like this, with the occassionally variation and French fry goodness surprise.

Around 4am, the call to prayer at the mosque across the street sounds. Now I sleep through it, and barely notice it even during the day. At 5am, the rooster starts crowing and the donkey in my family's concession starts hee-hawing. I had no idea donkeys could be so loud! The pigeons that live in the coop beside my room also wake up around this time and start dancing through the roof. I also sleep through all of this. Finally at 6:30am, my alarm goes off, and I get out of bed to give my bucket to my host mom to fill for my morning bucket bath. So I take my bucket to the nyegen (hole in the ground bathroom, like an outhouse but with no roof) and "shower." You can't greet anyone until after you bathe in the morning, so after I get dressed and everything, I walk around my concession and greet my family members individually, starting with my host dad. Then I eat some bread and cirre (rice cereal/porridge) and drink some powdered milk with chocolate added in (yummy!).

Around 7:30am, my friend Eliza comes by to pick me up for our walk to language class - it's a twenty minute walk, and one of my favorite parts of the day. They're kind of my rock. It's a nice time to just be quiet, but more often it's our chance to laugh and forget about whatever is stressing us at the moment. Eliza's going to be a really good friend of mine here - we are in the same sector, and both going to the Mopti region. She's from Ohio, went to OSU, and just finished her first year of grad school at SIT in Vermont. I'm glad we ended up in the same homestay village.

Anyway, I then have language class from 8am-12:30pm. Then we walk home for lunch, which is usually toh and fish sauce. So I eat some fruit, and my family brings me a soda, which is really nice of them. Afterwards, it's back to language and/or culture class from 2:30pm-6 or 6:30pm. Then we return home and I take another bucket bath - it's really hot here, so it's usually necessary! Then I play with my host sisters and brothers for a while, until the totally awesome French soap opera comes on TV at 7pm. It's the corniest, most ridiculous thing. Naturally, I'm totally addicted. Then I eat some rice and sauce for dinner with my host brother, who is one of the only ones who speaks French in my family. He's about 16 and really into soccer. By the time I finish thanking my three host mothers for dinner, it's about 8pm. I go read, study, or listen to some tunes for a while, and am usually asleep by 9pm at the latest. I know, I live such a wild life! But by 9pm I am out for the day. My family watches a DVD of Bob Marley in concert every night though after dinner, which is pretty sweet.

So that's basically my day here! Sorry if it was excessive detail, if you have any questions or want me to write about anything in particular let me know and I'll do my best when I return to the internet in 12 days. Photos are a no-go for right now, sadly, because I don't have a laptop and I can't use the PC comps to upload them. I'll figure something out though for the future. Miss y'all :)

I just got back from my homestay village and am back at Tubaniso for a couple days! It is absolutely wonderful to be back here - eating yummy food, hanging out with people, no donkeys and roosters waking you up at 5 am...haha! First round of homestay...complete! I'm at Tubaniso for two more days, than back in village for another 12. So if you want to reach me via email and get a close-to-immediate response, then now is the time.

Below are two entries from when I was in village that let you know a little more about my life there. I will update a little more with some more blog-ish entries if I have time, but there are 66 of us and two computers for three days, so we'll see what happens.

The letters, package, and huge amount of emails from home have been great though! I love hearing stories from home, no matter how random they are. Know that you all are in my thoughts every single day. :)

July 19, 2009

After four days at homestay, I am feeling more and more like Mali is home. The routine helps, as does the little bit of language I've learned. We have language class eight hours a day - very intense! Some days we have environment training as well, and we have a practice garden at one of the other PCT's houses in our village. The garden is coming along very well for the moment. We made five raised beds to plant veggies in, and one pallpaniere (which I'm not spelling correctly, but it's like a nursery for our lettuce and cabbage). So that's exciting, hopefully it will work out and the chickens won't eat everything. We start our tree nursery on Tuesday, which I'm WAY excited about - that's what I'll be doing for the next two years! Yeah reforestation! :)

Communication is getting a bit better - my family is so funny. Every night, a guy comes over who speaks French. And every night, he says I should learn both Bambara and Fulfulde. "It's easy!" he says, but it's not at all. Relearning French, learning Fulfulde, and Bambara on top of that? Nope, too much. So I tell him that my brain is too small to learn both at the same time, and he dies laughing every time. It's like our nightly ritual - he checks to make sure that my brain hasn't grown, and then laughs his head off when I tell him it has not. Pretty funny.

My host sister, Sali, is pretty much the cutest kid ever though. She's probably a little less than a year old, and just learning how to walk. So everyday we walk around the concession together until she gets tired, and then we sit and I talk to her in English about my day. I've started singing her Sugarland songs too, which her mom is greatly amused by. Settlin is her absolute fave - she always starts giggling during the chorus, and it's adorable. I probably sing it at least ten times a day. We have a dance and everything to go with it. The kids here are so great, and we've been having fun coloring and looking at pictures together. I showed them a picture of the White House, and said "Barack Obama lives here" - and they love Barack Obama here - and they were floored. That huge house is Obama's? Crazy!! I couldn't communicate that every president lives there, but they understood the general concept. Language success!

July 16, 2009

Well, I moved in with my host family yesterday! I am officially a part of the Coulibaly family, and was named Sitan after my host mother. My host dad has at least three wives and many many children. He is a traditional healer, and it's really neat to observe his work. Women bring their sick babies to him, and he says a blessing over some herbs, and then gives them to the woman, who will make tea for her baby out of them, or bathe her baby in them. I really want to know what the herbs are. I think they are more for peace of mind and mental health than an actual medical solution, but any little bit helps here. People go to him instead of a medical center because he doesn't charge them if they can't afford it. I think he refers bad cases to the medical center though. Either way, he's a pretty cool guy.

I have my own room with a bed, screened-in window, screened-in door with a lock (and metal door on the outside - hot!), PC trunk, and...wait for it....electricity! My family lives right by the main road, so in addition to having light and a plug in my room, there is also the light from the street lamps in our concession (courtyard). It's very nice. My host family are incredibly nice and do a great job of taking care of me. Despite that, though, they speak Bambara, and I'm learning Fulfulde. And only one person, my host brother, speaks French. So it is a pretty extreme language barrier, which can be pretty isolating at times. I like to call it confusion immersion instead of language immersion. It really makes you realize how fundamental language is in our lives. How many things a day do I say just to say them? You don't realize that until you can't talk at all. But I go over to my friend Eliza's house a lot - her family speaks Fulfulde, so I get a chance to practice, and she lives right across the street.

Last night there was a huge dance on the village's soccer field. My host sister grabbed me after dinner and we ran down to the field. We had a great time dancing to what seemed like Malian rap music. They had certain groups of people stand up and perform this one dance - about 200 people were seated aruond them in a circle watching. About five girls in one line, then 5 guys across from them a little while away in another line. When the music started, they would dance across one by one and trade places. My host sister convinced me to dance once, and now everyone in the village knows my name and starts dancing when I walk by. It's pretty comical.

One more quick story - today at cross-culture training, we were discussing American and Malian practices of gift-giving. And Eliza, Emily, and I literally laughed until we cried - about the idea of gift registries! Try explaining a gift registry to someone from another country - and the third poorest country in the world at that. It still makes me laugh. Think about it - could Americans be any more lazy AND efficient at the same time? Lazy - the gift-giver has to do nothing, you can just order it online if you want to. You don't have to leave your couch. Efficient - the gift-receiver gets exactly what they need/want in an orderly fashion, and doesn't get more than one of the same gift. It's great, in the most ridiculous fashion. Maybe you had to be there. :)

Hello all! I made it to Mali two days ago after goodness knows how many hours traveling...the highlight was that almost the entire group of 66 PCTs (Peace Corps Trainees - what I am right now) slept for eight hours on the floor of the Paris airport! It was pretty hilarious to see, I'm sure the French were appalled. We did see the Eiffel Tower from a distance though just as we were leaving, after we ate our last Ben & Jerry's ice cream for the next 27 months (I had cookie dough and phish food, if you were curious).

In Mali, we are at the PC training center, called Tubaniso. It is a beautiful place, and very green!! I have two fabulous roommates in my hut, and it is actually pretty cool in the evenings. Yesterday morning we woke up to a rainstorm so it was cool all day. So lovely! We have classes all day, every day - in technical aspects (that's environment for me), language, cross-cultural, and health. Today in my environment sector classes we learned how to conduct a Farmer Field School (FFS), where we would act as facilitators to a farmers group - it turns the farmers' fields into classrooms. Instead of the old top-down approach of development, the FFS acknowledges the knowledge that people already have and the skills they bring to the table. Hopefully I'll be able to implement a group like that in my village. We also learned about gathering seeds and creating plant nurseries.

Speaking of my village, I have a very very tentative site placement! I will potentially be in the Mopti region of Mali in a small village 20 km outside of a city. I will be working with a NGO worker in the areas of reforestation and agricultural ecotourism. It sounds really cool, so I hope that it works out! I would speak Fefeulde (I'm not sure if I'm spelling that right, sorry). Apparently it's a little harder to learn than Bambara, but the language teachers are great, so hopefully I won't have too much of a problem.

In other news, I saw a monkey today!! And I bought my first pagne (like a skirt) yesterday and love it, I plan on wearing it when I go to my host family on Wednesday. I will be there for a week, and am very excited to meet them and hopefully speak a little bit!

To answer some questions I've got via email:

- The time difference is 4 hours

- I am not sick (yet)

- I am not sunburned

- Only 2 mosquito bites! The bug zapper thing that my Uncle Ron gave me really works - they don't itch at all!

Hope you are all doing well, the emails and fbook posts from home have been great. I know I've only been here three days, but with all the things we've been doing, that feels like a long time! So thanks for all the support :)

PCVs are required to write an aspiration statement a week after receiving our invitations to serve. Mine is below:

A: Professional attributes you plan to use and aspirations you hope to fulfill:

I plan on using several professional attributes in my Peace Corps service in natural resource management (NRM), from my skills learned at a development internship at an NGO to my experience working in agriculture. However, the core of these attributes is my educational background. At Xavier University, I majored in the unique Philosophy, Politics, & the Public Honors Program. This interdisciplinary program studies the unifying concepts of civic engagement and the public sphere with an international focus. Through taking classes in philosophy, political science, economics, and history, I have synthesized new ways of thinking regarding public life and service. My experience in bringing together ideas from many different disciplines provides me with the necessary critical thinking background to achieve my goals during Peace Corps service.

Personal Aspirations:

Learn about Mali, its culture, and its peopleMaster French and gain a solid grasp of the local languageMake new lifelong friends and be accepted into a communityLearn from the challenges I face in patience, dedication, and with an open mindBring what I learned back to the US to share with family and friendsAvoid snakebites and sunburnsProfessional Aspirations:Teach my community about sustainable development as it relates to NRMDevelop long-term NRM plans that positively impact a communityGain a better understanding of the environmental challenges in Mali and West AfricaParticipate in secondary projects involving gender and development and HIV/AIDS education and awarenessLearn more about international NGOs and the complexities of developmentDetermine how best to use my skills to positively change the world after service – whether through graduate school, NGO work, or something completely different

B: Strategies for working effectively with host country partners to meet expressed needs: Working on a farm has taught me the importance of focus, dedication, patience, and a sense of humor, qualities which lend themselves well to working with host country partners. I am a hard worker, and my background in music has given me the creativity to think outside the box to find solutions. There are many challenging situations I might find myself in, but I plan to enter into them with an open mind and ready to ask questions – many questions.

C: Strategies for adapting to a new culture with respect to your own cultural background: Before leaving, I plan on learning as much as I can about Mali, its people, its culture, and its traditions. If there is one thing I have learned from my diverse internship experiences, however, it is that all things are subject to change. For this reason, I will enter into my service as well-prepared as possible and with an open mind and heart. Through immersing myself in Malian culture with an accepting and nonjudgmental attitude, though not forgetting my own culture, I believe I will more quickly adapt and become an active member of my new community.

D: Skills and knowledge you hope to gain during pre-service training (PST): During pre-service training, I hope to gain a solid foundation for my work as a PCV. While I know I will not learn everything, having a deeper grasp of Malian culture, NRM in Mali, and language will give me knowledge that will be vital during my service. I expect PST to be demanding, challenging, and incredibly engaging.

E: How you think PC Service will influence your personal and professional aspirations after your service ends: It is hard to say how PC service will influence my aspirations after service, as the one thing I certainly expect from being a PCV is for it to challenge and change my worldview and life goals. Whether I further pursue an international path of development work, attend graduate school, or something else entirely, I hope that as a PCV I will acquire knowledge and experience that will assist me throughout my entire life.

Hey all--finally received my invitation about a week before graduating!! I'm going to be a natural resource management (NRM) volunteer in Mali. Here's a bit from the Peace Corps about what I'll be doing:

"Volunteers in Mali work with communities to reverse the effects of desertification through reforestation, agroforestry and environmental education programs, but most importantly, through the development of village-based natural resource management plans.

The NRM program in Mali is designed around the corner stones of sustainability - economics, ecology, and society.

Economics: Volunteers educate individuals and associations about the importance of sustainable resource use, raising their capacity to generate income while protecting their resource baseEcology: Volunteers enable communities to evaluate the current status and threats to their natural resource base, raising their capacity to design and implement appropriate strategies to restore and preserve their natural resources. Society: Volunteers seek to understand local traditions and indigenous technical knowledge systems in order to inspire culturally appropriate innovation and empower underrepresented groups (women and children) to become participants in NRM.NRM Volunteers are essentially extension agents who work with local communities and individuals in reforestation, soil conservation, forest management, and/or environmental education efforts. Volunteers are assigned to work with the Malian government's 'Forest and Environmental Service' and other Malian organizations involved in integrated rural development efforts."