real short

This will be short and probably have lots of typing errors because the keyboard is bad and making my poor fingers hurt and it is hard to find things like punctuation and sometimes when i know where they are i still cant figure out how to make them show up on the screen. But im getting better at this. just in case you are curious, the rteal trick with two finger typing is that you have to use both hands on both sides not just use the right for what you would only use the right for if you were using all your fingers.
My new site is such an incredible improvement. i mean, dont get me wrong its frustrating and i had to come to town today because i was going crazy, but i am looking forward to going back to site and working there. I am hoping to work with children to help them start a youth garden. Im really excited about it and they are really excited about it, but right now we are struggling with finding a space. my one young boy said, really? youll help me grow onions? ive never seen a teenage boy so excited about growing onions.Dont tell them, because they just want a garden of their own that theirmothers dont control, but i have an ulterior motive to show them how much they can really do if they want. my new town is highly educated and fairly well to do - these will be the leaders of tomorrows Mali if they decide that they want to stay in Mali instead of leave and go someplace else.
i promise to put out a really good post within the next two months - I might come back to town next week, or maybe the second week of January, but then we have training and it is going to be crasy.

New site, an introduction

Well, for various reasons, I decided that my stay in Behon was going to be unsustainable, and (miracle of miracles) the Peace Corps allowed me a site change. So now I am in a site towards Burkina Faso (actually I'm basically in Burkina Faso, but I'll get to that later) called Koury. It is going great, so far. Of course, I've only been there a week, but I've already met all kinds more people than I did in all my time in Behon. There is the possibility for me to eat more than just oatmeal, I don't have to traipse through schisto rivers every day, I feel like there could be help forthcoming if I needed it, I'm not afraid to be alone with my homologue, my host family is not embroiled in an escalating civil war, my site doesn't seem to be neglected by the federal government, and I am actually looking forward to going back to site. In general, I'm happy this change got made.

So Koury is on a main shipping road between Mali and Burkina. I think that this is the main source of the difference between Koury and Behon. Nobody (and I'm talking Malian nationals here) goes to Kita unless they are going to Kita - or, I guess, Manantali. And so there is not a very lively flow of ideas into and out of the region. In the Koutiala region, however, there are always people coming through, people who have seen other parts of the world, and even if they haven't seen them, they at least know about them. The world is simply a much bigger place in Koury than it is in Behon, and I think that that means that the future is bigger and broader. Its nice to be working with people who are as much interested in being part of a larger world community as getting things. Not that I'm saying everybody must be connected all the time, but don't want to put my two years into connecting people that don't want to be connected.

Koury is really, really close to Burkina. I accidentally rode my bike to Burkina the other day. Luckily - and I don't know if this is because I am just so pathetic looking or what, but this kind of thing seems to happen to me a lot - the border guards were really, really nice, and I didn't get in trouble at all, and they let me go back home to Mali. But you just have to watch out a little around here, because its pretty easy to accidentally end up somewhere where you ought not be.

So my banking town is Koutiala, which seems to be a pretty nice town. I haven't spent any time there at all, but I have passed through twice, and both times I was impressed. When I told Boo, our driver, and possibly the greatest Malian employed by PC, that I was going to go to Koutiala he was very excited for me. Koutiala is a great town, he said, and they have a bakery! I'm looking forward to finding the bakery. They also have ice cream! A little bit backwoods Malian ice cream, as I understand it, but ice cream none the less. How lucky can a girl get? And apparently Koutiala has the best Malian hospital outside of Bamako, which unfortunately for me, is a huge benefit for me. The other PCVs in the area are also all really enthusiastic and supportive and I am looking forward to tech exchanges and other fun times with them.

My host family in Koury is great. I live with a man and his one wife and their youngest child, and there's some other guy and another boy who live with us, and our maid. Yeah, I have a maid. Kind of weird. She's really sweet. Her name is Adis. She's not a very good cook, but I only eat with the family one meal a day. I think I add a little amusemet to her life, because I am a little incompetent at some things. But I'm learning, and she's helping/letting me learn. She works an excessive amount, and I'm interested to find out exactly what the deal is with her. I need a little more language and a little more cultural understanding before I get to that one, though. My one young man that lives with us, I'm going to have to try to get his picture up here. We are having a t-shirt mis-match contest for our January training, and while his isn't really a t-shirt, the fact that every afternoon he pulls on his soccer fishnets brings me daily joy. His name is Ismael, and he took third in a footrace the other day. I was so proud. The two young boys study very hard and are very smart. We are learning English songs and poems together, so if anybody has any they want to share, I'd appreciate some ideas. It's really funny for me, because by the time a lot of these little songs have made it this far, they are only echoes of the songs as I know them. Their English alphabet song has numbers in it. They liked Jack and Jill, though Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star fell flat on its face. Oh, well, you win some, you lose some.

Here's a question I've been wondering about. This is for American people who live within hearing distance of mosques. Do mosques in America broadcast their calls to prayer? Because I can see how that would definately not go over well in some communities in America. But its such an important part of the daily spiritual cycle here that I don't know how they could not. So if anybody has any insight on that, please do share, because I am interested to know. My new mosques in Koury have Imams that can really sing. Its nice.

Koury is in the Sikasso region which is the region that feeds Mali. So I've gone from peanut land to potato land. I love potatoes. And I'll tell you what, I make a mean potato soup these days. And somehow even though we have the moisture and the good dirt, we aren't too mosquitoey. One of my women's associations is in a village 5 km brusse-fe of Koury. As I was riding there the other day, I realized it was 5 km of solid shea resources. Amazing. The region seems to work well with its local Eux et Forets representatives (Department of Natural Resources) and recognize that there could be money in these trees. There are big, old trees, too. I don't know what that means for their nut production, but there are so many of them that there must be a good diversity of tree ages in the forest, so if the old ones have stopped producing, I think there must be a new up and coming generation available to take its place. USAID is doing a GIS shea project, and I'll just have to get on that.

So, the out of town women's associations: I haven't really figured out what exactly the deal is, but I think that even though in town they speak Bambara, I'm no longer living in a Bambara area. I think this because all my village associations speak Mianka. Which apparently is related fairly closely to Songhai, which I thought was a Mauritania-ward ethnic group so I'm going to have to look into that, but it supposed to be a very difficult language. My homologue says I'll have no problem learning Mianka within the next four months, but he says he doesn't understand a word of it because it is hard. I think he's being optimistic about my prospects. But I laugh because people here are always talking about how PC is different (the word better may be recklessly tossed around every once in a while) because we don't just live in our cities with our air conditioning and indoor plumbing and show up in our white SUVs and speak only French and hire local translators and come and rescue these people from their lives, but here I am and I'm coming in from my big town that has some daily power and pumps, on my bike that cost at least a year's salary and being translated from one local language to the vernacular of the area. And right now I still need somebody to translate my Bambara into Bambara for the person who then translates into Mianka. So that's a little funny. Mianka, though, sounds to me right now more like Chinese than it does Bambara. I am going to focus on Bambara and French, though, for the time being, and then move on to Mianka if I develop any sort of competence in those two.

I'll try and get my thoughts a little more organized for the next time around, but it may be a while between posts now that I can more easily stay in site.

to Julie

Hi Julie - I read your recent comment.  If you get a chance to see the movie Freedom Writers, it also is pertinent to this whole topic!

That's my Kelly - she's a profound one!    

I talked to Kelly today. She has moved sites and will probably have less access to the internet, so it may be a little while before she can add to her blog.

She is living in Kouri (or Koury), on the road to Burkina Faso,  now, and sounds very happy with the switch. She'll have lots to tell us next time she gets a chance.    

The Moon

11.16.2008
The Moon
I was talking with one of the other PCVs the other day and she mentioned something about Mali that I find really fascinating. We were talking about the moon. The man in the moon. In Mali, they don’t see a man in the moon. They see a woman carrying wood on her head. So I looked at the moon, and tried to see either a man in it or a woman carrying wood on her head. I only see a bunny rabbit. A squashed bunny rabbit who looks like he’s trying to escape and got a bunch of fun balls dropped on him. Once I had a guy in my boat who told me I should retire from raft guiding and become an air traffic controller because people who can see imaginary things in rocks and clouds make good air traffic controllers. He was on honeymoon with his mail order bride from Russia. She was really pretty.

Elections

11.11.08
Earlier this week was the American presidential election, and the buzz in this part of the world has been pretty incredible to experience. It has led to what I think are very important conversations about tolerance and diversity and democracy more generally.
Mali, since its independence from France in the early ‘60s, has been help up as a fairly model fledgling democracy. There is a minimal amount of civil strife and the lack of violent governmental overthrow is truly astounding for this part of the world. Leaders are democratically elected and there is a well-established federal-regional-local hierarchy.
The Peace Corps gives us Newsweek. Six-week-old Newsweek, which I don’t understand at all. It’s the international edition, and I don’t imagine that Newsweek sends out six-week-old international editions to ex-pats all around the world. But also, let me tell you, Newsweek International Edition is Funny, with a capital F. It is clearly published for a different audience than the edition I’m used to. An audience with more money. Which I think is funny, because in my head when I am thinking of the kind of people who buy Bentleys and keep Rolexes in trust for the next generation, they aren’t reading Newsweek, but the Wall Street Journal and the New Yorker. But, there are lots of good pictures in Newsweek, and maybe they, too, like pictures in their news magazines. Pictures with captions that make sense. And then at the end there is a section called “for people richer than you’ll ever be” and it is full of fancy stuff you can buy for your house and fancy places to eat and stay – I love it.
Anyway, six weeks ago, Fareed Zakaria wrote an article about freedom, democracy, and land liberalization. It’s a good article. I would recommend reading it. He says, “Holding elections is a defining feature of any liberal democracy.” But the article is about how that is not really good enough. That there are plenty of other elements that go into making a democracy and making it work. He focuses to a large extent on land reform. I’m interested in attitudes. Attitudes that could drive a nation to hold elections or reform their land tenure system. And also attitudes that underlie the way citizens treat each other, their children, and their futures. Respect, creativity, tolerance, ambition, compassion, and responsibility.
I think maybe the importance of these attitudes is easily overlooked by us Americans because they are so deeply ingrained in our collective psyche that it is difficult for us to imagine being without them. I’ve been having a difficult time with these conversations with the brussey village Malians I associate with about democracy because these fundamental attitudes that I take for granted don’t exist here.
School can seem a drag, but every day an American student goes to school it is because America as a collective believes that each individual not only has a future, but has the potential to make his or her future matter. And then when he goes to school and sees that there is more to his life than just eating and sleeping and Young American Citizen Doe realizes that there is a greater world out there than just the one he can immediately see, the ideals because of which America works are reaffirmed. In Mali, children don’t all go to school. Especially not girls. In part it is because feeding a family takes so much time-intensive physical labor that everybody has to help out – everybody goes to the fields to farm, and then the girls help prepare the meal – but mostly it is because it doesn’t occur to uneducated parents that there could be a life for their children other than the one they are living. And schooling is not a requirement for that life. And then without going to school, the younger generation doesn’t get the opportunity to develop the creativity to imagine a changed life for themselves or their children. And without the creativity to come up with new ideas they never develop the ambition to strive for them. In America we go for the opposite of that; in America we cultivate possibility.
One of the things that limits the cultivation of possibilities in Mali is that there is very little variety. Every day is the same, every meal is the same. In a lot of these villages, I am the first white person that many of the children have ever seen. It doesn’t make any difference to the really little ones, but when they get to be about 2 ½ or 3, they begin to see that I look different from everybody else in their world. Now, in America, diversity is celebrated, and besides that, it is unavoidable. But in Mali, differences are not celebrated or encouraged. Differences just don’t exist, and if they do, they are suppressed. So instead of reacting to this strange person who looks different from them with interest or curiosity or even suspicion, little children react to me with terror. They scream and cry and run away. And the reason this is so disappointing is because the first opportunity these Malian children have to see a way of life other than the one they are living is so traumatic that it re-emphasizes naturally conservative tendencies and makes them even more intolerant of diversity. And, in contrast, just being able to walk down the street and see people of different colors – heck, people with different hair colors – opens up a world of possibility to young Americans. Because everything is not always the same, and the world is not a static place.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that it is easy for us to overlook all the great things that America does have going for it, even and especially when the country is angry, confused, poor, and struggling. But it is as much the intangible things that set the first world apart from the third as the tangible ones, and it is also the intangible things that are the hard ones to figure out how to share.
As far as our elections go, I think there is a little confusion about exactly who Obama was elected president of. Because if I were getting all my world news from Malians I would be pretty sure that he had been elected Lord King of All Creation for all Time. And the idea that he might focus on America over Africa is also one that is a tough sell out here. Paolo, down the street, puts up Malian billboards about Obama, and in the latest, Paolo is predicting an end to terrorism in the world. I fear that when the world discovers that he is going to be the president of America, and that he is going to preside in America’s interest, there is going to be a little disappointment.

new address for Kelly

We just got a message from Kelly with a new address.

Kelly Jones, PCV

Corps de la Paix

BP 71  

Koutiala

Mali, West Africa

Kelly said she will move into her new site on Thursday, Nov. 20. She has been staying in Kita lately, but will go back to her village with the P.C. truck to pick up things. Then on to Kouri, which is on the road into Burkina Fasso. 

Bicycles!!!

Well, the Peace Corps really came through with the bicycles. These things are so cute, they’re almost enough to make a girl sign up to stay in Africa forever. White with pink and grey. The grey is like regular bicycle paint and the pink is done in flowery tendrils all over the place. My frame is teeny tiny, so much so that my complementary water bottle (International Procurement Agency, Inc.: Proudly Serving the Peace Corps for over 25 Years – over half of Mali’s uninterrupted PC experience) doesn’t actually go all the way into the holder, and then it sticks out and sometimes I kick it off while I pedal, but it fits me remarkably well. And then my mother came through for me with my bike shorts. On a side note, if you ever join the PC, brink bike shorts. Because even though you have baggage restrictions and you may end up in a situation where you don’t need them, if you do you’ll be happier to have them than sad not to have something else. Except protein bars. Pack them over bike shorts. That’s the order: protein bars, bike shorts, sandals that don’t make your feet bleed, Gatorade. Everything else is inconsequential. And then my sister-in-law came through for me with this thing called a Cool Tie. Its not cool like the adjective that comes to mind whenever you think of me, but rather cool like the opposite of warm. Its this thing you tie around your neck with little balls in it that you put in water and they swell up and become gelatinous globs (a lot less gross than it sounds when I describe it) and then you put it around your neck and its not wet, and its not cold, but it keeps you cool. Amazing. And then the other pair came through with the Gatorade. I just have the best family ever.
But so, its about 60 km from Kita, my banking town/rainy season market town (PC really didn’t come through with that one), to my village. And doing this ride has done nothing but increase my respect for century riders. Because 60 km is what, 35 miles? I could figure it out for exact if I wanted to. I can still remember the day – 8th grade, Mrs. Daniels’ class – when we learned the Rule of Three, as our book called it. It was like magic, finding the missing fourth term in a pair of equivalent ratios. Right up there with the 9X finger trick. Now I wasn’t the most gigantic fan of Mrs. Daniels – she didn’t like David, and if nothing else we have family loyalty on our side – but that may have been the moment I fell in love with mathematics. I didn’t know it until years later, of course, but unfortunately, I think that’s how love sometimes works. But anyway, 35 miles. And after 35 miles I am SO tired! I can’t imagine wanting to ride another twice that far again. And then I think of certain people I know who do it on foot, and I am even more struck with awe. I think maybe PC is teaching me that I was put on this earth to be a couch potato. I also learned that I’ve just been breezing through police checkpoints with a good morning and a smile, which is a little bit of a no-no, but not enough of a no-no that the gendarmes ever got up from their tea to do anything about it. I thought that if you were on a bike you didn’t have to stop, but I’ve since been informed that everyone is supposed to stop. I guess that’s one way to avoid paying bribes in Mali.
I think that possible the rainy season may be over. It hasn’t rained in a while here and it has gotten ungodly hot. The timing is about right, and there is supposed to be a couple week long “mini hot season” before it turns cold. I’m hoping this is going to be the worse of the hot seasons because it is still so humid out in addition to being ungodly hot. And all the bugs are still alive. And there are no mangoes.
Well, I would like to apologize for misinforming my reading public about the nature of Ramadan. Turns out when you live in a Muslim country you still don’t necessarily learn anything true about Islam. (And this one came from a native English speaker, so I can’t even blame the translation) But I will tell you that the festival at the end, which we here in Bambara-speaking Mali call Seli, is one useful religious observance. I have never witnessed so much iron/protein intake in one day in my life. Even American Thanksgiving. Well, maybe American Thanksgiving. It’s really exhausting, to eat all day long. And this is fun. In the village, you not only eat all day long, but you burn with righteous indignation all day long. Because village people have one day of Seli, while town folk have two days, and Bamako fold have three days. And we village people be ANGRY about it! But not too, too angry, because we also all wear new clothes and don’t go to the fields for a day. I didn’t actually notice any praying or religious observances of any sort, but this host family is much less devout than the last one – as in not at all. So they might just put their energy into the eating and the new clothes, you know, a where’s the Christ in Christmas kind of thing. But I don’t know much else, I’m a well of information that was sunk in the wrong place and isn’t filling properly.
And finally, bless the Mines Geology Department. I have made the most beautiful map of my village and its water sources, and while its entirely possible that nobody in this country will appreciate it, gosh darn I’m proud of myself! (My other moment of great pride since I’ve been in Mali was crushed when the malaria smear that I labored to make a few weeks ago in the throws of the sweats was simply re-done as soon as I got to the clinic. I was crushed!)

Back in time

You know how when you go driving through small-town American on your way into town next to the nice welcome to wherever sign there is another one that says, we have Rotary International and the Lions Club and the Boy Scouts and whatever other organizations are active in town? Well, they have those signs in small-town Mali, too. Except instead of Rotary International and the Lions Club (actually, Rotary is represented) it is which countries and international aid organizations are keeping the village alive. Germans built our schools and Canadians put in out pumps and Norwegians are teaching in our schools and UNICEF is providing nutritional supplements. Because Mali sure isn’t building Mali.

10.15.2008

Well, I like to sew, and my host family knows that, so I regularly sew two scraps of cloth back into shirts or shorts or skirts for them. Well, I guess you take your mending to the tailor, right? And the tailor has the sharp scissors, right? And you’d want the person with the sharpest scissors for delicate cutting, right? Well, I know all that so maybe this shouldn’t have surprised me quite so much. But my host-mother came up to me the other day as I was sewing something up with her baby (2 months) and asked if I would circumcise him. I said no.

Moving Backwards - 9.14.08

We swore in as PCVs on September 12. It was a nice ceremony. The Charge d’Affairs, who is currently running the US Embassy in Mali has a wonderful French accent and I understood a lot of what she said. Malian French, still not so much understanding. After the ceremony we went to the American Club and swam in the pool for our Peace Corps party, and then after that we went out for the party the current volunteers organized for us. We decided it was a party for them, and we were just the excuse. Which was fine. We tore up the dance floor and then stayed in an air conditioned hotel and watched CNN. Which was great.

So now I am in Kita waiting to be installed. There is, of course, protocol to go through with every volunteer at every village, and then there is so much stuff that we all have, that they only can do a couple a day (in each region), and my teammate and I are being installed on Friday. So we have a few days to get our shopping done, catch up on our several month old copies of People and US Weekly, and get prepared for site. I bought a solar oven, which I’m particularly excited about, and I am going to see what kind of wonderful things I can concoct in it. I was thinking originally just along Dutch oven lines, but my APCD recommended going for more crock-potty recipes, which I hadn’t even thought of. So if anybody has any experience with a solar oven or any great ideas, just let me know, and I’ll tell you if it works or not.

I did almost miss the bus to Kita this morning. No, I almost missed the bus to the bus station this morning. I set my alarm wrong last night (because I don’t know why, but when you get before five or six o’clock in the morning it things get really confusing. So I set it an hour late), and was having weird dreams this morning that woke me up and I realized I was supposed to be up and breakfasted already. Butt luckily for me, I wasn’t the only one who slept through his or her wake up time. So we made it. And my bus, at least, didn’t leave for many many hours after we got there, so we got to watch French cartoons. I’ll tell you what, I didn’t know I was going to come to Mali and eat so much ice cream, swim in so many pools, and watch so many cartoons.

Bamako!

Guess who got a free (sort of) trip to Bamako this week? Yeah, that's right, this girl. It started out pretty bad and now is turning out pretty boring, but bad and boring took a turn for the better this morning when I bought a GIANT BOX OF CHEERIOS at the supermarket, the likes of which I believe only exist in Bamako. And I got some bananas at the corner and it was like eating a little bowl of heaven. Cheerios, believe it or not, and Chex are the two foods I have dreamed of the most since I've come to Mali.
Well, I've actually written out several blog entries that I am hoping to post at some point, about my arrival to site and my adventures there and in Kita. But as I mentioned, I am in Bamako right now, and they are all in Kita. So I"ll have to do that later.
So you know how they (at least used to) say that if you are going to have a heart attack, you'd be well-advised to do it in Seattle? Well, I think I'm still going to choose Seattle for my heart attack, but for just general passing out, I would highly recommend Mali. They take extremely good care of you if you suddenly go belly-up in the streets of Bamako. Help you to a chair, sit you down, bring you some water, put the fan on you - very, very attentive. Of course, then you don't want to go back there, because you are embarrassed about being the girl that fainted on their sidewalk, and they may have the best ice cream in all of Bamako, so sometimes you just have to suck in up and do the hard thing, don't you?
Well, besides all that excitement, we've finally found some French tutors in Kita that speak real Frenchy-French that I can understand (all teeth present and accounted for) and they want to do an exchange, learn a little English, learn a little French. Very excited about that.
Well, actually, my i-pod is all charged up now, and quite honestly, that's why I came in here, so I'm going to go back to bed now. Have great day, everybody, and I'll post some other more interesting stuff some other time. (Like, for instance, my young girl cousin, Seli, which was very confusing to me because it also means just plain old pray, is the feast at the end of Ramadan, and it took place while I was in Behon (my village) and so I will share what I learned about that.) So until then, au revoir (a phrase which my host family will swear up and down a stack of Bibles, or rather, Korans, is English - absolutely refuse to believe it's French, think I'm dumb for thinking so. Of course they think I"m dumb for innumerable reasons, so what's one more in the great scheme of things?).

Pre-Swearing In

Well, today is the big day, when I promise to be a PCV for two years. I told myAPCD I am probably going to have a heart attack because the idea is stressing me out, but that's just how I am. We are going to the Embassy in a couple hours for the ceremony, and then we have a day of festivities ahead of us. I should rightfully still be in bed right now, but sometimes when you live in Africa your body says "GET UP!" even if you don't really want to. So,I'll have a little time next week (I'm predicting) and I'll let you know all about it. Wish me luck! Thanks for the e-mails and stuff, they make me day!

Good luck publishing this...

Well, homestay is finally over and training is coming to an end. Crazy to think I’ve been in Africa two months already. Crazier to think I have two years yet ahead of me. I can’t even begin to imagine the things I’ll see and learn. This morning I saw an old man in a violet booboo on a pink scooter with racing stripes and an old football helmet. I got up late my last full day of homestay and went out running. I was running straight into this big orange circle hanging in the sky that I couldn’t figure out what it was. It looked like the cover of my copy of Tai Pan. It couldn’t be the moon because that’s the side the sun comes up on and the bright side would be the wrong side, and Ramadan is only 5 days old, anyway. (I’ll get back to Ramadan) But it couldn’t be the sun, either, because I was staring right at it with no sunglasses and no problem, and it was such a calm orange, and so clearly delineated. Well, it turned out it was the sun, after all. But then I had to think about what the heck was going on with the atmosphere that made it look like that. I don’t know if it looks like that every day because I am usually turned around and headed back the other direction (into the breeze) by the time the sun breaks the horizon, but I kind of don’t think so. Then I thought, maybe the world was just preparing for being sucked into a black hole on Wednesday when CERN turns on the LHC. We do get the BBC here, you know. And I tune in religiously to Science Weekly. Because I’m that kind of girl. Aaah, the mysteries of the African sun.

But speaking of religion, Ramadan started either Monday or Tuesday. There is some confusion about that. For me, at least. So I come from a pretty religious host family, but I’m confused about that, too. My host father prays more than any of the other men in my concession (all five times, every day) but he never goes to the mosque. And he leads family prayer. I don’t know if that means he’s in “Imam himself or just knows how to do it. He did spend six years in Cote d’Ivoire, so maybe he learned a different tradition of Islam there. All the other men and two of the boys go to the mosque. All the ladies, the rest of the children, some of the neighbor ladies, and me all pray at home with the chickens and the cows. That right, I participate in Ramadan prayers. I think its okay, because they are really happy when I do and I’m pretty good at patterns, so I don’t embarrass Ameriki too much. It’s pretty easy. You put your hand by your head, you bend on over, you stand back up, you put your forehead on to the ground, you sit back, you put your forehead to the ground again, you stand up without putting your hands up, and you repeat. And you repeat, and repeat, and repeat. It goes on for a really long time. And you don’t get to eat until afterwards. I’m not really sure what we’re praying for, but I just suppose that we’re praying for peace. So, a couple observations: 1. You have to tie your headscarf (musoro) on super tight or it’ll just fall right off, and that’s really a hassle when you are trying to be inconspicuous. 2. Children at prayer in Mali are just like children at church in America. There’s a lot of whispering and giggling and pushing and shoving. We had a puker one night. That might be more of a Malian specialty. 3. Mine are the only knees that crack every single time we get down loudly enough that the other ladies all look at me funny. Which leads me right to 4. I don’t know how to tie my headscarf correctly, because I can’t look either direction without moving my entire torso. Maybe they like it that way. 5. Malian women seem to have super long legs and super short torsos, or maybe I just have super short legs and a super long torso, because when we all sit back on our feet I stick up a good six inches taller than all the rest, but we’re about even, standing. 6. It gets really freaking hot inside a musoro by the time you are done with all the praying.

Ramadan. Megan, this one’s for you. Ramadan is one of the five pillars of Islam. I believe the others are making the Haj, praying five times a day, giving alms to the poor – hmm... that makes four. I’ll get back to you on the last. Ramadan is also called (here at least) the month of fasting. It is WHEN it is because that was when the Koran was revealed to the prophet. But it doesn’t commemorate anything like the way we are used to in a more Judeo-Christian tradition. The purpose is more to remind one both that other people don’t have the food they need all the time, and that we are all people and we are alive by Allah’s will alone and that our needs and what we have to fulfill those needs are gifts from Allah. That’s how I understand it, anyway.

You know how a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing (say, roommate in first semester abnormal psychology, for example)? Well, a little language can be, too. I was having a (stilted and cursory) discussion with my host father about the upcoming American election, and I told him that in a few months, George Bush is going to die. Obviously I meant to say that in a few months his presidency would come to an end, but the look of horror that came over my host father’s face told me I had failed at that. But it did make me feel good about political stability in Mali, I had to ask my LCF to step in and fix that mess. But here’s something nice: it turns out that after I said George Bush would die I explained what I really meant well enough that he understood what I was trying to say. So here’s Dauda’s take on the election: Barack is very handsome, but we should vote for McCain because he’s older. There you have it – straight from the Malian village.

Have I mentioned material yet? Malian fabric is wild. Today, one of my host moms is wearing that thing at the fair that you hit with a mallet and the ball goes up and dings the bell on a lime green background. Sometimes you have toothpaste tubes or keys. Of course, there’s lots of the Virgin Mary in Kita, because she made an appearance there once. (I don’t think that’s the right expression – “made an appearance” makes me feel like I’m talking about Cher) My friend Therese has a complet of an advertisement for Senegal Air. It says: Twenty years ain’t nothing. In French. Anyway, last week we went to the national museum which had an exhibit on the textiles of Mali, which my mother might have found interesting, but I liked the archaeology part. And then we ate ice cream. That was the part I really, really liked. I had caramel and vanilla. In a waffle cone. For 1000 fcfa. I think, maybe, when I’m done with the Peace Corps, I’m only going to live places where they have ice cream.

So there are a lot of things about Mali already that are very frustrating and I’m learning how to deal with them. Audrey and I were talking about her host family and she said “They never hit the children.” Which is great, but its sad for me that that is said as something that sets her family apart from the others, like, say, mine. My menfolk don’t hit the children; they leave the smacking to the women. And the other children. Children are vicious. And Malians love medicine. Love, love, love it. But they don’t seem to be very good at moderation, nor at giving it only to whom it was prescribed to. I’m giggling right now thinking about what my host family would do to a bottle of Flintstones vitamins. Heck I think if PC started giving out Flintstones vitamins they’d have a much healthier volunteer staff. At least one day a month. PS Dad: I take my vitamins every day. Except last Sunday when I forgot.

Maybe only my Mom and maybe Ryan will appreciate this, but I saw a girl the other day in a Bibi Blocksberg t-shirt and I almost stole it right off her body. But I didn’t. For a lot of reasons.

I think often in the US about how hard it would be just to get through each day without the ability to read. I think about it a lot here, too. Of course, in Mali, it would be a completely different kind of hard. Everything is a different kind of hard here. It seems to me that basic functioning in America would require reading. Mali, in part because of its appallingly high percentage of functionally illiterate adults and partly with that as the result, is structured in such a way that a large chunk of the population can get through the day with no need to read. But then that raises, for me, at least, a whole host of other question. Now, don’t get me wrong, Malians spend a lot of their time working, but they also spend a lot of their time not working. How do they fill their time? How do they occupy their minds? I have to remember that I’m coming at this question as the daughter of a librarian, and an avid reader myself, but I still, after two months, can’t come up with an answer. I hope to learn

David's favorite place

Today we went on a field trip to David's favorite place in Mali. A gigantic waterfall. Pictures are forthcoming (within the year, I'd imagine). It was beautiful. Some parts of Mali, it turns out, are really nice. We also went to a women's association Shea butter production facility, which turned out a lot more interesting than I thought it would be. And the funny part is that we learned that all the pictures that softsoap puts on their shea hand washes aren't really shea nuts at all! Anyway, I'll be at homestay for the next twenty days, and then everybody will want to be online, so in about a month, expect another update. Until then, be safe, healthy, and happy. And try to stay out of trouble.

Things I learned at Site Visit

I spent four or five days at my permanent site last week, and it was really great - will give me some incentive not to starve to death during the rest of homestay. Which brings me to the first (and potentially most important) thing I learned at site visit. Malian food, it turns out, is not entirely terrible; it can actually be quite delicious. I guess my homestay family just has different taste than I do.
My village of Behon is 50 km but three hours by Bashi from Kita, on a red dirt road that comes off of a nicely paved road going to Manantali, which has a hydroelectric dam (second thing I learned at site visit). I am going to go visit that dam someday. So my village wants help building a dam, but I'm not convinced their river can be dammed. Third thing I learned (but I think this one isn't true): you don't really get schisto from running rivers. I'm going to go ahead an assume that's false - but during the rainy season, at least, I can't get to the other side of town without walking through it, so I'm just going to run really fast on my tiptoes.
My village is really, really cute. Lots of corn, lots of little round mud huts with thatched roofs and ONLY ONE DONKEY! Fourth thing I learned: Every time I see a donkey without a name I think about Shrek, which means that I think about Shrek in Mali approximately 300 times a day. Which is a lot more than I even thought about Shrek in the United States. There are a lot of trees, which is a blessing, and the most gigantic baobabs I've ever seen. I heard bees and I ate some honey, and my homologue said that the honey came from the baobab, but I didn't see any bees - but I think there might be boabab honey in village. It's delicious. Fifth thing I learned: Sagasaga doesn't come from baobab. It comes from ku.
Kita is a wonderful city. I got to spend some time there after we got done with our site visit. It is small enough to not be as overwhelming at Bamako, but big enough to have some things like a Tubab market that sells cookies and tuna fish (packed in water, because the PCVs requested it). I also hear that there is a bakery in town that sells real baked goods, but I have not yet experienced that. We have a PC stage house in Kita, so when I go to town I'll have someplace I can stay. Which is good, because it is going to be a come to town one day and leave the next kind of situation. We are kind of a ways from Kita, but the transport in and out is kind of inconvenient, so Meg and I are going to bike it. Like I said, there are a lot of trees, so there'll be plenty of shade to rest along the way. And coming in it'll be mostly downhill. (Which means, going back, it'll be mostly uphill.) And during mango season, there'll be snacks along the way, too. Which brings me to another thing I've learned in Mali, though not this last week. I love mangoes. Even if they don't taste good, I love them anyway. I still don't love papaya. But I may someday.
I have no cell service until I get to Kita, so I can't really be contacted very easily, but we'll figure that one out sometime.

I didn't think to bring my camera up today, but we'll have an extra day in Tubaniso before everybody leaves, so maybe I'll try again tomorrow to get it to download. Right now I have to go drink some water. Oh, by the way, I posted my new address on the edge of the blog over there. Anything that is in the mail now will get sent through the PC to my site eventually, but I won't be installed for another month, anyway. Today I got two letters, two envelopes, and a package slip - it was better than Christmas! Thanks, I love you guys.

Kelly in Kita

(Any or all of this may be corrected when the real Kelly gets a chance to write her own blog!)

I just spoke to Kelly. Actually, several times that I tried to call her I got someone else. I was very careful about the phone number, but it wasn't Kelly on the other end, and I don't think they were speaking English, or French for that matter. Kelly said others have commented on that problem. So she called me and we stuck with that again.

For the last week she has been in the village that she will be living in, Behon. She says it is beautiful. She will be living in two little round huts with thatch roofs. Unfortunately, there is a finished ceiling under the thatch roofs, so Kelly's huts are pretty hot. She may end up sleeping outside (under her mosquito netting) just to be cool. One is a sleeping hut and one is a cooking hut. She said there is a little passage way between the huts that she has to bend over to go through. She spent about 3 hours yesterday shoveling mud out of her bathroom. It has a cement floor, but the walls are mud. But, it is her own private bathroom.

She has a host family in Behon, but apparently only the father speaks French and he was gone for part of the week, so communication has been somewhat primitive. So, what's new?!? They are very nice and she is pleased.

Kelly's village is about 5 kilometers away from another village, maybe named Bagari Baya. A friend of hers lives there. Kita is about 50 kilometers away and another friend lives there.

Kelly is delighted with Kita. It seems to have a lot to offer and the people are very friendly and helpful. She hopes to get there pretty regularly, for grocery shopping and such.

She sounded very good - happy and laughing. Made my heart feel good!

Quick Round Two

First, I’d like to mention that I’m having a terrible time getting envelopes. I live in a VERY rural town where the people aren’t really literate and there isn’t a thriving interest in pen-pal relationships, and there isn’t a post office in village and since somewhere along the line someone messed up and we don’t have bikes yet, we’re kind of stuck here. Especially since I think the closest town is only a few miles away, but my host family laughed uproariously at the idea that I would walk there, so I decided to trust them over me. Of course, who knows what they were actaully laughing at – I could easily just have had rice on my face. Or even without that, just the way I look ordinarily is apparently pretty hilarious. Discussion lately has centered around my freckles. Which are growing. I am starting to look like Mr. Needham here. And which are somehow associated in the Malian mind with flies. I’m a little confused as to the connection.

Site Assignment

I actually made a post yesterday, and maybe it'll show up, too. If not I'll fill in later. We got our site assignments today. I am going to be near Kita, in the Kayes region. I am going to be 5k away from another PCV from my stage, and her town is my market town. She is actually from Boulder, so we are going to hook our parents up and send them out to lunch together. Then our banking town is, indeed, Kita, and another really great PCV is going to be there, so we'll see her often, too. And, she has a REFRIGERATOR! I'll have my own place, right next door to my host family. I'll be replacing somebody who was well liked and really liked her village and the work they did with her. And best of all, Sam and Mark are in my same region. They are kind of far away in my same region, but we'll be able to visit, and we'll get together for regional training things, too. Kita is considered the peanut capital of Mali (peanuts equal protein!!!) and apparently it is really pretty and lots of fun things to do. Well, back to homestay for a week - more later...

A little slice of heaven

We have had a couple days here in Tubaniso between stints at our homestays, and it has truly been a little slice of heaven. Homestay may in the end prove useful, but it does indeed make Field Camp seem like a luxury resort spa vacation at Disney World that I would enter multiple sweepstakes for the opportunity to go to. Every year for the rest of my life.

My homestay is in a little village called Kabe. There are 800 people there, and I would imagine twice that many donkeys. Some of the other trainees have things like bars and pools and internet cafes in their homestay sites; we are lucky when we have bread at the boutiki. But what that means for us is that we are going to be rich by the time we get done with homestay, because we cannot buy anything, because there is nothing to buy. And, unfortunately, PC was a little tardy with the bikes this year so we are stranded in our village - can't even make it to the next town over to visit or buy or do anything.

I almost called it for good about halfway through this first homestay stint, but things have gone much better since. The language is progressing just fine - Bambara is interesting - there are no conjugations and no declensions. But unfortunately for me, I tested as an intermediate-level French speaker, which equals that my Bambara classes are taught in French, which I don't actually speak at all, much less to an intermediate level. We have one woman in our class who, though she speaks French, is painfully slow, though, so it works out for me because by the time she has begun to figure anything out, I've pieced together what the French means.

I live in a family that I am now starting to think is less multiple wives and more lots of aunts, but I still am having some interesting times trying to figure out. And Malians aren't actually the least bit helpful when it comes to that, because they just claim all children as their own and such. We have recently had a lice outbreak in our concession, but so far I seem to be safe. Lucky for me I am the anti-toucher (which the children don't really like and I think is a sign of a bad PCV, but I'm just going to go ahead and be that way) so I haven't been in too much direct contact with those children. I had a friend, Awa, who I liked a lot (as much as you can like a nine year old you can't communicate who the only reason she is your friend is that you know her name and she doesn't shout directly into your face all the time) but she disappeared somewhere and every time I ask what happened to her they are so amazed that I constructed a complete sentence that they just run around repeating it to each other. Either that or I'm saying something else that doesn't make sense and they don't know that I am asking them a question.

The food is pretty truly atrocious. I would not have guessed that it would be possible for food to be so bad. If you ever have the opportunity to go to a real Malian restaurant, don't do it. Really. Just don't.

We're also doing some technical training with our entire sector, which is a blessing because we get to see some other people every once in a while. We have "prepared" and planted a little garden, which we completely abandoned for the last several days, and we will again for ten days in a week, and so we'll see how that works out.

That, though, brings me to an interesting point. The more I am here, the less I understand what I, and PC in general, am doing here. If I ever figure that out I'll be sure to let you know. Maybe things will become more clear when we get to our permanent sites.

A little bit of bad news here, and I think Jim will appreciate this more than most, but for the time being, Timbuktu is off-limits to PCVs, so unless things stabilize in that region, I may not even be able to go see it. And, really, what would be the sense in being in Mali for two years and not going to Timbuktu? I just don't know. But Mali is reportedly a pretty stable place, so hopefully things'll calm down.

We have our site assignments this afternoon, so it is potential that I can get back on here before I go back to homestay and let you know where I'll be spending the next two years, but don't hold your breath, for sure.

Have a great day, I'm thinking of all of you (probably a lot more than I do in the US!) and miss you all very much.

A Call from Kelly

Kelly called briefly this morning. She is in Tubaniso - the training center -for a couple of days, but their internet is down, so no e-mails or blog updates. And, her phone was short of power, so it shut down shortly after we started talking.

She sounds a little hungry. I think she has been subsisting on rice, and recently, peanuts. Sure hope she took some multi-vitamins with her!

Hopefully we'll hear more soon. the Mom

Life in Mali

I was going to post some pictures from a cultural fair we had yesterday, but my camera and I are in disagreement about whether or not to transfer them. So hopefully I'll get this little thing worked out and get some pictures posted for you. We had drummers and singers and fabric and jewelry sellers and a tailor. We ate some fried fufu, which was awesome. The drummers were a local African drumming/dancing troupe who performed a welcome to Mali dance for us.
When Malians eat, they don't each get their own bowl with a fork and a spoon. There is one bowl in the middle and everyone sits around it on the floor with no shoes on, except we learned today that ladies are allowed to sit on little stools. Everybody holds onto the bowl with their left hand and eats with their right. People don't talk during the meal, because since you all share the same bowl, you better eat quickly or somebody else is going to eat your share. We practiced this afternoon, because tomorrow we are going to our host families, with whom we will be eating in that manner for the next eight weeks. At first I will be able to say this to them: Hello, how are you? How is your family? How is your father? How is your mother? How are your younger siblings? How are your older siblings? And when we are all together I will be able to count them. Imagine how strange that would be, some stranger who looks weird and acts even weirder comes into your house to live for two months and spends her time counting things out loud and being proud of it. We have been told that we will simply be laughed at for, essentially, the rest of our time here. Should be exciting!

Welcome to Mali

We arrived in Mali in the rainy season. It took a full twenty-four hours for any rain to come down after we got here, but this morning at four a.m. it came down with a vengeance. The thing, it turns out, about rainy season in Mali is that the flies go crazy. So it's been nice and cool here, but the flies are driving everybody a little wild - we call ourselves fly popsicles.
We're at our training center just outside of Bamako, the capital of Mali, for a couple days here, and then we are leaving for our homestays. What that means is that there are all these families in individual families in villages surrounding the area have been contracted to let us live with them for the next two months. They don't speak English and we don't speak Bambara, so we'll learn really quickly. I did learn today that in Bambara Mali means hippopotamus. And I greeted a Malian in Bambara and got it mostly all right. Which was awesome.
So, Megan, I don't know the significance of Ramadan, but I do know that we are still going to be with our host families for Ramadan, and maybe by then I'll be able to communicate with them a little, so I'll go straight to the source for you. The Peace Corps has promised us that we won't have to fast during that time, and there will also be a big party at the end. I'll be sure to let you know what I learn.
Well, it kind of looks like dinner is on its way out, so I'd better wrap it up here. I was going to take some pictures of our compound this morning, but it was raining, and then the lock fell out of our hut door, and then the new one was non-functioning, and it's basically been a pretty busy day, what with all that and then the greeting Malians thing. So I'll get some taken soon, and get them up here somehow. Until then, we have lots of thin trees with white trunks and big leaves, the ground is orange, I've seen two terrifying red bugs, one of which was the most gigantic tic I've ever seen, they feed us all the time, and its not nearly as hot as I thought it was going to be.
I wish you well.

You've just landed!

Hi Kelly - Just noted that your flight has just landed in Bamako! Welcome there - we miss you here.

You have comments on your original entry!

Eager to hear from you. the Fam

Hello, Friends

Well, friends, tomorrow is the big day for me - I ship out from Colorado Springs to Philadelphia for a couple days. There is a lot of confusion here about what's going on for me the next few months, and I don't really know either, but I can let you know what I do know.

I'm going to be in Philly until next Wednesday, with all the people who are going to Mali with me. There are only going to be people who will end up in Mali, and we will not all go to the exact same place, but we are all going to train together. While we are Philly we will get to know each other, learn how to be safe, learn how not to be sad, and get shot. Then we will fly to Mali through Paris. I figure that airport food in Charles de Gaulle will probably be delicious, and I am taking Euros for just that experience. After we get to Mali our in-country training starts. There is a big central training compound where we will start out, but in very short order we are going to be farmed out to private families to learn what it is to be Malian. At that time we will have very, very little language in common with our host families. I've heard rumor that I express myself well, anyway - we'll see how that holds up. While we are living with our host families, we will be taking language lessons, cultural lessons, and technical lessons. As I understand it, we are going to be having language classes in both French and Bambara, which is the Malian language that 80% of the population speaks. As for technical training, I don't know exactly what that will entail. I am in the natural resources sector, which ranges all the way from forestry and agriculture to water resources. Some people end up building fish farms. I'll let you know about that. And then, after we've been living with a Malian family for a while, we take a test to determine whether or not we are competent, and if we are deemed so, we are sworn is as Peace Corps Volunteers. This will occur in September. So that means, if you are up on your calendar, that we are going to be living in Muslim households during Ramadan. PC says that they have made arrangements that we can still eat even if our hosts are fasting, and then at the end of the month there will be a big party. That will be fun and interesting. After we are sworn is as PCVs (which means Peace Corps Volunteer) we will move to our permanent site, which is somewhere other than where we have been, and start doing our jobs.

So that's all I know that is going to happen for the next few months. Have a great rest of your summer here! (We've had a heat wave the past few days in Colorado Springs, and yesterday I went out to run at 2ish, and I thought 'It is way too hot to run!' and then I thought, 'You better toughen up real quick here, Kelly!')