Only a drop to drink...

Christine in her "toubab" bath

Annie cocks her head to the side and frowns.
“Is today Friday?” she asks.
“No, Thursday,” I say, looking up from my slowly growing pile of shelled peanuts.
“Then why are the Muslims at the mosque?” she muses aloud, more to herself than to me.

Annie reflects on her question as her knitting needles click, click, click in the mid-day heat. Christine is splashing away in a green, plastic bucket; Annie calls it her “toubab bath.” I am sprawled out on a mat dividing peanuts into “good” and “bad” piles for planting Annie listens to the Imam a moment more, his gravelly voice broadcasted to our entire village over the loudspeaker, and nods.
“They’re praying for rain,” she explains. “Everyone is praying for rain now. The Muslims. The Protestants (Annie and her family), the Catholics, even the Animists,” she adds.

Rain has not come in almost a week. Over 80% of Malians are subsistence farmers and if one thing matters to their livelihood, it is rain. Crops are planted when the rains start (usually in early to mid June in the San region) and the fields are tilled until harvest time rolls around in late September through early December. Annie asks me if droughts happen in America. I immediately respond “yes.” Annie nods and keeps knitting. I continue to crack the dried peanut shells and think what a drought means to me in Virginia Beach. Does the faucet or well for drinking water every dry up? No, I’m never wanting for potable water. A drought means no car washing. It means we can’t water the lawn. It means don’t refill the pool. Annie points out that even if I don’t farm in America, surely others do. I agree but remind her we have machines to water plants when there is no rain. And while my family in America is not a farming one (though they produce a mean tomato plant!) when rains do not come it’s never a question of if we’ll be able to produce enough food to sustain ourselves for the upcoming year.

Christine helping me shell peanuts...or just moving around my piles :)

I have stopped dividing peanuts and feel a little panic rise into my chest. Annie and Esayi say I think too much, “Djelika, I be miiri ka ca!” they say to me. While I am usually thinking about cheese pizza, this time I’m running over a list of solutions to drought, surely I’ve learned something about this somewhere…. Hand watering? Too much acreage and too far from the wells. Drip irrigation? Too costly. Sprinkler systems? Not even close.

Reading development-themed books like The End of Poverty by Jeffrey Sachs or The White Man’s Burden by Willaim Easterly break everything down into numbers, statistics and heart wrenching anecdotes meant to stir the humanitarian spirit within us all. I wondered if living in a village where the $1 a day mantra is a reality would desensitize me to the effects of poverty – a year in and it is just the opposite. I cannot shake the feeling of concern and sometimes, like sitting with Annie talking about drought, the worry comes over me in waves and I have to steady my thoughts to keep from choking up. I am worrying about things over which I have no control. Rain, unemployment, health care, quality of teachers and schools. But how do you care about something without caring about it all?

Annie notices my frown and asks me if I think that by worrying I will add one hour to my life, referring to last week’s sermon. I smile weakly and let my furrowed brow relax as I agree that no, I will not be able to add one hour to my life. A smile breaks on Annie’s face revealing rows of white teeth with generous gaps. She shrugs her shoulders that swim under her oversize blue t-shirt and says there’s nothing we can do; the rains will come when they come. I think about all the things we can do something about – soak pits behind the latrines, moringa tree formations to improve nutrition, shea butter work, and ameliorated seed trials—as I listen to the closing remarks of the Imam at the mosque just across village.

That night, as though the gods of all the religions that co-exist in Zana put their heads together, I wake to the sound of wind rushing through my windows and the glorious sound of rain falling outside (and inside…) my mud hut. One night of rain does not mean the end of a drought, I remind myself, but it is better than no rain at all. I crawl out of my bed and take all my buckets outside to catch the rain falling from my roof. There’s nothing I can do to make the rains come but when they do, I’ll be ready.

Who would have thought?

Fourth of July 2009 at the Bisap Cafe in Mopti with other Peace Corps volunteers from all over Mali. We got matching hand bags from the tailor - can't go shopping in stores so I spend a lot of time getting new fabric and going to the tailor. I'm wearing my Barack Obama dress with fabric the American Embassy designed.


Who would have thought one year from today
I’d be Skyping with loved ones so far away?
Gone for a year, miss friends, pizza and treats.
But so much I’ve learned biking these dirt streets.

Who would have thought one year from today
I’d be conversing in Bambara, making mud stoves from hay?
Bike 15 miles to get all my groceries,
Love stopping at the 7-11 for ice-cold Slurpees (not!)

Who would have thought I’d make dinner by car battery, solar charged light?
Making dinner on a gas stove and sleeping under the stars each night.
I filter and bleach hand pulled well water to drink,
Such a different lifestyle but people are the same is what I think.

Who would have thought I’d devour People magazines and pop culture?
Eating treats from packages like a Sahelian vulture.
New American and Malian friends making me laugh every day,
Who would have thought my time here would slip so quickly away?

Easy to carry cute babies on your back

July 5th, 2008 in Virginia Beach,VA

July 6th, 2008 at Regino's in Virginia Beach


How to make a mud stove (I know you've been wanting to learn!)

The final product

Sticking out, trying to fit in.

The cute old men who got right to drinking and contributing their sideline advice :)

I take down the gauzy mosquito tent strung from the hangar in front of my house and as I do, I see old men stumble over my front “gate,” a criss-crossed tree trunks that keep out the wandering goats, cows and donkeys from my compound. The sun has just stretched it’s first rays onto another day in Zana and these men are here to break ground on a tree-branch fence in my front yard. I saw the homebrew association (my name for them) put up Kadia Dembele’s fence and asked if they could do the same in my area. Their requests are simple and few. 500 cfa (about $1) per donkey cart of branches, enough millet beer for the crew, kola nuts and tobacco snuff. Not unlike a moving party in the states except instead of take-out pizza and beer we have millet homebrew and caffeine-rich kola nuts. Eight donkey carts of tree branches are unloaded in front of my house. Bundles of dead and dying wood lying like tired skeletons on the ground waiting to mark the border of another garden.
Taking a break drinking millet beer by my house.

The old men ask for the millet homebrew before the hand trowels have made a dent in the hard, packed dirt. I’ve been asking them to build this fence for about a month and a half and only recently got a confirmation it would happen. Once the rains really get going here I know I won’t be able to get anyone to come help me around the house since everyone will be farming. But soon enough my weeks of nagging will be validated and the work will be done. I expressed to Annie that maybe the old men’s association didn’t want to build the fence since my repeated requests were going unanswered but she insisted that’s just how Malians are, that you have to ask 3 or 4 times for things to get done so people know you’re serious. I told her Americans would call that kind of persistence annoying. Every moment an opportunity to share our cultures! ☺
The uniform of the day are old man skull caps, loose t-shirts, tattered pants and leather satchels made from goat skin. The bags are worn soft from years of farming and sitting under mango trees drinking tea and millet beer. They’re my favorite old man accessories and even though I’m a young, single woman I got one made by the village tanner and sport it to the weekly market and when I wander from compound to compound. A few men have biked to my house this morning and their trusty one-speeds lie tired and rusted against the mud walls of my house; their muted colors and chipped paint blending with the sepia wash and natural colors of, well, everything around me.
The younger of the homebrew club are on labor detail and as soon as they’ve all assembled they begin to delegate tasks while the older men settle in by the millet beer jug and proceed to make peanut gallery comments and dole out the sweet, heady chimmy-chammy (Bambara nickname for homebrew) to those thirsty from hard fence work. The smell of the millet beer is intoxicating at first and brings to mind warm cider on fall days. But be careful you don’t inhale too long as the rubbing alcohol undertones sweep into your nostrils, making you recoil from the harshness and wondering what volume of alcohol per calabash bowl we’re talking here.
Digging the trench for the fence

I peek in on the garden work with my camera glued to my hands. The men speak quickly and animatedly with one another, one story blending into the next and interruptions and addendums frequent. I don’t bother to ask folks to slow down anymore when they talk to each other – I’ve rescinded my unquenchable curiosity concerning casual conversations in favor of the don’t-need-to-ask-they’ll-tell-if-they-want policy. If they want me to understand what they’re talking about they’ll be able to read the lost look on my face and will retrace the steps of the conversation until I’m caught up to speed. If that doesn’t work, they can always call Annie over to translate their old man, mumbled and jumbled Bambara into what Annie fondly calls her Toubab-Bamabra.
I weave in and out between the men working, sitting, drinking and talking, snapping pictures and trying to get the lighting and composition just right in the mid-morning sun. I lend a hand when heckled by one of the old men but do so knowing they’ll ask me to stop as soon as I reach for a tool or to pass over a bundle of branches. They make such requests to get a good laugh and dissolve into themselves with their chuckles and guffaws when I try to show that I actually can pass sticks and contribute to the cause. They wave off my efforts and instruct me to sit in the shade or refill an empty (gasp!) calabash bowl with more homebrew.
Adama fashions fence ties from tree bark to keep my fence in line.

The work is well under way as I plop down next to Yacou Coulibaly. He’s wearing a pill box hat with a blue circle-brown square pattern and is fashioning fence ties out of freshly stripped and soaked tree bark. Yacou and Adama are working on the ties while Dramane delegates the fence tasks to the younger men– you, go to get more tobacco, you, start digging the trench over there, you, haul over another load of branches. A seamless operation of tasks that, once started, couldn’t be better organized by a Ford assembly line.
The number of men working on my fence is proportionate to the amount of homebrew left. As the supply dwindles, Dramane, Adama and Yacou are the only ones who remain at work. What was once a crew of 20 men has now decreased to 3 and the work that started with the rising sun is now, 2 hours later, all done and I have another garden to cultivate! Another protected parcel of land to try out leafy experiments and technologies for farming in the Sahel.
Chuckles erupt from the bellies of men finishing off what’s left of the chimmy-chamma. Girlish giggles and hearty old man laughs as calabash bowls are passed. The jokes, I don’t understand. But the laughter; that is universal and while I don’t catch the punch line of most jokes (hey, kind of like in the States!) I’ve come to feel that having a complete understanding of life here does not, cannot in fact, matter in a place where I don’t truly belong. Trying is what matters here since I’ll never be a seamless fit in this complex, yet inviting, culture. No matter how much I study Bambara or how many Malian outfits I get made I’ll always be seen, at first, as the Toubabu muso (foreign woman) and Djelika Coulibaly, second. I’m like these branches being stuck into my lawn – from the same material as everything around me but sticking out in a place I don’t belong. As I look around my front yard at the finished fence, emptied calabash bowls and tipsy old men I’m OK with sticking out like the branches as long as these men keep laughing at my efforts to fit in.
A throwback to Marija's visit:
Marija and I in Malick Sidibe's studio

Sweet visit from a sweet lady

Marija's first night in Bamako

Even after over 24 hours of travel, Marija looked fresh as a daisy coming out of the airport in Bamako (not exagerrating, she looked lovely!) and was a real sport going out to dinner right after even though I know she was exhausted. The next morning we got on a bus to San (see previous post) and spent the afternoon getting to know San and hitting all my "regular" spots.
Our "uniformu!" we wore to the wedding celebrations in village and in Bamako

Monday morning we made my usual market-day circuit in San visiting the tailor, shopping for groceries and visiting the fabric section of market. We got our portrait taken at a studio (only $1 a picture!) in our new outfits tailor made for us by Vincent Diarra. I went to the tailor the week before she came and got my measurements taken and guessed on Marija's. Of course, when we tried on our dresses on Monday, hers fit perfectly and mine had to be altered. Ah, the joys of tailor made clothes!
Baby Christine makes a good joke

One of Marija's goals was to spend as much time as possible holding this sweet baby (she let me hold her for this picture :) I think she successfully achieved her goal as we spent a fair amount of time just hanging out with my host family, Annie and the kids. Marija biked over 10 miles out to my site and really held her own especially for being a self-proclaimed non-exerciser. Way to go girl!
The world through rose colored...frames!

Emma(nuel) is a character who, though quiet, likes to be the center of attention. Whenever Marija would try to take a picture of something or someone in the compound Emma would sneak into the back of the picture wearing his shades.
Sunset piroque on the Bani/Niger rivers

We made it up to the Mopti/Sevare area (as well as Bandiagara, the delta of Dogon country) and took a sunset cruise on the Bani river which feeds into the Niger. Sunsets here really are breathtaking and I'm glad that even though the restaurant we wanted to go to was closed we were able to take this boat ride with Cassie.
Marija's visit was a great time to reflect on my service thus far (wow, already almost a year in??) and the year and a half I have left. It felt very strange seeing Marija get swallowed up by the airport doors and me staying on the other side of the roped-off ticket line. We had an incredible time visiting my site and travelling around Mali together. Seeing her enjoy the same aspects of the culture that make everyday here fun for me (bean jokes, marriage proposals, friendly people) made me feel even more attached to the Malian people and culture and even though it was hard to say goodbye I know the next year and some change will go by even faster than this first one and soon enough, I'll be saying hello again.

World Wise School connections

One of the greatest joys of my Peace Corps service in Mali comes from sharing my life and experiences with those I love most through letters, emails and blog posts - and also with those I don't know well at all! Since I installed in my village in September and the American school year coincedentally began I've been keeping a correspondence with two schools back in Virginia: North Landing Elementary School in Virginia Beach and Stone Bridge HIgh School in Ashburn.
Mrs. Shellnutt at NLES and her 3rd grade class studied ancient Mali in January and we skyped with one another where I talked about modern Mali and the students asked about what elements from ancient Mali are still around such as the salt trade, the ancient library in Timbuktu and if there are camels and elephants in Mali (there are up North!). Her class also collected school supplies and treats to share with the kids at the school in Zana (thank you so much, the kids love them!). They sent great letters and sweet valentine's and birthday cards. Thank you for bringing me so many smiles NLES 3rd graders!
Ms. Doughtery at SBHS had her 9th grade class write me letters asking questions about Mali and my life here and it was refreshing to hear what questions were on their mind and neat to see them reflect on their lives in comparison to young adults their age in Mali.
One of my best friends, Marija, flew in from America last night where my friend Khadi and I picked her up. and is here safe and sound. Khadi is a banker in Bamako and knows some folks at the airport so Marija was whisked through the visa line (big time saver) and escorted out with her bags (she's the best packer, a small duffel bag and a carry on bag; I would have brought waaaay too much). We made it safe to San today after an initial bus break down and are ready to embark on the adventures Mali and Zana have to offer. Wedding festivities in village, hiking in Dogon country, shopping for souvenirs in Sevare, dinner on the Bani river, meeting Malick Sidibe in Bamako and maybe even a camel sighting if we're lucky. On the bus today a man asked where we were going and I explained that my best friend was here to visit me from America. "All the way from America??" he asked. "That's right," I said, "over 14 hours in an airplane!" "She's good, she is very, very good," he said. I'm going to have to agree on that one.

Let's baroke! (let's talk!)

Me and baby Christine in my most recent knitting creation.
Communication and community are the centerpieces of my life here in Mali. Everyday I work to navigate my way through Malian culture and chores using Bambara while striving to be connected to the village in which I live by being apart of ceremonies and getting to know my neighbors by compound hopping and peeking in on gardens. The heat and tight-knit nature of the people here mean that a lot of time is spent outside. Relaxing under a shaded hangar, drinking tea, applying fertilizer to the fields in preparation for farming season, pounding millet for the day's meals, washing clothes - everything is done together and it's this sense of community that I revel in and try to transfer to my own relationships with other American Peace Corps volunteers and my sweet family and friends back home.

Cheese!
After almost a year here, it's just in the past few weeks/month that I'm starting to feel not only a part of the community but that my presence at village events and ceremonies isn't a novelty - it's expected. This past week brought the deaths of two older men in village and funerals here, like in the states, mean a coming together of loved ones of the deceased. The difference here is that every single person in the village is considered a close family friend and therefore comes to the funeral to pay their respects to the grieving family as soon as they find out. The night of the death, all the women bring their mats to the family's compound and set up to have a sleepover of sorts as well as to dance and sing in honor of the dead. Talk about a true celebration of life. Annie and I headed over to the compound this past week around 10 p.m. and set up our mat with Aminata, Annie's sister-in-law and Marte, our neighbor. With their babies nestled us and fast asleep we settled down for the night as other women set up the generator, microphone and lights for an evening of celebration. While the attitude of the women was somber and tear-filled during the day, the night was filled with laughter and women lining up to dance. When I woke up at 5 a.m. Annie was sitting up next to me, knitting away and unable to sleep with the women's singing and loud dancing. Baby Christine's arm was sticking straight out into my face and her little leg kicked in my direction as I rolled over to see the sun rise on our sleepover.

Here you can see the little booties
As farming season gets ready to kick off again and Peace Corps Mali gears up to welcome another group of volunteers (including another UMW grad - Jeremy Jordan!) I'll continue to work hard to be aware of my surroundings and live in the present as I continue to learn about Mali and all the nuances that make up this rich culture.
Also, can hardly contain myself that in only 6 days Marija will be here! Wedding season is upon us (in Mali as in America) and one of the first things Marija and I will do together is go to my village's wedding party, pictures to follow!

eggplants and bubbles, is there a better combination? Thank you Heather for the bubbles and Mrs. Shellnutt for my oh-so-cool organic gray t-shirt
Pictures for the previous blog post - the internet was being slow and wouldn't post them so here they are!

Shea butter- whipping the mix

this is what ground shea nuts look like

Cooking lunch for 40 women isn't easy! here's rice and sauce

Shea nuts on our homemade solar dryer

I've got to admit it's getting better...shea butter that is!

I picked Umu up at the bus station at 3:30 - only a couple hours behind schedule since her bus broke down on the way from Bamako. We found a boy with a push cart to load her bag and rice sack filled with shea nuts and headed over to the taxi area to catch a van to meet Esayi who was waiting on his moto to take Umu back to Zana (I followed on my bike which was safely secured, sort of, onto the roof of the car). Once enough people had reserved all the seats in the van about 8 men threw their weight into the back of the 10 seater van (comfortably filled with 20 people) to kick start the alternator (I'm assuming). Once the engine caught, the driver threw the van into reverse and and we scrambled to get our seats before the car decided it didn't want to run anymore. We sputtered and jerked through a flash rain and wind storm to get to a village on the paved road about 5 miles from Zana where we unloaded our bags and I proceeded to huff and puff on my bike behind Umu and Esayi to get to Zana. A project proposal was approved to buy food for the shea butter formation the money for which I had given Annie before I left for Guinea. Once I arrived, Annie showed me the itemized list with all the purchases she and Esayi made for the formation and how much each item cost. We settled in our formatrice, Umu, who travels around Mali during the hot season doing formations on improved shea butter practices and how to start associations and shared a hot meal before collapsing under our mosquito nets and going to bed. Umu and I got up early Wednesday morning to prepare for the formation. Annie and Baissata, the head of the informal women's association, invited 10 women from each quartier in Zana (there are 4) and 10 extra women to cook the lunch. Esayi and Bachary set up extra desks from the school under the shade of mango trees by the village bank and a chalkboard for talking points. About 6 women pound millet in this area each day and since the mortars in which they pound the grain are so heavy and shade is at a premium, we had a nice rhythm of thump thump thump throughout the formation. By 10:00 a.m. only about 20 women had showed up. Annie was acting nervous and called me over to help pound some millet and shared her concern that no one else was going to show despite her repeated instructions to the women about when and where to show up. She said, Djelika, I'm going to cry! If these women don't want to learn new things, so be it! Annie doesn't normally have a flair for the dramatic so I panicked a little but tried to hide my concern and calm her down by saying that surely the women would show. Sure enough, by 10:15 most of the women had come, though 2 hours later than expected. Umu expressed her dissatisfaction with the women's tardiness and set a ground rule that if they were late again tomorrow each person who came after the start of her formation would have to pay 50 cfa (about 10 cents). However, once Umu got rolling talking about why shea work is important, how proper collection of shea nuts leads to the creation of good shea butter and why it's important to preserve shea trees, the women were all ears. I kept notes during the formation and marked names when women spoke out of turn (another finable offense of 50 cfa). It was pretty funny how the women would hold one another accountable and point out to Umu women who were nodding off or speaking without raising their hand. It's pretty incredible to see women sitting and learning something when they've never had the opportunity for formal education. I hope that their children, especially their daughters, see them learning and say, yeah, me too! I want to learn! I couldn't help but beam at Annie who did an incredible job orchestrating the formation. Ever tried making rice and sauce for over 40 hungry women in pots the size of mini-bathtubs over wood? Me either, but I know it's not easy but no big deal for Annie!
Day one taught us about associations and how Together Everyone Achieves More (doesn't exactly translate in Bambara into such a clean acronym - Nogon Fe An Be Barra Caman Were Ke!) and that pooling our resources (namely, labor) you can get some pretty good butter our of those shea trees. Day two of the formation consisted of taking the ground up shea nuts Umu brought from Bamako and whipping them into a paste similar to the consistency of marshmellow fluff (yum!). It took about 30 minutes to hand whip the 20 kilos of shea nuts and we then put the mixture into a big pot to separate the oil from the residue. This took awhile and Umu used the opportunity to re-emphasize the importance of cleanliness and that all the pots and bowls used were cleaned with soap and water, hands washed similarly and hair wrapped up and sleeves pushed back. Annie had seen this method of shea butter extraction twice: Once with Tamara, the volunteer I replaced, and then again with me this past January at our training in Bamako. The other women usually just boil the shea mixture they get once they grind the shea nuts without whipping it and once they saw the oil that came out of just a few minutes of whipping (per woman) and then boiled they were truly amazed and kept coming up to me saying, i ni baara! (Good work!) An nenya kosebe! (Really cool!). At the end of the formation, Umu spoke to all the women to encourage them to pursue this technique (it's not as radical as I'm maybe making it out to be but education is all about repetition, right?). Then Annie got up and made my heart swell a little. She's such a beautiful woman who works tirelessly to provide for her family but also for her village. She told the women how she'd wanted them to see this technique since she and Tamara had seen it first together in Bamako and now that they finally had, how excited she is to move forward and start an association. She told the women how at the beginning of the formation she wanted to cry but now she was happy again and proud of the work they did.
In the end, Umu collected 1,000 cfa (hey, that's kind of a lot!) in late fees from the women so we were able to buy candy at the end for everyone to enjoy. As rainy season fast approaches (thank goodness, the heat is getting oppressive!) and shea work will begin again, I'm crossing my fingers the women will keep Umu's formation tucked in the back of their minds when collecting shea nuts and processing their butter so they can increase the quality and yields of their work thus providing more and better butter for their family and potentially, an outside market.

A trip to Guinea and Sierra Leone

Seeing the sites of Guinea and Sierra Leone on a recent vacation with fellow volunteers Joe, Ashley and Cassie - River #1 & #2, Banana Island, both capital cities Freetown and Conakry, the Fouta of Guinea opened my eyes to the raw beauty in West Africa and also how from one country to the next life can be so different. It's easy to lump regions together from a distance and even from within Mali I thought things wouldn't be much different in Guinea or Sierra Leone but I was in for a wake-up call! Sporadic running water and electricity in Conakry, the capital of Guinea and a bustling Freetown with big buildings and colonial architecture still intact drew stark contrasts to Bamako where there's almost always electricity/street lights and running water in hotels.
It was worth spending over 30 hours in a tightly packed car with red dirt coating our entire bodies and bags to get to the beach in Freetown, Sierra Leone and then spend 5 days on the beach, turn around and head back to Mali through Guinea, stopping in the Fouta Djallon for hiking and site-seeing.

I'll let the pictures speak for me because words are failing and no matter how hard I try to describe what I saw, it can't come through!

the Fouta Djallon in Guinea


Tokeh Beach near Freetown, Sierra Leone

Banana Island, Sierra Leone

River #1, Sierra Leone

Our taxi from Bamako, Mali to Kankan, Guinea. We were celebrating making it through all the border check points.



See more pictures here :)

(every) 6 days a week...

Catherine Dembele - the pastor's wife and a crocheter with a pretty smile and inviting laugh.

Market is every six days in my village and I always look forward to weaving in and out of the small hangars to greet the old women and men who hang around chatting with one another, greeting folks they only see on market day who come in to sell their various treasures. Things get started as the day cools off so around 4:30 I peek in the direction of the two dead baobabs that designate our market to see if all the vendors have gathered. Go too early and run the risk of lingering too long. Go too late and all the best produce could be snatched up by the early birds. Timing is everything and I'm looking to fill my canvas bag with tasty treats to last me a few days as well as some gifts for Annie, Esayi and the kids.
Commerce is always going on in village and it's fascinating to see the laws of supply and demand at work. Annie is on constant commission to knit baby outfits for new and soon-to-be-born babies and business is booming as evidenced by the little ones sporting her handiwork around town - dainty hats, tops and booties knitted into delicate patterns of red, yellow, green and white - colors favored by the women and the colors of Mali's flag. Annie also buys peanuts, okra and yarn in bulk and resells them for a small profit. Esayi fills a 20 liter jug with gas in San and then redistributes it into recycled, one-liter wine bottles he sells to moto owners who find themselves in the middle of the bush and with no gas station for at least 15 miles. Catherine, the pastor's wife, crochets large doiley-esque pieces for women to lay on the cement benches at church so their fancy fabric doesn't get mussed by the dirt and dust that coats all surfaces this time of year; a souvenir from the persistent harmattan winds whipping around.

These two were hanging out in Esayi's horse cart - had to snap a photo.

The market in my village is different than San by leaps and bounds. Whereas San is humming and buzzing with people and all kinds of trinkets, village market is subdued and the variety is limited. You can find small stacks of tomatoes, onions, hand carved stools, tightly woven straw mats, bread, dried fish, baggies of salt and women who repair broken calabash bowls in exchange for millet. As I buy stacks of tomatoes or dried fish, the women selling it will load them in my bag, pick up an extra tomato or scoop of fish, and then knowingly look at me as they add it to my bag; an encouragement to come back to their spread the following week with an unspoken promise of another gift for her "terimuso" (girlfriend). Women also make fried dough balls and spaghetti which they sell in little plastic baggies for pennies a pop. Traveling salesmen bike in from neighboring villages and San, peddling things like rope, medicine, baby clothes and powdered soap; an ever-expanding market for their goods found in distant villages like mine.
After making my rounds I make one last loop of the market to make sure I've greeted everyone and gotten everything I need. Satisfied with my purchases and carrying my "shopping" bag filled with the deals of the week I wave goodbye to the crowd of women and children and navigate the dirt path back home, carefully dodging traffic along the way - cattle and donkey carts crowding the way, indifferent to shoppers like me.

Technical training in Segou

Joel is a volunteer in the San region, like me. His counterpart developed the Plasa method which is a tree planting method for the dry season. Here he demonstrates how to do it for other volunteers and their counterparts. The man helping him has a tree nursery and hadn't heard about the method before - he's now really excited to try it out on his own trees.

Esayi and I went to Segou this past week along with other volunteers from the region and their counterparts for a more focused technical training on things like tree grafting, soak pits, the Plasa method (a method for planting trees in dry/hot season developed by Jude Thera), shea work and solar dryers as well as how to draft project proposals and funding sources. It was a great opportunity for volunteers to share what projects they are trying to get started in their villages and for our counterparts to meet one another and discuss their ideas. We did a lot of round table discussion and also met with over 15 NGO's represented in the Segou region.

It's incredibly fascinating seeing our counterparts get so excited about projects and also talk with one another about work going on in different areas of Mali. Communication isn't easy here - electricity is sparse and while lots of people have cell phones, that doesn't mean they have a disposable income to make a lot of calls. With volunteers all over Mali there's an instant network of people and volunteers who are well connected to one another and can work to connect people who specialize in tree grafting or planting and shea work to come and do formations in our village and vice versa.

Happy Easter

Anne's beautiful niece Nema came to celebrate Easter with us "en brusse" She said that in San, they only celebrate Easter on Sunday (the audacity!) but in Zana it's a three day celebration. We danced Saturday night-Sunday morning, church on Sunday and then more dancing on Monday.

Sweet baby Christine in her Easter dress. Her bottom two teeth are coming in (Anne says her kids teeth come in slower than others) and is a speedy crawler!

Anne looked better in this outfit than I could ever hope to so we traded Easter outfits. Jackie, please note the green t-shirt that says "Sweet Baby." Made me think of all the sweet babies back in the states, namely you!

the whole fam damily as Memaw says. And folks may look grumpy/not smiling; don't worry, that's just the Malian way! I'll bring out my camera to a group of laughing kids and as soon as they group up for the picture they give me the saddest frown-y face you've ever seen. Then, when I show them the picture they smile and say what a great picture it is...guess I just cheese it a lot!

A lot of the kids get matching outfits - here is Ibrahim, Emmanuel and Samuel. Emma is my host brother and the other two are his cousins.

Classy folks in village

Me and the garden boys. These are my host brothers who help me pull the over 40 sacks of water needed to water my garden of lettuce, okra, tomatoes, eggplant and corn.

I check the time on my cell phone that hangs in my door frame (the only place I get reception). It's 9:52 and I've got 8 minutes to make it to the other side of village before the women's Bambara class begins. I peek through the window in my kitchen to Annie's compound to see if she's ready just as she slips into the outdoor bathroom with her bucket of water for a quick bath. I'm reminded of most of my mornings in college when I'd hop in the shower 10 minutes before class would start and my sweet roommates would roll their eyes as I dashed around grabbing lunch, books, keys and cellphone with sopping hair and running out the door to get to class on time. I realize not much has changed after living in Mali for 9 months as I grab my little day pack filled with activities to keep me busy while I sit in on the women's Bambara class in my village. I've got my journal, letters to respond to, a book, my nalgene and I'm out the door. I lock up and shut the gate to my area so chickens can't eat any more of my moringa trees and by the time I get to Annie's house she's donned a full complet with headwrap and her knitting is in hand, baby tied to her back like she's been waiting for me all morning. I think "Didn't I just see you going to take a bath..." but there's no time to waste contemplating Anne's quickness - we've got to get to class! We set off at a quick clip for the free standing classroom World Vision built at the edge of the village and where Annie and Bachary teach a class of about 30 women and girls who are too old to start school to read and write Bambara. Class starts at 10 and if you're late you have to pay 50 CFA (about 10 cents). Annie and I aren't late today - but it was close! The dedication of these women and Bachary is incredible. Starting from square one on February 17 with most of the women, now they can all write letters and read, albeit haltingly, words and simple sentences. For Aminata, Annie's sister-in-law, this past week the lessons got to be too much so she stopped coming to class. I pleaded with her - "but Aminata, won't your daughter Rachel go to school? Don't you want to be able to help her read?" but to no avail. (Annie was going to a training, also led by World Vision, on clean water and hand-washing). Aminata said class was too hard and she was no good. I went over to Bachary's compound and he said he was going to talk to Aminata about why it was important for her to come to class. I wished him luck but said that I had tried and she still said no. But you would believe the next day, there she was. I don't know what he said but whatever it was, it worked and hopefully she'll stick with it until the end.

Annie likes long walks in the millet fields, knitting cute baby complets and teaching women to read and write when she's not busy cooking for her family or washing clothes.

Annie learned to read and write Bambara from a missionary when she was 18. She's the exception to the rule here where a vast majority of the population is illiterate, especially women. I asked Bachary where he went to school and he laughed bashfully and said his dad didn't send him to school. How did you learn then? I asked. He said he would stand by the window of the school and copy the lessons from the board. I asked him how old he was and once again, a shy smile and a laugh. A lot of people don't have formal birth certificates and don't know, to the year, how old they are. They'll instead give dates relative to when a certain president was in power or a major event took place when pressed for a specific date. I offer that maybe he's in his mid-20's and he says he's at least 30 but I'm not so sure; he looks pretty young to me. No matter how old he is, I am impressed everyday with his and Annie's dedication to literacy in our village and the efforts folks make all the time to make a better life for their children.

Mai is too old to start school but she's learning to read and write and is cute as the day is long.

Everyday I wake up and do the chores around my house - pull water for the garden, water the flowers, sweep the house and wash dishes all knowing that this is temporary. After two years my time will be up here and I'll return to having water from a tap, refrigeration and paved roads. But my heart aches thinking about basic needs not being met for people like clean water, access to education and health care. However, all it takes to bolster my spirits is to take a look around me, at people like Annie and Bachary who work tirelessly to improve the lives of those around them and foster an environment, as much as they can, for their own children to learn and hopefully one day, things we take as givens (because they should be!) like schools, doctors and paved roads will be the rule instead of the exception.

Attention: Toubab gets a great deal

Lovely travel companions to Goree Island.


A view from the ile de Madelaine, a nature reserve off the coast of Dakar.

In Dakar en route to Mali after a root canal, I visited the market with two other Mali PCVs, Amy and Liza. Here’s a story from our visit.

And so we plunge into the frenzy that is the market in Dakar. Tight dark denim jeans stretched on mannequin legs, cheap baubles and jewelry tacked onto cardboard displays propped up on rickety card tables. There are vendors setting up shop and dusting off their random assortment of goods with a rag or feather duster, as if one more cleaning could keep off the constant kicking up of dust and sand from the cars whizzing past. Minibuses deftly navigate the narrow alleys, brushing dangerously close to women selling little plastic bags filled with peanuts and the garibous with their old tomato paste cans used for collecting food or money slung over their shoulder. Calls of “good price here” rain down on us from the shops and we get swept into the fabric corner where bags and fabric samples hang from every open space. A man who introduces himself as Aboudou Faye says he’d be happy to give us a tour of the factory where bags and outfits are being churned out on foot pedal sewing machines. We weave through the rows of sewing machines and see all the wholesale shop has to offer. I pick up a bag and Aboudou swoops in on my admiring gaze, “I give you good price when tour is done.” We follow him upstairs where his Malian “brother” is sitting among shelves of mud cloth bags and batik wall hangings. The bags and outfits are being feverishly sewn as though an army of toubabs (foreigners) are going to rush into Dakar demanding boubous and over-the-shoulder bags with red, yellow and green motifs and rasta men beating drums in a dizzying pattern. This seems unlikely so I’m curious for whom all these bags are being so quickly sewn, it is the off-season after all.

So jumping photos are way more fun than you'd think...
Aboudou says there is one more shop we must see, it’s just across the street. We head over, carefully dodging mid-day traffic and the other shoppers milling in and out of the endless boutiques. The shops in the area across the street have more jewelry and mud cloth bags than rasta fabric and elephant bags. I find a bag I like and pick it up. We’re at the end of our tour so I sit down with Aboudou to discuss a price. When I ask how much he says “23,000 CFA” (roughly $46). I hear myself cough in surprise – you can get a personalized mud cloth wall hanging for 7,500 CFA in San; this bag shouldn’t be more than 3,000 CFA, or so I’m convinced. I tell him I’m reconsidering his sanity giving me a price like that and I get up, ready to go. He laughs and says “Ah, my sister, that’s how it is in Senegal. Bargaining is a game. I give you a high price, you offer yours and we meet in the middle.” Bargaining is nothing new but it’s also a time consuming process not made for the weak of resolve (my bargaining skills pale in comparison to some of my friends here). Today I’ve decided to stick to my guns – I’m a casual shopper and while I do love the bag, I’m also willing to walk away and that’s what gives me an edge in Aboudou’s game. After going back and forth a few times I repeat to Aboudou my price is 3,000 CFA; I’m not budging. I thank him sincerely for his time and walk to meet my friends Amy and Liza (proud owner of a new print shoulder bag) who are waiting outside. I get as far as the women selling wood statues and bead necklaces and Aboudou follows me from the store and says, “ok my sister, 4,000 CFA.” When I say 3,000 is my offer, he says, “My sister, I came down from 23,000 CFA to 4,000, at least you can meet me at 3,500?” What incredible marketing! Aboudou is right, it is pretty incredible to see the price of something change from $46 to $8 in a matter of 15 minutes. I agree he has come a long way and since I really do like the bag, I hand over my money and we slap hands and he flashes a big smile. I turn around to find Liza and Amy and when I look back, Aboudou has reabsorbed into the frenzy of the market. I hear him call out “My sister, follow me, I give you nice price.” Another toubab is about to get a great deal.

Midnight Wedding Crasher

Biking to the village next door this past Tuesday I greeted the people in a compound that had more folks gathered under various shady spaces than usual. They called out for me to stop and greet so I got off my bike and walked around the compound greeting the separate groups of people. The old women on stools finishing up their porridge under the mango tree, giggling teenager girls by the huts cleaning breakfast dishes and preparing for lunch and the old men relaxing on a mat next to a grainery after what I'm sure was a taxing morning of eating breakfast. Nana, one of the old women, took me by the arm to greet the men and she explained that I pass through each Tuesday to go to the health center when they asked what I was up to. I asked them why there were so many people in their compound and the men said they were celebrating a wedding tonight and that I should come back later to join in the festivities. When I agreed that I would, one of the women piped in that they'd be sending someone to find me if I didn't so to make sure I came back.

When I got home that afternoon I told Annie about my chance encounter with the wedding party and got her blessing to return later that night (they don't get started until 11p.m. or midnight!). After dinner I take my knitting over to Annie's hut and we sit outside to knit and talk about the day, Christine's cuteness and when we think she'll start walking or get her first teeth. My eyes got heavy around 9:30 so I curled up on the mat next to Annie's chair and took a cat nap alongside my already fast asleep host sister Batuma and host brother Emmanuel until about 10:30 when I got up to get ready for the wedding. With a full moon and a cloudless sky I didn't need a light to navigate the dirt path between my village and the one 2 miles away where the wedding was. Usually when I bike anywhere people pop out from the fields or compounds to say "Hey Djelika, where are you going?" and then we greet one another as I bike on and they say "Greet them for me!" But tonight it was just me and the dark outlines of the shea and baobab trees and it didn't matter if my wrap skirt flapped in the breeze since no one was around to see. As I approached the village, I could hear the rapid beat of the drums inviting me to come and dance. I arrived at Nana's compound and admired the shine and glimmer of the women's wedding complets in the moonlight and went to sit on an open stool. Nana came to sit beside me after we'd greeted the half-awake wedding guests lying on mats spread out around the compound. I found myself instantly surrounded by about 20 little girls who kneeled around me and laughed shyly at one another when I would return their polite stares. Nana went around and introduced each of the girls, relying on promptings from her own girls when she couldn't remember one of their first names. I could still hear the drums beating and asked Nana if it was time to go. She said, soon, soon and continued to laugh heartily as I told her that no, I wasn't married and no, I didn't have children and that yes, having more than 3 kids in America was considered a lot as she said she had 8 herself.

Somehow Nana decided it was time to go to where the actual wedding party was (at this point, I was still unclear as to whose wedding we were attending...actually, I still am...) so we gathered up our stools and trooped over to a large clearing next to the mosque where folks had already set up mats and lounge chairs around spotlights and speakers powered by a humming generator. We set up shop next to the man with the microphones and Nana got started singing along with a few other older women she introduced as her sisters. A few men at a time would pair up and start dancing to the women's chants and the beat of the hand drums. The bride stays closed up in a hut somewhere else while the groom sat surrounded by his buddies next to the dust-bowl of a dance floor. Someone would periodically pour water from a jug onto the dancing area so the fast moving feet wouldn't kick up so much dust. One of Nana's sisters handed her microphone to another muso-koroba (old woman) and pulled me onto the dance floor. We walked in front of the groom and knelt down to touch the ground in front of him and then went to dance in front of the drummers. I felt the laughter pour out of me as I tried to imitate the women around me and was only encouraged by the belly laughs of the old women shimmying and shaking faster and with more rhythm than I could ever hope for. This went on until about 3 a.m. when I found an open lounge chair and curled up once again for another nap. My friend Hawa gently woke me up around 4 and walked me to my bike so I could go home to catch a couple more hours of sleep before the call to prayer broke the spell of the evening and a slightly pulsing headache from too little sleep reminded me I'll opt for an early reception when I get married.

Can I get a slice of humble pie?

Annie doing a urine fertilizer formation for the women's association this past week.
I went back to site unsure what to expect after being away for a month and a half. How do you all of a sudden just get started doing projects and formations in a village...? Well, have a great counterpart, that's how! Annie called a women's association meeting as soon as I got back and we did a urine fertilizer formation and talked about improved shea butter techniques. Then, the men's and women's association met to talk about future projects including buying cattle to fatten and then resell and building a community cereal bank.
Annie and another man, Bachary, are also teaching a class of 30 women and a handful of teenage girls to read and write Bambara 5 days a week, 3 hours a day (I do NOT know where the women get the extra time- they're already so busy!). The women are starting from square one with letters and then building up to words (I go and sit in the back of the classroom and play with babies, read or knit). I feel my heart clench up seeing them practice before the teacher calls them up to the board to read aloud to everyone else. They called my name up out of the blue to read and I started to get nervous because while our alphabet is essentially the same, the letters are pronounced differently. I stumbled over a couple words and at the end all the women clapped. For me. I couldn't stop beaming and all the women broke out into laughter at my giddyness.

Of course, no event is complete without a timed photo to remember it by!
Here are the women with a jug soon to be filled with urine then let to sit for 2 days, mixed with water and then applied to gardens and fields! (I swear it's legit :)

The 3rd graders from North Landing Elementary School in Virginia Beach sent school supplies and games for the kids in my village (Thank you!). I was at a loss for how to distribute them but the teachers decided to give the first box to the top students in the class. Each month (there's a whole suitcase more of things to share) they will re-evaluate the students rankings (I'm not wild about the idea of ranking students but so it is) and will give the supplies out accordingly. The kids were really excited to receive the treats and hopefully will feel encouraged to keep working hard. Education is definitely lacking in Mali - it's neither universal nor mandatory (in that it's enforced) so it feels good encouraging what we take for granted in the states.
I had a great birthday yesterday (big 2-3) and thank everyone for the great birthday wishes! I couldn't do this without the incredible support I'm receiving from back home. Thank you!