A kid has moved into my kitchen.  And by this, I mean a baby goat, rather than one of the more human variety (although I seem to have reached a more zen place with the children here, so it might not be the total disaster it once would have been). I was making my morning [...]

The above would be the question that I have heard the most often in the past few weeks.  I wouldn’t say that, necessarily.  I might instead say that Mali has a sort of offbeat sense of humor and enjoys mocking me.  A dysfunctional relationship, perhaps, but one that’s ultimately based on love (I tell myself). [...]

The last time I wrote, I almost exclusively focused on the excitement of being at a new site, and the wonderful feeling of infatuation with the unknown.  I’ve now developed a routine, and have settled in, and am still, perhaps surprisingly, infatuated.  My love on Manabougou Coura, the people there, the gardens, the brush, however, [...]

Winter at the lake is lovely, yet long. Still a foot of snow covers the landscape, but the sledding runs on the dam are nearly bare. No wandering goats have been seen here, but sightings of an American Bald Eagle fishing on the ice filled waterfront, two red fox scampering across the pond and an [...]

“Maintenant, je pense que Umu reste heureuse,” my homologue, Moro, whispered one evening as I leant back from the fire to look up at the stars before the rising moon. A dusty mist coats the cliffs in the distance and the early morning train clatters at my side as I lope through sandy trails and [...]

Christmas is the season for friends, family (real and chosen), reflection, good food, and…never-ending hikes from hell? I’ll back up.  I was finally able to move to Kita (my new regional capital) after our sector specific training at the beginning of December.  This was also the time when I met my new homologue, Moro, who [...]

Advice on running a Malian half-marathon: Don’t follow the blinking lights. When the map says, “Follow the loop around,” it actually means take a sharp right. Be polite when asking directions from armed guards. Don’t trust said directions to the elephant statue unless you have confirmed them with at least three people.  And even then, [...]

After nearly a month of languishing — I mean, um, resting — in Bamako, I finally have a new site waiting for me.  As I’m finding to be typical in this country, it’s nothing like what I expected to get.  An altogether different region, Kita, in the west of Mali.  Much smaller — my village [...]

Well, I had all of these great plans for posts on life in Somo – things about sunrises, my kneecaps, coming home to all of my plants being dead after a week of language training in San because no one in my silly family remembered to water them, becoming a Malian farmer (yes, I did [...]

September 22 was Malian Independence Day.  50 years out from colonialism.  The village had its own celebration, out past the mayor’s office, with school desks set up in the scarce shade and drummers in knock off Converses readyto pound.  I happened (and by happened, I mean was forcefully steered) to be directed to a squishy [...]

I’ve long held the belief that there are certain inherent traits in us that have corresponding genes that are just waiting for some silly scientist in a lab coat somewhere to discover.  Favorite flowers and Christmas songs come from grandmothers, the propensity to talk about the height and general well-being of corn is surely a [...]

If one must spend a sleepless night, at least one can make it productive. Like the delightful evening I spent chatting with the three little old women who spend their days pounding millet out in the backwoods of my village. I’ll have you know that, in my head, my Bomu was perfect. The three witches [...]

A vision of the future for a week known as site visit.  What a surreal time.  I travelled with my homologue by public bus, leaving Bamako mid-morning on a packed and rickety bus.  I started out being quite excited to have gotten on the bus before the rain came.  Until the rain came.  Inside the [...]

I’ve always dreamed of owning a “Martha” mini-farm where I could raise chickens which lay blue eggs, harvest bushels of fresh herbs and maybe even herd a goat or two. But now that I have a cold-blooded, dull knifed, vegan chicken killer in the family, I’m not so sure. Poultry speaking, Sarah it seems I [...]

IIt must be said that I’m no stranger to fresh food, or being close to the source of my food. But when the Tubabs of a certain Malian village decide that they cannot, in good conscience, eat yet another bowl of rice and less than mediocre sauce, you’d better watch out.  Particularly when the resident [...]

On Sundays when my body isn’t protesting too violently, I spend a good half of the day on long, rambling bike rides out through the fields and hills of central Mali.  Just an opportunity to get away from village life and move into semi-solitude of sunken rice fields and canals and far-off hills hazy in [...]

What. A. Stretch. Tidbits from the last two weeks for the next few days, I think. We find out our sites tonight, which is nerve-wracking and exciting. But first I think it’s important to cleanse myself of this stint at homestay. More language, learning field crops, learning about the miracle of moringa trees (and then [...]

Of all the worries, anxious moments and doubts, Sarah’s serious reaction to meflaquin, the anti-malaria med. wasn’t even on the list. Lions & tigers & bears, yes. Hunger, drought, bugs, maybe. Homesickness and lonliness, absolutely. Not meflaquin nightmares. Oh, baby. Sarah, I looked up “animists” and this is a belief that souls or spirits exists [...]

Home stay. The real deal. The hardest nine weeks of service. Before leaving Tubaniso I simply refused to believe how tough it would be. The ups and downs have been incredible. We’re back and Dove camp for a couple of days of rest and recuperation, so I’m feeling newsy. Two weeks of approximately eight hours [...]

The much anticipated e-mail from Sarah, “Mom, I need….” With the following “please send me your canning and preserving books and your bee-keeping books, as well.” Now let me see about that. Canning? Bee-keeping? Like any anxious Mom an hour later I was at the post office paying $44 to ship old preserving books to [...]

Maybe not exactly flox, but as I walk through the rows of freshly tilled soil, rough and silty, waiting for our little plots of sorghum to come along and sprout up.  The small plots are lined with sweet grasses, studded with papaya trees and baobabs.  Small, hopeful leaves of crisp green lettuce shoot from the [...]

Growing Season 7/2/2010 As Sarah was backing out of the driveway on the way to the airport, I poured myself another cup of tea and began to re-arrange my spice drawer. It seemed odd, even at the time. It was comforting though. There was an order to it, a plan. The nutmeg before the oregano, [...]

It seems inappropriate to be starting this record in Philadelphia, which is decidedly neither Mali nor Edwardsville, but it’s also a place of transition, which I suppose is the larger point anyway.  A stop-over on the way to a connecting flight.  No sign as to where the destination is yet, though. The real reason for [...]