I think I have perhaps been watching too much Mad Men (in the middle of the fourth season after four two-day long trips into Sikasso), but I have starting noticing advertisements in Mali more often. I noticed them before, and you may understand why in a minute, but I never felt it really needed to be blogged about. Truth is, it still doesn’t need to be blogged about- not really anyways. I am sure that at some point in the future, someone will doing a Masters or PhD thesis about advertisements in West Africa and what it says about the conditions of the society keeping in mind in the contexts of their culture, or something fancy-sounding like that.

At any rate, there are a couple of things, and only a couple of things, that Mali seems to advertise. This could because there is not a lot of business going on in this country that the average Malian can afford to buy, but I think it is also because no businesses in Mali can actually afford to advertise. Honestly, these businesses have a monopoly anyways and there is no real reason to advertise. They do though and I suffer for it.

1. Malitel: C’cool. C’jeune. C’Malitel. (It’s cool. It’s young. It’s Malitel) Mali + Telephone= Malitel. First I have to tell you about phones in Mali. They can be paid for on a month to month system that Americans are used to, but they are more often paid for with “credit.” You can by credit in increments of 200, 500, 1000, 2000, 5000, and 10000 CFA cards ($.40, $1, $2, $4, $10, and $20 respectively). It is like a lottery card. Scratch off the number, type the number in your phone, and, voila, you have credit. The smaller amounts expire more quickly than the larger (four days to three months). When it “expires” it does not actually disappear. It just goes into lala land until you buy more credit and then it comes back. They have special bonus days so you can buy 1000 CFA and get 2000 credit on 100% bonus days or 3000 on 200% bonus days. Bonus credit is different than regular credit. Bonus credit is used when you call only other Malitel phones and regular credit is used when you call Orange (pronounced French style) or internationally. A text is 20CFA but calling America for five minutes is 1000CFA. Malitel offers bonus on most Malian holidays.

Malitel’s most recent tagline is that one I wrote about it being cool and young. It is kind of silly to advertise like I said because the only other competition is Orange. My village only gets Malitel service so advertising Malitel and Orange to me is a waste. Even in the large cities, where Orange and Malitel coexist, most people buy a double sim card phone or buy two phones so they have one for each company. Then they use bonus credit as much as they can. You can tell what company a person uses based on their phone number.

The advertisement itself is predictable. There are a bunch of young people (my age) dancing around at a party. Then it cuts to a white screen (or at least white on my family’s 12 inch black and white TV) with simple Power point- like flashes of words about how cool Malitel is. Go buy it kids!

2. Orange: C’cool. C’Orange. At least get a different slogan if your ad is just as pointless as Malitel! It is the same ad, for the same product! The other slogan is la vie change avec Orange. Life changes with Orange. Perhaps. If I had Orange, my life would change because it would mean going back to standing on the back of the middle school latrine and hoping the sun was at the correct angle and the shitty (literally) wind was blowing in the right direction (the correlation between the wind blowing up my nose and the number of bars I had were highly positive) so that I could make a 20 second call before the forces of nature changed and my call was interrupted. You see, Orange is only in certain parts of the country and Malitel in others. And again I argue that big city people have both. The only benefit for either company is advertising their bonus credit days, which may encourage people to buy more credit on those days, but having bonus credit means they may need to buy credit less often. Or maybe they just talk longer because they can and still buy credit just as often, which is to the benefit of the companies. I don’t know what research says. But I can almost guarantee it has never been studied in Mali.

3. Maggi: Avec Maggi, chaque femme est une etoile. With Maggi, every woman is a star.

Can somebody gag me? Where to start? Maggi is like a broth cube. It would be the equivalent of buying a chicken flavored can of broth in America. It is used by women to add flavor to their sauces. It helps because it is basically flavored salt (I use it to make “Ramen” because it is chicken flavored) and you sweat all day long.

Obviously only women need to use Maggi because only women cook in Mali, and only women buy it. It is the only cube of its type though. Can you say monopoly? Nobody else makes the stuff so there is no competition. Oh, and women rarely see this ad because they are cooking during the hours that TV is being watched in the evening. Oh, and it is in French so the majority of women cannot even understand it. They make a killing being the only brand and all, but it is only 25 CFA a square and I wonder how much of this unnecessary advertising cuts into their profits.

The commercial itself is a pretty Malian woman cooking a meal with her young (impressionable) daughter. There is a beautiful head of lettuce, a bunch of tomatoes, onions, and a healthy chicken (healthier than any chicken I have ever see here) on the table surrounded by pots. The woman is distraught because she can’t find the Maggi. No need to worry mom! It is right here…(lifts pot) under this pot. Smiling and giggling follows and order is restored to the universe. Thank goodness for Maggi. Hard telling what my husband and son(s) would say if there was none.

4. Fani ko. Fani ko. A ka ni det! Fani ko. It is wonderful! Fani means fabric. Ka ko means to wash. It is soap to wash your clothes…and hair, and body, and pots and pans because there is no differentiating between types of soap.

I abhor this commercial. I actually (discreetly) plug both of my ears when this comes on and close my eyes when possible in order to avoid dealing with this commercial. There is a larger woman (because here heftiness proves that you are well fed) in beautiful bazen (the most expensive fabric) singing about how great Fani ko is while men play drums and other healthy looking women dance in the background. It’s a party! Women! Look how much fun it is to wash your family’s clothes! Don’t you love the back breaking work of fetching buckets upon buckets of water so you can bend over and scrub this fabric (for all 20 family members) clean every other day?

The reason I have to protect my senses from this commercial has everything to do with the woman singing the song. You know how women and children (especially young boys, if my memory of my brother singing is correct) have a tendency to raise their voice by an octave or three when singing a song? This woman does it by, like, five. I never knew it was possible, but she proved me wrong. And she is loud. You need to lower the volume by 100 (preferably out of 100 or just stick your fingers in your ears) just to make it bearable. And she is so damn happy. I have never felt so happy about washing clothes. Ever. Washing my hands, for sure, but never my clothes.

5. Soccer. This one is new. I have only seen the ad once. There is a very obese white man, who is clearly American, dancing around like a ballerina in an empty room. This goes on long enough for my family to notice it, start laughing ,and for all 20 of them to turn and stare at me to see my reaction, before it cuts to the three, extremely fit, extremely good looking African soccer players. Then it cuts to clips of African soccer matches. It is an ad for African soccer or a tournament I think, but I’m not sure I understand the point of the man at the beginning. Yeah, Americans are stereotypically overweight, but I’m American and I don’t fit that stereotype. There are just as many great American soccer players as there are African soccer players. And this is for African football so why would there be a white man in the ad at all? And lastly, there is only one TV channel in Mali (ORTM) so if the game is on the game is on. I have to watch it if I’m going to watch TV so why bother advertising it?

There you have it. Commercials must have some benefits in our lives or college majors for marketing would never have been created and beer companies would not pay millions so their ads could be played during the Super Bowl. In Mali though, it seems that it is a bit unnecessary and painful ordeal. Malians do not have the money to buy many products and there are really no products with labels to be sold in the markets anyways. I’m stumped.

There are many people in my village who regularly ask me for things or tell me that Americans have not done enough to help Malians. Recently I had a particularly frustrating conversation with a rather influential person in my village about this. I had returned from Bamako a few days early, and he had returned to the village after a long absence as well. When he saw me returning home from a walk one day, he called me over and yelled at me telling me I was rude for not coming to greet him after returning from my trip. People lecture me about this all of the time. As the village toubab, I am expected to be on my best behavior at all time, which means greeting everyone all of the time and telling everyone where I am going at every minute. I don't have the energy to greet everyone after returning from a trip. The average person can walk through the village without being harassed or being asked about where they are going, but I am not the average person, and I understand that, but it can still be frustrating and tiring at times. At any rate, he lectured me about this, and then he began telling me how wonderful Libya is as a country and how great Gaddafi is as a president. I told him that the only reason he liked Gaddafi so much is because of all of the money he has given to Malians, and this person readily agreed. For a country as poor as Mali, it should come as no surprise that they are endeared to countries that readily give them large sums of money. Gaddafi made it clear during his time of rule that he wanted to be the King of Africa. Giving money to other countries was one great way he attempted to earn this title. You can find endless posts online about this title. Many Malians went to Libya in order to help Gaddafi in the past recent months. Again you can Google the situation to learn more about the violence that broke out there. My neighbor told me that he wished he could go to Libya and help Gaddafi and that Americans were terrible for not helping Gaddafi and that our only interest in the country was for oil, which is another conversation in and of itself. In the past 24 hours, Gaddafi has been killed, making this conversation stick out even more in my mind. It should be interesting to see what people say once I return to village and to see what happens to the country as a whole in the coming months. After telling me how wonderful Gaddafi and Libya is/are/was whatever part of speech I should use here, he told me that Americans were generally bad people and that Obama was particularly bad. I wanted to yell at him and say, “What do you think I am doing here? Who do you think I am! You know I am from America! Who do you think bought my plan ticket, pays my salary, and who is starting a bunch of projects in your village in order to help you and your fellow Malians improve your life?! Who?!?” After that, I wanted to yell at him some more and ask him how he could say that when he was teaching in a BRAND NEW classroom funded and built ENTIRELY by USAID. I don't see anyone else helping them out as a village. Nobody except for the missionaries who are creating language materials. He is not the first person to say Americans are bad because we do nothing to help Malians. They never say this about other countries though because most Malians are only aware of maybe ten countries in the world. It is hard to blame a country of being lazy and stingy with their money if you do not know they exist. Furthermore, America has this magical connotation of being a beautiful land where nothing bad happens and everyone is rich. He then pointed to one of my favorite students and said, if she tried to go to America, Obama would not let her in because she was too black. I can handle people telling me that other leaders are great and other countries are wonderful, even if it it based on ignorance, but I do take offense when people rag on America, especially when it is based on ignorance. Even more, I was upset because this is a student I really like and he was making me and other Americans looks like terrible people by telling these lies. The true reasons she would not be allowed in America are because she does not speak English, does not have money to buy a plane ticket; even more, she has no idea that she must take a plane to reach America because she believes she can drive there (in the car she does not have or on a bus she cannot afford to buy a ticket for). She has no passport or visa, has no place to live upon her arrival in America and no money to stay somewhere. She has no job, an extremely limited education and limited skills she could use in applying for a job, and she does not know a single person living in America who would be willing to help her find her way around. So the fact that she is black has nothing to do with the reason she would be denied entrance in America. Her lack of resources and skills or what prevent her from coming to America. But how do you say this to a person without offending her, especially when you are dealing with an irrational person? I just told him we were not going to agree and told him I was going home.

I can't say I really take his opinion to heart too much, but I wanted to write this post to highlight some of my daily conversations and frustrations. Yes, most people generally believe America is a wonderful place and have many misconceptions about the lives of Americans, but there are obviously others who do not think such nice things. If anything, I am surprised by how willing people are to express these attitudes in front of me when they know I am an American.

Why the Malian Education System Fails Some students never get to be students. These are the kids who never go to school because their family claims they cannot afford it, because they are needed to work the fields, because their family thinks they are too dumb, and other excuse they come up with. School costs about 1000 CFA ($2) after they buy notebooks, pens, and pay the small fee, though I am not sure how much a monthly fee for school costs though I know it is no more than 200 or so a month. A pack of tea is 100 CFA and many families drink tea every night with 100 CFA worth of sugar. Students are hungry. After two days at site eating Malian food, I experience dizziness and lightheadedness. I require ten hours of sleep each day (most days I require a nap because I cannot stay awake). I don't want to do anything, even if there is work to do because I don't have the energy. Feelings of hunger can be pretty persistent. Fortunately, I have American food that has been sent to me and can afford pasta and sauces to cook for myself, but the kids don't have this. How can kids learn if they are hungry? Students are tired. They bike 5 km to school, go home and return for lunch, and bike home after class (20 km total). They pound millet or corn, care for siblings or their own children, cook, wash clothes, and more whenever they are at home. They stay up far later than I do completing homework, running around the village, braiding hair, watching TV, etc. Students are crammed into the classrooms. In the 9th grade room, there were 143 students this past year. They have shoved two tables together and 7 sit crammed into these tables, where only 4 should be. They must wiggle and squirm to slowly free an arm here and a leg there, stand on top of the table and walk on top of it until they reach the aisle in order to get in and out of their seat. The tables are 11 deep. The rooms are hot and they are in class six hours a day. The physical discomfort and the lack of individual attention is just no good. Students enter school without speaking Bambara. The new curriculum dictates that children study in Bambara or their mother tongue for the first two years of school. In my village, the average child does not speak Bambara but it is the language they teach in because their mother tongue is only now becoming a written language. The teacher does not speak the minority language they speak. They spend the entire first year learning to speak Bambara in my village. Students are hit by teachers. They are hit with rubber rope if they arrive late, smacked over the head with a book if they fall asleep, backhanded if they answer incorrectly. The school directors do not believe this is right, and this alone endears me to him, which is pretty pathetic. Teachers are poorly educated. The older teachers have impeccable French reading, writing, and speaking skills, but the younger teachers make errors frequently. The English teachers speak very poorly, but they tell me that American English and the British English they teach are different and that is why I do not understand them. I tell them I can go to the UK and have little to no trouble, but they do not believe me. The teaching method is terrible. Repetition, repetition, repetition. The students cannot actually read what is on the board. They have memorized what the teacher has read to them. He/She often reads the sentence four or five times before calling on a student, which is ample time to memorize it. Even then they interrupt the student if they do not “read” fast enough. I have tried pointing this out, but I am ignored. Students in literacy classes do the same thing because it is the way the literacy teachers were taught as children. I do not know how they recognize that students cannot read or how they are able to ignore this fact. 6th, 9th, and 12th grade exams are extremely difficult. To pass on to 7th grade, you must pass an exam in 6th grade, to pass on to 10th you must pass an exam in 9th grade, and the same goes to earn your high school diploma. This year, my village has the third highest number of students pass the 9th grade exam for the entire Sikasso region. 17 students passed. Out of 143.Many villages had zero pass. Even if these 17 go on to pass high school (and many will not go to high school and not even half with pass the 12th grade exam), there are not any jobs for them. All other grades have a pass rate of about 60%. In my village, there are always a large number of students redoubling or taking the class for a second time. After the second or third try, you cannot try again. There are 18 year old students in the 9th grade class because they started school late or have retaken multiple classes. Corruption exists. Three years ago now, 100% of students passed this same exam. Two years ago, two students passed. You do the math. Materials are outdated or nonexistent. Sometimes the new books are just used books from the city. Students share copies or the teacher simply stands at the front of the room and reads from the one book the school owns as the students copy down what he says verbatim. This often goes on for hour after hour in classrooms. Just copy, copy, copy. The spelling skills of the students is no good because their French skills are very poor making it hard to read over if they try and study. Students do not study. Occasionally I witness them studying, but it is hard because they are so busy. In the evenings, they must study by flashlight or a small fluorescent light, if their family can afford the batteries or lights. Parents do not help children with their homework. My mom would help me for hours in completing my math homework, go to Parent/ Teacher Conferences diligently, or help me study for exams, often reading Spanish word after Spanish word even though didn't speak the language. Parents don't even ask a child what they talked about at school. They often times cannot help them with homework because they are illiterate. Children are not read to at night because the family has no books to read. It is believed that only the teacher can help a child learn to read. There are no enough teachers to fill each classroom. In my village, for the last month of school, there was no 1st or 2nd grade teacher. The students ran around screaming for the majority of the day, unless another teacher came in and told them to be quiet. They would stand at the window and yell my name over and over until I waved at them or was minutes out of their line of sight.

I can certainly identify the problems, but what are the positives? More women are studying and they are staying in school longer. My homologue has told me that fewer girls get married at 16 now because they are studying longer. It doesn't quite mean they are not still having babies at 16, but it is a start. It is certainly empowering for these students. My host dad's daughter wears a shirt that says “College Bound” in English; she understands it and gets a big smile if I ask if she wants to go to college. First she has to pass 12th grade, but I know her dad will let her go to college if she passes (she is currently taking 12th grade a second time), and that is awesome. The school director reads teaching theory books. It is wonderful and another reason I really like him. He sits outside of the school under his mango tree with his radio and various books concerning teaching methods.

What can I do? I have started literacy classes in my village, which I have written about several times so I won't go over that again. Also, I have helped with training to teach other volunteers to start literacy classes and written up handouts about steps to follow, mistakes to avoid, and so on.

I have started teaching literacy classes at the mayor's office. Every Wednesday when I am in village and the men at the mayor's office and Nachata are not too busy, we study Bambara and English together. Malians are so good at hearing every sound in a word. When I say a word in English, it is funny to hear them repeat me because they pick up on every sound and any bits and pieces I pronounce with an accent. They are able to tell me how to spell words in Bambara because they can identify the sounds of letters so easily. I prefer to only teach them Bambara because it is practical, but they requested studying English as well so we are spending half of our time studying both languages. It will help them write speeches at future ceremonies and parties and I think it helps them understand why it is difficult for me to learn Bambara as quickly as they would like. I have painted world maps. I painted a map of Mali in the 6th grade class with each region painted a different color and I painted a world map in the 9th grade classroom. The geography teacher uses the world map he tells me and the 6th grade students have told me they really like the map in their room. I have done hygiene lessons and introduced hand washing stations at the school. I did the F-chart presentation, which I talked about a post or two ago. I just turned in the SPA (Small Project Assistance) forms from a project I just completed. I had 11 hand washing stations made. The first cycle already had three so I gave them three more so that they could place one station in each classroom. I gave the second cycle six stations because there are six classrooms, and I gave one to the doctor's office and another to the mayor's office. The stations at the school are important because the teacher can remind the students to wash their hands every time they return from the latrine; hopefully it is a habit they will start taking home with them. People at the doctor's office can use it to teach people about hand washing, and the men at the mayor's office have started lecturing anyone who visits and does not wash their hands after using the latrine. I just completed Take Your Daughters to Work Day. We just finished this project two days ago. On Sunday, 12 girls and four chaperons from four different villages in the Sikasso region came into the city of Sikasso. They slept at the high school where one of the volunteers works. We spent the day visiting different working women in the city and talking about the importance of education. We visited the cesref, which is an extension of the hospital; the girls got to see a large hospital here and listen to a female boss talk about her education and how difficult it was for her to get to the position she was in as a woman. We also visited a woman who runs a volunteer program that is very similar to Peace Corps but is composed of Malian volunteers. She was amazing and talked to the girls for nearly two hours. We visited women who worked at the artisan's market and they talked about their training for their work, their marriages, and their plans for when they completed their training program. At the high school, one of our language instructors came and talked about her education and work with Peace Corps and then four high school students talked to us about life in Sikasso and their goals after high school. When we weren't visiting powerful, highly educated women, we did ice breakers, talked about Malian and American culture, played games, colored, put together puzzles for the first time, played basketball for the first time ever, walked through the huge Sikasso market for the first time, and more. We were able to take the girls to two different restaurants in the city and bought them chicken sandwiches one night and hamburgers another. My favorite part was seeing them smile as they experienced things for the first time and watching them come out of their shell. Almost everything we did was a first for them, and I think the girls really got a lot out of it. They came to understand the importance of education and saw first hand where there lives could go if they worked hard enough and if their families agreed to allow them to continue their education. I don't know that it will ultimately change the direction of their lives because their fathers and husbands make the majority of the decisions that make up the girls' lives, but it allowed them to see a different world. When I get back to village, the chaperon and the three girls will give a presentation at the school to talk to other students about everything they learned. I am excited to hear what they have to say and to see how it effects their confidence. Most of the girls were too shy to say their name the first day but by the end of it they were running around smiling and laughing and talking. I will start a life skills course. I have already talked to the school director about starting a life skills course. Each week we will discuss a different topic, such as positive communication skills, conflict/resolution, HIV/AIDS education, and more. Once I return to site, the director has promised to sit down with me and one of the English teachers to plan the program. I already have a book with the Bambara translations, which will help, and the English teacher is there to help in case students have questions I cannot understand or cannot explain. I am looking forward to working with the students again.Slowly I am seeing the benefits of my work. This week in Sikasso I was able to use my Bambara skills to speak with people in the city and the girls who came to our program. In village I rarely talk because people are so reticent to speak Bambara. It was nice to see a pay off for all of my hard work in learning the language. I am seeing the benefits of literacy classes when I teach the women new life skills or watch them learn a new letter or put together two sounds all on their own. As I said, the men at the mayor's office have really taken to lecturing people about washing their hands and explaining their benefits. The impact I am able to have in Mali under the circumstances I am in are not at all what I expected, but I am seeing benefits and that is what matters right now.

Patience: waiting hours for meetings to start, in understanding what people are saying to me, waiting for the appropriate season to do an activity or project, communication with Peace Corps and dealing with red tape Going easy on myself/ Celebrating small successes: being happy to understand a conversation, hearing a woman put two letters together to make a syllable, getting Madou or Korotumou to play clapping games with me, teaching those at the mayor's office to read Bambara and speak English, getting an outfit tailored the way I want, not getting ripped off at the market, getting funding after redoing a proposal three times, seeing people wash their hands with soap and water, getting through Samogho greetings without being laughed at, cooking something new and tasty with my limited supplies, fetching water at the well, getting a compliment for sweeping my yard appropriately

World affairs: thank you BBC, having time to spend hours reading, knowing all of the countries on the map, understanding the situation in Libya, Sudan, Egypt, etc. Powerhouse that is US: I never really understood out position in the world as a nation. It is amazing the influence we have and better understanding how we use this position Being a minority and knowing how it feels: Malians generally like Americans, but you always know you are white and therefore different; you are perceived as being rich and seen as either spoiled or are envied. Even if people like you for what your skin and/or nationality stands for, it never feels good to feel so different from those around you. I also know that things get better and you can integrate and make friends, though it requires going easy on yourself for a very long time. Friendship: That warm feeling you get when you see a friendly fellow American's face after three weeks at site and knowing that they totally 'get' what you are going through. Home: I never want to be away from home this long ever again. The food, comfort of your own house, shopping in the same grocery store or at the same mall, TV shows and movies, driving around town without thinking about directions cannot be replaced by anything else. Living in my own country with people I understand without having to try is something I appreciate more than ever before. Views on Africa: I get annoyed when people say, “I live in Africa” or “That's Africa” because I live in Mali. Africa is just as diverse as any other continent, if not more. That being said, the world as a whole knows so little about any part of Africa, let alone individuals countries. This is sad to me. Africa is so misunderstood as being backwards or uncivilized, and that isn't true. Malians are some of the nicest people I have every met. Every country has had some weird beliefs and behaviors throughout the years and Africa as a whole just hasn't had the time to develop as other countries have. Opening a care package: knowing somebody went to the store to buy food or books for me or wrote me a letter is a great feeling. It is better than Christmas to be honest. It is unexpected when I received one and always appreciated Fortune of being me in a western world: There are little to no restrictions on what I can do or say as me at home. School, work, hobbies, traveling alone, driving, etc, etc. These are all decisions I get to make for myself without worrying about receiving another person's permission beforehand. Fatalism: How destruction it can be for a group of people to feel helpless to improve their own lives and how hard it can be to create change from this. My strength: This goes along with celebrating small successes. Knowing I can lean on myself for weeks on end and can survive and do work in another country in another language gives you a good feeling about yourself. Doing what you like: Peace Corps is not the perfect fit for me. I get frustrated, lonely, question myself, and want to quit once a week. I committed to this so I will finish, but in the future, I am determined to find work that is a better fit for me. This means having a schedule, having a clearly defined job description, and more structure in my day.

It's hard to believe that 36 hours ago I was waking up in London to rush to the airport for my first of three flights back to Bamako. 24 hours ago I was sitting in the airport in Rome waiting for my flight to Lisbon. Two hours ago I was sitting in a mud hut having a meeting in another volunteer's village. What is more surprising is that both worlds have come to feel completely natural to me. I am able to transition from one to another fairly easily. It almost felt nice to hear Bambara. To be greeted by everyone I met and to have people so genuinely happy to see me even though we have never met before. Part of it is that I am well rested and have had a nice break from Mali. Here is the quick play by play of my vacation. Photos to be found on Facebook as soon as the internet agrees to cooperate. RomeAirport. No luggage. 1.5 hours in line at Customer Service. Termini Train station. Hostel. Museum of Modern Art. Walk to Victor Emmanual Monument to people watch. Walk to hotel. St. Angelo's Castle. Baths xs a lot. Parents arrive. Italian lunch. Spanish Steps. Trevi Fountain. Gelati xs a lot. Vatican Museum and Sistine Chapel. St. Peter's Basilica. Borghese Gallery. Sushi. Museum of Roman Civilization 1-4. Piazza Novana. Colosseum. Palatine Hill. Roman Forum. Victor Emmanual Monument. Double-decker tour ride. Chinese x3 nights in a row. Pasta xs a lot. Pizza xs almost too much. Contiki Good bye to parents. Fly to London. Victoria Train. Tube x2. Check in at hotel. Meeting. Depart for Amsterdam. Cross ferry. Cliffs of Dover. Canal Cruise. Anne Frank Museum. Depart for Rhine Valley. Beautiful mountains. Drive along river. Beef and pasta dinner. Visit winery. Try ice wine and 4 others. See world's largest cuckoo clock. Learn about beer steins. Depart for Munich. Walk up church dome. Watch performers playing African music on stage. Visit second church. Bavarian beer hall. Cow bells. Pint sized beers. Depart for Austrian Tyrol. White water rafting. Paragliding. Nauseous. Delicious tomato soup, turkey, and desert. Party night. Depart for Venice. Boat ride to city. Walk the alleys. Visit famous bridge. Sit for 1.5 hours people watching in square as quartet plays music, sun sets, and lights come up. Depart for Swiss Alps.Visit city of Lucerne to see Swiss watches and army knives. Wander the trails near Jungfrau Mountain. Visit a quaint little town. Beautiful hills. Depart for Paris. See Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triomphe. Try snails with champagne and cheese. Train to Eiffel Tower to watch lights sparkling. Back to Eiffel Tower for group picture. Walk to Louvre Museum and visit Italian and French paintings. Visit Church of Notre Dame. Walk along Champs Elysees. Wonderful dinner of escargot, duck orange, cheese, and chocolate cake. O'Sullivans. Depart for London. Drop people off at Paris airport. Final get together in London. Return home I was fortunate enough to get a ride back to Sikasso today. Also, my boss is visiting my site on the 21st to see how things are progressing and making sure my last 10-ish months are a success so I am getting a ride there as well. This is a relief because I have 20 buckets for my current project to get there, books, food, my suitcase, etc to return. It is also nice because I can have my boss help me with translations for ideas I have for the upcoming year. This vacation was really nice and I feel better prepare to take on the next few months than I did before I left.

7/25 About four months ago I started doing the F-chart presentation at the school. It stands for something like the Face to Fecal presentation, during which time you discuss all of the siraw (roads) in which a person eats fecal matter. The first night after doing the presentation, I sat around our communal boy for dinner with Mariam, Aminata, and the other women in my family. M and A said, “n'i anw te tege ko ni safine ye, anw be na bo dun” (if, we do not wash our hands with soap, we are going to eat poop), as they giggled and the other women burst into laughter. I knew they were curious about where this came from so M and A explained the presentation. I was tickled. Then I went to the elementary school. I visited all 6 classes with the help of the school director. That afternoon, I took my usual yaala yaala, passing by the house of the midwives. They said, “Today during lunchtime all of the kids came to our house and asked it if was true that they would eat poop if they didn't wash their hands with soap.” At dinner, Bhatuma the fifth grader repeated the mantra M and A had started. Tonight Myuma sat down on her stool around our bowl, grabbed the soap, and laughingly repeated the phrase with an added, “Tiendo, Asetou” (Right Asetou)? She has just returned from high school in another village and never saw the presentation. I agreed with her as Jelika grabbed the soap. Jelika who refused to use soap every night until recently. Jelika who would yell at Bhatuma, her daughter, when B got on her case about using soap. Whose hand I once took in my left hand and wiped with soap using my right hand while she laughed at the stupidity of it all. Myuma took one bit of to, scrunched up her nose, threw back her head, and said the equivalent of, “Yuck!” I laughed not believing a Malian would so openly reject to, the staple of everyone's diet here. She laughed and said, “N te to fe.” (I don't like to) No wonder people are so surprised to hear I eat it every night!

7/26 Day spent reading Traveling with Pomegranates by Sue Monk Kidd and Ann Kidd Taylor. I thought of my upcoming trip when I read the following quote: “I keep indulging in the hope that being in Greece, and only that, will solve everything for me. Even when I woke up this morning, before I opened my eyes, I lay in bed luxuriating in that particular fantasy. I'm going to walk out of the hotel lobby onto the sidewalks of Athens and that alone is going to make me happy.” pg. 59 I cannot wait to get to Italy. I will be spending 9 days in Rome visiting with my parents, and then I will be traveling with the group Contiki doing their Northern Horizon trip. It begins in London. In 12 short days we will pass through Amsterdam, Rhine Valley, Munich, Venice, Swiss Alps, and Paris. It will be fantastic.

7/27 Two pieces of good news today. One, my project is going to be funded. This means hand washing stations inside every classroom, the mayor's office, and the doctor's office. Also, it means I am now the CEO of a new soap company! Ok, not the CEO, but I am going to teach the women in my literacy classes to make an sell soap while documenting their flow of supplies, products, and money. I am nervous but feel better when I am able to teach Moussa the documentation process in a few minutes. Secondly, the men and Nachata at the mayor's office agree to let me teach them to read and write in Bambara. They never learned in school so they write Bambara with a French writing system. This problem was apparent when I attended a huge party in the village that built all of the latrines I wrote about in a previous blog post. The mayor had to give a speech, but he was a bit flustered (but still did well and I understood him; way to go host dad!) because he could not read the Bambara written on the paper using a strange writing system best described as the French way of writing Bambara.

7/28 I begin reading Committed by Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of Eat, Pray, Love. For some reason, I told myself I wouldn't like E, P, L and was resolved to not bother with her other books. I had just finished a Maya Angelou book, an author I had the same reservations about. I was right about M.A.; I can't read her books, but I was wrong about E. G. She has done some really interesting research on the institution of marriage that I have enjoyed reading about so far. I recommend it.

7/29 Woso is back in season. It is like a potato but much together and like a sweet potato but not as sweet. Serve it with salt and some pepper sauce and I can't stop eating it. One woman fries it every Friday at the market. In my anxiousness to chow down, I always arrive before the first batch is done and sit with her to wait. Today her daughter was cooking and me, “I be ke n terimuso ya Asetou?” (Will you be my friend Asetou) in the most sincere voice that would make you think she had never had one. Of course, I said yes. (Note: She visits me every afternoon to say hello and greet me with a big smile. We don't talk about much; what she did that day and what I did, and then she runs off to do some errand or other. P.S. I like when Malian women ask me to bring them back a pair of pants the next time I am in town.

7/30 Today the Velveteen Rabbit and his girlfriend died. Throats cut, skinned, and bones chopped up in front of me. Everyone in the family was going to eat it that evening. A hedgehog met its fate in the fields a few hours later. This was to be eaten only by the kids who found it. I spent the day in the field picking peanuts with a friend.

7/31 Rereading journal. I see from 7/13 last year: “It will be strange not to return to Oliver. I'm so used to it being my home. I spent three years there, and I survived. I think that makes me feel better about my current situation.” Hah! My host mom and I have different views on dirty. I think it is dirty to defecate on my hands and eat with them five minutes later. Malians women are disgusted when I don't sweep my yard every single morning. There are only a few leaves out front, but I spend 40 minutes sweeping it all. It seems Malians have a penchant for forgetting their kids in the fields kilometers from home the same way American parents forget their kids at rest stops on road trips or at home. I equally enjoy hearing these stories retold by my dad and host dad.

8/1 The sounds on the metal roof are not those of a lizard crawling around on top of the door-at least not always. Instead, it is the sound of a rat's tail hitting the roof as it walks on the wooden beams bolstering the roof to my house. I move a trap to it's favorite beam.

8/2 My first and probably last day to fast in Mali. I know millions of people do this every day for a month every year for Ramadan, but I am not one of them so I'll give you a bit of a play by play. But first The other day my host dad asked if I was going to fast. I told him maybe so the next day at the mayor's office he asks me again in front of five other people who were fasting. They encouraged me to do it so I told them tomorrow would be the day. My stipulation- I will be drinking water. They tell me I don't need it and when I tell them I drink three liters of water a day they tell me this is far too much. On a typical day, Malians drink maybe a cup of water from what I see. At the office, things were different. Nobody was talking except the men on the radio. Men were laying on benches sleeping, shutting themselves in their office (one man locked himself inside the office for all three hours while another just sat staring at the wall), or leaving early. This was day one of Ramadan. That night, in order to seal the deal, my host dad told my family, all 15 of them, that I would be fasting tomorrow but that I insisted on drinking water. Myuma said, “Spch, that isn't fasting,” and Jelika said, “A te se” (She can't fast). This phrase- she can't- is my least favorite phrase (tubabu being my least favorite chant, of course). I use the word to say things like, Can I sit here, or I can start this tomorrow. Malians use it to tell me all I cannot do. Beyond breathing, they seem to think I can do nothing. Ok, fine. If drinking water isn't real fasting, I guess I won't be drinking. And trust me honey, I won't be eating either. Because I can. If you can do it. I can do it. (By the way, she doesn't fast. EVER) 430 AM: I walk to my family's house where my hose dad says, “Oh Asetou, are you going to fast today?” Really man? We ate to, a bite of fish, and drank coffee. I returned home to sleep. 700: Madu comes with his “koko” call. (Koko means wall but they said it as knock, knock, which I think is really funny.) I try to ignore him. My door is closed. I am in my pjs. I give in when he won't give up. I open the door and he gives me a big smile. Nothing else. No reason to visit, but this is the time he usually brings me my breakfast. I told him to go home and shut my door. 745: “Koko Asetou.” Really Madu? Again, he doesn't give up. This time it is a spoon. Just a spoon. 10: I go to the doctor's office where Ina brags about my farming skills, something every Malian says I cannot do. You should see the look of shock on their faces and their concerned glances at my hands. 1030: I begin seeing stars and feel like I have been gnawing on chalk all morning. 1130: I finish my lesson plan for Bambara/English class tomorrow. The English was added as a side detail during the fasting peer pressure conversation. 12: Today is the first time I feel personally offended by the heat of this country. It has not rained in a week and it much hotter than other days this month. Anyways, I made it through the day. At 630 I go to my host family's house to wait for the call to break the fast. They do the call on TV and on the radio. We eat porridge and coffee first so as to not upset our stomachs with heavy food right away. Right now is a fitting time for me to fast with all that is going on in East Africa. Not drinking or eating water that is a few feet away can be difficult, but I can't imagine the feeling of hopelessness of not having water or food available to me.

8/3 First class a success. We did the Bambara alphabet and then I wrote the basic greetings, switching up the vowels (there are two es and two os) and asking them to choose the correct spelling. Next we did the English alphabet. They confuse a, h, and 8; j and g because of the French pronunciation of these letters; and Malians generally struggle to say r. Finally, we did Good morning/ afternoon/ night, How are you?, Fine, thanks./ How is your family?/ and They are fine. (Note: As of 8/6 I still have a bumb on my head from carrying a chalkboard across the village from my house to the mayor's office) Also, the mouse met his fate last night. He ran head first into the trap, and the force knocked him and the trap from the beam ten feet up, and I found him on the floor in the morning. My host dad removed him from my house, admired my mouse trap, and picked the mouse up by the tail to give to the kids to eat.

I know that should be obvious at this point in time. I have been here for a year come July third so I should know. And I do know, but I am in a slump right now. I'm allowing myself this one blog post where I get to complain so consider yourself forewarned. From December to May I was busy. I had a formation to organize and literacy classes four days a week. I traveled all the time to sit in on these classes. When things slowed down, I started teaching the women in the classes to make mosquito repellent (that they never made for themselves), improved stoves (that they love and want to make for other women to make money), and soap (that they love and want to sell...eventually). As of today, I have a formation planned for Friday, Monday, and one more in late July. I am trying to get hand washing stations made, but this requires little to none of my time beyond a little people chasing. I visit the health center to help weigh babies and pregnant women, but I am still bored. Most days, my only responsibilities include getting my bowl of porridge when my host mom knocks, making myself lunch, and going to my family's house for dinner. Otherwise, I have nothing to do. Literally nothing. I have my Kindle I can read as well as hardback books when the Kindle battery dies. I can study for the GRE, work on my Bambara, do some crosswords or sudokus. There is no TV, no internet, or video games. I can't call home or friends because I have limited phone service and a five minute call home is $2. Within a few hours of phone calls, I will use up my entire months salary. Right now, being at site feels a bit like being in prison, although people socialize in prison and can find people who speak their language. There is definitely more variety in diet, recreation time, TV, and most have some sort of work to do each day. You might ask, well, why don't you just go out and socialize? I do. I try. But the mother tongue of 97% of villagers is Samogho, and they prefer it to all others. When I go out to talk with people, half greet me in Samogho. Most of the people know I don't speak Samogho, and do it because they think it is really, really funny. Obviously I don't. Because I did not choose this village. My boss did. Because I did not choose to learn Bambara. My boss did. Because I tried to learn Samogho and it didn't work. My tutor was chosen because she is in my host family, and was not fit to be a teacher. Fit or not, she was chosen because my family wanted someone in their family to be able to make some money. (This is very typical in Mali. Five of the original 18 teachers were illiterate. They couldn't write their own name, but they were related to village chiefs or other respected people so they were chosen to get the per diem and rice and sauce everyday. It took ten minutes to catch on and were sent home to find new teachers.) What happens when I go out to visit with people is that they 1) continue to speak Samogho and ignore the fact that I don't understand, 2) speak a mixture of the two languages so I don't understand, 3) speak Bambara so quickly I can't follow (although they make no attempt to include me anyways so it doesn't matter if I understand or not), or 4) rarely, rarely they speak to me, but it is so rare that it takes me by surprise and I forget how to speak at all. This wouldn't matter if I could remember to speak because I don't understand anyone due to the Samogho accent they speak Bambara with and because I am so rarely spoken to that my listening skills are terrible. When I visit other villages outside of my commune though, I understand everything being said and everyone understands everything that I say. It is extremely frustrating knowing that somewhere out there are villages I could fit into so much more easily with far fewer language problems. As a result, I feel terrible. I am so tired of being ignored, spoken around, or laughed at for not understanding. After having a panic attack one day and making a trip into Bamako for some mental R and R, Peace Corps has tried to help by visiting my village and explaining why these language problems are so annoying/frustrating/challenging for me. They used the exact same word and explanations I used for eight months. The people of the village took them seriously but they did not take me serious when I said them, which makes me feel unable to solve my own problems when people do not believe what I say or do not understand how grave things are when I say them. They said it was hard to speak Bambara because they feel most comfortable in Samogho. This ignores the fact that I do not feel comfortable speaking Bambara, but I do it because they asked me to come to their village to help them. It is give and take. Then they tried to say my family can't speak Bambara, which is a lie with the exception of the small children. Then they said, well the two other white people speak Samogho, why can't she? They spent more time learning Bambara than I did, and have lived in Mali for nearly ten years, and are working to make Samogho a written language. It is their job to speak it. I have been here a year and will stay only one more. Why would I try to learn two new languages while trying to not forget absolutely all of my French? Oh, and I did try Samogho, but as I said, it didn't work out because people were too greedy helping themselves make money to try and help me. Furthermore, it had to be explained why it hurts my feelings to hear people call me by the other white woman's name. Sometimes, they confuse who we are, although the other woman has said herself she is nearly old enough to be my parent. We look alike if you consider being white, a similar build, and brunettes similar. I know people think I am her without using her name when they ask me how her husband is. At any rate, people did not understand why it upset me to be called her name. They actually laughed when they admitted they confused the two of us sometimes, though we don't frequent the same places (she, in her office, me, at the health center, school, or mayor's office). First of all, I live by a Malian name so I obviously do not want to go by the other woman's Malian name. We are two different people; we are not that same. I have to explain this a lot. They know there are two of us but don't get that we are different. I'm never sure what they mean when they ask if we are the same. Neither of us are French and we come from different countries. This is very hard for them to understand. People ask for my things a lot. They want my bike, my sandals, my clothes. It's a fun game to them. I am a novelty because of the color of my skin so I get stared at everywhere I go. I go for walks and little kids chase me for a minute or two yelling my name over and over saying "Ca va? Ca va?" They don't know what ca va means; they only think it is what you say to white people. Once I escape these kids, new ones show up. I sit at the health center or literacy classes and five kids stand and stare. Just stare. I take it better now than before, but is is still annoying. Adults do it too. People don't say anything until I do, and even then they laugh as they shoo people away. Rainy season is here until September. Literacy classes will begin in December or January. I can't figure out how I can pass the time. I'm waiting for months of my life to go by. Just waiting. And I don't know how to fix it. Yeah, I'm pretty bummed. This is nothing to say for the small daily sacrifices. No electricity. A latrine. Bucket baths. Flies everywhere all of the time. Biking 8 miles just to get to the main road and then having to wait hours for a dangerous, cramped bus with no windows or A/C. The heat. Doing laundry by hand. Mud everywhere when it rains. Waiting half an hour to get a single bucket of water. Eating new foods, wearing long skirts, heat rash, power going out for hours every time I come to the city (4PM- midnight just now). Taking malaria meds everyday. Not getting to talk to friends or family. Being socially isolated from other volunteers and people who speak English. There are positives. I like most people in my host family, even if I can't communicate with them. Madu is my absolute favorite little kid. I gave him an old butter tub the other day and he told my hose dad it was cekani, or very pretty. He loved it. He spent the day filling it up with water and pouring it from the tub to an old tomato can and back. I gave him an old magazine. For a week, every single night after dinner, he would go into the house to get his magazine and then he would come back out and sit alone quietly reading it. He brings me my breakfast sometimes; I love when he is the first person I see everyday with his big bright smile. I like when he speaks about me and says my Malian name, even though I don't understand what he says because he only speaks Samogho. I give him little snacks and he treasures them for as long as possible. The women of the health center are awesome. They speak to me in Bambara. They tease each other, and slowly I am feeling more comfortable with them. I hold their babies while they work (they always conveniently pee on me on the days I do my laundry). They let me weigh women's bellies, listen to the babies heart beat, weigh and take the height of the babies. I sit with them in the afternoons at their house, and play with the kids. I love Adjiarra. Her 4th birthday is Monday and I can't wait to give her some nail polish. She is one of the few kids I can talk to because she never learned Samogho and because she isn't dumbstruck by my skin. I like the teachers as well. None of them speak Samogho because they come from villages further north. They understand how frustrating it is to live in a village where Bambara is not the primary language, as do their children. They understand hygiene better than most and are willing to let me give presentations in their classes or do maps or murals on the walls. They understand what it is I am there for and help explain this to other people. I like having all the privacy in the world, when I don't find myself surrounded by kids in my yard as I sit under my mango tree reading. I can exercise, go for walks just to greet people, and people love when I just sit with them, even if I don't talk to them. I have lots of free time to read books I have wanted to read for a long time, but I need some work to go with all of the free time. I should write letters home, but I get lazy. I can handle the same food each day and begin craving it after a few days away from site. The women from literacy classes love everything I teach them to do. They give me a dozen blessings everyday. The other day they blessed that I should come visit them after classes, that I should teach them to do more activities, that I would be healthy, have a safe trip home, and thanked me for helping them, and on and on until I thought I would burst with happiness. They cook food for me when I come do a formation, walk my bike to the road, where they all shake my hand as I leave. When we are all on the same page, I am able to joke around with the men at the mayor's office. We pick on each other for anything and everything. On those days, I feel like I am appreciated and that I can actually speak Bambara. They let me work in the office to do Bambara-French dictionary translations. They listen to every idea I have for projects and thank me. I just get annoyed when they do nothing to help with literacy classes, lie to me about having money to pay teachers, and a hundred other things. The other day I went to a soccer game celebrating the end of the school year. I was given a seat in the front with all of the more highly respected individuals, as I always am, with the kids all crowded around our chairs. I really enjoyed my time sitting there. I recognized all of the men sitting in those chairs. I knew all of their faces, and quite a few of their names. I knew what grade or subject they taught in the school or what they did in the health center. I watched the mayor, first cycle school director, and two other teachers go out to the pitch and laughed at them joking around out there because I could imagine what they were saying as they were dancing around being silly. I could laugh at the players acting all professional because they are students who greet me or invite me to have tea with them sometimes. When one student walked with a swagger and acted very cool, but then got on his knees to beg the referee not to card him, I knew it matched his personality and could laugh at it. In other words, I understood who was who and what they were doing instead of feeling completely confused like I was when I first arrived. I feel like I am integrating, but it is taking so much longer and requiring so much more of my time, patience, and energy compared to other villages because of Samogho. So there. Things are bad. But things are good. But right now more things are frustrating me than they were a month ago. And next month they will probably be less as I actually hit that one year mark and reflect more on when I have done here and because that is how Peace Corps is. Some days it is really hard and I just want to hide in my hut, and other days I run around like crazy for nine or ten hours trying to go to all of the meetings, formations, and soccer games I have been invited to.

I have been weighing the pros and cons of writing and posting this blog post. First, I wanted to give a better glance into the life of the average Malian. To show their daily habits, or in many cases, the lack there of as you will shortly see. Second, it is a way for me to express some of my daily frustrations in improving sanitation practices in my villages. In a way that will also tell you about a really awesome behavioral change I saw last week. This post isn't meant to make fun of or criticize Malians. It also isn't meant for you to cringe your nose and criticize. Hygiene is not something taught in Mali, in school or otherwise. So my note of basic health problems along with very short notes are below followed by a success story.

1. Few people wash their hands when coming from the latrine. No toilet paper here. Just your left hand.

2. Few people wash their hands with soap before cooking.

3. Few people wash their hands with soap before eating. Everyone eats from the same communal bowl with their hands. They then feed themselves and babies with their unwashed hands.

4. Few people wash their dishes with soap.

5. Most people drink water from wells without using bleach to clean it. They also drink water from the stream sometimes. Chances are high that I would be puking my guts out within hours of drinking unfiltered water and would probably have amoebas in no time at all.

6. People wash their clothes in the stream.

7. People shit in the stream. What is my upstream is your downstream, but the problems this brings about doesn't change anyone's behaviors.

8. Women stop breastfeeding their children, no matter what their age, if/when they become pregnant.

9. People do not sleep under mosquito nets. They do not take any form of prophylaxis to prevent malaria, and from what I can tell, they have never heard of mosquito repellent until I teach them how to make it. Malaria kills so many every year, and it is a terribly painful illness, yet nothing is done to prevent malaria by the average Malian. A new initiative is being started in Mali so that, for every two people in a concession, the family will get one mosquito net. The upshot is that is should help with malaria, but it means people are doing nothing to help themselves without an NGO or the government stepping in to do all of the work for them. Malians are so used to getting things for free. It has become an expectation to get paid to attend a formation (paid to learn in Mali, pay to learn in America), to get free handouts at the health center, etc. It is very frustrating and undermines their ability to help themselves.

10. Women give birth in their home or on the concrete floor of the maternity room at the health center. This space is then cleaned with the equivalent of laundry detergent and some water by her friend. The nurses wear a glove or sometimes even two gloves with aiding the women in giving birth.

11. Children are allowed to crawl on the ground where cows, sheep, donkeys, goats, chickens, etc have just walked, and, more often than not, shat.

12. Trash is thrown wherever you stand. In my yard, in your yard, it doesn't matter. Wherever you are, there is your trash can. I get annoyed when people eat mangoes in my yard and spit the skins on the ground. I just want to yell, “You know, I have to clean that as soon as you leave!?”

13. All people blow their nose by covering one nostril and blowing into the wind. They use one finger to wipe the excess snot from their nose, which they then wipe on the wall of their house, the school, or their skirt or pants.

14. Never once have I seen somebody covering their mouth when coughing. Cough on a baby, food, or just in the air where 10 people sit.

15. People use sticks to clean their ears.

16. They use larger sticks to clean their teeth. Toothbrushes and toothpaste are nearly nonexistent. Most people have rotting teeth and maybe only half the amount our mouths are capable of holding because of their constant intake of sugar in tea or porridge. Teeth are stained from tea, but they are also caked with plaque.

17. Female genital mutilation is practiced on 95% of women. The immediate risk of this procedure is huge. It is illegal in Mali. It is the older women who perform the “procedure,” typically with a razor. When performing multiple procedures at the same day, they do not always use a new razor or clean the razor. That is only the immediate risk and says nothing of the long term risks and consequences.

18. Many people practice open defecation. They do not have a latrine with a hole. They have a short 4 wall room where the ground is no different than the ground outside of wall where they urinate. And it just sits. Or drains out of the hole in the wall where people and animals walk. They go out to their fields to do anything more than that. Then when it rains...well, shit, literally, everywhere.

These are the problems I came up with in five minutes of brainstorming. Like I said, I have a success story to share, which is the main reason I chose to write. There is a village 5km from where my village is. The NGO CLTS or APTC in French does a presentation in villages throughout the country. They come into the village and do several demonstrations. They hold up two plates, one with shit on it and another with food on it. The flies then fly from one plate to another, and they talk about what happens when people don't cover their latrines or their food, namely that people end up consuming poop. They discuss the benefits of latrines to open defecation; a cleaner village, fewer flies, improved health.

The results of this presentation in the village was outstanding. I was invited to come and look at the results. I went with my General Secretary, in part because he is extremely excited about this program and would like to do it in my village as well. We walked throughout the village to check out some of the 68 new latrines the village made all by themselves. They used the traditional method of using latrines, in which you dig the hold, lay tree branches on the surface, and then cover the branches with dirt and sand to form the ground. Every latrine had a covered hole. They all have soak pits. This is a hole dug outside of the latrine where bucket bath water drains to in order to be absorbed or to evaporate. This prevents mosquitoes from breeding in open water and increasing rates of malaria in the village. There was soap inside or sitting just outside the latrine as well as a selidaga, water container for cleaning hands after each trip. People have constructed trash cans, short circular containers made out of dirt like their houses and latrines where they burn the trash. All of the animals have been moved to the exterior of the concession walls so their feces is outside of the house. The piles of wood used to cook have been moved to the exterior of the halls to keep bugs out. Women wash clothes outside of the home to prevent standing water in the house. The wells are covered so dirt and insects can't get in the water.

They understand how to improve their living conditions. They talk about washing their hands with soap and water. A few days after checking out the latrines I returned to teach the women how to make soap. I did a demonstration with them. I put my hand in cooking oil, which is also used to make the soap, and then I began to shake each woman's hands. I asked them what was on their hand. I told them that the oil was like germs, and that germs are spreading when you shake hands. We talked about other times in which they need to wash their hands with soap and water. Malians make a special sound to show they are listening and that they hear you. Noises came from all of the women as we discussed these things.

It was the first time I have brought up the subject of washing your hands with soap and water with a Malian without being immediately laughed at. The. First. Time. Since arriving here. It felt so nice to have people understand I actually had a point instead of thinking some white girl who thinks she knows everything is telling them what to do. The reason I could do this was because CLTS is a program put on by Malians so it is Malians stigmatizing unhealthy habits instead of an outsider. I'm so glad it is a program done by Malians for Malians, and that this village showed they could do this all on their own. Moussa wants to get this project going in my village and I want to help, but also want to respect their ability to help themselves. Right now my biggest goal is to make sure that we actually getting around to doing this activity in my village.

I never would have thought that getting people to defecate in a hole in the ground and to wash their hands with soap would become one of my biggest concerns during my service, nor did I know it would be such a challenge to do, but it's nice to see a kid reach for the soap before dinner at night or to hear the matrone lecture her daughter about using the latrine and washing her hands before eating. Very rewarding.

If you look at the literacy classes I organized in my commune this year from the perspective of an American, who is used to immediate results as well as an individual used to being able to produce success through the force of sheer will alone, the literacy classes were an utter failure. If you look at it through the lens of a development agent, things start to look a bit different. Mali has the lowest literacy rate in the world. It is estimated that roughly 25% of the citizens are literate. It consistently ranks as one of the five poorest countries in the world. Combine these two facts and things look pretty abysmal. What is the point of being able to read and write if there are no jobs waiting for you out there? Why bother going to high school if you only need a 9th grade DEF certificate/diploma to be a midwife, one of the highest paid people in my village (when they get paid)? These are questions for youngsters and their parents though, not for the grown woman aged 20-60, who has at least half a dozen children to support. Their roads have been well paved already. One woman told me, through an interpreter, that the short and sweet answer to this question is that learning to read and write would make them feel whole, like a complete person. Touching as it is, it is hard to remember in the throes of literacy season when things seem to be going wrong so much of he time. Nobody ever showed up to class on time. Woman agreed to pay a fine of 25-100 CFA (3-12 cents) for arriving late, but it seems most tardiness was exempt from fines through some tacit agreement only I was unaware of. One woman would arrive 30 minutes late and pay up, but the woman who came in an hour late paid nothing. Women don't have watches though. Their morning responsibilities include sweeping the yard, making breakfast, bathing kids, heating bath water, or doing some early fieldwork, if not all of the above. They almost always come to class with a baby strapped to their back a a snack for them in their hand. I wouldn't show up on time either. Additionally, time just isn't respected in Mali. Meetings regularly start 2 hours late without complaint and the participants are almost always men, who do have watchers and far fewer domestic responsibilities. Just last week a meeting started an hour late and my only thought was SUCCESS! The one excuse I have trouble making about time was the regular tardiness of teachers. We prepared for this by finding 2 teachers per class, but the less skilled one was always first to arrive, perhaps out of respect to the other teacher. As the leader, and respected teacher, I expected more of them and thought they would expect more of themselves. Then again it is not uncommon for a school teacher to leave his class for 20 minutes to talk to a friend or to drink tea while the kids run around screaming as class continues in the classroom next door. I may be able to explain the tardiness of the literacy teachers, but never the school teachers, though... Teachers did not get paid. I held a meeting with all of the dugutigis (village chiefs) in the commune before teacher training. I explained sustainability in the sense that it was not sustainable for Peace Corps to pay teachers' salaries because I would be returning to America and any salaries would end with my departure. U sonna (They agreed) and then said teachers would earn 12,500 a month ($25). The only problem is that the village and commune had no such money to pay the teachers. Of course, nobody bothered to mention this to me or the teachers when they were informed they would be receiving a motivation payment. I stayed out of it and didn't ask because it didn't feel like it was my place. I paid for training, they paid salaries- or were supposed to. A month ago though, a teacher told another teacher, a woman conveniently in my host family, that she wanted her money. The woman in my family was clearly shy and embarrassed to tell me about this scene and only brought it up when the two of us were sitting alone one day. I went to the mayor's office. When I mentioned it, the General Secretary looked down with a dopey grin every Malian shares that clearly shows guilt. When asked if they would be paid, an equally dopey laugh followed by a eyes clearly told me the truth was no. This is irritating for so many reasons. I took the right step in talking to the dugutigiw to ensure money, trusted them, but was never told there was no money until last week. Furthermore, I was told that, had I explained fund raising options earlier this problem would not have happened. I, however, had no way of knowing they were needed. The cynic in my scoffs when told we will find a solution for next year. The teachers' reaction is mind blowing from my American perspective. It has always been a shrug of the shoulders and an, “A main” (it isn't good) comment with no passion whatsoever. I went three months without my salary. I knew it was a mix up of bank accounts and knew I would get the money eventually. I was simply irritated by extra trips to the bank and phone calls to Peace Corps. We expect our money and get it even if it is a struggle. No teacher has gotten angry or raised their voice. It is clearly expected here. They all, in the end, just say, san were (another year). It isn't just the village that lacks money for literacy center teachers. One volunteer went to the CAP, the capital of the few villages and their communes, to see if they would pay the motivation payments. For several years, on woman in my village received 25,000 CFA a month for several years, but that was several years ago. Not surprisingly, that cut in funding corresponded with the last literacy class taught in my village. The CAP explains that they barely have the money to pay the actual school teachers, let along seemingly expendable literacy teachers. This isn't like a college club that needs funding for one obscure event or another. This is a government program, a national educational government program for a country that is only the size of Texas twice over. It's only one example of the extreme poverty here. Of course showing up late is better than not showing up at all. Literacy season is December/ January- April mostly because it is not rainy season during these months when everyone is in the fields all day long. Literacy season therefore coincides with all other non-rainy season activities, primarily wedding season. It was absolutely normal for me to bike 5, 12, 15 kilometers to hear that the students and teachers were at the furukeyorola (wedding place). This could be in another village or my village. Weddings aren't just an afternoon and evening affair. Its at least a 3 day long even, meaning students missed 2-4 class days for each wedding, and weddings happen all of the time. A wedding is a wedding though. People can't skip them and can't be in two places at once so classes go out the window. Nothing is done to make up for a missed hours though. Women don't wan to learn to read' This is not intended to be a blanket statement, but one village decided one woman from each family would be chosen to go to class, but only at the family's convenience, regardless of whether she could read or not, and especially regardless of whether she wanted to go to class or not. As a result, some women only showed up, they didn't tune in. They would fall asleep or just not pay attention. It also meant some wo men could already read and write. So long as one woman could read the phrase, the teacher would call it good and move on. I would protest saying they couldn't all read the words. The teacher would select one literate person to complete an exercise and would then say, “Yes they can.” I would as a struggling student to do the same exercise and the teacher would mutter the answers under her breath and give the same defiant expression and response. Are you kidding me?! Well, no. Memorization is as good as reading here. Teachers at the school do the same things. 9th graders can't go through the most basic greetings with me, though they study English from 7th-9th grade. They certainly can't read English with any confidence either. But they memorize a script so very well and repeat it back to you. They study French beginning in the 2nd grade but struggle with that too. Thursday a boy said, “Je suis l'homme” I am the boy. He didn't know to say je suis un homme. I am a boy. Memorization and repetition is the way it is. It is a habit I can't figure out how to break in the literacy teachers. For the most part, regardless of how the women came to be in the class, they do want to read, at least a little. Despite the teacher method used, they do want to learn. They study before the teacher arrives or during the breaks or they study in the evenings. I suppose those who don't care much just don't study or try in class and that is their choice. Like I said, learning to read won't change the fact that they are farmers so they are studying for their own personal reasons. Last but no least, oh certainly not least at all, the women still cannot read. Many still cannot identify all letters of the alphabet. They cannot locate the page you tell them to find. For some reason they haven't all grasped that pages are numbered chronologically so page 8 is not at the back o f the book and is before page 15. Some still open the book upside down and flip pages, apparently not noticing that even the picture at the top of the page is upside down. But it does meant that they can all identify several letters of the alphabet. They can even tell you what sound two letters make when combined. Those who received some schooling are able to put together multiple sounds to read basic words, and those who could read already can now read slightly faster with more confidence. They can't always find the correct page, but they are extremely good at math. Without ever seeing or having to memorize a multiplication table they can easily tell you what 7 X 6 is or do long division. Many have held a pen for the first time and have discovered their own unique way of holding both pen and paper to write. It's usually a creative method and almost always requires extreme squinting or head cocking to read, but it is there. Although they have not learned to read well or sometimes at all, they are getting something out of it or they would stop showing up. I have taught them some new skills. I've taught 7 classes to make mosquito repellent. I've taught others to make soap and am teaching others to make improved stoves in the coming weeks. For next year, the General Secretary has asked that I teach more life skills type of activities . In this way, even if they aren't reading and writing, they will learn about basic hygiene, health, nutrition, etc, and I think it is a great idea. I want to do fund raising and have planned to hold a formation with my boss to help the village think of ways to raise money for teachers. They don't want to strengthen the program by creating a literacy committee. I want people from the village to visit classes, record student hours spent studying, organize fund raising activities, and otherwise attempt to make this sustainable. I have told them it is too hard for me alone to visit classes and that it will never work when I leave. They say they understand, but like many things in Mali , agreement and promises go unfulfilled because people don't like to tell you no or are afraid to admit to a problem. Then there's always that West African rumor that Malians are just plain lazy...but that can't be true...

My house is alive. There are creatures living in the walls, on the walls, below the floor, on the ceiling, etc. Like a rain forest, my house has its own ecosystem. First are the lizards. There once were two of them that happily lived with me. They enjoyed crawling through the hole where the tin roof meets the wall just above my doorway. One day I came home and one dead near my bed. It seems he was still in the house when I left, after locking the metal doors and windows, and suffocated. I found him splayed on the ground with his arms sticking out and his long tail extended straight behind him. Another day I came home and found a piece of rope in the door handle of my screened door. Curiously (well, stupidly), I wondered how the rope got there while I was gone and had to reach out and touch it. Imagine my surprise when part of the “rope” fell to the floor and floundered around while the rest of it crawled back of the wall towards the ceiling. Naturally, after jumping away from the door, I forgot the word for lizard and couldn't explain to my homologue what had caused me to jump. New lizards have taken the place of the original two and prefer spending their time resting during the day and crawling on top of the roof during the night. There is a special lizard, that probably isn't a lizard, that is super fat with a blue fade to green fade to yellow tail that loves crawling on my concession walls.

Then there are the termites. They have created long trails across the wooden beams that are tied to the tin roof to hold it in place. As I lay in bed, I hear the sound of pieces of dirt falling to the ground as they crawl in my house, pushing dirt out of the way as they go. They come in through the roof and they are crawling under my house, breaking up my cement floor as they go and making trails of dirt up the wall, many that were painted over and are now a permanent fixture of the house. The giant ants (the size of termites) used to enjoy crawling in through the roof as well and go diving through the trunk I had all of my food in. It took me a few weeks of coming home to them every night to figure out what they wanted. I eventually discovered a hole in my sugar bag and discovered that they had eaten my entire can of Nescafe (big loss there, not). I bought a bucket to hold my spices and they have, for the most part, left. The cockroaches are a recent development. Usually they just hang out in my latrine and jump out at me every night when I lift the cover of the latrine up. I stomp on them when I can and then kick them out of the hole in my latrine where my bucket bath water runs out. I typically score a hat trick every night. The cockroaches in my house seem particularly dumb. They just hang out on the wall and die. I see them at night and find them dead on their back on the floor the next morning. I have written about the mice before so won't go into that again, other than to say that I got a new door about a month ago so they cannot crawl in the main door at all anymore. Needless to say, I really like my new door. For a few months, I was greeted by hundreds of small flies as the sun was setting. I don't know what kind of flies they are. They aren't black- they're white. Their wings are thinner and originate at their neck instead of their sides. They reproduce in holes in the exterior walls. It seems that they crawl in my window as the sun sets because they like that the inside of my house is darker than the outside. So they crawl through the screen and then just crawl up and down the screen of the window. I don't really understand. Hundreds of them crawl around at each window. It is the only time I hate having so many windows in my house. The only time. Of course there are spiders too. Compared to other volunteers, mine are harmless. The first is the daddy long leg spiders. I came back from Sikasso after a week in the town and discovered that one had covered most of one of my doorways inside my house. Wondering how large of a web it would spin, I refrained from tearing it down. It covered most of the upper corner of the door. The other spider is a small, round spider that moves sideways more than forward. They are fast. I don't even try to kill them. These spiders like to hide behind the pictures taped on the wall, where they reproduce. The cockroaches particularly enjoy hanging out in the small space under my water filter. I know cockroaches play into the circle of life that exists in my house, but I can't handle their chirping. I am glad I found their hiding spot because I can eliminate them quickly. They also enjoy hanging out in the cracks between the wood of my chairs under my gwa.

Once in a while the village swarm of bees visits my house. Apparently the trick is to burn some leaves in a bin to prevent them from entering your house. My host mom told me that I just need to stay inside of my house and u te foyi ke (they won't do anything). If you listen to bees buzzing that long, you will start to feel like you are going crazy. On that note, what is a bee-line? The shortest distance between two buzz stops!

Then there are the goats. They aren't in my house, but they are within my concession walls although they shouldn't be. They love, love, love to climb on the walls of the concession. I wake up some mornings to 7 or 8 of them on my walls and have to shoo them away. Baby goats are super cute though. Recently a goat chose to have a baby under my gwa. I had just been out of town and so had not put up all of my chairs outside of my gwa (put them in my house when I leave so they don't get stolen.) I know the goat. I never knew the goat well enough to name it, but I did know it. It was enormously pregnant for several months. It could hardly walk without it's belly reaching the ground. Three months ago my family tried to induce the goat, but it failed miserably because it was too early for it to give birth, though you would never have known by looking at it. Anyways, I came home and found two little baby goats and the mom-still gigantic- along with all of the lovely birthing fluids all over the place under my gwa. I told Fatumatah, Ba ye den jigi n ka gwa kono (literally, a goat set down a baby in my gwa) and asked who the tigi (owner) was. She was worthless and did nothing to help. I hid out in my house giving them their time and told my family a few hours later. They thought this was the funniest thing ever, but my homologue came and removed the baby goats so that the mama goat would follow it. Then of course you have the sheep that leave their droppings all over the yard, the cows that wander into my yard and sometimes attempt to walk into my gwa. I heard an animal the other day and assumed it was a sheep because they are always around. Imagine my surprise to look up from my sudoku to see a cow a foot from my face. She clearly wasn't interested in sharing so continued her wandering elsewhere. The chickens squawk all morning, the roosters crow, occasionally a donkey gets ticked off and makes a mad sprint across my backyard hee-hawing his way along. I think it is so funny when they do this but it seems to scare people.

Creatures that have not taken up residency in my house yet are scorpions and I am very happy for it. Unlike other volunteers I have also not had any bats in my house. Also have not yet seen snakes near my house, although I did once see a snake in my village. I almost ran it over with my bike. That close. Maybe I am a parseltongue like Harry Potter? No more comments about this.

“If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos.”

Edward O. Wilson

I was going to send this to my mom, but realized I was only talking about project ideas and that, maybe, if I shared them with readers, I would feel more compelled to follow up and do the projects I have ideas about. Let me start with current projects

1. Literacy classes- They are going well, but it is definitely a dooni dooni (slowly, slowly) project. The teachers have low literacy levels themselves, and it takes them a while to read and write the words to their students. It is amazing how much they have been able to learn thus far given that they have never been to school before. In my village, there are three signs to read. There are signs at both schools, signs at the entrance to my village, and a sign at the CESCOM. If you never saw the symbols we use for letters until you were 25, 40, or 70 in some cases, you can imagine how hard it would be to differentiate between a b, d, or p or tell the difference between an f, t, and r and so on. Most women have learned the sounds of the letters and can write them, but right now they are all trying to put the sounds together to form syllables. We have not gotten to the level of words yet. In Bambara, nearly every syllable is made of a vowel and consonant. Teachers and I repeatedly ask, b ni a, o ye mun ye ( b and a made what word)? They repeat the sounds of b and a but have not yet figured out how to put them together. I give them hints sometime. For example, n and a obviously forms na, which means sauce in Bambara so I ask the women, what do you eat every day? They say to and- and then they get a big smile on their face- na and suddenly understand the word. At any rate, this is going well enough, but we need to start sooner next year so that women have more time to study. The rainy season will be here in a month so they will soon stop studying, before they have really learned to read. Dooni dooni though.

World Map

I am working on the world map in the 9th grade classroom. I have finished painting all 9 colors, but I missed a few countries/ some were not on the map so I need to fill in the gaps, label the countries, and put up the Peace Corps logo. Then I want to have a conversation with the geography teacher to talk about ways to incorporate the map into the work he does. After this is finished, I want to do a Mali map to paint the different regions in different colors, draw in the roads and rivers, and big cities. Also, I want to do the letters and numbers in the elementary school (2nd graders can't recognize letters and their sounds) and later do more drawings in my free time, etc.

Dictionary Translations

I have translated 30 pages of Bambara/French dictionary so it is now Bambara/English. I still need to type up most of the words. I have 20 left until I finish my portion. Our goal is to get this dictionary published so English speakers can learn Bambara/ new volunteers don't have to spend their time translating the dictionary and reinventing the wheel all of the time.

Health Presentations

I had one conversation with the 7th graders, where we talked about things we could do well. We wrote our names on a piece of paper and drew pictures to show what we did well. Then each student presented their photo. It went so so because my language wasn't the best at the time, and the students are not used to using their imagination. They asked me how they might draw a picture of them cooking instead of using their imagination to draw the picture. Students are never asked to tell their opinion or use their imagination so it was very challenging for them. Plus, they were nervous to present in front of the other girls. It didn't help that the village came running when they heard a toubab was teaching a lesson at the class.

My second presentation went much better. I did a presentation, in Bambara, in front of 143 9th graders and the school director. It is called the F-chart. You show the students a bunch of pictures. The first is a picture of poop, during which you ask the students, how do you eat poop? It is amusing and gets the kids going. We talked about covering our food and water bowls, washing our hands before eating and after using the latrine, about not pooping in the fields or in the water, not getting water from dirty pumps or rivers, etc. It took about 45 minutes to complete and the kids seem to have gotten a lot out of it. Because my commune has one middle school, the students come from 6 villages. My hope is that, if I continue doing these, they will take the messages back home to their village so it reaches more people.

Future projects

Stoves

Tomorrow I am going to visit another volunteer's site. She lives in a village a little closer to the Ivory Coast than I do. I am going to work with two men in her village to make a mud stove. Right now, in my village, women just put three rocks on the ground, put their burning sticks in the middle, and put their pot on top to cook. The stove has two holes that will essentially be burners. They are side by side. You only put the burning sticks under one hole, put you carve out the area between the two burners so both sides get hot, but because their are outside walls, you don't need as much firewood to reach the temperature you want and it stays hot longer as well. Because deforestation is a HUGE problem (imagine everyone in Kansas cooking with firewood for every meal), and because women must fetch firewood (imagine going out to the country by foot to chop down trees and then carrying them back home) every day, this is a cook project to save the environment and reduce the work women do. Plus, the stove is made out of mud and dead grass so it is entirely free (only need a tomato can to make the hole between the two burners to let heat through) so everyone in my village can do it. Anyways, I am going to her village tomorrow and can hopefully build a stove and get back to my village by dark. I think I will build a model stove at my house, in my yard, so I can explain it to people. My host family is going to my first experiment. I hope they like it and tell other people in my village. Ideally, I would train a few people to do them so it is sustainable.

Neem Cream

I am also planning to start making mosquito repellent. The stuff I can make here requires a bar of soap, which I will start making too, water, some leaves from a tree, and shea butter (like the shea found in lotion). Very cheap, helps protect against malaria pretty well and people apparently like it because it is a lotion and mosquito repellent. I am going to ask the doctor to let me do demonstrations every Monday and Friday for a month when women bring their kids to be weighed. Women bring their kids each month so I could hit a lot of people in that time. Almost all women make shea of their own so all they would need to buy for this is a bar of soap so it is also a good project.

Soccer Team?

I don't have a soccer ball, but the boys play soccer everyday after school. They have two or three balls so I might ask if the teacher knows where I can buy a new ball for the girls. I have been thinking of starting a team, but the girls are so busy everyday that I don't know how many can come practice during the week. I received a bunch of soccer jerseys from the Peace Corps (a bunch just showed up in Mali in the office so they gave them to education volunteers) and need to put them to use! Feel free to send me a ball!

Village Ideas

Soon the Sikasso coordinator is going to do a needs assessment in my village to help me figure out my next big funded project. I would to build latrines but want the ideas from the villagers first. I want to do education things as well but don't really know what that would be. As it is, I am going to keep doing presentations at the school and introduce an idea to make the students try harder. You just give the top female student a scarf and the top male student a hat to wear for the week. I bought a scarf in Senegal to use and think I will donate my Jayhawk hat for the guys because I never wear it.

I have to say my thoughts would seem much more organized if I would take the time to think about my blog posts before typing them up and if the power stayed on long enough to finish a blog post. That being said, I know this doesn't always make sense, but just try and make sense of it all.

Adventures with Madu and Midu Technically their names are Amadu and Amidu, but their family has shortened the names slightly. Midu is three and Madu is two. Midu is Madu's uncle. Midu's dad is Madu's older brother by about 23 years. Madu's dad is my host dad, the mayor, meaning my host dad is Midu's grandpa. I'll try and make it more confusing as we go. Lately the boys have begun spending more time at my house. The kids here have no toys to play with, with the exception of plastic used soft drink bottles, bike tires they roll around with sticks, and the rocks they find on the ground so I can understand why I might appear to be some sort of entertainment (Side note: this is not me asking you to send toys for the kids, just a note to readers). Most people enjoy staring at me, for minutes on end, even if I look them directly in the eye for a solid minute as if to say, excuse me, you are bothering me a lot so please stop staring. Usually the only way to get them to stop staring is to ask them why they are staring, and even then they don't always take the hint. One morning we spent a lot of time together. Madu's mom, my host mom, and Midu's grandma always brings me breakfast in the morning. On that particular day, Madu hung around with me, sitting in one of my chairs under my gwa, patiently waiting for me to finish so he could eat the leftovers, as he does each morning. That morning he ran and grabbed Midu. This was shocking because Madu hates sharing, in part because Momi, Madu's half brother (Momi's mom is my host dad's second wife), always steals the bowl from Madu. They polished off my bowl and ran home with it. They returned shortly later, just as I had finished making myself a cup of tea. Again, they waited patiently, occasionally eying me. Fortunately I had made far too much tea so I let them finish it off. I could not believe how they took turns taking sips and passing it back and forth. Then they just awkwardly sat there. I tried doing my sudoku, intently listening to the radio, but then the radio died and I grew annoyed with counting from 1 to 9 over and over and I could feel their little eyes on me. I took my things back inside and tried to figure something out to do with them. Suddenly I spotted the fallen leaves from my mango tree. I had just returned to site from Sikasso and hadn't had a chance to sweep my yard (they are very particular with the design they make in their yard while sweeping the dirt). I casually began sweeping up the leaves and putting them in the pile. When I grabbed some trash and started the trash and leaves on fire, they came running towards me. Lots of giggling and jumping up and down ensued. I motioned for them to get more leaves because they speak Samogho and I speak Bambara. They ran everywhere and before I knew it my yard was leaf free. They eventually ran outside of my concession to search for more leaves and handed them over the wall to me to throw into the fire. This still wasn't enough for them. Right now I have figured out that when all else fails with getting rid of kids who wander into my yard (probably 30 a day), the best thing to do is to pick mangoes off of the trees around my house. So Madu, Midu, and I went on a search for the best mangoes around. I cut the skin off of them (typically kids bite into the mango and spit the skins out all over my yard later) and they ran around eating them, dropping them on the ground, asking me to clean them again, etc. Two hours later, my host mom was walking around and chanced upon the boys. In general, people don't worry about the kids much because the villages are very safe. The only time they worry is at night when it is dark and it is bath time. She was able to distract them and they ran off with her for the rest of the morning. I didn't see them again until that night. Madu and I made tea together... fake tea that is, but tea all the same.

Eating in Mali I know I have talked about how much I enjoy eating food on special occasions, but I'm not sure I have talked about the foods I eat in Mali. To (sounds just like toe in English) To is by far the most commonly eaten food. In my village, people eat to for every meal and snacks. It is made out of corn. First, you shuck the corn, peel the corn off of the cob, and pound it into a fine dust. All day long throughout the village you can hear the women pounding corn, millet, and more. Sometimes two women will work together. To keep rhythm they will pound the corn throw their stick in the air, clap their hands together, catch the stick, and hit the corn again. While she is hitting the corn, the second woman is throwing the stick and clapping her hands. It sounds confusing and strange but it helps them to pound and not have to work alone. Once the corn has been crushed and sifted for any dirt it is cooked with water. As it is boiling, you use a huge spatula to continually stir the combination. It slowly begins to take form so you throw it in a huge bowl and let it set for a while. Eventually it forms something with the consistency between that of pudding and play-doh. Usually it forms a skin on the top you have to peel off before you eat. When it is time to eat someone tells me na shi no (come eat in Samogho) or na dumunike (come eat in Bambara). Each person takes their turn washing their hands. My family didn't wash their hands with soap before I came, but now we all take turns using the soap. Each woman washes her hands from the same bowl though, which means you're basically just swapping dirt. Fortunately I get to wash my hands first so avoid this problem. We- all of the women- eat out of the same huge bowl. The idea is for each person to respect their area of the bowl to take food from, but that doesn't always work and I awkwardly grab food that nobody else has yet touched. You grab a small hand full of to, dip it in a sauce made of a combination of vegetables, water, salt, etc. and then throw it in your mouth. Next, you lick your fingers free of to and then repeat It is a strange consistency but it doesn't taste too bad. At the end of the meal, whenever you are full, you say, N faara, which means, I am full. The women pass me the water bowl and I wash my hands. After washing, I say, A barika, which means thank you for this food. Typically this is followed by the blessing, Allah ka sumaya kono, meaning, may it cool in your stomach, i.e. we hope you do not get sick from the food. Rice Rice is considered rich people food. As a result, my family only eats rice during big fetes (parties), such as Seliba (wrote about this in the holiday blog), the end of Ramadan, the Malian anniversary of independence, or weddings. Instead of dipping the rice in the sauce, you pour the sauce directly over the rice. There are three ways of eating rice. The first is the way I eat my rice every night. My host mom cooks it for me, and I eat it with a spoon. The second way is the way Malians eat rice. They grab a huge handful of rice, scraping it on the side of the bowl as they pick it up. Then they make a fist to squish the rice into a nice mound. Next, they put their tongue at the base of their wrist and lick their hand from wrist to fingertips, grabbing the huge ball of rice and any other pieces that got away when squishing it into a ball. Repeat. The third way is the way I eat rice with my hands. I take smaller amounts of rice, and allow it to rest on my fingertips instead of squishing it into a ball in the palm of the hand. Then I use my thumb to push the rice off of the rest of my fingers into my mouth. Then lick my fingers clean and grab a new handful. A great deal of saliva is swapped in the process of eating rice and to if you haven't figured that out on your own. Meat/ Fish Once every week or two, my family is able to afford to eat meat. Each person gets a very small piece of meat, enough to eat in two or three bites. Usually it is ba sogo (sheep meat), but occasionally it is misi sogo (cow meat) or she sogo (chicken meat). My family doesn't seem to ever eat fish, but you can find plenty of fish at the market. When I visit literacy center classes, they will invite me to lunch once in a while and they will give me fish as a treat. During teacher training I insisted that the women wash their hands with soap before eating together so whenever I eat after literacy classes the teachers are sure remember to bring some soap with them so we can wash before eating. They do this out of respect for me and don't use the soap at home, but dooni dooni (slowly slowly) change will occur.

Ivory Coast/ Libya I think that it is really easy to hear about things going on throughout the world and think how such and such has nothing to do with you and has no impact on you. I would imagine many Americans would only complain about the situation in North Africa if it referred to the drastic increase in oil prices. I am guilty of this too, but lately is has begun hitting home. Problems in the Ivory Coast have made costs increase in Mali. I know of two projects on my road alone (National Road 7 is my road that leads to the Ivory Coast) that have been impacted as a result of increased prices. The size of a gwa (hanger used to weigh babies at the health center) had to be made smaller because of the price of cement, and it affected another project making latrines as well. Additionally, problems in the Ivory Coast has caused drastic power outages throughout the country. Bamako, the capital and largest city in Mali has power outages all of the time. In Sikasso, the second largest city in Mali, the power is out for probably 16 hours a day, at least. I live without electricity at least 25 days a month so you can understand how disappointing it is to spend three hours traveling to Sikasso in 100+ degree weather to do work, charge my iPod, use the computer, sleep under A/C and a fan and then find out the power went out ten minutes before I arrived and then doesn't return until after I have gone to bed or gone back to site. Obviously this also hinders all types of work that depend on computers, electricity etc. especially if the organization cannot afford a generator. Lately it has been very difficult to catch a bus on my road because there are so many refugees returning from the Ivory Coast. The buses enter the country completely full and some Ivory Coast vehicles have been allowed to bring refugees over. I don't have as much to say about the situation in Libya and it's immediate effect here in Mali, but I will say that the president of Libya has given Mali a lot of money for development projects. Recently they funded a project to build a fantastic building in Bamako that will soon house all of the ministries of the country. There are strong ties between the president from what I can understand so there may be more to the story with time. My point though, is that the things going on in a country may not immediately affect us, and we have a tendency to ignore situations or care less about them until they have an effect on us (sorry for completely butchering the use of affect and effect in this point), and even then we only care about the impact on us, not the impact on those in the country, and that impact is obviously greater, especially if it means leaving the country. Many Malians live in the Ivory Coast because there are more jobs to be found there. Right now, there are Ivoirians going into neighborhoods dominated by the Bambara ethnic group (an ethnic group from Mali) and slitting the throats of the residents. One volunteer's work partner is on the phone all of the time, can't eat, can't sleep because her family lives in one of these neighborhoods and has no means or money to return to Mali. I would challenge you to consider the impact that international events have on the residents of the country itself instead of just waiting to see how it impacts you.

I have to say my thoughts would seem much more organized if I would take the time to think about my blog posts before typing them up and if the power stayed on long enough to finish a blog post. That being said, I know this doesn't always make sense, but just try and make sense of it all.

Adventures with Madu and Midu Technically their names are Amadu and Amidu, but their family has shortened the names slightly. Midu is three and Madu is two. Midu is Madu's uncle. Midu's dad is Madu's older brother by about 23 years. Madu's dad is my host dad, the mayor, meaning my host dad is Midu's grandpa. I'll try and make it more confusing as we go. Lately the boys have begun spending more time at my house. The kids here have no toys to play with, with the exception of plastic used soft drink bottles, bike tires they roll around with sticks, and the rocks they find on the ground so I can understand why I might appear to be some sort of entertainment (Side note: this is not me asking you to send toys for the kids, just a note to readers). Most people enjoy staring at me, for minutes on end, even if I look them directly in the eye for a solid minute as if to say, excuse me, you are bothering me a lot so please stop staring. Usually the only way to get them to stop staring is to ask them why they are staring, and even then they don't always take the hint. One morning we spent a lot of time together. Madu's mom, my host mom, and Midu's grandma always brings me breakfast in the morning. On that particular day, Madu hung around with me, sitting in one of my chairs under my gwa, patiently waiting for me to finish so he could eat the leftovers, as he does each morning. That morning he ran and grabbed Midu. This was shocking because Madu hates sharing, in part because Momi, Madu's half brother (Momi's mom is my host dad's second wife), always steals the bowl from Madu. They polished off my bowl and ran home with it. They returned shortly later, just as I had finished making myself a cup of tea. Again, they waited patiently, occasionally eying me. Fortunately I had made far too much tea so I let them finish it off. I could not believe how they took turns taking sips and passing it back and forth. Then they just awkwardly sat there. I tried doing my sudoku, intently listening to the radio, but then the radio died and I grew annoyed with counting from 1 to 9 over and over and I could feel their little eyes on me. I took my things back inside and tried to figure something out to do with them. Suddenly I spotted the fallen leaves from my mango tree. I had just returned to site from Sikasso and hadn't had a chance to sweep my yard (they are very particular with the design they make in their yard while sweeping the dirt). I casually began sweeping up the leaves and putting them in the pile. When I grabbed some trash and started the trash and leaves on fire, they came running towards me. Lots of giggling and jumping up and down ensued. I motioned for them to get more leaves because they speak Samogho and I speak Bambara. They ran everywhere and before I knew it my yard was leaf free. They eventually ran outside of my concession to search for more leaves and handed them over the wall to me to throw into the fire. This still wasn't enough for them. Right now I have figured out that when all else fails with getting rid of kids who wander into my yard (probably 30 a day), the best thing to do is to pick mangoes off of the trees around my house. So Madu, Midu, and I went on a search for the best mangoes around. I cut the skin off of them (typically kids bite into the mango and spit the skins out all over my yard later) and they ran around eating them, dropping them on the ground, asking me to clean them again, etc. Two hours later, my host mom was walking around and chanced upon the boys. In general, people don't worry about the kids much because the villages are very safe. The only time they worry is at night when it is dark and it is bath time. She was able to distract them and they ran off with her for the rest of the morning. I didn't see them again until that night. Madu and I made tea together... fake tea that is, but tea all the same.

Eating in Mali I know I have talked about how much I enjoy eating food on special occasions, but I'm not sure I have talked about the foods I eat in Mali. To (sounds just like toe in English) To is by far the most commonly eaten food. In my village, people eat to for every meal and snacks. It is made out of corn. First, you shuck the corn, peel the corn off of the cob, and pound it into a fine dust. All day long throughout the village you can hear the women pounding corn, millet, and more. Sometimes two women will work together. To keep rhythm they will pound the corn throw their stick in the air, clap their hands together, catch the stick, and hit the corn again. While she is hitting the corn, the second woman is throwing the stick and clapping her hands. It sounds confusing and strange but it helps them to pound and not have to work alone. Once the corn has been crushed and sifted for any dirt it is cooked with water. As it is boiling, you use a huge spatula to continually stir the combination. It slowly begins to take form so you throw it in a huge bowl and let it set for a while. Eventually it forms something with the consistency between that of pudding and play-doh. Usually it forms a skin on the top you have to peel off before you eat. When it is time to eat someone tells me na shi no (come eat in Samogho) or na dumunike (come eat in Bambara). Each person takes their turn washing their hands. My family didn't wash their hands with soap before I came, but now we all take turns using the soap. Each woman washes her hands from the same bowl though, which means you're basically just swapping dirt. Fortunately I get to wash my hands first so avoid this problem. We- all of the women- eat out of the same huge bowl. The idea is for each person to respect their area of the bowl to take food from, but that doesn't always work and I awkwardly grab food that nobody else has yet touched. You grab a small hand full of to, dip it in a sauce made of a combination of vegetables, water, salt, etc. and then throw it in your mouth. Next, you lick your fingers free of to and then repeat It is a strange consistency but it doesn't taste too bad. At the end of the meal, whenever you are full, you say, N faara, which means, I am full. The women pass me the water bowl and I wash my hands. After washing, I say, A barika, which means thank you for this food. Typically this is followed by the blessing, Allah ka sumaya kono, meaning, may it cool in your stomach, i.e. we hope you do not get sick from the food. Rice Rice is considered rich people food. As a result, my family only eats rice during big fetes (parties), such as Seliba (wrote about this in the holiday blog), the end of Ramadan, the Malian anniversary of independence, or weddings. Instead of dipping the rice in the sauce, you pour the sauce directly over the rice. There are three ways of eating rice. The first is the way I eat my rice every night. My host mom cooks it for me, and I eat it with a spoon. The second way is the way Malians eat rice. They grab a huge handful of rice, scraping it on the side of the bowl as they pick it up. Then they make a fist to squish the rice into a nice mound. Next, they put their tongue at the base of their wrist and lick their hand from wrist to fingertips, grabbing the huge ball of rice and any other pieces that got away when squishing it into a ball. Repeat. The third way is the way I eat rice with my hands. I take smaller amounts of rice, and allow it to rest on my fingertips instead of squishing it into a ball in the palm of the hand. Then I use my thumb to push the rice off of the rest of my fingers into my mouth. Then lick my fingers clean and grab a new handful. A great deal of saliva is swapped in the process of eating rice and to if you haven't figured that out on your own. Meat/ Fish Once every week or two, my family is able to afford to eat meat. Each person gets a very small piece of meat, enough to eat in two or three bites. Usually it is ba sogo (sheep meat), but occasionally it is misi sogo (cow meat) or she sogo (chicken meat). My family doesn't seem to ever eat fish, but you can find plenty of fish at the market. When I visit literacy center classes, they will invite me to lunch once in a while and they will give me fish as a treat. During teacher training I insisted that the women wash their hands with soap before eating together so whenever I eat after literacy classes the teachers are sure remember to bring some soap with them so we can wash before eating. They do this out of respect for me and don't use the soap at home, but dooni dooni (slowly slowly) change will occur.

Ivory Coast/ Libya I think that it is really easy to hear about things going on throughout the world and think how such and such has nothing to do with you and has no impact on you. I would imagine many Americans would only complain about the situation in North Africa if it referred to the drastic increase in oil prices. I am guilty of this too, but lately is has begun hitting home. Problems in the Ivory Coast have made costs increase in Mali. I know of two projects on my road alone (National Road 7 is my road that leads to the Ivory Coast) that have been impacted as a result of increased prices. The size of a gwa (hanger used to weigh babies at the health center) had to be made smaller because of the price of cement, and it affected another project making latrines as well. Additionally, problems in the Ivory Coast has caused drastic power outages throughout the country. Bamako, the capital and largest city in Mali has power outages all of the time. In Sikasso, the second largest city in Mali, the power is out for probably 16 hours a day, at least. I live without electricity at least 25 days a month so you can understand how disappointing it is to spend three hours traveling to Sikasso in 100+ degree weather to do work, charge my iPod, use the computer, sleep under A/C and a fan and then find out the power went out ten minutes before I arrived and then doesn't return until after I have gone to bed or gone back to site. Obviously this also hinders all types of work that depend on computers, electricity etc. especially if the organization cannot afford a generator. Lately it has been very difficult to catch a bus on my road because there are so many refugees returning from the Ivory Coast. The buses enter the country completely full and some Ivory Coast vehicles have been allowed to bring refugees over. I don't have as much to say about the situation in Libya and it's immediate effect here in Mali, but I will say that the president of Libya has given Mali a lot of money for development projects. Recently they funded a project to build a fantastic building in Bamako that will soon house all of the ministries of the country. There are strong ties between the president from what I can understand so there may be more to the story with time. My point though, is that the things going on in a country may not immediately affect us, and we have a tendency to ignore situations or care less about them until they have an effect on us (sorry for completely butchering the use of affect and effect in this point), and even then we only care about the impact on us, not the impact on those in the country, and that impact is obviously greater, especially if it means leaving the country. Many Malians live in the Ivory Coast because there are more jobs to be found there. Right now, there are Ivoirians going into neighborhoods dominated by the Bambara ethnic group (an ethnic group from Mali) and slitting the throats of the residents. One volunteer's work partner is on the phone all of the time, can't eat, can't sleep because her family lives in one of these neighborhoods and has no means or money to return to Mali. I would challenge you to consider the impact that international events have on the residents of the country itself instead of just waiting to see how it impacts you.

WAIST stands for the West African International Softball Tournament. This year volunteers from Mali, Senegal, The Gambia, Cape Verde, and Niger (volunteers were evacuated from here very recently and live in new countries). Apparently we won the tournament though we only showed up for two of the five games and were in another town the last day of the tournament.

Rather than tell you everything I did on vacation I will give you a brief summary of what I did and then tell you everything I love about Dakar, which will highlight some of the things Mali lacks/ things about Mali I dislike.

First, if you don't know your West African geography, I would suggest you check out where Sikasso, Mali is on a map and then look where Dakar, Senegal is located. They are very far away. It takes 8 hours to get from Sikasso to Bamako. It took us another 24 hours to get from Bamako to Dakar. PC Mali were the only people on the bus going to Dakar. Traveling from Dakar back to Bamako on regular transportation took us 30 hours. Somewhere on the return trip my camera was stolen so the day I returned to Bamako I got to file incident reports, visit the police station, and file a claim with insurance, which put a damper on the trip because I had some great shots. The last leg of the trip was the trip from Bamako to Sikasso, which took another 8 hours. I am glad to be settled. One hour on bus and one hour on bike and I will be back to site.

Now onto the trip. I spent most days at the American Club, a place for volunteers and ex-pats to hang out at. I am going to skip ahead to the second part of my blog for a minute to tell you that I love the American Club in Senegal. There was a great pool, great lounging chairs, great food (ham and bacon club, hot dogs, and hamburgers eaten by me), softball fields, a large hanger, etc. I spent my time at the American Club lounging by the pool and one day I played a few rounds of kickball. I spent a lot of time at different places on the beach. We asked locals where the beach was our very first day and four different people pointed in every cardinal direction so the beach really was everywhere. We jumped on a great trampoline, visited Goree Island, and ate lots of food. This is the most important part. I ate pizza every single day in Senegal except for one day and at other meals ate sushi, Moroccan food (Moroccan tea is so good!), hamburger, hot dog, ice cream , croque monsieurs (hot ham and cheese), croque madames (hot ham and cheese with fried egg on top), lots of stuff from boulangeries, and a shrimp salad. I spent nearly an entire months salary on food, but it was so worth it. After Dakar, nearly 50 PC Mali volunteers went to Touba Diallo, a resort on the beach. I spent two days lounging by the beach, sitting in hammocks reading, and hanging out with other volunteers as the sun was setting.

Things I love about Dakar:

1. People do not stare at you for being white, black, brown, yellow, red because there is a lot of diversity and Dakar is a somewhat popular tourist destination these days. We weren't called toubabs (my least favorite word in any language), they didn't laugh when we spoke, etc.

2. Speaking French. Sometimes it's just easier to speak French and not Bambara. In fact, it was actually fun to speak Bambara because we so rarely met a Bambara speaker and it almost felt like we had an instant bond.

3. The beach. Being landlocked in West Africa is a real bummer now that I know what I'm missing out on. The ocean breeze makes things so much cooler.

4. Sidewalks. Mali does not have sidewalks and you risk being hit by people, donkey carts, motos, bikes, cars, trucks, etc. every time you go anywhere.

5. Paved roads. Again, Mali barely has any paved roads. Even in Bamako, many roads are not paved. There are even fewer painted lines on the road. Also, for some reason, whoever built the “highways;” meaning the paved roads leading from regional capital to another regional capital, seemed to have some trouble with tape measures. When two vehicles pass one another, it is almost impossible for both vehicles to stay on the paved road. Typically, they play a game of chicken to see who will stay on the road the longest while the chicken swerves off to the side and straddle the paved road and dirt road. All of this requires a great deal of honking and waving and nervous laughter once we have survived yet again.

6. Cars. Everyone drives cars in Senegal. Nobody drives motos in Senegal. I understand that this does not bode well for green people, including myself, but motos are so dangerous.

7. Literacy.

8. Working women. They were everywhere doing the same work the men were doing.

9. Restaurants, boulangeries, bars, malls, hotels. Basic things you expect in a capital city.

10. Trash cans. I rarely saw trash on the sidewalks because they have trash cans. Mali does not have trash cans on the streets. The world becomes a trash can as a result.

This isn't to say Dakar is perfect. Like Mali, the electricity goes out all of the time. Almost every day we lost power for several hours. Our hotel had poor showers so we all ended up taking cold bucket baths instead. People did occasionally act out towards us. One man grabbed my arm while walking down the road. I was expecting him to do something though and was prepared, quickly smacked his arm away, and yelled at him in English. Street vendors still gave us the tourist price for things and pickpockets followed us.

All in all it was a really great trip. It was a chance to get away and spend time with other volunteers just relaxing. I won't be going again next year because it is a lot of work and because I have new places to see!

I have been putting this blog post off for a while with the excuse that I shouldn't give you a play by play of my work until I really get somewhere. As of two weeks ago, the women in my commune who were interested in taking literacy classes had their first class. I was not present for these classes because of my trip to Senegal, which is another blog post. From the lists I compiled, there are 224 women in 9 different classes- 7 villages, but one village has 3 quartiers (french for neighborhoods). Here is a short description of all of the activities I completed in order to get the classes going.

October 1. I held a meeting with the Mayor and General Secretary to discuss projects to complete in my village. They discussed doing literacy classes, and I told them I would be interested in doing this as a project. They invited me to a meeting that Friday with the dugutigis (village chiefs) and some of the teachers. 2. Attended the meeting with the dugutigis of the village and discussed the literacy classes. Six women came to the meeting to tell me they wanted to begin studying. They said women interested in studying would be coming the following Friday to begin classes. 3. Friday I had a meeting with a group of about 30 women, where I told them we could begin enrolling students into the classes, but that I could not begin work until after December when I completed IST. 4. The women began sending lists of interested students to the Mayor's office. 5. Yaya visited my site and held a meeting with the interested women to discuss how we would coordinate classes, when classes could begin, etc. 6. I held a meeting with the dugutigis to discuss the salary of the teachers for the literacy centers. They responded the following week that they would be paying each teacher 12,500 each month and agreed to pay two teachers per month. 12,500 is the equivalent of $25 USD. A teacher in the school earns 50,000 ($100 USD) per month, but considering the amount of studying the teachers must complete, this is a very positive situation for the literacy teachers. January 7. I held a meeting with the teachers to discuss teacher training, such as where they would be staying, food, per diem, transportation, etc. 8. I completed a request for funding, which was approved. I picked up the money in Sikasso at the end of January and returned to my site. 9. January 30th we begin a 10 day teacher training. Four women prepared food for the students each day for lunch, provided per diem and transportation allowances, and bought books and pens for the teachers in training. During the training, the blackboards and books were picked up and taken to each village. 10. On January 12th we had our first day of class. Each village has agreed to study Saturday, Sunday, Tuesday, and Wednesday from 9a-1p from February until the end of June. The total cost of this program was 700,000 CFA or $1,400. The formation, or teacher training, was an interesting experience. Five women showed up who could neither read nor write. When I called my boss for advice on how to deal with this situation, he reassured me that I should not worry about this because people will often send their own friends or family members to these formations because they want the per diem, the food, etc. even if they know they cannot complete the activities expected of them. Our regional coordinator also said I should consider that more people came who could read than could not and that in itself is a success here. We sent them home and they sent four new teachers for us. Two of the new teachers are men. Prior to this, the program consisted of women only, with the exception of my homologue who is helping me with language and logistical issues or contacting people in different villages. I am hesitant about including men because men and women never interact in Mali. One of the male teachers was constantly berating the female teachers, taking over when they did mock teaching lessons, and sat in the very back of the room as far away from us as possible. As one point I asked the trainer who the teacher was (during mock teaching lessons) at that moment because this male teacher was taking over. He took the hint that I was growing tired of the interruptions caused by this teacher and asked him to sit down. He will be a constant struggle for me, but I am glad I have my homologue to help me with these situations. The classes will continue until the end of June when rainy season begins. During rainy season, people work morning, noon, and night to harvest their field so the women cannot studying then. For now though, they will study four days a week. The three others days are market days in different villages. We cannot study then because the women need to be able to go to the market to sell goods and make money Every day I will bike to a different village to sit in on the classes, provide support for the teachers, and help the students as needed. Hot season is going to be here very soon and I am not looking forward to the bike rides under the sun, but it should be very rewarding to watch the women learn to read.

I don't have anything great to write, but I had a few odds and ends to share with you so here goes nothing. I am going to start a “Kilometers I've Biked” tracker on the side of my blog. I think that by the time I go home I will have biked my way back home, so to speak. I will have to put up the official numbers the next time I am in town because I forgot to bring the paper with me. Just giving you a heads up so you can be prepared. You can bike along with me if you'd like. I tried to make a video of my trip to Segou, but the Mac doesn't recognize my videos. I will figure something out so you can follow my travels through long, entertaining videos as opposed to long posts with 100 grammatical errors I am too lazy to fix. Maybe it will be like the biking record where I just keep adding to the video. This means I need to start taking many more videos and pictures than I currently take. Like bullet number one, this will also probably be more exciting for me than for you as well. The Poisonwood Bible. It is written by Barbara Kingsolver. It is about a family that goes to the Congo just as they are gaining their independence from Belgium. It is written from the perspective of the four daughters and wife of a Baptist minister. The details are great if you want to get a better understanding of the intricate details that are very similar to my own life here. There are parts that aren't explained well enough for someone who has not visited this neck of the woods to totally understand. Facts I wouldn't understand if I were not here, such as the mentioning of people putting their left arm to their right elbow when they shake hands with someone. It is a sign of respect, something that is not explained in the book. Additionally, in Mali anyways, touching your right hand to your heart after shaking a person's hand is a greater sign of respect for that person. The mayor does this when he shakes my hand, and I do the elbow thing because the heart thing is more awkward for me than the elbow thing. The book also does a great job of describing how the girls come to have a better understanding of the Congolese mindset as they spend more time in the country, an experience I am slowly beginning to have about my neighbors in village, perhaps at the same pace as the girls in the book. They slowly pick up on bits and pieces, and I think it the author is able to look into the Congo through the eyes of American teenage girls in the 1960s. Sometimes I think the girls “say” things many people would think when visiting foreign countries but would never say, which is important because it makes it seem all the more real. Sometimes you just can't help but think that people who do things in a way differently than you do are very strange and so you think strange things about them. It would be stupid to pretend we don't experience culture shock and I'm glad the author embraces that. I guess the Malians show their shock of me through their actions (laughing, staring, and pointing), opposed to me thinking the thoughts to myself, which is a good defense mechanism because, obviously, I am highly outnumbered here. I think the book is also important because it shows the mindset of the minister in thinking he can come into a country without trying to learn about the people and the many bits and pieces of their culture while trying to have a huge impact, such as getting a village to convert to Christianity. Here is a give away. It doesn't work. Peace Corps takes a long time, but it has a more meaningful impact on all parties involved because we learn the language and culture. Perhaps most importantly, we get to know the people and get their opinion on what their village needs. They obviously have the best ideas because it is their village. By getting to know them, we can help them to meet their developmental goals by serving as a facilitator to help them organize the skills they already possess (along with money once in a while) to make these changes. I could continue this thought but it would go on so many more tangents and this is already a very long bullet point. My English is absolutely terrible. My homologue does this stuttering thing when he can't think of a word. He will just repeat the first letter until the rest of the word comes to him. It isn't a real stutter, and I have begun doing the same thing. I have to say, it really works if you know the first letter. Again, if you know the first letter. A few stutters in and you will remember the rest of the word. This works well in Bambara, but it isn't working for my English. Finally, I was distracted in writing this post when I discovered that my bike tire was completely flat and had to fix a hole in it. First time ever doing that. After though, I realized I didn't have a pump and had to borrow one from a volunteer living in Sikasso. Borrowing another volunteer's bike to go to the house with the pump, I saw-prepare yourself- a cow, living and well, although a bit uncomfortable looking, lying in the trunk of a taxi. I would say that site alone was worth the two hours spent fixing the tire.

I am not sure how much I have written about the holiday season in my blog so I thought I would give you an overview of the holiday seasons in Mali.

Tabaski This is a holiday celebrated a certain number of days after Ramadan ends, the time when Muslims fast from sunrise to sunrise, according to the moon, which is similar to how we determine when Easter occurs. At any rate, this is the day when people wear their finest clothes. The kids walk all over the village greeting people and asking for gifts from others in the village. The teachers all go from house to house of the most important people in the village in order to greet them. They feast all day long on sheep they sacrifice for religious purposes. My family received so much sheep meat as gifts that we ate it for the rest of the week, which was fantastic because we usually eat meat once a week at most. Most of the time we eat meat only when I return to site and give them a gift (it is traditional to give a gift if you have left the village to travel) of tea and sugar, toys for the kids, rice, etc. At any rate, I spent most of the day sitting with my family because there were too many children coming to visit asking me to give them money or just coming to stare at me while I read a book or did other day-to-day activities they find so fascinating. It was a nice day because nobody in my family was working for a change. They all just sat around, drank tea, ate good food, and talking. At one point, I caught all but one person sleeping and when I pointed this out everyone woke up and started laughing about it. It reminded me of something that happens at holiday dinners with family at home. Thanksgiving Thanksgiving is traditionally celebrated by volunteers in the Sikasso region, which worked out well for me because I was not allowed to leave my region for the first three months at site. We came into Sikasso before Thanksgiving in order to buy and prepare food. The day before the feast, I helped stir up 9 pumpkin pie mixes. We bought fresh squash, cut it into pieces, boiled it on the stove top, and mixed in the eggs, milk, and other ingredients. We also made homemade pie crusts. We also made a bucket full of apple crisp pie mix and then another girl and I spent the afternoon cooking the pies. We may or may not have eaten a pumpkin and apple crisp pie in the process... On the actual day, I helped carry a bunch of silverware and dishes to the place we were having the feast. There were two of us carrying huge buckets on top of our heads, just like the Malians do. People thought it was so funny to see us doing this, but I have to tell you, carrying things like buckets on your head makes things so much easier than banging them on the side of your leg and it doesn't wear out your arms. We prepared drinks and then made salads. Then it was time to eat. We had Malian women prepare our turkey, had a huge pot of green beans, another pot of potatoes, stuffing, fresh fruit, and pies. All of the food came fresh from the market right outside of our office and absolutely delicious. It was good eating and fun to be with 70 other Americans on a day that Malians don't understand for obvious reasons. The day after Thanksgiving, we all took advantage of the great weather to go to an outdoor pool. Some swam, others put their legs in. Some of the Sikasso boys made us a feast of burritos. Meat, beans (mostly for the bean-eating Coulibalys), cheese, guacamole, salsa, and tortillas. None of us minded not having any silverware. We are all fully comfortable eating with only our fingers at this point. We also had donkey races. Each region had 3 riders and they rode 2 donkeys at a time. Naturally the Sikasso region won the competition, and one girl even took home a trophy of an infected arm after she fell off the donkey. In-Service Training So this obviously isn't a real holiday, but it was like a holiday for us because we were with other volunteers and not under the microscope of Malians. We spent two full weeks at our training center near Bamako. The first week it was only volunteers, and we did sector training. I learned a lot of information about setting up a literacy center, improving Bambara and French reading skills of children in the schools, building a canteen at schools, creating a school library, etc. Many of these activities would take two full years to enact so it is a matter of determining what our village needs, but it was nice to learn about resources available to us. Our homologues joined us during the second week. We learned several ways to do needs assessments in our village. They included asking different groups- men, women, children- to create a map of the village to determine what things are important to those groups, doing interviews with different groups and using a voting system to decide on important issues, and many other ways. We did a lot of this during Pre-Service Training so it was a bit frustrating to sit through again, but we made it. During the evenings, we were free to go into Bamako. Most of us took advantage of this time to visit the grocery store and get a nice dinner. I went to the Formi, which is the biggest grocery store in Bamako. There were canned foods, spices, cereals, cookies, candies, hair products, children's toys, cheeses, and meats. They even had wrapping paper, Christmas lights, inflatable Santas, and Christmas trees. Your typical grocery store, right? It was absolutely overwhelming. These are things we never, ever see anywhere but in Bamako. We have no way to transport some items to our village, and Christmas lights and bathroom cleaning products obviously do us no good when we have no electricity and our bathroom consists of 4 walls and a hole in the floor for a toilet. However, it was nice to just see some of these things. I walked away satisfied with some ravioli, pepper, oregano, chocolate candy, and nutella. I was able to eat a pizza at a restaurant next door and it was delicious. Afterward we went to a bar and listened to traditional music being played live. On another trip I got to eat a pulled pork bbq sandwich, which I would not have dreamed of before seeing it on the menu. Christmas Many volunteers took advantage of our ban of visiting other regions being lifted to do some exploring throughout Mali. I went back to site to do a bit of work and met other Sikasso kow volunteers in Woroni, a village south of Sikasso, to spent Christmas Eve at beautiful waterfalls. We ate dinner, built a campfire, one person played his guitar for us, and afterward we slept on top of the falls. My bug hut is a tent, but the walls are mosquito nets, meaning I can lay in bed and look at the stars. The next morning we got up with the sun, made breakfast, and hiked back to the main road to catch a ride back to Sikasso. We spent the day skyping with family, put on our Christmas dresses, and had a nice dinner together at a restaurant here in Mali. New Years I think this was my favorite holiday to celebrate in Mali. On Thursday, I rode up to Koutiala, a town about two hours north of Sikasso. We spent the evening with other volunteers, and ate an amazing meal together. We all had a half chicken and salad. Of course, there was no silverware so we washed our hands and dug in. It was delicious. Have you picked up on how much food means these days? I slept outside under the stars again. We left early the next morning for Segou, a village another two or three hours north of Koutiala. We arrived around noon and just happened to get out of a bus at the same time as volunteers coming from another region. We dropped our things off at a hotel and set out for lunch. After lunch everyone else left for the pool and I went out for a walk to see the city a bit. I found an awesome belt in the colors of the Malian flag with a glittery belt buckle, which went perfectly with the black t-shirt with gold jewels outlining the continent of Africa I bought in Koutiala. I went to find the others at the pool but discovered the artisans market. It was amazing. There were earrings and necklaces, traditional masks, clothes, wall hangings, and more. There were pretty ruthless because they are used to tourists here, but they were nicer when they discovered I spoke Bambara and were more willing to bargain with me. So, shopping completed, we all went down to the Niger River, next to the market, to go on a canoe ride. It was an hour long ride up and down the river. There was an Italian restaurant next to the river where we ate lunch. The pizza...wow. Real cheese. Real ham. Real white wine. It was unbelievable. Afterwards it was time for New Year's celebrations with new friends. The holidays here aren't the same as the holidays at home, but we get to spend Malian holidays with our new Malian friends and family, and we spend the American holidays with other volunteers trying to make the best of our time together. I can't wait to do more exploring in other regions, and you can bet I will keep you updated.

I just received all of my Christmas cards that were written during the Thanksgiving/Christmas celebration. Thank you to everyone who took a minute to write me a little note. It is the best Christmas gift I could have received. I am going to put them all on my wall as soon as I get back to site.

"Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do, than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover" Mark Twain

I sure hope MT knows how much trust I am putting in him. Also, completely unrelated to this post, you should know MT's autobiography is coming out. He wanted people to wait until 75 years after he died for it to be released. Just saying...

So. I might have joked around with the Oh Bats! Title, but I would never joke around about snakes. In part because a snake can kill me immediately by constricting me to death or by poisoning me to death and a bat can only give me rabies, which I have shots for, thus giving me extra time to get help before the rabies kills me or I turn me into a vampire.

Before I start the story story, let me tell you about the only recurring dream I ever have. It is simple. Big, huge snake. White walls. Killing me. Donezo. I think about this dream all of the time and wonder if it is a sign that I should not come to a country where snakes can kill me in at least one of the two ways listed above, if not in other creative, snake-like ways.

So. Last night I decided to write a few emails and then watch a movie in my hut until I fell asleep. I told someone good night and they asked me to buy a sucker for them. I wanted one myself so I went to the butigi, grabbed two (ok, eight, but it's because they didn't have change) suckers, wished the shopkeeper a blessed night, delivered the sucker, and headed on my merry way. The other day I had forgotten my flashlight, but I was prepared last night with the flashlight on my phone.

The walk between the dining hall/reflectoire/dumunikeyoro leads to our huts via a road that takes a couple minutes to walk. I stopped to let a truck pass me by. About 100 feet ahead they stopped the truck, got out and started yelling something. I, for some reason, thought, they are trying to kidnap me. They wouldn't do this because they work here (our training center has its own gate and guard), but that was my first thought.

They started yelling. My next thought was, wow, they really are going to kidnap me. Then I thought maybe they were fighting with one another because a man on a moto stopped next to them. I kept walking, thinking maybe I should turn around and let them talk and then leave.

Suddenly a lightbulb went off and I stopped walking. I yelled, “Ne?” Me? They stopped yelling, and I asked what was going on. What I thought they said next was, “Sa banna.” A snake died. Next they started yelling something I couldn't understand at all, but then they yelled “droite, droite.” Right, right. I got the memo and moved to the right of the road and moved ahead. It wasn't until I got closer that I saw the “dead snake” was EIGHT FEET LONG and sprawled across the road.

I ran passed it and one of the guards grabbed onto me. My next comment was, “Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God,” over and over again. They kind of passed me from one guards arms to the other and I ran into the gate leading to our concession.

And then it hit me. My key to my hut was with my roommate back in the dining hall. So I stood in the dark, certain there were now 1340923840 snakes out there in the dark waiting to attack. Of course my phone was out of credit. One of our trainers walked by, I explained the situation, and he told me he would give the message to my roommate. I figured if she knew there was a snake that was dead she would not be as frightened as I was.

Well. Guess what I heard while waiting in the dark for one of those 1340923840 other snakes to attack me or the key to arrive? “Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God,” being repeated over and over again by the guards. They were mocking me! The nerve!

Apparently the trainer who told my roommate I needed my key also told someone else a snake was around so soon I heard people laughing and shouting their own words of surprising as cameras started flashing. Turns out the snake, excuse me, EIGHT FOOT LONG PYTHON wasn't so dead after all. “Sa banna” (a snake died) and “Sa be na” (a snake has come) sound much too similar.

Long story short. I survived. I thank Mali for their delicious suckers (that I never ate) I just had to have while I watched my movie (I never watched). I wish I could say the snake is dead now, but apparently the guard who is also the satigi (snake king, aka, snake killer in this case) was not on duty. I also wish I could say this is the only snake to show up here, but one night they killed a king cobra and two nights ago they killed a poisonous water snake. Tomorrow they are bringing in a real snake tigi, who is bringing his own snakes, so he can teach us about them. What is there to learn? All snakes must die. Easy lesson. Only 9 more days until I leave this snake ridden place. I can't wait.

I number of odd things happen to me or I observe a number of odd things on a daily, sometimes hourly basis. I like coming to Sikasso and hearing about the random, unpredictable events that others have experienced. Here are a few of my own from the most recent few days at site.

November 12: Discovered that, if I put credit on my phone this week then I will be put in a drawing to win a mouton (sheep). Here goes nothing!

November 13: Ate a UFO tonight. Some sort of meat. Guessing cow or sheep. Body part unknown. Shaped like macaroni pasta with hollow insides. Intestines? Some questions are better left unanswered.

November 14: You know how kids in the commercials are always causing their mother's trouble by falling down in the mud or getting grass stains or spilling food on their clothes? Only the mom's in the commercials are always ready with their laundry detergent? I guess Malian moms are just as amazing. Only, according to the commercials (always a reliable source), kids ruin their clothes here by helping the neighbor lady catch her runaway chicken. Guess things can't be exactly the same.

November 15: Held a baby for 20 minutes during baby weightings. People rarely show affection so it's nice to hold a little smiling bundle of cuddles. Good morning although the 4.5 pound newborn really put a damper on things.

School director has left so I have a new tutor, who is a new teacher. He commends my ideas for activities without me even asking instead of immediately shooting me down. I could get used to this.

November 16: Went to the CESCOM to help weigh pregnant women and end up seeing a woman give birth.

November 17: Tabaski, aka mouton slaughtering day, aka seliba (big feast), aka party after Ramadam. My body hates me every time I eat meat. This is not a good sign. Enjoy day with family and glad they all have taken the day off to relax.

November 18: Have tea and coconut bars baked by the Europeans in their ovens. Great conversation much needed after such a long time with so little talking.

November 19: Have a cold although it is probably 80 degrees out. Second in two months, but it could be worse.

November 20: Hear “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” sax solo being played while watching TV with my family and get lost in thoughts about Christmas dinners with family and warm fires. Nice daydream until the song ends and I snap back to reality.

November 21: I can now add to my “Skills I Can Never Put On A Resume” list: How to make a house with little more than dirt, water, sawdust of some sort, wood, shovel, and hay of some sort.

November 22: Inform my tutor that we have fruits and vegetables, homeless people, rarely more than 30 students in a single classroom, and that people do not eat to (cooked millet) in America. Not sure which of these things shock him most.

Alternative Title: These Women are Made of Steel

I have been visiting the CESCO M every Monday, Tuesday, and Friday morning from about 10-12. Monday and Friday I help weigh the newborns-2 year olds and on Tuesday I help weigh pregnant women. We take the babies and moms' height and weight, measure the baby's upper arm circumference, and moms' bellies.

I was perfectly content in weighing pregnant women and their children. I wanted nothing to do with being the middle man in the interim between mom's weight and baby's weight. I had thought about the fact that about 1700 people are in my village and the other 6 villages in the commune brings the commune population to about 3500 people. The CESCOM is the only one in the commune. I told myself I might see a birth or two but that they would be few and far between.

I guess who have to start somewhere to begin the few and far between process though.

Tuesday morning I hurried over to the CESCOM. I had just finished the monster 900 page monster of I Know This Much is True and was a bit late, not that anyone besides myself would notice or care. I felt relaxed despite this because I really liked the book.

We, the moms-to-be and I, waited under the hangar until 10:40 before the midwife began taking their blood pressure. One of the midwives called me to join her in the birthing building. The door to the room where we usually measures the womens' bellies was closed and I heard occasional shuffling about inside. I minded my own business though and read off the heights and weights of the women.

After one belly measuring in the second room, the midwife opened the door to our usual room and addressed the woman inside. She was looking at the floor where I could tell the woman was. She got some gloves from the main building across the way and told me to come in the room with her.

I have described the birthing room before, but it isn't difficult to describe again. There is one metal bed in the corner, and that is it. Just the very uninviting white metal platform.

So uninviting apparently that the woman had chosen to lay on the floor on top of two pagnes. She had her knees pulled up and was holding her ankles with her hands and pushing. There was no groaning, no screaming, no friends or family members encouraging her. The midwife said maybe five words the entire time. It took about three minutes for the baby to come. The midwife left the baby on the ground, gave the mom a shot in her leg to ensure there was only one baby, and then helped the mom birth the placenta. It was only while removing the placenta that the mom let out a very little, very small cry. The midwife said something harsh sounding and something seriously/ somewhat playfully swatted at the woman's face. Whatever she said made the woman laugh two short laughs and quieted her. I laughed out loud when the midwife asked me if I knew what the placenta was.

Placenta out, they moved the baby against the wall and wrapped it in a pagne. They brought in a silver metal toilet, put the two dirty pagnes inside of it, and the mom sat on top of it. Her friend brought in a bucket of water and gave the mom soap. I left the room at this point because I wanted to give the mom some privacy, and yes I see the irony in that comment, but mostly because I was feeling rather light headed by this unexpected event.

They gave the mom two pagnes and helped her to another building so she could rest. The midwife took off her gloves and called for the next mom-to-be and we resumed the weighings. The friend brought in two more buckets of water and some soap and cleaned the floor of the room, and it was over.

The women aren't supposed to cry because other people are just outside the window. They get little support during the birthing process and the conditions are terrible. As I mentioned, my village is the only one in the commune with a health center and only two others have a room for birthing.

The women here are amazing. They work almost every minute of every day, usually with a baby strapped to their back. They work in the fields under the hot sun all day, cook for their family, sweep the yard early in the morning, and carry five gallon buckets of water on their head. Many resume these activities only a few short days after giving birth. I have no idea how they are able to do all of this. It's almost one of those things you have to see to believe and fully appreciate.

“Please always remember the secret of survival is to embrace change, and to adopt...you see, you cannot draw lines and compartments, and refuse to budge beyond them. Sometimes you have to use your failures as stepping stones to success. You have to maintain a fine balance between hope and despair.” A Fine Balance

I have been thinking a lot lately about disparities that exist in Mali. I have thought most about Educational/ Intellectual/ Scholastic disparity as well as Economic disparity, but I will try and write something worthwhile about Educational disparities here. I will try not to compare things here in Mali to things in America because Mali or America alone are (is?) complex enough without comparing and contrasting.

The big statement here is that Mali is a country with people with degrees of all kinds down to those who have never set foot in a classroom. My village has a doctor, pharmacist, three midwives, and a Traore (my joking cousin) whose role at the CESCOM is unclear to me. I would call him a male nurse, but those two words probably would not bode well here. There are people who have gone to university, others who had vocational school training, some who stopped at the end of high school, middle school, or elementary school or any level between if they failed a grade too many times. In my village the development paperwork says 33% of students fail every year. Then there are other who have not studied at all and may only be able to write their name, if that.

I wonder how people coexist. I can see how they interact, but I usually don't know what they are saying. Even if I did understand, I probably wouldn't understand the undertones of the conversation. One of the biggest educational (I say educational because it is “smarts” from a school and has no relation to their actual intellectual capacity as far as I am concerned) disparities occurs at the CESCOM. Women come to have their babies weighed once a month. The nurses/midwives write down the date of the next weigh-in on their charts. The women carry the chart that records the baby's vaccinations and weigh-in information in a small plastic bag because they have no purses or filing cabinets at home for these records. It is good that women have the record available, I guess so they know what vaccines their child has received and know the date they must return for the next weigh-in.

I say I guess because nearly 25% of Malians are illiterate and you can guess what sex makes up more of that 25% than the other. Women can't read the date of their child's next appointment that is written on their card. They will often come to the CESCOM and wait an hour for the weighings to being because they don't have a watch- and things rarely start on time here to begin with- only to be ridiculed because they are supposed to come next week. It's right there on the card, but they don't have a clue how to read what it says.

And it isn't that they aren't intelligent. Take the children at the school for example. Mali has recently adopted, and is still working to enact, a mother tongue instruction policy, meaning children are initially taught in their mother tongue and French is slowly introduced to them so that all classes are taught in French by the time they reach middle school. This is a good idea. What is the point of teaching students if they don't understand the words you say, right?

Well, kind of. This philosophy works well if you live in a village where the mother tongue language being taught- in this case Bambara- is the actual mother tongue of the students. When I visited the first grade class, during the break, the teacher explained, in Bambara, that many students come to school with limited Bambara speaking skills. Their parents may speak Bambara, but the first language children learn is Samogo in my village. As a result, he spends most of the first trimester teaching Bambara. While I was there they practice nefo, kofe, numan, ni kini (in front of, behind, left, and right). It took an entire hour to complete the lesson. It is a difficult lesson for first grades, but I imagine it would be easier if it were taught in their mother tongue.

Why not teach in Samogo then? The number one reason would probably be resources. There is no information, not even a dictionary, about Samogo online that I could find, although a French search might produce more results. There are no textbooks written in Samogo. The teachers come from other villages where other minority languages, such as Senofo or Fulani, are spoken or where only Bambara is spoken. They can't teach in a language they can't speak!

As a result, by the time a student is ready to take the CEP or sixth grade exam to go to middle school, they already speak Samogo, Bambara, and French. In seventh grade they start learning english. These kids are smart. Their intellectual ability is capped by the system, not by they themselves in many cases.

To continue that last thought, let me give you a few more observations. For starters, there are over 90 students in every classroom at the middle school. There are closer to 50 or 60 in the elementary school. This is because my village is the only one with a middle school in my commune so students bike from 3-7 miles away to attend school, if their families allow it. In the 9th grade there are 143 students. The tables are five wide and eight deep. The tables are meant for two students but four must sit at each. The students must wiggle out of their seat one appendage at a time and then walk across the desk in order to exit their desk or return.

After school the girls sweep the floor, wash the tables and chalkboards, and on the weekends students do grounds keeping work or plant crops. The kids in my host family help with the cooking, cleaning, childcare, or mend to the animals before school, between the morning and afternoon session, and again after school. On the weekends they spend eight hours a day in the field harvesting that season's crops. It's astounding how much work they do.

You can begin to see how things at home may limit a child's education, if they are allowed to go at all. They say school is compulsory, but I've gone on enough walks during school hours to see otherwise and I learned otherwise in training as well. At any rate, it is interesting to think about the effects of education or no education on a person's quality of life and the ripple effect it has. You see why some people have a bit more pep in their step or why others are more reluctant to talk to the doctor or midwife. The blog about my visit with the doctor shows one perspective of an educated person's life on the life of those who are uneducated. The topic of our talk, l'ignorance, tells a great deal.

I guess this interest motivates me to continue to push for literacy in my village. It will empower women to know they can read, encourage them to continue their children's education, and they can learn about sanitation, hygiene, and child care in their readings. By helping themselves, they can help improve Mali.

Dooni, dooni.

“Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends.” – Maya Angelou

This blog is long overdue. The night I wrote it I was wearing Snoopy Halloween songs sent from my mom whilst eating a Hershey's Dark Chocolate candy bar doing my best to celebrate Halloween at my site.

Today I visited the CESCOM. It started because the doctor had visited the mayor's house- my jatigi (hostdad)- and said I should come chat with him tomorrow. I wasn't sure if he was sincere or just doing the Malian thing, but I got up the courage to go around 230. he was just washing to prepare to pray when I arrived, but nobody else was there so we were able to talk uninterrupted for about an hour, which is a lot considering how busy he is. He told me that he works everyday. It is too much. He is tired. He is sick.

He showed me the buildings. The first is the birthing room. You walk into a room that is maybe 5 X 12 foot room that has a desk in the corner filled with all sorts of papers. It doesn't seem very organized. There is a door that leads to another room, which is maybe 12 X 12 feet. It is empty except for the iron “bed” in the corner. It is 3 X 3 feet and waist high. On the end is a small piece of metal, maybe 2 X 3 feet a foot below the first table. This is the table used for birthing. There is nothing else in the room. No mattress, no sheet to protect from the cold, harsh table. No monitors, no equipment, and the only picture on the wall explains the birthing process and is more like a checklist for the doctors than anything.

The next building is for sick people. There are four twin sized beds, two on the left, two on the right. One has only a piece of wood over the metal frame and the other three have mattresses. Not all have mosquito nets over them.

As we move to the next building I ask how long mothers rest after giving birth. He says some stay for three days, others two, and others 24 hours, though other villages around me have no birthing room and give birth at home. We step into this last room and there are two more beds. By this point the doctor seems almost embarrassed by the conditions and nervously laughs saying, “C'est Afrique.” I am not surprised by what I see and hope he doesn't think I am to avoid embarrassed.

It is Africa. It is not what I could have imagined four months ago, but it is what I have come to expect. Multiple rooms, free mosquito nets for every child, a dispensary, proper disposal of needles, soap under the hangar. The nurses seem well trained and work without anyone overseeing them.

We sit back down and I ask more questions. He tells me a woman does nutritional classes three tiems a week and he shows me medication he gives to patients who are discovered to have HIV. He works with an organization in a larger town outside of my village to do the testing and then sends people to an even larger town for more help, if they are discovered to have HIV.

We discuss the number of children a woman has during her life. He writes out a few lines saying from 16-25 years of age, woman have 2, 3, 4 kids. From 26-35 they have 5, 6, 7 kids and from 35 up they have 8-12 kids. He says it is due to l'ignorance. They don't know the benefit of contraception. He says families think bigger is better because it means more hands to help in the field. He says that they don't realize it means more food is needed, more clothes, more medicine, etc. He says a second problem is that men can have up to four wives so there are even more kids. I try to lighten the mood by saying, “I be muso kelen fe.” (You want one wife.) He laughs and says yes and tells me that with only two or three kids, children can go to school and parents can support them. Finally, we talk about nutrition. He tells me there are plenty of crops and lists them for me. Knowing where he is going I say that he send all of the veggies to Sikasso to be sold and he tells me I am right. Then he says the families use the money they earn from veggies to buy motorcycles and other items.

None of what he says is new to me. It is all information I have slowly been acquiring. I am very glad to have seen the CESCOM and talked to the doctor. He is extremely intelligent and I can understand his frustrations with what he sees because I share many of them. He knows better hospitals exist in Mali, but I imagine he would be even more frustrated to see a modern hospital, and I don't mean a modern Malian hospital.

In the end I thank him and say I would like to help with any activities I can, careful not to mention projects, which implies that I have money to give. He says whenever I have time that I can come and we can work together.

My homologue has a habit of asking the price of different items I own. He asks about one item at a time, perhaps thinking I won't notice or be upset about one item per day.

One day I decided I would try and explain why we volunteers are not as rich as he thinks. I asked how much it was for a student to go to college (roughly $600/year here). I showed him how much many million CFA it took for one year of school at my university.

“But your parents paid for it'” he said with a smile.

“No, a lot of parents don't pay for college.” This quickly took the smile off of his face, which was replaced with a frown.

“A da ka gelen (It is expensive),” he tells me.

Next, I showed him how much money I earned for each hour that I worked and divided the cost of school in dollars per hour of work and showed him the amount in CFA. I think he started to understand. And then I told him that was only the cost for class and did not include your housing or food costs.

I felt good knowing he has a better idea of how expensive things are in America and that many of us are coming straight from college.

Flash forward two weeks. I'm eating an orange. It is one of five that I bought for 50 CFA a few days earlier in a village several miles away that I had biked to. It may have been only $0.10, but it was the most difficult $0.10 I may have ever spent.

So there I was eating my $0.02 orange when up comes my homologue. He watches me fight the peel and asks if we have oranges in America. Ha ha. I get it. I can't peel an orange, but yes, we do have them in America. So then I explain that we have all sorts of fruits because we buy them from other countries. Subsequently, this also makes them expensive I say.

Sly grin.

A chance to ask his favorite question.

“So how much is den kelen (one child/ one orange)?”

“Keme.” It means 100, but you have to multiply numbers by five here to get their actual price. This means that 100 is actually 500 CFA here. In the States this is roughly $1.00, which can be a lot here.

He agrees that keme is indeed a steep price for one orange but shrugs it off saying, “But Americans have money.”

Right. This again.

This time I try saying we don't all have money. I say many people right now cannot baara soro (work find/ find work), and he finishes my sentence saying this means they can't wari soro (money find/ find money). Bingo. I only wish I would say, and they can't survive off of sending your 5-20 children out to do subsistence farmings because that isn't the way America works.

At any rate, he seemed satisfied, or perhaps figured out I was annoyed by the conversation, and tells me he is headed out to the field to work on his corn.

“If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion and avoid the people, you might better stay at home.” – James Michener

So before I get to the real point of my blog, I wanted to take a moment to brag about a paragraph that I wrote today without notes and only made two errors in, that I know of. I'll translate it sentence by sentence. We were supposed to wrote about the work we were going to do in our village and why it is important that people receive an education.

Musow sigilen don Kai, u be fe ka baliku kalanke.

Women living in Kai, they want to learn to read and write.

Ola musow fila be na taa karamogo kalanyoro oko u be na na Kai ani u be na musow dege.

So two women are going to go to teacher training and then they are coming to come to Kai and they are going to teach the women. (Side note: I have no idea how many women will go to teacher training, but only needed an example.)

N be na karamogow ani kalandenw deme.

I am going to help the teachers and the students.

Kalan nafa ka bon barisa ni bangebaaw be se ka gafe kalan, u be se ka denw deme u ka sokonobaaraw la.

Education is important because, if parents are able to read books, they can help their children do their homework.

Kalandenw be se ka dinye don.

Students can learn about the world.

Mogow be se ka baara soro ani u be se ka Mali yiriwa.

People can find work and they can improve Mali.

It's nothing magical, but it was what I was able to say, and it's pretty sweet to explain some of the things I will be doing here in the language I am going to be doing it in. Now, if only I would think to say these things in my village.

On to the real point of this post. Malian blessings. They're pretty awesome. The people, in general, are pretty awesome. People genuinely care about one another, and on of the ways they show it is by blessing one another left and right. I am blessed several times a day, but I don't know what the blessings mean. The only way I know someone is even blessing me is because nearly every blessing begins with Ala ka and continues from there. In class today we talked about some special days in Mali and went over a few blessings for some occasions so I thought I would share them and maybe shed some light on Malian culture.

Blessings for Baptisms

Ala ka den balo. May the child live.

An ka bugo a dogow ye. May he/she have siblings or May he not be the only child.

Ala ka na kan diya. May his/her coming be good.

Blessings for Funerals

Ala ka hine a la. May God have pity on him.

Ala ka yafa a ma. May God forgive him.

An ka dayoro suma. May God cool his resting place.

Blessings for Weddings

Ala ka den caman nogoya aw ye. May God give you many healthy children.

Ala ka sen ni bolo bo a la. May they (the children) have legs and arms.

Ala k'a ke si ni keneya ye. May you spend a long time or may you live a long, healthy life.

I will add more by topic once I remember to write them down. Until then

Ka su hera caya. May you have a peaceful night.

Ok, ok, ok, ok. There aren't any bats in my house. Sorry to get your hopes up. I have no idea what will be in my house a week from now when I return though. It's just too exciting to think about right now...

So I am here in Sikasso once again. I was skeptical about returning to site at first. The problems began the second I stepped out of the greatness that is the office in Sikasso and attempted to go back to my site. We walked to the bus stop near the office and told them where we were going. The guy working there is really familiar with Peace Corps and we were told he would be able to help us. The problem is that he can only help us go anywhere but the direction in which we needed to be going. He helped us get a taxi to go to the main bus station and catch a bus. Long story short, the taxi driver tried to put us in the worst vehicle I have ever seen. It was probably a 40 year old station wagon and it's white exterior was covered in rust. The second option was taking a bashe.

If I were to describe a bashe I would have to first tell you it looks just like the Scooby Doo car. It is painted a darker green color, but it has the same shape and is about the same size. I know it is the same size because I once saw the Scooby Doo car at Six Flags in St. Louis. The big difference is that instead of sharing the car with the regular crew of Scooby, Shaggy, and Co., I get to share the car with roughly 30 very sweaty and sometimes smelly people with no ventilation.

We weighed our options, taking Peace Corps policy into consideration of course, and chose the bashe over the station wagon, paid our wage, and were on our way. Kind of. We sat inside the car with no ventilation in the 90+ degree heat for an hour and a half before leaving. Apparently I wasn't the only person upset by the wait and loved listening to a particularly rotund woman in the front row yelling at the driver in French telling him he was a mouton (sheep) and that we were packed in the bashe like sardines. Hearing it in French was so much funnier than hearing it in English for some reason and we laughed and laughed at her. We finally left the station, and I got to my stop, climbed out, and loaded my bike up with my stove, clothes, books, computer, and food and set off for the long ride.

After that adventure, it was pretty much smooth sailing for two weeks. School began the day I arrived back at site so I was able to sit in on a few classes. I started my Bambara tutoring and I even managed to start tutoring in Samogo. The mayor and the general secretary held a couple of meetings and spoke on my behalf about the literacy center (more below). I met a married couple from Europe who have lived in my village for several years, and I saw an American woman who lives in the next village over drive through my village one day. I went to the health center and got to help weigh babies. I was brave and started running in the mornings. There are still rough moments where loneliness hits at not being able to speak with people, times when I get annoyed waiting three hours for meetings to begin, and so on, but compared to my first few weeks at site, things are much better.

Visitors

So yesterday my boss came to visit me at my site, which was super sweet because we were able to meet with some of the women who want to be part of the literacy center. Originally, he was supposed to come on Wednesday, but for whatever reason it was delayed until Saturday. The women were already intending to come to the meeting on Wednesday, and I was really impressed. Nearly 40 women showed up, and they brought a list of names from two other villages with nearly 30 women. Needless to say, I am amazed by the initiative they have shown in wanting to study, though it will be months before their first class. At any rate, about 20 women were able to come to the meeting yesterday, where my boss explained the concept a little more in depth to them. Then he asked the women if they had questions or comments. One woman made a particularly touching comment, when she said that they felt good about themselves as women, but they couldn't read and that learning to read and write would finally make them whole. I was really glad another PC staff member was there to translate this all for me.

After the meeting, we were able to discuss some of the problems I was having with my house or with the village in general. They are not large problems, but it is nice to know they will finally be resolved. Soon, I will be the only person using my nyegen again, I will have chickens, my screen door will lock so that mice can't get in, my back brake on my bike will work, and the best of all is that I will finally be able to cook with my stove!!! No more cooking over coals. Mac and cheese will only take a respectable 15 minutes to cook and not an hour. It's going to be great. It's just a shame I have to eat hamburgers, chicken sandwiches, egg sandwiches, and all the yogurt I please for the next week here in Sikasso. Such a shame...

“I've learned to distinguish low expectations from indolence...Krishna proclaims that a person is wise 'when all his undertakings are free from anxiety about results'...it's possible, indeed desirable, to give one hundred percent effort to an activity and yet have absolutely no stake in the results.” The Geography of Bliss

"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it."

Karl Marx in "Theses On Feuerbach" (1845)

So the quote has nothing to do with this post, but just a thought.

I hate mice. I have always hated mice. It is a fear I acquired thanks to my mother, and perhaps reading a few too many times about Little Albert (although the Little Albert rat sounds like a nice friendly, white lab rat. Is this correct? Because that sounds so much better than Malian rats.) in psychology classes. But I hate them (and I hate writing sentences that begin with conjunctions in most cases, but I'm doing it for emphasis so deal). Hate them. So guess who visited me one fateful evening about two weeks ago?

I was in my room minding my own business because it was raining out and I need some time to myself. I love when it rains because I can escape to my room and my family doesn't just think I am avoiding them. However, I kind of like Malian TV these days so I go sit inside their house and they pull the cable and the TV inside (normally we sit outside and put the TV on a plastic chair with a broken leg, and last week the TV fell when the broken leg was folded funny and didn't work for two days. Seeing how devastated they were made me notice just one more similarity some Malians and Americans are.). At any rate, I was sitting in my room, reading a book by flashlight when my host mom brought me dinner. My host mom had told me about five times (to make sure I heard) to just leave the bowls in my room for the night so I didn't have to go out in the rain. I thanked her a bunch, she blessed me for the night, yadda yadda. I sat on the floor on top of my pillow, reading my book and eating my rice and sauce, minding my own business.

After finishing my rice, I set the two bowls on the island in my front room. I was going to sit down in my chair, and I heard something in the kitchen. I don't know why I was brave enough to see what it was. I usually get cockroaches and these annoying termites at night so that when I come home from watching TV and having dinner with my family, I get to walk around stomping on little critters for half an hour. I was shining my flashlight around when I saw it. A big, dirty, brown haired Malian RAT. It was as surprised to see me as I was to see it. I jumped in the air, danced around for a second, and then ran to my bed, and tucked my mosquito net in (I will not tell you what fate that mosquito net has saved some people from, but it is by far one of my most prized possessions).

I sat there weighing my options. I could go to my host family's house and inform them of the rat, and they would kill it. Plenty of people had rats in their houses during home stay, and I was always delighted to hear how their family would go in the room with sticks and beat it to death. The problem with that option was that the mouse was closer to the door than I was and my shoes were by the door. I would never squash a rat, but I would feel so much safer walking around with shoes on if there was a rat in my house. The other option was to stay in my mosquito net for the rest of the night and hope it went away when the sun came up or I would at least be braver (more brave) to confront it in daylight. It was only 8 though, and the rain and the water I drank was not going to allow for option two though so I decided to put on my brave hat and attempt to go to my host family's house.

Part of the problem with visiting my host family was that I didn't know the word for mouse. I considered grabbing my dictionary on the run to the door, but I was in no mood for that kind of bravery. It sounded like too much fun for one night so I ran out the door as quick as I could. Everyone at my house was inside except for my host mom. I informed her that, “Bagan fitini be n ka so kono.” There is a small animal in my house. She thought this was the funniest thing ever and laughed at me repeating bagan over and over to herself on the walk to my house. I agreed to laugh along if it meant karma would kill the rat in a few minutes.

We went in my house. I have to admit I am partially to blame for its presence in the first place because I had just bought a sack of rice that day and it was sitting on the floor. There were also several black sacks sitting on the floor. The mouse happened to be hiding in or under one so my host mom did not see it when she was looking. I saw it though, shown my flashligh on it, and covered my eyes because I hate them. I was standing behind the island and she and the rat were on the other side together. I guess when I lit it up with the flashlight it got scared and ran outside.

My host mom didn't see anything and thought I was psychotic. I said, “No, I will not stand for this,” and went to get my dictionary. It wasn't in the Bambara-English dictionary- that thing is so worthless. All I know from that thing is how to call someone a worthless person with at least 15 words. I found it in my French-English dictionary though, and fortunately the word translated nicely and she understood what I was saying. It's souris if you're interested. She said, okokokokok, and tried to explain to me that I should just shine my flashlight on it and it would get scared and that the rat would never hurt me. Like hell a rat would never hurt me. I do not want to get bitten by a rat and then have to bike to the main road, grab a bus to Bamako, and then get a rabies shot. (Did I mention that I hate rats?)

She was convinced that all was well and decided to leave. We moved my boxes and sacks off of the floor and I felt better too. She left, and I heard the stupid thing again! Now I was a mixture of ticked off and scared. Fortunately she came back to my house for some reason. She tried to say something to me, but I immediately interrupted her and told her the mouse had returned (mouse, not small animal this time. I guess that is one way to learn). We looked all over, but I didn't see it and she didn't either. I'm dancing around telling her that I really hated mice, REALLY hated mice. She laughed and thought I was so ridiculous and bid me farewell again.

I resolved to sit under my mosquito net, and suddenly I heard scratching sounds near my metal trunk. It sounded like the mouse was inside of the trunk, which would be logical because the trunk has all of my food inside of it. I was a little bit happy about this because I had placed a shelf with my pots on top of the trunk. I was laughing to myself thinking how I would let it suffer all night and then get my family to kill it in the morning, but the thought of listening to a rat squeal all night long was too much for me to bear. Certain it was in the trunk and not able to hurt me, I bravely returned to my host family's house.

The game was over by then. My family wasn't messing around anymore and they sent a small army consisting of my host dad (the mayor of the village. Can you imagine a mayor of any city coming to your house to kill a rat?) and three kids ages 12, 6, and 5 maybe. On the walk I said, “I be na souris faga?” Are you going to kill the rat? I was pretty pleased with myself for that sentence, and he laughed and said he was going to, yes.

Guess what? The rat wasn't in the case after all. I don't know where it was or what other living creatures were making those sounds in or around my house (I'm now thinking something is living on my roof at nights. Bats? I hear rats can scale walls though...). I felt really ridiculous but had to laugh out loud when he offered me one of the children and said she could stay at my house and kill the rat when it came back. I felt silly having a 12 year old body guard all night and didn't really want to play host at that point. He walked outside and said, “Kan ben sinin sogoma.” See you in the morning, in a tone that I knew meant, enough is enough, leave it be for the time being.

The tale doesn't end here though. The rat went away, and I didn't hear from it again that night. I have taken to duck taping part of my screen door shut so it is not able to push it open and get inside my house. It worked pretty well too because one morning I woke up and found it sitting in the two inch space between my front door and the screen door. I waited for it to leave and saw where it crept out from. I found the hole in the door and filled it in as best as I could, and I haven't seen the rat again. I'm not letting it live though. I'm getting mouse traps from the States sent here, and another volunteer tells me that there is poison that kills them. The poison sounds better because it kills the mouse, whereas the mouse trap only holds it prisoner for a while. At any rate, that rat and any other rat who tries to mess with me is going down. Very, very soon.

The End

“We don't use sunscreen; we're already burnt!”

“I be ji taa komi Ameriki muso.” You take water like an American woman. She was carrying the pail by the handle on her side instead of carrying it on her head. They thought it was pretty funny.

So I have a list of about 30 things I could blog about, but I'm only in Sikasso for today and tomorrow morning so I'm sorry ahead of time if it makes no sense or is long and rambling. And has no coherent order. I have been at my site for 24 days so there is a lot to write about.

First of all, in order to get to where I sit right now, there were several routes I could have taken. The route I took involved me getting up at 5 am and leaving my village as soon as the sun came up at 555. I biked the 45 or 50 km into Sikasso. The first few miles were spent biking to the main road because my village is not on the main road. That was the worst because the dirt roads are terrible and were a bit muddy because it rained yesterday. Once I hit the main though it went pretty quickly. I stopped once to hide out underneath a house because it started pouring about 12 km from Sikasso. I had a lovely chat with 5 members of the military in charge of the toll booth of sorts. They were really nice and even gave me a tarp to cover up my bag (don't worry; everything was already wrapped in three or four ziploc bags anyways). Then, I probably broke three rules of the road cutting across a road to ask two more military members as to where the bureau is. He told me I made an infraction, and I said, I'm sorry. But could you tell me where the bureau is? And he was nice as pie. Anyways. I survived, and I'm pretty impressed because it only took my 3 hours to get here, including the 20 minutes spent under the hangar. I'm taking public transport out tomorrow though because the hills going back are much worse than the hills coming in. Eventually I will work up to biking both ways.

Cooking

The first crisis (not a real crisis, just an annoyance, but I said crisis for emphasis (I realize with family reading this they are going to over exaggerate every “terrible” thing that occurs.))occurred the day I arrived at site. Apparently we were supposed to grab a rubber tube to connect our gas tank to our little camping grill. I was the first person to pick up my stove though so I think it was just a matter of miscommunication in the process. The people who were installing me could have bought a new rubber tube in Sikasso and given it to me when they installed others who live nearby. However, with Ramadan ending very soon, they wanted to get everyone installed and didn't have time to drop off the tube. The end results was that I could only cook with this teeny tiny little stove thing (might add a photo if I remember) and coal when I chose to cook. For the most part I just ate what my host mom cooked. It was much better this time around. I think they realized that I do not enjoy them cooking with shea as an oil base alternative (you know, shea butter). The end result is that in the past 24 days I have eaten moni (millet and water porridge I doctor with powdered milk and sugar) or siri (rice and water porridge, again doctored up) every morning for breakfast, potatoes or rice everyday for lunch, and rice and to (millet) every night for dinner. I just ate an egg sandwich. I really thought it would be amazing, but all I have is a belly ache now. Maybe a hamburger tonight will do the trick. Really though, I don't mind the food right now.

I did manage to make some amazing macaroni and cheese with the help of butter, powedered milk, garlic, and vache qui rit (cow that laughs, read: laughing cow cheese). It's actually pretty fantastic; definitely rivals boxed mac and cheese. I also made french fries, but I don't think I have the oil to fry ratio right quite yet and there wasn't enough heat to really get the oil going. With a little bit of ketchup though, it was also pretty great. I wish I could say that the stove is going to improve my situation, but there aren't a lot of foods to choose from, although I am looking forward to making pancakes, tuna sandwiches, and whatever type of Mexican dish I can. One of the games PCVs play is to think of their dream food for an entire day, including appetizers, entrees, and desert. I'm not there yet though (not desperate enough for good food I mean) so I'll save it for another blog post.

Goals

I made a whole bunch of goals I wanted to accomplish during this first three months. They were small things, like going out and greeting people in my village , painting my room, studying language, visiting the offices in the village, finding my way around to other villages, etc. I've accomplished most of the goals already so that is pretty great. One of my goals was to wear a head wrap each day. Most women do. I thought it would be good for lots of reasons. It gains you more respect, it covers up the frizz (although it still manages to escape), etc. I'm not going to though, at least for the time being, because it gives me the worst headaches so bah humbug. There is still a lot I can do for the next two months though.

Projects

We can't do actual projects, but we can start doing a needs assessment and brainstorm ideas. I was finally able to meet with the mayor (he is my host dad but I don't want to talk business during family time when I see him at night) at his office. (Note for my grandma; I have a host family that I can always go to when I need their help. In fact, I live right next door to them At no point would I ever live in the same house as them (nor would I want to). As far as I can tell, without jinxing myself, I am completely safe in my village. Violence does not exist) I showed up at 8 and we talked business starting at 1030. I spent the first thirty minutes watching them bring chairs outside, greeting one another, and finding someone in a nearby concession to give them charcoal to make tea. Then we made tea. Making tea is super important in Mali, if you haven't picked up on that yet. The problem is that the man at the mayor's office who makes tea, is quite possible the slowest tea maker ever. I see the value in spending an hour making tea, but it took him 90 minutes to make the first round of tea, and you make three rounds. Let me interject on this topic to explain tea making.

Making Tea

First you have to gather all of the materials. This includes two baradas (small tea pots), two weres (glasses that can most easily be described as shot glasses), one aseti (plate), one furune (stove), finfin (charcoal), te (tea), sukaro (sugar). So you put about three weres worth of water in the barada and put it on the charoal and let it cook for 12 minutes, according to my Language and Cross-Cultural Facilitator. Next you pour the tea from the barada to the were back to the barada a couple of times. Then you add a full were of sugar into the yet unused barada and pour the tea into the same barada. Then you pour it back and forth from were to barada again, because frankly that is a lot of sugar for such a small amount of water. Then you stick this second barada on the finfin (does your head hurt from looking for the meaning of the words yet?) and let it cook for a few more minutes. Finally, you pour the tea back and forth from cup to tea pot. There is a special art to this in that they pour the tea about a foot above the cup so that it makes a really nice foam. The better the foam, the better the tea maker they think. Anyways. You then clean the weres out (ie pour water in them) and serve the tea. There are usually 5-8 people drinking so you pour the tea accordingly. While this is happening, you have already poured three more weres of water in the barada with the tea leaves and put it on the charcoal. Like I mentioned, you serve three rounds of tea. It is really good stuff, but you can bet I brush my teeth super well at night.

Projects

So back to projects. He spent all that time making tea, pouring it from barada to were so many times that I imagined myself taking the barada and were and throwing them in the corn field next to me and then throwing the furune (stove) with charcoals next while the entire village burned to pieces. Ok, I didn't really imagine that, but it was so frustrating to watch.

At any rate, I finally asked the mayor if we could talk and motioned towards my folder. We talked about the major players of the village, that is, the leaders of the different associations in my village. Then we talked about literacy centers in my village, or the lack there of. They were really interested in this project, as am I. It is the project I was hoping most to do as part of the Education Sector.

I am, however, still sorting through what happened next. They invited me to a meeting that Friday at the mayor's office (supposed to start at 8, but officially started at 1015 with people still trickling in due to tea making and general tardiness) to discuss the upcoming school year, which starts this coming week. The mayor and general secretary argued with the dugutigis (village chiefs) of those in my commune about how much money each village would give per child in the classroom.

Then the mayor introduced me, everyone stared, I said, “Aw ni sogoma” (Good morning) and he began to talk about how I was going to work with the women to start a literacy center. There were 6 or 7 women who were representatives from the different villages for the Women's Association. They said they would like to work with me and that was that. They all headed outside so I slipped out of a side door to say hello to them personally. I asked when they met, and they told me Fridays from 8 to 9. I thought this was strange because my homologue told me that they usually meet once a week. I thought something strange was going on, but I just played nice and said I was excited to see them in a week.

What I have pieced together so far is that the women think we are going to begin literacy courses this Friday. What I had to explain to my homologue, and will explain to the mayor on Monday, is that it cannot start this Friday. First because I can't start projects. Second, because I have no idea what all of the logistics are. I do know that the women who are going to be teachers need to be identified. They need to receive some teacher training to learn how to teach literacy to adults. This requires funding from somewhere yet unknown (we have In Service Training in December, after our three months, to learn about these things, which is one of many reasons as to why we cannot start projects until then). We need books for the women to study with. Oh, a place to study might be nice, right? And students might be nice as well. We will need to coordinate when the women can study, and how to make groups so each teacher can have a set of students. I don't know if the teachers will expect to receive money for their time, and if they do, we will have to decide where the money will come from. As you can see, there is a lot that needs to be done before we can begin classes. I told my homologue that what we can start doing is making a list of interested women who would like to teach and a list of those who would like to study. In the mean time though, there isn't a lot we can do.

Although we can't start right now, I am really impressed at how quickly this came together. Basically, I was expecting this to take the first year of my time here to work to organize, and even then, I was skeptical about how successful it would be. The women are very busy with everyday chores and organizing people can be difficult when you are speaking another language and have to visit people at home, if they are at home, to coordinate anything. I am glad they are so excited, and I think the Women's Association is going to be a really great resource for me. I just hope that they stay excited and patient while we work through the logistics of it all. It's a really good start for having had a 30 minute convo with the mayor though. I'll keep you posted.

CESCOM

So I know what that stands for, but not at this exact moment. What I do know is that it is the health center. It seems to be fairly nice by the standards of health centers here. They weigh babies once a week and they invited me to come and help. There have been volunteers in my village before, and apparently they helped with baby weighings, and vaccinations, but I'm not interested in asking them how they pulled that off with liability issues, nor do I want to give vaccinations. Weighing babies is interesting here. I didn't help the first time, just watched. They have some rope tied around a beam of the hangar they sit under. Then they have a hanging scale (like something you see in a grocery store) they hook to the rope. Next, they stick the baby in this sack-like thing that looks like one of those baby swings at parks but is made out of cloth material. Whatever this thing is called has a big strap on it that they hook to the scale, and voila, baby weighed. How do they weigh babies in the States? There has to be an easier way.

At any rate, I was really happy to know all of the words they were saying to me, but then the doctor invited me into his office and let me watch him visit patients. I wish I had not seen some of those illnesses. I also did not understand the words he was saying because they were french, and probably not illnesses you and I hear much about these days.

School Dance

One evening after talking to Chris, I saw some older boys playing soccer so I went over to see what it was all about. The director of the school was there, and he pointed towards a classroom they had taken all of the desks out of and told me they were having a school dance that night. I asked if I could come check it out since it was a school function and all. He said, of course I could come.

Wow. Those kids dance. They dance in a way I have never before seen a person of any age dance. They move their legs as fast as they can, and, well, I just can't describe it. When they weren't dancing, they were staring at me. Large groups of kids 12 and under standing around me, just staring. They all got really shy when I asked them their names or otherwise attempted to make conversation with them. It was super awkward and I left after about an hour. The real bummer is that all of those kids are leaving to go back home. They were visiting to help family plant for the year, but go home for school. This means that other kids are returning home from other villages. New kids. Kids who have not seen me before. Kids who will love to stare at me all over again. Yay...

Integration

I have been wondering what integration even means anymore. I am in my village all the time. I occasionally go for walks and bike rides and greet everyone along the way. I go to the market on market day and I intentionally say hello to every person selling goods and the women who are buying things too. When I check my phone (I have to walk about ten minutes to get to a place that has service in my site), I say hello to everyone. When I go out for a walk, people yell my name (Asetou these days) and smile to see me. They know I am here and they know my name. I don't know if that is what integration is. I thought I knew what integration was, but now I am rethinking what it means for me. My village is a decent size so I don't think I will know everyone's name, though I will probably come to know everyone's faces. I don't have friends in my village, and am not sure who I would be friends with. I don't want to be friends with boys my age because it sends the wrong message, but the girls my age are married with babies already and can't relate much. It will happen eventually. If nothing else, I will have people I spend a lot of time with (educators, homologue, mayor's office) so I will stay busy. Here business and pleasure are one in the same. The integration thing is just a thought to consider.

Family

My new host family is much different than my old host family. At first, nobody would talk to me. The big problem is language. My family speaks Samogo when they are just sitting around chit chatting, as does most of the rest of my village, which is annoying for a non Samogo speaker. There was about one whole week where people said close to nothing to me and I said close to nothing to them. Then, one night, my homologue came to my host family's house and I made a point to speak to hiim in Bambara for a few phrases and then switched to French. You could see the look of shock on his face to see that I could speak, and that I could speak in two languages he understands even. (He was really shocked when I did the interview with him in French. At one point he stopped and just said, Asetou, you can speak French well.) Since then, things have gotten better. They speak to me a bit more often (read, three or four times per night), and I understand a bit more often, but it is slowly working. They still speak Samogo all the time though.

BBC

There is very little in village that is better than listening to BBC on the radio. They do a focus on Africa segment in the morning and again in the afternoon so it's almost nice to hear about places near me. I say almost nice because they rarely have good things to say about things going on here, though they rarely have good things to say about anything going on in the world so I don't take offense.

They have only mentioned Mali twice by my count, though I don't listen everyday. I was surprised that they didn't mention the 50th anniversary of independence. They kept talking about Nigeria's 50th yesterday because of troubles going on there. Did you know there are something like 17 countries celebrating their 50th year of independence this year? I think people have really negative views of Africa, but just think about what you would expect a country to look like after having only 50 years of independence in a world that has had 100s of years to develop while your country has been repressed by those other developing countries. Just think about it.

50th Anniversary

The 50th was on the 22nd. The party started on the night of the 21st though. One of my host family members took me over to the party. Everyone was dancing, but this time I knew what to expect because the party at the school was a few nights before. They partied until probably 5am; I only know this because I could hear the music playing all night.

The next morning was really interesting. We went to the school, they lifted the flag and the school children sang a song. Then we all moved over to an area where they had chairs and benches. These men came in and played xylophones and drums while others sang and danced. Men wearing masks came out and danced, other men were shooting guns as part of the show. I can't describe it at all. All I can say is that is was one of the few moments where I have said, “Wow. I'm in Africa.” I could say it a million times a day, but there isn't a lot that surprises me at this point, but that was quite a show. People kept asking if I was going to record the show, but I didn't have my camera. Next year though.

Painting

Yeah, I painted my house! Well, 2.33 walls of my house, but whatever. I ran out of paint. I don't know when I will be able to finish. It isn't a matter of money so much as it is a matter of getting it to my site by bike. I need to buy food and my bag was already stuffed when I got in. I have my bookbag to fill, but it becomes a lot to carry, especially when I have my box with my stove in it to take as well.

Heat

It isn't too bad. I don't typical break a sweat during the day, though the past week has been warmer. I even get cold in the evenings and have to bundle up in my blanket at night. Something tells me hot season is still going to suck though.

Biking

I have obviously biked a bit lately. I was able to visit a larger village near mine for market day. I hope that it can be a place to meet with other volunteers from time to time. Just having a couple of hours in the morning to spend with another volunteer is really nice. I went on that adventure with my homologue. In the future I will have to take a different route because the route he takes requires me to pass through water, and I shouldn't because of schisto that is in the water. I'll let you look that one up on your own. Anyways, I will have to go the long route in the future, which is a lot of extra kilometers, but not having schisto would be great.

I also went on another adventure to visit another volunteer in a village close to mine. He was my site buddy during site visit. My homologue showed me which road to take so I left one morning. I decided to go on market day because I knew there would be a lot of people from my village and the villages between ours would be going to his site and could give me directions. It was a good choice too. My homologue made it seem like the road went directly to his village. Wrong. There were probably 15 forks in the road going all over the place. Fortunately there was a young boy watching over animals at every fork in the road.

I had some difficult in one village. There were some women fetching water. I asked what village I was in, and they told me it was my friend's village so I asked if they knew him. They said yes, but then the woman starting touching herself and motioning that my friend was a woman. That was when I knew we were really on a different track. She insisted I come and see my friend who turned out to be a woman about 50 years old. I told her that unfortunately that was not my friend. They took me to see some other guy and I told him the exact same things- the village I was going to and who I was looking for. He repeated what I said word for word to the woman, the same words I had said to her, and she said something similar to, “Ok” and walked me outside of the concession and told me to follow the road I was already on. Wow. But I arrived, and luckily his girlfriend was visiting so I got two toubabs for the price of one! Plus, they made some french fries and I even got to eat a tuna sandwich. Going home was another adventure, but I made it before night fall. Not sure when I will do it again though.

Ok

So that is a lot. It doesn't really describe much, but whatever. The past three weeks were especially difficult for me. It was the first time that I had to be on my own for three weeks with nobody to talk to, with the exception of my visit to the volunteer in the village near mine. School has not started. Tutoring has not started. Nobody was inviting me to do anything or go anywhere. I don't mean friends wise. I mean that my work partner and my host organization was not inviting me to meetings or inviting me to meet people in the village. I didn't know what was going on or when because nobody told me, but they were surprised when I didn't show up.I seriously considered going home on several occasions because I was worried about ever starting projects, if the work I accomplish would mean enough for me after two years, I was thinking about what I could be doing at home, and I was mentally and emotionally spent.

We were supposed to have language training this entire week, but it was been pushed back. Even so, a good number of us came in to see the city. We didn't all know we would be visiting so it is a nice surprise, even if we are all sitting on our computers right now.

I think things will go better now that school is starting and language tutoring is starting. We have language training in a few more weeks now instead so it gives me something to look forward to. I know when things go on in my village, and I think the mayor will help me find things to do maybe. It is going to be hard off and on, but hopefully I am moving into a period where things are a bit easier.

Tomorrow morning or afternoon sometime I will be heading to site. We arrived in Sikasso yesterday afternoon. It was really nice to be able to take Peace Corps transport here instead of public transportation because we could spread out and use our electronics without concern for them being stolen. However, I think the trip actually took longer than it would have on public transportation.

I'm not sure that I am ready to head to site quite yet. We have been at the training center or on the road for about two weeks now so my Bambara has greatly deteriorated, and I have been completely spoiled by modern amenities. Well, sort of. The water is still cold, but it is running water. There aren't as many flies and mosquitoes in the nyegens, and I've gotten to eat a good amount of American food. I have had internet. It isn't always reliable, but it is there if I have the patience for it. I still need to buy food for my site and get my furniture, but it is raining out today so I don't feel like going out.

At the same time, I am ready to get to site to start setting up my house. I want to start meeting everybody in my village and practicing my Bambara. I have a more advanced book, but I don't understand a word of it because there is little English, but I do have an English/Bambara dictionary I can study. I also picked up a French grammar book so I can continue studying that. My French is even worse than my Bambara right now from studying Bambara (I think these blogs are getting a bit repetitive). Additionally, I need to hang out and befriend the Samago speakers so I can learn some basic Samago because everybody in my village speaks it.

School starts on the 22nd, the same day as the 50th anniversary of Mali's Independence. There should be a pretty big party for that and for the end of Ramadan. I am excited to see what school looks like in my village. Although it isn't my number one job duty, there are a lot of potential activities I could work on there, including after school clubs, life skills animations in the school, helping in the English class, installing wash pits, painting a world map. The opportunities are pretty endless, just depending on the ideas I come up with, how much activities might cost to do, and getting approval from those in the village. I can't do projects yet, but I can start thinking of them.

Changing gears now.

Two nights ago, at 1:39AM (the perpetrator tells me her watch read 1:35AM), I was awakened by screaming coming from the hut connected to mine. It seems that when she sat straight up in bed and began her discourse, she also woke up her two roommates. One was screaming along with her while the third yelled, "Help us!" over and over. There was a group of unfortunate souls who had to leave at 3AM for Kayes region, who had decided to stay up all night. They were chatting outside in the hut that faces mine so they went running over to try and help. By this time, the protagonist of this fantastic frenzy had screamed herself awake from a bad dream...

My standards for entertainment here in Mali are quite low. I have played a dozen games of Phase 10 in the past week, but it's a good thing because I don't have my own deck or the language to explain it to Malians. More recently we have taken to doing impersonations of those around us. It's all in good fun and so very entertaining. I can do some pretty good impersonations too.

Alright modern world. I've run out of ramblings to continue. But before I go, one last piece of advice from a Malian proverb:

"Hali ni kono boli ye dognoi faga, a te korokeni ka bo nyogon ke."

Even if diarrhea killed the younger brother, he will not have defecated as much as his older brother. In other words, the older you are, the wiser you are.

Enjoy your Labor Day.

I want to take note of the death of a recent Peace Corps Volunteer who was serving in Lesotho. According to CNN, he was fatally shot when returning to his hotel one evening after attending a going away event of sorts. I just learned of this a few minutes ago and haven't had any sort of time to reflect on it, but I wanted to simply write that it happened and make others aware of the story. It is a tragedy that this would happen to someone who gave up so much of their own life to travel to a foreign country to help them do the very work the country requested.

I suppose, for those readers out there, I should say that I do feel safe. Lesotho is far from Mali, and it is a completely different culture. I just have to be smart about where I go and when I go there and hope for the best.

I haven't been here for long, but I have learned a lot on this topic. I'm going to try and just present the facts and not give a whole lot of my opinion. At this point, it is still psychologically hard for me to see how greatly the gender roles are divided so I haven't allowed myself to think of it much, mostly because it would make me so outraged. I'm not blaming the females or the males for continuing these gender roles. We would see it as a problem, but, in general, I feel Malians would just tell you that's the way it is, and that would be that. Feel free to tell me your opinion on the matter. I could always use new insights or trains of thoughts to consider.

A woman's day usually starts in the wee hours of the morning, far before the sun comes out. They are up cooking breakfast for the family, fetching water, or sweeping the lawn. She must tend to the children when they wake up, making sure they are fed and taken care of. She spends the morning washing clothes or washing dishes from the day before. Around 10 she begins cooking lunch for the family, often cooking for her husband's parents as well as her husband's siblings. In my home stay family, Fatimatah cooked for 10 people. When lunch time comes around, she usually walks around cleaning or sits on the smallest stool the family owns whilst all of the men in her family sit in the nicest chairs the family owns and eats the food she has prepared. Her children will all eat. Once everyone else has finished eating, she will eat what is left or will eat with the other women who were cooking for the other family members too.

After lunch, she might tie her youngest child to her back and head out to the field. If there is no donkey cart, or if the men took it, she will walk at least a mile to reach the field her family owns. After a few hours bending over mending to the crops, she will head back in to begin cooking dinner. If she doesn't go to the field, she might instead go to the market to try and sell a few goods her family has produced or to buy food for the next few days or week. It's the same routine of waiting for the men to finish eating, eating whatever is left. If the men are making tea, she might be lucky to get a drink during the third round of tea (I am always served the first or second glass of tea during the first round of tea and I am offered tea during all three rounds), and there might be a stool for her to sit on. After dinner, she cleans things up, removing dishes and putting things back into the kitchen. She helps bathe the children, puts them to sleep, and then she might yaala yaala through the village to talk to her other female friends. They might talk about funny events, what their toubab did that day, or talk about their children, money, and other concerns they have.

Life for women here is rough. The average woman has 7.4 children. (In America, women average 2.06 children.) For every 1000 live births, there are 113 deaths. The rate of domestic violence is high. Although it is high in America too, there is less of a taboo here so domestic violence is more public. (In my short time here, I have not seen domestic violence between spouses, but I have seen several children being hit by adults, birds being hit with slingshots or killed just cause, donkeys and cows being beaten, bugs and insects being tortured. The saddest story is hearing of the cat with two broken back legs dragging itself through town. The animals are all underfed, the people don't get adequate nutrition, and you can always see their ribs jutting out.)

The education levels of all children is extremely low, male or female. Of all children here in Mali, ages 7-12, only 58% are in school, and only 51% of young girls are in school. Part of this has to do with the fact that a girl can be married at age 15, and with parental consent (not hard to come by), girls can be married when they are younger than 15. I have met a number of women who are 16, 17, 18 and have two or three children already. Let's not forget that a woman can share her husband with his 1, 2, or 3 other wives. They take care of all of his children, whether or not they are their own, but they view their family as one unit. Ask a child who their mom is, and they usually won't point to their biological mother. Instead, they say they are my moms, and they won't differentiate between them no matter how you ask or alter the question. That's how they see it. Women make up only 15% of the labor force here, obviously hindered by a lack of education and demands of running her household. In America, women make up 46% of the labor force, and the women who stay at home often choose to do so in order to be with their children rather than being forced to stay home.

Prostitution here is legal. When I was in Sikasso, current PCVs (Peace Corps Volunteers) were able to point out who these women were. An easy way to notice is by looking at the direction in which she has tied her pagne. A pagne is a wrap skirt. If the skirt is wrapped so the opening is on the right side of her body, she is a prostitute. It's an easy signal for all parties involved (unless you are an unknowing foreigner, but they taught us this lesson very early on). The rate of AIDS is under 2%, but this is because people do not get tested. Women rarely go to bars, and never alone, so the women who do go to the bars are easily recognized as being prostitutes as well.

Finally, approximately 95% of women undergo FGM (Female Genital Mutilation). There are several different ways of performing the procedure (procedure makes it sound like something necessary or good, but I'm not sure what the correct word is to use). The attitudes towards FGM differ between every village and the reasons for continuing the procedure also differ. In one village, nearly 30 women died of infection at the same time as a result of this practice so the village stopped doing it. It wasn't so much that their attitudes had changed. It was just a sign from Allah.

I think it is safe to say that life here for a Malian woman is hard. It's hard for all parties involved. The women take great pride in being able to support and provide for their family though. They like their roles because being able to take care of everyone is the way they earn respect from other villagers.

A man's life is drastically different. They usually wake up an hour or two after the women in order to eat breakfast. They might spend the morning working in the field, going by moto or donkey card. If there is no work to be done, they hang out at the butigi (small village shops) with the other men. They might play card games, smoke, or just talk. They return home for lunch in the afternoon. When lunch has finished, they go back to the field or the butigi and usually make tea for an hour or two. They pass the afternoon away in this way. They return home around 6 to take a shower, spend time with their family, and to eat dinner. After dinner, they go back out to talk with their male friends, listen to the radio, make tea, or watch TV in another concession.

There are men who do other things of course, but this is above and beyond the sweeping generalization of life for a male in a village. Very generalized. People who are public officials might go to the office all day to do work for their community. They may sell goods in the market, work as tailors, and so on. They spend time with their children in the evening. I saw one man help with laundry one day, and they made fun of him the entire time. They don't ever enter the kitchen, never wash dishes, don't help the children bathe, etc.

Again, these are the generalized gender roles found here in Mali. There is much more discussion to be made about how the lives of children differ from the adults, the gender roles that exist between the male and female children, and so on.

How do I fit into all of this? I am kind of a third sex here (something I've mentioned before). I am more respected that Malian women because I am educated (probably more educated than any person in my village actually). Additionally, I am American and there is a general knowledge that gender roles in America are different. Regardless of my education status, I am not necessarily as respected as the men in the village simply because I am a woman. However, I can get away with saying or doing some things with the explanation that I am naïve, a silly woman, a silly American, and so on. The women in my village will make sure that I am taken care of- that I am eating well, that I am keeping my house and compound clean, that my clothes are washed, etc. They will also make sure I am safe at night, and they should put any harassing men in their place. The men will help me to do work in the schools, and I must go through them to get permission to start projects and they will oversee my work (although all village members will also be more than happy to do this). It's a bit of a tricky role to play, but it allows me some freedom, and I think I can use my status to empower women and serve as a role model and also use it as leverage when I ask men about doing projects with women.

I don't think there is any good starting or stopping point here. It will be an ongoing learning opportunity throughout the next two years and will always give me something to think about. I hope it gives you a little something something to think about as well.

I wish I had something fantastic to write about, but I don't have much (for a change). This third round at homestay was much like all of the other rounds of homestay. Only, it was easier because I could communicate! That part was really great. I was able to communicate before using my French, but being able to use their mother tongue to communicate with them helped to cut down on the confusion.

I passed my language test! We have a few smaller tests this week, but otherwise we will all swear in on Friday! I went to the tailor at my site and got a pretty sweet comple (shirt and skirt) made that I will wear for swear in and then other formal events (big party and feast at the end of Ramadan, weddings, funerals, etc). Besides the comple, I had 4 dresses and 2 pagnes (skirts) made. The fabric altogether was something like $16 US and it was $10 to have it all made. It's pretty sweet. The only problem is that I have to wear some type of pants or yoga pants under my dresses because they are too short. I can't be showing off my knees or they will think badly of me.

We get a dead day on Saturday after swear-in, and then most of us will head to site. I'm not sure of the logistics of us getting to site with all of our stuff so it's hard to say what day I'll end up rolling in, but I should know more soon. Then it's 3 months at my site. I'm only allowed to leave for two days to go to my banking town. We can't work on any projects. I guess you could say our only project is to work on integrating.

All in all, homestay was a really good experience. During the first month, I always knew the date, knew the time, etc. This second month really felt like it flew though, and I had trouble keeping track of the days. I am going to miss my family, but I'm also excited to have more independence at my site. I can cook and clean for myself, fetch my own water, and I don't have to go to class anymore! I can set my own schedule of waking up, exercising, eating, yaala yaala-ing (one of my favorite Malian words. It means to walk/wonder about with no particular purpose. Just passing the time), and so on. I'm going to miss my toubab friends from homestay, especially when I can't speak English to anybody at my site. It was nice being able to get to know people in my stage, especially people in my sector, and I hope the people who live closest to me at site are equally awesome. Nobody is closer than a 1 or 2 hour bike ride away (the only mode of transportation really), but it's good exercise and well worth it after a long time alone at site.

Stress levels seem to be going up. I don't think I have had the highest stress level, but I don't want this process to seem like a cake walk either. Up until this point we have had our initial training in Philly, some training at Tubani So, our training center, been to homestay twice, visited our real site once, and tomorrow we head out for round three at home stay. We have class from 8-12 and 3-5 for about 12 more days until we are expected to test at a Intermediate Mid level. I know the language much better than I tested at during our mid-stage test. Even so, I can't shake the feeling of having not done as well as I would have liked. I guess it just gives me more incentive to study more this time around. They want you to talk as much as you possibly can during the oral interview (their method of testing us), saying all the words you know to show you have mastered the language. So they ask about what your mom looks like. You should say, my mom is short, she is skinny, she has black hair, her eyes are brown, her nose is straight, her teeth are nice, she is a hard worker, she is nice, she is intelligent, she is clever, and probably five more things I forgot. I guess I'm just not that talkative, but I'll do it next time. At any rate, the days are very long, and I have trouble sitting in class for so many hours at a time. I'm used to 50 minute long classes two or three times a day. Between classes are the greetings, people staring, always interesting foods, etc. I wake up at 430 am when the mosque calls and then again when they call at 930 at night. It is pretty hot, we have no A/C or electricity, the nyegen is yucky, the mosquitoes are annoying, etc, etc, etc.

When we are at the training center, we have limited internet connection and all fight over the bandwidth, trying to use Skype, check email, upload blogs, and of course check Facebook. We have sessions from 8 to 6 with little breaks in between because the sessions tend to run long. The food here makes me more sick than the food at my homestay site, and I actually crave the food from home stay.

These aren't complaints so much as descriptions as to what life is like, but altogether they can cause people to stress out from time to time (or hour to hour, sometimes minute to minute). Saturday night in Sikasso, we stayed at a hotel. It was beautiful- a single and double bed for three people, A/C, a bathroom with a sink with running water, a toilet WITH toilet paper (until we run out), a shower with HOT running water, a TV (though it unfortunately didn't work), electricity and wall outlets where I could have plugged in my computer and jumped on the internet (if I had brought it), and there are even two hangers in the room. It sounds like something you might expect everyday of your life, but it was a real shock to my system to have so many amenities. I don't know what will happen to me when I get back to the States in two years and a few days.

I am excited to go back to my home stay so that I can get outfits made from the new fabric I have slowly been acquiring. I think I will be making two dresses, one black with turquoise, another purple, pink and yellow. I can make two comples, which is a full outfit with skirt, top, and headwrap, one of which will be my swear in/wedding/funeral outfit. Finally, I will have two more skirts to be made. I'm also excited to go to the market in two villages near mine, although I'm nervous to figure out what gifts I need to buy my host family. I get a few more weeks with other volunteers until I head out to my site, where I will be on my own for a couple of months.

I'm ready to get to site too though. I can start using my Bambara more regularly (but can use French for back up with most people, which is very reassuring), get to know the people I will work with for two years, check out the school I can work with. I can dictate my own schedule, cook for myself, get a consistent exercise schedule going, sleep in the same bed for more than two weeks at a time, and even put my clothes in the dresser I ordered. I will be cut off for nearly three months though, as we aren't allowed to leave site but two or three times so that will be hard. We can't do any projects during this time either.

Sunday 8/8/2010

4:30AM Roll out of bed and panic trying to get to the bus by 5. I hope I don't forget anything but don't know where my packing list disappeared to.

5:00 AM get to the bus and end up waiting an hour as the driver climbs up and down from the roof of the bus loading our bags, water filters, and bikes. We have people from 3 regions on our bus, homologues are missing, etc. Anymore this sort of chaos just feels normal.

8:00 AM We finally reach our bus stop, the third and final round of people to get off at different stations. There are buses wherever there is room, cars maneuvering between buses, motos maneuvering between cars, and people between motos. There is luggage everywhere and people selling all sorts of odds and ends. I use the nyegen and realize how low my standards have become. You thought American truck stops were dirty...I watch as they lift an entire house worth of furniture on the roof. It is always amusing to watch the drivers climb up and down. I sometimes think luggage has fallen off the bus, only to realize that it's just the driver skidding down the window making that squeaky clean sound. Someone wears a shirt that says, “Please excuse my tardiness, I have explosive diarrhea.” I would usually roll my eyes at this shirt, but it is a common problem for trainees so it's humorous today.The nyegen hole is absolutely humongous but has been covered by a plastic piece. There are places built in where you are supposed to put your feet, and then there is a hole in the plastic piece itself. When I stand on the plastic piece it bends more than I would like. I imagine (I do a lot of imagining these days, and am happy when these worst case, humorous scenarious don't pan out after all) the plastic piece breaking under my weight and my falling feet first into 5 meters of urine and feces.

8:30AM we begin loading the bus. It looks like it belongs to the 70s era with it's orange seats and curtains on the windows. The AC is broken and there is only six inches between my seat and the one in front of me.

9:00 AM the bus finally rolls out, or tries to, fighting the chaos of other vehicles and people.

9:10 AM first of many stops on the side of the road. People climb on the bus with sweets, drinks, and other goods to sell. These stops occur the entire trip. We don't drive more than 30 minutes without stopping, each stop accompanied by visits from street vendors.

2:30 PM I relieve myself in someone's nyegen as another trainee gets her luggage to head into site. The nyegen has no actual hole. You just pee on the dirt and watch a trail form. The bus honks nonstop as I hurry. He has laid on the horn since leaving this morning so I'm not worried about him leaving. I'm a toubab and that bus isn't going anywhere without me. I hand back the salidaaga and make my mad-dash-make-it-look-like-i-was-hurrying run back to the bus.

4PM roll into Sikasso. I see two female toubabs walking down the street and eagerly wave. It turns out that they are PCVs coming to our rescue. My buddy showed up with them at our bus. I was happy to see him because we weren't able to contact each other before then. He and two others got bus tickets and loaded their bikes. In the mean time, another trainee asks her homologue to buy her peanuts and gives him an obscene amount of money. I see the peanuts sitting on a silver platter atop a girls head just outside the window. I imagine her eyes growing wide when she sees all that money, taking the silver platter off of her head, and giving us the entire thing for that much money. We roll out.

4:03 PM Or try to roll out, but there was another bus that broke down. When this happens, they “sell” passengers to other bus companies. A good 30 people joined our already full bus. Chaos and shouting ensued. I wasn't annoyed so much as amused, but I felt like I should shout along just to join the cause.

4:15 PM roll out.

6:00 PM by this point, we have unloaded my gear, homologues, and buddies (yeah I’m missing some apostrophes there, get over it), and we are eating a rice and sauce meal on the side of the road. We set off for the ride into my village. The entire ride on the bus was great, and the further we drove into the region, the greener my new world became. There were trees, mountains, etc. Needless to say, the bike ride in was stunning. I decided things weren't going to be so bad. A man with a moto came and took my stuff in. He speaks English so I wonder what else lies ahead. We reach my house and I am stunned. I pictured a concession like my homestay site but with a dozen more children, twice as many animals, and so on. Instead we roll up to a very nice house with a plethora of windows and 2/3 rooms. It is split into two official rooms. The first room is smaller and has a concrete partition in the middle. I'll call the first half the foyer and second the kitchen and the partition is now an island. The larger room is pretty huge all things considered. I am excited to decorate it/potentially paint it once I get furniture. My nyegen is a solid concrete slab well worth bragging about. Also, I have my own gwa to chill under whenever I want. Did I mention the mango trees in my backyard? I didn't take my camera because I was worried about public transportation so I'll post pictures of the final product in a few months. It's pretty sweet to say my first house is in Africa.

8:30 PM dinnertime round two. It's to, my new favorite food (sarcasm) and rice on the side with two bites of meat. I drink way too much tea and chat with my buddy. I meet the doctor and discover he too speaks a bit of English.

9:30 PM My homologue looks tired so I say I am tired and head in. my buddy helps set up my mosquito net. We lay down on the ever so comfy concrete floor of my kickass new home and talk for a couple of hours.

Monday

6:30AM Nature wins the battle, but I will win the war. The mosque came a calling and the roosters starting crowing. I gave up and took my first bucket bath in my new home.

7:30 AM I begin round one of introductions and visit the mayor's brother, mayor, the doctor's office, dugutigi, mayor's office and deputy mayor, another office, and then return home. The president of the women's association visits me. It is near impossible to understand what anyone over 50 says.

10 AM my buddy leaves. It's sad that my personal translator and new friend is leaving. I sit under my gwa enjoying my first moments in my first home. “I'm here,” I think, and then I am greeted by the flies.

12 PM my stomach starts to growl. My homologue says we will eat when the doctor arrives.

12:30 PM no doctor. My homologue leaves

1 PM the food shows up. Do I eat or wait for them to eat? I opt to eat.

1:15 PM I now have a collection of food in my room. I say I'm tired and lay down to sleep.

1:30 doctor arrives. I greet him and lay back down.

145 Macki arrives. We greet the dugutigi and mayor's family again.

230 round 2 of introductions is over. I lay down again.

330 I wake up and realize I am all alone and don't know how to feel. Having nothing else to do, I do some stretching.

5 my homologue arrives and we do some homework

6 bath time

7 my homologue takes me to the place where I eat dinner. I awkwardly watch a French soap opera and my belly growls. They try to serve me. I am confused and think they want me to move my chair to the food. They think I am trying to go home to eat. In my inability to express my confusion I head home and eat my rice and sauce alone. I take my bowls back to the house and tell them I am tired.

8 my homologue arrives. We had tea at this time last night so I think we will have it again tonight. I ask my homologue this. He goes to buy tea, and I realize we weren't going to have tea and feel bad. I sit with the doctor as they eat. He asks if I like milk. I say yes so of course they give me food. I should have said yes but I'm full. Three strikes and I decide to go to bed.

Tuesday

6:30 AM I succumb to the noises of nature and get up.

7 AM millet porridge for breakfast and cake/gateau

8:30 greetings round 3 begin. I have tea with people at the mayors. I meet the person who is supposed to be my tutor but can't communicate this with him. A man shows up with some sort of MP3 player. We listen to some Smack That by Eminem, followed by Elton John, and finish off with some Michael Jackson. He asks if everyone in America dances like Michael Jackson and I reassure him that yes, everyone in America dances just like Michael Jackson (I have to get my giggles in where I can).

1215 I am summoned to the mayor's house and eat rice and small amounts of carrots and onions. In the future, I will pretend its fried rice, like Chinese food.

1230 there is a cuty baby next to me and another woman whose name I may never remember. He keeps smiling at me and I decide to sit for an hour and make small talk when I can.

1240 my homologue comes and I have to leave. He asks if I am tired and I say no. The concrete just isn't appealing anymore. He invites me to the tea. Tea lasts two hours. I am thankful that I only took one glass of tea at the mayor's office. A woman from the doctor's office sits and talks about me. At Tubani So they drilled into our homologue's heads that we've been here a month and our Bambara is bad. My homologue continually tells people I don't understand a single word they are saying so I enjoy understanding them without them knowing. The doctor returns and tells me he saw S biking. I'm confused because I only remember my buddy by his American name and am sooo confused. He drives off and is satisfied.

230 my homologue keeps asking if I am tired and I decide it must be because he is tired. I tell him I would like to go for a bike ride and head home. The doctor gives me a customary gift of two oranges and two bananas (good doctor) and I head out. I greet everyone along the way.

330 shaved legs are the best thing ever.

6PM I wash my hands and prepare to leave for dinner. An old man arrives, and I really hope he doesn't want to shake my hand. I get a second shake even when he finds out we share the same last name. It's French soap opera time again. They are exactly like American soap operas. Beautiful people, affairs, divorce, death. My host mom gives me my dinner, and then I see it. A perfect chicken leg swimming in broth. Before I can eat it, I am greeted by “Asetou'” and a glass of tea to the face. I drink round 3, cup 4 of the day and dig in. the broth is the saltiest I have ever eaten, but I remind myself of the iodine deficiency here and gobble it up. As soon as I take my first bite of chicken I begin plotting the death of the next chicken to cross my path. Why did the chicken cross the road? Then I see it. Little orange numbers counting up the time over the TV. The men are changing the DVD, and the fact that we have a DVD player blows my mind. The movie starts, someone offers me some peanuts, and I see Morgan Freeman flash across the screen. I have trouble containing myself as someone with a perfect French accent begins speaking Morgan Freeman's lines. They say, “Drink this tea,” to me again and flash a light on the cup. The tea is red. I think “Hell no,” but say' “N faara” instead. I tell them I am tired and head home. The doctor offers me yet another glass of tea. In broken Frambara (French/Bambara) I laugh and say I am good and that I have had tea three times today. He asks, “How are you?” “Good, thank you,” laughing at how weird it is to hear my English voice.

9PM I smile as Smack That serenades me to sleep.

Wednesday

630 AM bucket bath. My breakfast has magically appeared in my house. I return the bowl and the wife's doctor brings me a delicious drink. It is supposed to be coffee but is really milk, sugar, and a pinch of coffee.

730 round 4 of greetings. I meet the APE President and CGS Treasurer. I try to strike the right balance between my skirt covering my knees and staying out of my bike chain. I fail and make a huge rip in it right away. We run into my new father. As my homologue talks to him I daydream/zone out/ i-don't-know-what-they're-talking-about-and-have-nothing-else-to-do world. I watch a goat jump from one crumbling wall to the next, each new wall slightly higher than the rest. He gets to the stop and I wonder how he plans on getting down. Apparently he does too, judging by how badly he starts shaking.

1230 pm my homologue visits. I wonder if I should engage him in conversation and we settle into a comfortable silence. I laugh as his breathing becomes more labored and he fights sleep. Nobody in this country seems to be able to stay away between 1 and 3, myself included.

Elizabeth Higgins

Corps de la Paix

BP 227

Sikasso, Mali, West Africa

Last time I was at my homestay, I wrote my blog post before I came back here to the training center. I have been a bit overwhelmed the past few days so I didn't do the same for this time. So instead I will just write whatever comes to mind first.

N fa be fa. This means my father is crazy. My father (there are many of them these days) isn't crazy, but the fact that fa means father and crazy is only one of many cases where a single word has multiple meanings.

Kono be n kono kono. There are birds in my stomach. I know the word for bird is missing a letter somewhere in there, but I don't know where. Again, one word means many thigns in this language.

Kaba be n fe. I have corn. Or alternatively, I have ringworm.

N be kaba fe. I want corn. Or, I want ringworm. See where the breakdown begins?

N ba ani n ka ba be taa ba. My mother and goat go to the river. Ba is mother, goat, and river.

N ka so be na n ka so. My horse comes to my house.

About once a day, I think about how I would like to write, direct, and produce a film about flies during my time here in Mali because the flies are everywhere. I can just picture an up close and personal image of a fly with his big red beady eyes covering the big screen. The only problem is that as soon as I imagine what the film would be like, I am reminded that it would not be very excited. They fly in the negen and break down feces, contaminate food with their feces infested feet, and spend the rest of their time harassing humans. That was a good sentence. I understand that they made a film about rats and it was pretty awesome, but I really don't want to make flies out to be something that they aren't. Obviously I spend a lot of time thinking about flies, and the thoughts are rarely polite thoughts.

Tomorrow morning, bright and early at 6 am, I will be taken to the bus station to begin my long journey to my village for the next two years. Sikasso is a pretty lengthy trip from Bamako and then I have to take another road to get closer to my site, after which point I must bike into the actual site. No big, right? It's only an entire day of travel with very limited language. I'm thankful to be traveling some of the way with others and that my work partner (homologue) is going to be with me every step of the way. Unfortunately, I don't have a big hiking backpack so I have to carry my book bag and duffel bag if I want to be able to bike. I also must carry my water filter, which breaks down into one big bucket, which I should be able to put over my handlebars or something. Oh wait, not on my bike because nobody told me I needed to bring a bike for this trip. One other person was not told they needed a bike either. I have been told that a bike will be found for me sometime between now and then. So, duffel bag, book bag, water filter, and bike on public transportation. I am feeling more than a little nervous.

Then at the end of this long trip, I will arrive in my village, where I will visit for a week. Following this visit, I will return to the training center for a few days. Then I will return to my homestay site for about two weeks, and then I will come back to the training center for a few days. In one month-ish, I should be able to return to my site and settle in. No more living out of a suitcase. That will be awesome, but scary because it means I will be all alone in my village. We are only allowed to leave two times during the first three months so those might be the most difficult three months ever. My mom is sending me a book that I have wanted to read for about a year (A Suitable Boy). It is 1000-ish pages so I'm hoping it keeps me preoccupied for those first three months while I try and obtain a kindle somehow.

I get run down when I am in my homestay village. I am still working through the mindset that I have to accept the things I cannot change. The children, for now, are going to chase me and yell toubabu (white person) until I get it through their minds that I don't want to be called toubabu. I guess I find it more disrespectful than anything, although they don't mean anything bad by it. They are just a culture that calls people by what they are. At any rate, I want to try and get them to call me by my name when they see me, not by my skin color.

On that same note, I feel like I have gained a lot of insight as to what it must be like to be a minority in the U.S. I know how it feels to make a baby cry simply because of the color of my skin. The baby in my concession at my home stay village cries just at the sight of me. I'm usually just sitting there, not doing anything, not even looking at him. Obviously I have never done anything to make him think I will hurt him or think I am dangerous. It is only the color of my skin and the fact that I look so different that is scary.

I could go back to my tangent about why home stay has run me down, but I don't think it would get me anywhere that I haven't already been to in my mind throughout the past few days. I need to do other things to prepare myself for the day and my time here.

I have a bike! Yay!

Eh Allah seems to be the most popular phrase to express surprise. It's the Mali version of America's Oh My God. And they say it like they mean it. Eh A-llah.

The past few days have been the most difficult days for me thus far. I had a string of events that left me feeling down. I'm hoping this trip to the training center helps me to clear me mind. Words of encouragement could always help.

We learned about our site visit this afternoon, shortly after arriving at the training center. I will be going to the Sikasso region. I won't tell you my village name for security reasons. I feel pretty good about my placement. The Sikasso region is in southern Mali where they apparently have the best weather Mali has to offer and the most vegetation as well. I should be able to get my hands on fresh fruits and veggies pretty regularly.

My number one job priority is to work with the women in the community to encourage them to continue their education. There are a number of ways in which I will be able to work towards this goal so I will wait until I begin working on those projects to write more about them. Of all of the job options available to me, this is the one I liked the most, and it is something that is right up my alley so I'm excited to see what is out there to do.

That being said, I won't start any projects until mid to late December. I am still in training until September, when I hope to be sworn in as an official Peace Corps Volunteer. As of right now, I am a lowly Peace Corps Trainee. After I am sworn in, I will spend my time at site continuing my language training and getting oriented with my village. This seems like a long time, but I have a lot of catching up to do and not a lot of language to do it with.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZcZf-VYkBwc

I ni sogoma. Good morning Nba(men)/ Nse(women), I ni sogoma. I hear you, good morning I ka kene? How are you? Tooro te/ Baasi te. I'm good Somogow be di (or somogow ka kene)? How is your family? (to which I always want to say, I have no idea, haven't talked to them in days. Do you know how my family is doing?) Torro t'u la. They are good I fa ka kene? How is your father? (they are referring to my host father and not my real father now) Tooro t'a la. He's good. I ba ka kene? How is your mother? Tooro t'a la. She's good. I be taa kalanso la? Are you going to school? (the only place I go. They know what time I go to school and there is nothing else in the area of the village where the school is so it's obvious, but they ask to be nice) Owo, n be taa kalanso la. Yes, I am going to school. K'an ben. See you. K'an ben. See you. Owo!!!! Yes! (they do this to tell me they are impressed that I made it through this greeting)

So that is how I greet almost everyone that I run across. Sometimes we just say I ni ce. (e knee chay), which is also thank you or hey I say you but I'm on a mission to go somewhere. Or I get the toubabu chant described in the previous post and go through the waving, I'm an American routine.

I somehow failed to mention one of the most important parts of my time at homestay, which is my new name. When we arrived in our village, we met at the duugutigi's house (duugu is city, tigi is head; so he's the chief) so we could meet our host family representative. When they announced my name, my host dad stood up to greet me. I didn't know anything he said besides the greetings, but they told me he was giving me my new name. So. Here it is.

Fatimatah Diarra.

Fatimatah has no connotations to being fat whatsoever, although some people shorten this name and go by Fatty. The first name is pronounced just like it sounds. My last name sounds something like jarrrrrrrra with the r being rolled. The Diarra's are part of the Bambara ethnic group and are considered noble. In Mali people have joking cousins. Your joking cousin is determined by your last name. People within the same ethnic group who have different last names are joking cousins. Coulibalys joke with everyone, regardless of ethnic group. I can joke with Coulibalys and Traores (tra-or-ay) amongst other groups, but these are the two main groups in my village. The woman who makes my meals has the same first name but a joking cousin last name. She is always pointing to me and saying that she and I have the same name. So I say no, you are bad because of your last name. I am a Diarra. So what is a joking cousin? You just say derogatory things to one another. Malian derogatory comments are things such as, you eat beans, you eat beans and fart, etc. It is a means of entertainment, but it is also a good way to resolve conflict as well. For example, you marry within your ethnic group, which means you marry your joking cousin. So if a husband and wife are arguing, a third party might come in and mediate the conflict. To resolve the conflict the mediator might say, well of course he/she did this or that, he/she is a insert last name here and he/she eats beans and farts. Conflict solved. I don't mean for this to sound like Malians don't have real problems or this solves all problems, but it is a good thing, for the most part. My first experience with joking cousins wasn't the best. One of the other trainees came up to me and said that our bikes had arrived and we had to go to another trainee's house to pick them up. When I got there I went through the greetings and these two girls who are my age asked me my name. I told them, and they started laughing. It is a kind of difficult last name so I thought they were laughing at my pronunciation. But then they kept telling me I was a Traore, not a Diarra, and I was like, no, I know my last name. Plus the driver must have been a Traore as well and kept telling me to just get my bike and go. I was getting so upset because I thought they were picking on me and felt as though I was in middle school or something being bullied. It wasn't until the next day that I realized they themselves were Traores and were just joking with me. I get it and can appreciate it now, but my language (or spirits) were not at a point that day in which I could understand and put two and two together.

We spent the day doing some more security and medical sessions and met with our sector. I have been jumping online at every break while I can. I don't want to get too excited about internet since I am leaving again soon, but I want to be connected while I'm here. It is a difficult mindset to go from access (albeit sometimes difficult internet connection) and watching Up in the dining hall to living in a village where I use a lantern every night. One of our LCFs went home the day we didn't have class. When she came back she told us how she had surfed the net and watched TV all day long the day before at home. It is a really weird split to know how progressive parts of Mali are and how remote other areas are.

Dooni dooni That is the phrase we hear most often here. From other volunteers, our LCFs, our home stay families. It means slowly, slowly. Or it can literally mean, speak more slowly I don't understand. Things in Mali move slowly, learning the language is a slow process, etc.

I have a lot of goals I would like to accomplish in my next home stay trip. I want to really study Bambara as hard as I can. I know I get made fun of for working too hard and being a good student in the states, and I have continued that in Mali, but the distractions are everywhere. I also want to write more for myself to better reflect on my thoughts about being here and what I am seeing here. I have a few mental notes, just haven't written yet. I need to be more physically active as well. Others work out in the morning, but I don't do well in morning workouts. I think afternoon walks or runs between class and dinner would be good. I just need to find a way to escape so when I try to study I can be there mentally and so I don't burn out from being around my family too much.

Lots of ramblings, but you can pick and choose what to read.

Once Uncle Julian told me how the sculptor and painter Alberto Ciaconetti said that sometimes just to paint a head you have to give up the whole figure. To paint a leaf, you have to sacrifice the whole landscape. It might seem like you're limiting yourself at first, but after a while you realize that having a quarter-of-an-inch of something you have a better chance of holding onto a certain feeling of the universe than if you pretended to be doing the whole sky.

The History of Love, Nicole Krauss

Diet/ Water Filter

After some initial problems, I now have a solid diet. Every morning I have bread. For lunch I have french fries with a big helping of meat and sauce or instead of meat and sauce I get a fried egg. Or instead of all of the above I get pasta with some type of oily sauce and a fish on top. To end the day, I get rice porridge (incredibly good- reminds me of cream of wheat but with rice) with 3 hard boiled eggs. I usually get a block of salt for my eggs, but two days I didn't get any and it was a sad day. I have no control over my diet whatsoever. I just eat what they give me. I can tell them if I like it after I eat, but I don't have the vocabulary to really say what I would like beforehand. Fortunately I have eaten the same food for about 7-10 days. I crave it so badly every day too. I'm eating like a queen by Malian standards. Eating spaghetti or a fried egg with my fingers is interesting, but I don't mind it so much anymore so long as I know my hands are clean.

We all got a water filter before homestay. It's two white buckets that sit atop one another sift some sort of filter on the top and bottom buckets. I have to add bleach (2 drops for every liter) before drinking, but it beats having to boil my water. I don't mind at all really because it's always there and takes two seconds to do. My family is perplexed by this strange contraption though, and they definitely didn't understand why I have to drink 3-4 liters of water a day. Rarely do I see them drink anything. Besides tea, of course.

Vitamins

I get a multivitamin everyday along with Probiotics I brought with me. A lot of the children here have big bulges on their belly button due to iodine deficiencies. I don't know if salt is expensive, hard to come by, etc., but our health manual says we should put as much salt in our food as possible when we come across it.

Bucket Bath/ Negen

So, like in America, here in Mali the toilet is in the same room as the shower. It's a pit latrine and then I bring a bucket of water into the negen with me, and voila, it's a shower too. It isn't that bad actually. The negens at my home stay don't have roofs so I don't get cold showering there and it doesn't stink as much as it could. Most people take at least two showers a day. It's pretty refreshing, and it isn't even that hot here (read 80s-90s). I take one in the morning at 630 and again at 6- long before dinner is served. By the time I dress again I have begun to sweat, but that's ok. For the most part, if you're sitting, you don't sweat. I'm usually pretty comfortable, especially under the shade with a nice breeze going.

I've gotten used to the negen also. We went on a field trip one day and I used a real toilet. It felt a bit bizarre, but in a good way. They only gave us one roll of tp for weeks. Give it a try and tell me how you do. I ran out the night before we came back.

Latrine

Every night the sun goes down at about 7:30. At this point, I grab my lantern. The night time is not my favorite time. This is when the bugs come out. I can't really do anything because it means contorting my body so the light from the lantern hits the page of whatever book I'm reading just right. I don't have a desk so I've tried propping my lantern on a chest and sitting on the floor of my room, but the lamp makes my room super hot so then sleeping is hard. As a result, I usually eat my dinner and turn in at about 930. I get up early though so it's fair.

Toubab Chant

Whenever I walk anywhere in the village, kids spot me, and when the kids spot me the chant begins. Usually if I wave to them they will stop, but sometimes they just want to yell it and there's no stopping it. This chant gets to me, but it doesn't bother others. Toubabu means white (toubabakan means French language). Some volunteers yell back the world black to the kids and others try and say no, I'm American. I go for the wave, and if that doesn't work I say I'm not a toubab, I'm an American. I think it's working too because some of the kids come up to me now and say Ameriki? Ameriki? This sounds like it will be a constant teaching lesson though and not one that will be too sustainable for the next person that rolls in.

Ring Around the Chair

When a guest (especially a toubab guest) is around, there are never enough chairs. Whenever I walk into the compound, someone gets up and gives me the best chair that my family has. So. The oldest man then gets the second best chair and it trickles down by rank. You can tell where someone fits in by looking at who gets up when someone shows up. All of the men, regardless of age, get a chair before any woman can sit down unless she is elderly. In my concession though, they sit in their own area and have seats only they tend to sit in.

Additionally, I am never allowed to sit in the sun. A lot of the time, I'm not even allowed to move my own chair. Someone will get up and move it for me. It doesn't even weigh a pound so maybe you see the humor in this. I do get annoyed when I am constantly being told where to sit or when to move my chair to the shade and which shade is deemed better than others.

Language

My language is coming along, but of course my family doesn't talk about anything I have learned. So far we have learned to talk about our family, count money/barter, and talk about objects in relation to one another (above, below, etc). I have a funny story about this if you keep reading.

Baby

A baby was born in the family that lives in the concession next to mine. When a baby is born, they party. The friends of the new father are responsible for the party. My host brother took me to check it out for a few minutes. It was a bunch of kids and teens and a few adults. The music was blaring from 7-430amish so I felt like I was sleeping in the middle of a rave. I should have believed my host brother when he said I wasn't going to get any sleep at 8 that night.

Bamako

I mentioned our field trip earlier. We visited a private school to learn more about the Malian education system. We did an activity that stimulates how hard it is to get an education. Not many get to go to 1-6. Some have to quit along the way and very few get to go to 7-9 because of location or a need for help at home. Fewer go to 10-12. At each of the three periods here, they must pass an exam to move on. They can repeat once for each grade. There is one public college in Bamako and a few private colleges, but that is all. It makes being part of the education sector a bit worrisome.

Marriage

Traditionally, at age 10, a woman is engaged to a man, which is decided by her father. At 14 she visits his family for 6 months as a trial period. It is possible, and acceptable, that she get pregnant during this time. She returns home after the six months, and if all is well, once she gets her wedding materials and dowry, the two get married. She may be the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, or 4th wife. The men are typically 5-10 years older, depending on their families wealth.

Should a husband die, a woman must stay inside for 4 months and 10 days to ensure she isn't pregnant. After that time she may marry again, though it is highly likely that she already has children. There is no such waiting period for men.

This isn't to say all people have this experience. The cities are much more liberal, and there are women who have college degrees. Women can also deny a man or wait to marry later. I will likely be working in the country in a village though so the above story will be quite realistic. It's daunting to try and encourage a woman to be educated if she is visiting her husband at 14. if her husband has the means, she can continue school, but it is his choice. Additionally she has to do the cooking, cleaning, child bearing, etc.

Mosque Chants

Throughout the day there are calls from the mosque telling people to come and pray. The call is repeated three times with spaces between them. The first round of calls begins around 5 am and the last call is at about 10 pm. I live about a one minute walk from the mosque and thanks to the beautiful foghorn they use, it is impossible to miss.

Most people are Muslim, but there is a Christian church a few villages away. We haven't talked about this much in my family, although my host dad has told me several times that he is Muslim and I am Christian and our names for God are different.

“The Wave”

I'm not waving any wheat here. I am waving my fifilan though. It is a square hand fan and is absolutely necessary if I want to sleep at night. It helps to cool off a bit before sleep. I joke that I am going to get carpal tunnel from doing it, but it may be true...

America

The people in my group have deemed an area in our village America and escape to it once a week. I think we all look forward to a few hours away from everything. Well, almost alone. It never fails that 5-10 kids follow us or stumble upon us and then sit and watch us.

Slow Days

Everyday seems very long. I go to class from 8-12 and 3-5 (typical Malian school hours). After that I take my bucket bath and wait for dinner. When I'm not in class I'm outside in my chair in the shade of the hour studying. Sometimes others come to my house to study also, which is always nice. I think the days drag because I'm not at all busy the way I'm used to. Even class seems slow sometimes and I feel like we don't always move along very fast. I don't cook and only sweep my room in the morning. My job is to sit and study and talk with my family right now. Also, I'm used to TV, music, internet, etc. to aid in me wasting precious time. The closest I get to that is playing Uno in the evenings. I hardly ever listen to my iPod, but it is so great when I do. It blocks out the French and Bambara surrounding me.

Vacation

We are here at a strange time because the kids aren't in school. It means we have a classroom to use and that all the kids are free to follow us around. For whatever reason, they really love sitting outside the classroom, usually hanging through the window sill, watching us learn. A couple of times I have heard them whisper the answer to a question to us. Usually they grow in numbers and then our LCF (language and cross culture facilitator) chases them off or sends them to fetch water to wash the chalkboard with. Chalkboards!

Anyways, the kids in village are a bit different too. Some are visiting siblings from another village and others are off working in the fields. One of my host brothers disappeared one day and they told me he was helping in the field. He can be a bit of a troublemaker and picks on me sometimes, but he is also entertaining so I miss having him around. They say he'll be there for a month or so, so I should see him again before training ends. I already feel attached to my family. It will be hard to leave them. I want to know where they all end up in the future.

Moto

I'm not allowed to get on a moto or ever drive anything beyond my negeso (bicycle). Everyone here in my village appears to have the same moto though, which is really entertaining for me for some reason.

Frisbee

Yeah. We pulled one out one day and went to a field in the middle of town. It took about 5 minutes for words to spread. We probably had 30-40 kids playing catch. They all yelled cosabe cosabe (farther, farther). I really liked it, in case that wasn't clear. It's fun to interact in a positive, meaningful way. I know it may not seem that meaningful to an outside, but it's the small victories right now.

Cows

Whilst playing catch, I saw several cows walking themselves home from the field, it's rope dangling on the ground behind it. I was amazed when it walked into its concession without anyone saying anything to it. I hope this fact blows your mind.

Animals

They're everywhere. Cows, donkeys, goats, sheep, dogs, cats, lizards, mosquitoes, flies, cockroaches, chickens, etc. etc. (two etc.s is necessary here). They're loud. They're everywhere. Their poop is everywhere.

Dust Storms

They happen. They're fairly predictable because they are usually followed by rain so you see the clouds rolling in. the wind is strong too. I don't mind when they happen because I'm always home, and it gives me a perfect excuse to go to my room. I've only experienced 3 or 4 but I always need the time to recharge. One night the storm started at 6 and didn't end until 11 so I ate in my room and went to bed. It was during one of the first nights at homestay when I needed it the most too. Another night it started at 9 and lasted until 7. Downpour. It was crazy. I didn't get any sleep in my little tin roof house.

Stars

You can really see them, although I never spent a lot of time looking for them in the states. I know Lawrence was bad, the sky was always red on campus. It's just that I notice more here because I am ALWAYS outside unless I'm sleeping or in class (and we go outside then too). I wonder how I will handle the indoors when I get home, although that is a long time away.

2 men, 1 concession

My organization of topics could be better, but that's ok. When we talked about marriage in class, we talked about children also. The man from the village said he and his brother were given a concession from their father. He said they decided to fill it up so they did. There are almost 100 people living there today. One man has 42 grandchildren from his 4 sons, not including his 5 daughters. They live with their husband's family though so he doesn't really know them... Space isn't an issue and they survive mostly on subsistence farming so more is better. It was a source of pride for the men.

Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas

people ask me what dugu (city) I am from in America. I skip dugu and go straight to state (no word for state in Bambara). I say Kansas, which is followed by a blank stare. So I say Texas? And they all goo ooooo, Texas, yeah. You're city is Texas ?! To which I say Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas while pretending to point at a map.

They know Texas because they all liked Bush. He did a lot for Africa. I also find it amusing that Obama's face is on a lot of things here; book bags, fabric for clothing, etc., which is impressive since the elections were a while ago.

Flies

I hate them. They are in the negen all the time. They are good (I hear) because they decompose the #2 in the latrine, but they swarm me when I take my bucket bath and rest on any scratches you have. I never know if it is a fly or just the water tickling my skin. They are especially annoying when I wash my clothes because I think they like the soap. I wash my hair every 2 or 3 days, and I don't know if clean hair is worth all of the swatting I have to do afterwards.

Money

It is complicated. The money is in large bills, 1000 and up and coins 5, 10, 25, 50, 100, 200, 250, and 500. But they don't say the number on the coin. 500 is keme (100). 100 is mugan (20). You divide everything by 5. So 10,000 is wa fila (2000). So not only do we barter in the market, but we barter in a different language and have to constantly multiply and divide by 5. Oh and we're American so they charge us double to start and we don't know a good price to begin with. I have not been to market yet. The butigi (shops) in village are fixed prices. I'll let you know how it goes though.

World Cup

I watched Spain win under a thatched shelter on a 12 inch TV with 30 men, one other female volunteer, sitting in the best chair in the house with the best view, of course. Sometimes the toubab card is totally awesome.

Sure I'll Cook you Breakfast

The men do no housework. I saw one man help do clothes once when the wife was working in the field. His brothers made fun of him the entire time. One day it was me and two men in my concession. They were kind of giving me a hard time and said I should cook them breakfast the next morning. I said sure, I'll cook you breakfast. Tomorrow morning I will go to the butigi and buy bread and give it to you. Voila, I cooked. They thought it was hilarious, but I think it made it clear that I am not the same as the women here. I don't mean to disrespect anyone.

Comment Appelle...

I'm reading The History Of Love right now. My host brother wanted to know the name of my book so I told him it was L'Histoire de l'amour. He was really confused by l'amour so I busted out my dictionary to show him. He was genuinely confused by it, which confused me. Anyways, he was reading the sample phrases in the dictionary. He asked me comment appelle (I find it endearing that he says this instead of comment dit on) to make love. I said, ok, enough dictionary for tonight! I hope this story makes your day and is worth all of the reading it took to get here.

I'm Under the Moon

So in class we learned how to say where things are in relation to one another. I was practicing with the same host brother as in the story above. I said I am under the moon to which he said no you are not. To emphasize that I knew the word for moon and that I knew my phrase was correct, I stood up so as to be more directly under the moon. He kept telling me I was wrong and that I wasn't under the moon. I asked my LCF about this the next day. Apparently this is a woman's way of saying she has her monthly visitor. Awesome.

So. Homestay begins today. There are 7 other people staying in the same village as me. We are all Education volunteers learning Bambara. I'm not too nervous about it because nerves won't seem to get me anywhere. I'm excited to see who I will be staying with, what my new room/concession is like, etc. It will be weird to sleep in a room by myself again.

Tomorrow we begin learning Bambara in the classroom. Tonight I will be learning a lot with my family most likely. It is unclear as to whether or not someone in the family will speak French. I hope they do so that I can translate when needed. Learning a language and testing at an intermediate level in 8 weeks is going to be rough while adjusting to new food, a new family, and all of the other changes I'm experiencing as well. Thus far I have had 5 vaccines, take malaria meds once a week, and take a couple other meds. Who knows what is making me feel nauseous today.

Hopefully I have something to update you on in two weeks when I return.

So. My first post from Mali. What what!? Africa is pretty sweet. I'm sorry you have to miss this. We arrived the first night at about 230 Mali time because our flight was delayed and it took a while for us to get our luggage. When we first arrived, they taught us how to use the negen, or toilet. It's just like a normal latrine, I suppose, with a square hole in the floor. You have to carry the sallydagan (not spelled correctly) with you. It looks like a flowering water pot/ teapot. You put water in it to clean yourself and must carry it into the negen with your right hand because the left hand is the dirty hand or hand you use to wipe with. Don't worry, they supply us with toilet paper here at the training center, and I brought two rolls with me until I can buy more. Our shower is in the same spot, which was a bit of an adjustment. I took my first shower this morning, but in my own defense, we left Philly on July 2, and I took a shower at the American Club where we celebrated the Fourth of July with the Ambassador. Yeah, we're pretty cool. I have taken to washing my hair in the spicket near the negen and think I'll just rinse off in the shower. The water is cold, but it is warm enough here that I appreciate the cold.I have had three shots so far and began taking my malaria meds two days ago. The med I am taking must only be taken once a week, but we are taking them three days in a row to begin so we can build it up in our system. I think my mosquito bite count is up to four and that is because I forgot to wear my tennis shoes last night. The place I live is pretty basic. It is a mud hut with a tin roof, and I share the room with two other girls. It is a room with three beds, each with mosquito nets, a fan, and a small light. We are definitely being spoiled with the toilet paper, lights in the negen and our rooms, and the fan is a huge perk. The weather isn't bad. It is at least 15 degrees cooler than Kansas, but the humidity is high. Just sitting around I am drenched because of the humidity. It makes falling asleep at night a little bit difficult. We have had training in a few issues already. We started cultural training yesterday, learned about Mr. D and Mrs. C (think about the negen), learned how to treat our food, how to change the tire of bike/other basic repairs, and how to wear a skirt (will learn spelling for it later), which we will have a chance to purchase tomorrow. Last night we watched a film about Mali (I told you we're being spoiled). Afterwords, someone busted out the guitar and several people took turns playing songs right next to my hut. I was getting ready for bed/laying in bed. It was a pretty sweet way to fall asleep, err, lay in bed, while I cooled off. It rained this morning at about 5:30 and got really cool. I'm enjoying what I would guess is a cool 75, and under this fan, I'm not feeling a bit of discomfort. So I'm in Africa and life is pretty swell, right? Chris thinks I am on a 2 year vacation. Don't worry, the really hard stuff begins this Thursday afternoon when we leave for our home stays. We are broken up by sector (I'm Education) and language. We had our language test and I tested at an intermediate French level, which I was happy about. Most of us will be learning Bambara for our actual site placement (different than homestay). There are 80 volunteers here and 12 home stay sites. At each home stay, each individual lives with a family, who feeds them, gives them a place to stay, helps them learn informally. During the day, we have 2 or 3 LCFs (language and culture facilitators, I think.) who live in the same village as our home stay site and teach us just what their title says, the language and culture of Mali. I think that they are slowly weaning us from our American lifestyles and helping us to understand the culture. They have a phrase in Bambara that says Foreigners have big eyes, but they don't see. We're seeing the culture, but we don't understand the reasons behind it. Who can say diversity training to the max? I have no anxieties at this point. I didn't feel nervous to meet the other volunteers, I felt no anxiety coming into the training center, and I have felt good throughout training. I have had my moments when I feel a bit homesick, but I just think about all of the good times and the good parts of my day. I would say my mental health level is topnotch right now and there have been no incidences of Mr. D either so I'm feeling even better for that. I know I will eventually get sick, probably many times, but I'm not going to worry about it happening. I'll just appreciate the good health for now.So. I feel good. Africa is absolutely wonderful. Everyone in Mali is extremely nice. The food is A-Mazing, like better than any of that processed stuff we eat in America. All is well.

I should say that I forgot to mention bringing body soap in my last post. I don't think anyone noticed or read half of that list, but I must reassure you that soap did make it into my suitcase. Three bars in fact. You and I can both sleep better tonight.

First of all, day one was insanely long. It started at 3:45, after a hard evening of talking about good-byes. Chris drove me to the airport. We aren't very good about the direction things. We couldn't find the terminal lanes. You would think we would just follow the "terminal" signs on the road, but we apparently don't take the easy road like that.

I left for Philly at 7am. Saying good-bye to Chris, as you can imagine, was crazy hard. I won't go into our plan for our time apart because, frankly, it concerns nobody but Chris and I.

Happier note time: everyone here is sooooo wonderful. We know that we're in the same boat. We did a few icebreakers (the RA in me will always love icebreakers) and got down to business. Part of staging included us talking about our anxieties and aspirations for our time here. We all have the same fears and hopes and wishes. Having that common goal is really great and makes me feel better.

For the evening we were cut loose. My last sitddown dinner (because you care) was a chef's salad and hamburger. All American. I slept well, though not many hours. All in all I would say day one of 795 was a success.

Today I got a yellow fever shot. It's one of many shots to come. Then we were set friend. My roommate for Philly shared my joy of American history so we visited Constitution Building, Independence Hall, and we saw the Liberty Bell. I got all sorts of awesome pictures, but the bellhops just loaded my bags on the bus and the cord to upload photos was in that bag for some reason. I have to say that being in Philly for the Fourth of July weekend was a cool experience.

We are loading up to ride to JFK airport in a few minutes, which is about a 3 hour drive so we hear. It is a Friday and holiday weekend. Here is the layout:

330-630 ride to airport

630-1130 hang out

1130 depart for Paris

1230 arrive in Paris on Paris time

430 depart Paris for Mali

830 arrive in Bamako

I need to wrap stuff up to head out to the bus. Yikes! Au revoir!

How do you pack for two years? Well, first off, you don't actually pack for two years. You kindly ask your parents to occasionally send you items and do the best you can do in the meantime. I have scoured the internet to find packing lists, and they have been very helpful. I have 76 pounds in my bags right now and one stuffed book bag. Here's what it contains.

Clothing

3- pairs of shorts (I really love my athletic shorts. I will more than likely only get to wear them in my house, but I love them so much)

2- pairs of cotton pants

4- ankle length skirts

5- t-shirts (see note about shorts)

5- dress shirts

8- socks

10- underwear

1- long-sleeved tee

1- jacket

1- raincoat

1- hat

1- swimsuit

1- capris

1- black dress pant

1- watch

1- jeans

Shoes

1- Adidas flip flops

1- Keen sandals

1- running shoes

1- black flats

Hygiene

1- shampoo and conditioner

2- deodorant

6- razors (hard to find in Mali and very expensive)

1- body lotion

1- very small sunscreen (will be provided later)

1- facial sunscreen

5- months of Probiotics

lots- feminine products

2- glasses

1- sunglasses

1- clip-ons for glasses (yeah, I'm gonna be clip-on girl)

3- months of prescription meds (later provided)

1- nail clippers

1- set of earplugs

1- heat rash powder

1- eyeglass repair kit

1- bug spray

1- anti-itch cream

1- towel, hand towel, washcloth

Kitchen

2- frying pans

2- spatulas

10- granola bars

6- trail mix packages

6- packs of flavored water

sadly, much of the food I spent a good deal of money on will not be going with me due to space issues

1- kitchen knife

Technology

12- AA rechargeable batteries

4- AAA rechargeable batteries

1- iPod

1- laptop computer with external hard drive

1- jumpdrive

1- external battery for iPod

1- Solar charger for batteries

Miscellaneous

1- The North Face bookbag

1- Leatherman

1- headlamp (gosh, clip-on sunglasses by day, headlamp by night. You're reading about the coolest kid in town right now)

1- flashlight

1- alarm clock

2- Nalgenes

2- combo locks for suitcase

1- duct tape

40- Ziplocs

1- scissors

1- digital thermometer

1- sleeping pad

1- mosquito net

1- sleeping bag

2- books of stamps (volunteers visiting the stamps can mail letters for us)

1- maps

Personal sanity products

1- Edward (cute, little white bear)

1- journal

lots- photos

1- book

1- camera

1- shortwave radio

1- pillow

1- French-English dictionary

1- Uno

1- deck of cards

1- planner

And, of course:

1- passport

1- wallet

etc.

I suppose I got a bit ahead of myself in the first two blogs so let me give you a short run down of things I may have failed to mention.

Location: Mali

Time period: July 1, 2010- September 3, 2012

Job: Basic Education and Literacy

Application timeline

May 2009: began application

June 2009: completed application, completed interview

August 2009: nominated for French speaking Africa doing community development project leaving July 2010, completed legal clearance portion of application

September 2009: completed medical portion of application

November 2009: went back to doctors to clear up some confusion about medical portion

November 2009- January 2010: received legal and dental clearance

February 2010: received medical clearance

March 2010: fretted about receiving invitation

April 2010: submitted updated resume

May 2010: received invitation, accepted, applied for visa and passport, completed aspiration statement

June 2010: shopped and packed

July 1, 2010: flight for Philly from KC leaves at 7am, where staging begins

July 2, 2010: flight for Paris from Philly leaves at 9pm, followed by flight to Bamako, the capital of Mali. Training and my new life begin.

I hope that this blog is at least somewhat entertaining. I hope to focus on the more comedic aspects of my adventure (bug attacks, amusing conversations), but I know there will be not so happy days that I will choose to write about, and there might even be some posts about the achievements (or lack there of) that I am experiencing in my job. There may be some things I cannot write about either.

Comments, emails, facebook notes will do me wonders so write as much or as little as you like. Topics such as what you ate for lunch, a new outfit you bought, a concert you went to, a test or paper you wrote, a good movie, etc, etc, etc would suit me just fine. Anything will probably make my day.

Of course, things do happen, and there are volunteers who are unable to fulfill their commitment to serve. This could happen for a number of reasons. People get sick or are unable to adapt to the weather or food, others may not be able to mentally adapt, people make bad decisions and are told they must leave, some people take a few weeks vacation in the States and somewhere during this time decide not to go back to their post, and more. While I have absolutely no intention of quitting, things do happen, and I would hope that people can be understanding of this. I know I certainly would be. Hopefully I'll just get sick a few times, get a few new scars, and cry once or twice. :)

On a much happier note, I have had some of the greatest food ever while waiting for this day to come. Volunteers who are already serving in Mali suggested that we eat as much American food as possible. So I did. In the past week alone, I have had takeout Chinese, 23rd Street Brewery,

Applebee's half price appetizers, Cielito's, Piasano's, Coldstone, and my last meal tonight will be at Chili's. So my American food isn't so "American," but I see the diversity of food as a definite benefit of living in the States. It sure beats millet, which I hear I can expect to normally eat three times a day. I'm a grain girl though (that sounds absolutely ridiculous) so I am excited to give it a shot.

Until the next post (in a few minutes), toodles.

I have been dragging my feet a bit lately about studying the language lessons provided for us on our toolkit. I feel as though I pick up on languages fairly quickly, and once I know the language so so, I enjoy coming up with my own novel phrases. In French, I can occasionally be funny, although my French humor is much different than my English humor. I just can't pull off the sarcasm yet.

I studied Spanish in middle school/first year of high school. All I remember is how "interesting" my Spanish teacher was in middle school and studying the words for fruits and vegetables. It seemed like all we talked about during my second year of Spanish was going to the airport. I don't actually remember any of the words, though I can sometimes understand a few phrases here and there. On the other hand, you can usually get a good idea of what is going on just by listening to the tone of someone's voice.

Then during my junior and senior year at KU I started learning French. I really wanted to learn Czech, but the university didn't have funding or enough student interest to offer the course until my senior year. I had to have two years of language to graduate, and I wasn't so intent on learning the language to stick around college for another year. I realize now that taking up French was a blessing in disguise because French speakers are in high demand in the Peace Corps. On the other hand, I can't help but wander where I might have been placed to serve if I had taken Czech and done a minor in Eastern European studies.

Luckily, between my junior and senior year I was able to study abroad in Prague. Initially I was going to take a class that I knew I would get credit for. I guess I got swept up in the moment and realized that I wanted to take Czech and I didn't care about the credit- I didn't need it to graduate anyways. So the night before classes began, I fought with the computer and eventually succeeded in enrolling in Czech language classes. I'm so glad that I did. Our class began with 14 students and dwindled to 4 meaning we were able to speak more, visit our professors house, go to a cafe to practice speaking, and we even went to see a film together. I still remember some of what I learned, and I'm so glad I took the class, even though it made coming back to French a bit more difficult. Also, I earned 5 hours of language credit for 5 weeks of language classes. Baller.

So now I'm trying to maintain the French I do know and learn Bambara, a local language. I may end up learning a different local language, but this is at least an introduction to new sounds and ways of speaking.

I'm seeing patterns between English, French, and Bambara. For the most part I am sure they are coincidental, but they humor me and help me remember the words. Je, Tu, Il/Elle, Nous, Vous, Ils/Elles is N, I, A, An, Aw, U in Bambara (that's I, You, He/She, We, You, Them in English). Counting is never easy. In Bambara you have the words for 1-10. 11 is literally 10 and 1 tan ni kelen. 12 is 10 and 2 and so on. 21 is 20 and 1. 35 is thirty and five. I realize counting in other languages is very similar but learning to count in a new language reminds me of it again. Think about how much you take being able to count for granted. It's pretty complicated it you think about it. Also, talking about family is fun. You say older + boy= koro + ce (older brother) and younger + girl= dogo + muso (older sister). Momuso is grandmother. You get the picture. Here are other words I think are interesting:

Tabali- Table

Kaye- Notebook (cahier in French)

Liburu- Book

Tabulo- Chalkboard

Aseti- Plate (assiette in French)

Fini- Clothes (I only find this interesting because in makes me think of Boy Meets World when Eric always says the teacher's name in funny voices. Just to remind you: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-BB-Xk9xYY&feature=related)

Nono- Milk (come on, it's funny)

Abiyon jigin kene- Airport (why is this word so long? that question should be read with a great deal of emphasis on each and every word with differing intonations)

Posu- post office

Ok, so you get the point. I suppose now that I have spent half an hour telling you about words in order to actually avoid studying words, I should go and do just that.

This Thursday I will be leaving for Philadelphia for staging. From what I can gather, this is a two day training period, during which time we will also receive last minute shots and turn in our paperwork. KU is a bit slow in processing transcripts and diplomas, but I was finally able to get my transcript this afternoon. I think all of my paperwork is complete, but I'm going to double check everything tomorrow. Also tomorrow I need to try and finish up studying the Bambara lessons they gave us, and I want to look over my French textbook from this last year. Oh, and work my last three hours (I can study during this time) and figure out what 5-8 pounds of luggage I am willing to do without. I'm not sure what is making my luggage so heavy, but hopefully I can find the culprit. Otherwise, I'm ready.

Or at least my stuff is ready to go.

The past few months have gone by in a whirlwind. From finishing my thesis to moving to filling out paperwork and writing essays for class and the Peace Corps to the three days of graduation/entertaining my parents it has been busy. Luckily I have been able to go on short day trips to just gen away. I visited St. Joseph and went to the Glore Psychiatric Museum one day. Another day I went to Topeka and saw the Brown vs. Board site and took a tour of the capital. I went to St. Louis to Six Flags, the Arch, Botanical Gardens, and a Beer Festival, and the other day I watched the U.S. play at the Power and Light District in KC after visiting Union Station. So there have been lots of firsts and lots of lasts. In the last few days the fact that I am leaving has begun to set in. It usually hits me the hardest when I wake up in the morning and count how many days are left until I leave. I couldn't help but notice that the Peace Corps crept into most everything I did. I would find myself becoming sidetracked in St. Joseph looking for luggage or I would run to Wal Mart for that night's dinner and end up shopping for odds and ends for an hour.

All in all, I am both excited and nervous. I have a lot to learn in the next few weeks of training before I arrive at the site where I will work for two years. We have training most of the day Monday to Friday and part of Saturday. During this time, we will learn the language (French and Bambara/local language), cultural lessons, technical training for our jobs, etc. The long days will probably be exhausting, but I like the idea of having a structured schedule while I adjust to everything around me. It's strange to think that in only a few short days I will be staying with a host family while I complete training.