Look, it's me and Heath. We so pretty. This isn't my picture, it is Caitlin's.

So, yes, the new stage has been here for almost a month! I can't believe it, and I'm sure they can't either. They are really great - a lot of fun to be around. They are working hard and learning Bambara, French, Fulfulde, Dogoloso and Tomokan like its their job. Which it is. Because we're the most fun sector, we are also growing gardens. Their gardens are doing really well. We planted rice sack gardens a week or so ago, and they are doing sort of well. One or two of them are doing really well. Mine are doing great! Except we seem to be having a tomato rot thing going on, and a caterpillar problem. Boo caterpillars. But I'm growing container potatoes, which is fantastic, and they are really starting to come up now! I'll describe the process in detail sometime, because it is amazing. But I feel it deserves some pictures, and it is raining outside right now, so I'm not going to go out and take them. Later, though.

That's not me, it's Moussa and Audrey. But apparently all the other old pictures of the rice sack gardens are in my camera, which is in my hut, which is not only through the rain, but on the other side of the mudroad that in the dry season is the driveway into Tubaniso. Moussa is a great gardener, exect that he keeps burning all our little lettuce seedlings with rabbit manure. But see the little bag? I planted lettuce in that and we are letting it go to seed, but it is huge!

Hippos (=Mali in Bambara)

This is one of the Hippos we saw in Manantali.

You can't really tell, maybe, but she has two wee bebes behind her. We kept our distance.

And have I mentioned that, yet? That "mali" is the Bambara word for "hippopotamous?" And "bamako" means "crocodile river."

Long time coming

I see it has been a couple months since the last time I posted on this blog. In fact, I was chatting with Ryan the other day, and he very pointedly said, I see you haven't posted anything new on your blog... Well, I've been meaning to sit down and write a really nice entry, but it's been a busy time, and now it's been so long since I've written anything that I lose my momentum after just a little while. So instead of writing you a really nice entry, I'm just going to give you a really quick overview. But there is good, good news. My mother tried to teach me how to resize photos a little while ago, and I didn't really learn, but then necessity forced me to really learn it afterall. So now I know how to resize photos, and that will make it much easier to upload them. So I will do that sometime.

I did, indeed, go to America, and it was fantastic. America really is a great country. And I'm not only talking about the concrete and the steel, though that is a good thing, too. It was really crazy while I was home - had to graduate people, marry other people off, and drive all around the country and then the state. And I had to go to Kennywood. Which was fantastic. I went on almost every single rollercoaster and didn't even cry once!

But now I've been back in Mali for over a month. Wow, I didn't even realize that. Good for me. And I've been busy here, too, even though some of you think, yeah right, all you do these days is be online. Well, yeah, there's been a lot of being online, but that is because I have set up shop at Tubaniso. You see, our new trainees are coming in tonight. Alyssa said this morning "I couldn't sleep last night. It was like the night before Christmas and all I could think was 'Santa is bringing me friends!'" So we are excited about them getting here, but it turns out that organizing and preparing for a training like this is a HUGE ordeal, and we have been working our little fingers and other things off since I got back from America. Hopefully we are ready for them. And if we aren't, hopefully they are forgiving.

I did get to go back to my site for about a week during all this, and it was nice to be back. It actually wasn't great, because our well ran dry. A manye dat! There was still water in town, just not in our concession. I went with Adissi and Abi to go get water, because we had to go to the neighbors and pull it out of their well and put it on our heads and bring it back and put it in a big barrel in our concession. So they carried these giant twenty gallon jugs on their heads. I, on the otherhand, carried a salad bowl half full of water on my head. I tried to convince Addisi that I could carry a salad bowl entirely full of water on my head, but the one time she let me try I spilled three-quarters of it and ended up with less water on my head than when I started. So she went back to only letting me carry half a bowl full. Despite the fact that I was useless more than helpful, everybody seems to have been quite impressed and very appreciative. Hmm.

And then, as you know, we had the dual occurance of the death of Michael Jackson and the Fourth of July, so I got another weekend off for that. Michael Jackson dying was pretty funny in Mali, (sorry, that sounds harsh now that its out there), because while it didn't really affect us volunteers all that much, it seems to have devastated a lot of Malians that it didn't devastate us. They are curious folk. So we went to a place in Mali that isn't really very much like Mali for the Fourth of July. It is called Manantali, and the thing that sets it apart is that it has a nice, large, German-built hydroelectric dam. The electricity, of course, is sold out of country. But it was beautiful. And downstream of the river is the frequent haunt of hippos! So I saw some hippos. Hippos, if you don't know, are extremely dangerous and could kill you if they cross you and are very, very fast runners, but actually prefer cabbage to people. I know all this because I read Congo. We played cards, dressed in red white and blue, looked at the hippos, and roasted and then ate a pig. It was a lovely celebration of independence.

Independence Day was interesting here, because the Malians were shocked that we had to have one, too. They were shocked, but I think they were impressed. I think it made them feel like I had a little more legitimacy. So those were some interesting conversations.

Oh, and we got lucky enough to go to Manantali from Bamako in a Peace Corps vehicle, so it took us about five hours or so. We had to take public transport back, though, and it was a more than ten hour journey. Aahh, Mali!

Scary, scary

One of my last days in village before going "en vacance" to, Inshallah, Ameriki, Inshallah, I was caught in a little miniature cattle stampede. Little and miniature because it was just me and one cow. But still. Now I was taking a - shall we say "creative"? - path home, mainly because I have yet to make it all the way from the garden to my house by the back channels without getting lost. But every time I am more adept at getting myself un-lost, so at least there is progress. Anyway, there I am on my bike, and its very sandy, which is very hard to ride in, and this cow, with no provocation, just starts chasing me! I figure he must have someplace to go in a hurry, so I take a quick (slow, wobbly, and slidey) turn and continue on, assuming my troubles are over. But when I look behind me (just to make extra-special sure) he's followed me around the corner! So the race is on, with me, panicked, pedaling as fast as I can without risking losing control in the sand - because if I do lose control and fall off, he'll come up and trample all over me, pop both my kidneys and my gallbladder, and then I'll really be goners - and he's chasing behind me, snorting and shaking his great big curly horns. Even at this point I still think maybe I am just extraordinarily unlucky and I just happen to still be on his pre-chosen path of rage, but then I double back around somebody's house (to the great delight of the family on the other side of the low wall) and he's still there so I know that for whatever reason it really is me he's after. So I'm looking around for anything familiar, thinking to myself that if it comes down to it, I can probably pull one of those jump over really tall wall moves that rodeo clowns sometimes do, when they don't just get gored, instead. But it doesn't come down to it and eventually I do know where I am and I turn into out courtyard, leap off my bike, and slam the gate shut. And my host family is curious and I say "there's a great big beast out there trying to kill me," but panic Bambara not construct good and all I really say is "Cow Is!" And their eyes say to me, "sometimes we're not sure how your country got to be so powerful," but all I can think is, "if one cow with crooked horns is that frightening, how scary must it be to be caught in an elephant stampede?"

Koutiala shea formation

This last week my teammate Maridee and I hosted an improved shea butter training in Koutiala that was both successful and inspiring. It had been a frustrating journey up to the launch - we didn't feel PC gave us the support we needed and our host service had visions of aid money piled on their tables. So, instead, we pulled it off on our own and had an incredible learning experience, and we explained in a way that I think was understood about the rules of this game preventing over-inflated budgets. Maybe. But regardless, half-way through this project I swore I would never do anything like this again, but my community just approached me with a valid need and a genuine interest, and armed with these lessons I'm ready to start again.

It was an interesting group of women we had in town for the training. We had originally budgeted for 15 women from Koutiala and 15 from the brusse. This is interesting in itself: half the city women who were slated to come failed to show up. Their slots, however, were filled by the plethora of brusse women who just appeared. The first day they were nervous around each other; the city mice dress, hold themselves, and speak differently than their country mouse counterparts. Maridee and I despaired a little that 5 loud and bossy voices would monopolize the whole training and the shyer ladies weren't going to get their bit out of it. But luckily, by the afternoon, a couple of boisterous country voices had prod their sisters into participation and there was a good dynamic in the room.

The morning of the second day, which does involve a bit of standing around as water is boiled out of the butter, I overheard a conversation that went something like this: We have a lot of nuts but we don't really process them; if you give me your phone number, I'll be in touch and we can arrange for your village to buy our nuts to process. Warms my little heart.

Oh, yeah, and I got a boyfriend. His name is Mamidou and he's probably about 3 and he sat on my lap and wore my sunglasses and didn't even pee on me. He thinks I'm awesome and isn't even afraid of my skin. We have a lot in common, and his mom offered to give him to me, but I 'm afraid the timing might just not be right, what with him being only 3 and all. Oh, well, its good to see that quality men are, in fact, still out there.

Malian trainers - well, this is just another one of these lessons from this that I am in the process of learning. I know that I'm from a different culture, but if I were treated like that by a trainer, I would stand up and leave. Maridee assures me that it is appropriate, and that the women like being yelled at and belittled. They don't look unhappy, so I guess its just another one of those things that I'm not sure I'm going to learn to understand.

After the end of the formation, it was incredible. I had at least three different people come up to me and say, hey, I want to have a formation on this, or I want to teach a formation on that. I love to see them interested in learning new skills. I would love even more to see them interested in applying the new skills they've learned to better the lives of themselves and their children. But that, I believe, is something that people have a lot of trouble with in the States, too, so if anybody has any ideas, I'm all ears.

If you're in the Peace Corps, I can't emphasise enough that the most important lesson I learned doing this is: Do it with a partner your first time!

Rain Gardens

This is one of the coolest things I've seen in nine months. Wouldn't work in Mali, and might not work in Colorado, but would be a great project to try.
http://www.kidsgardening.com/Dig/DigDetail.taf?ID=2140&Type=Art