I've been back just about a week now, and things are going well. The trip from the US was a bit exhausting. I left on the first and spent two days hanging out in Paris. I can't say that I actually did much, which I blame on jet-lag. I got there on Tuesday morning and spent most of the morning and early afternoon finding a hostel and some food . . . I had been hoping to walk around and do some more site-seeing, but instead I decided I was exhausted and was back at the hostel in bed by 4 pm. The next day wasn't any better. I couldn't sleep Tuesday til four in the morning or so and then managed to sleep until 3 in the afternoon . . . so much for wandering the city of lights. Still, I had a good afternoon that day- I found a cozy tea shop with a fireplace and sat down to read for a while before heading back. I stopped in Notre Dame on the way, where they were having an evening service, very beautiful singing. Back at the hostel, I couldn't sleep most of the night again.
Since I got back to Mali, I've felt oddly relaxed and clear-headed. I got in early Friday morning around 4 am and hung out at the Peace Corps Bureau until the car that was supposed to make the circle from Bamako to Sikasso to Koutiala and back to Bamako left. We traveled all day, spending the night in Sikasso, and I was back "home" by Saturday morning. Monday was Tabaski, so things have been pretty relaxed all week. Monday was spent hangning out with my host family and visiting friends, Tuesday more of the same, and Wednesday working at the maternity and then attending a tea party at Koko, one of the family compounds out in the country.
Today was a particularly nice day. I woke up early (my internal clock seems to have re-adjusted to Mali) to go for a jog (definitely needing some exercise after all the wonderful Ameriki food) and then off to the garden to work with the women from Ferme. Since I left, they've been working with a local woman trained by the FAO in gardening techniques to grow potatoes in the garden. Right before I left they cleared a space for the communal garden they would be working on, and since then they've been working together each Thursday to prepare beds and seed potatoes. There are probably forty beds, one meter by four, in preparation, fifteen or so of which already have potatoes growing. The women have more seed potatoes in preparation in a potato nursery as well as a nursery full of tomato and cabbage plants, protected by a mosquito net held up by a few arched branches.
We spent all morning watering things and digging beds, then ate lunch and drank tea for a hour or two under the big mango tree. The woman who's been studying with the women never actually showed up today, but we still got a fair amount of work done, and it was nice to spend the day with the women. We also talked about possible projects for the time before I leave to go home, and decided to try setting up some training sessions to help the women improve their cloth-dying techniques. We'll also spend a few days in January working on the bilan for 2008, hopefully getting our paperwork in order again.
That's about it for now. If I don't write again before Christmas, Happy Holidays and all that. It was great to see everyone for Thanksgiving.
Monday, December 15, 2008
Saturday, November 15, 2008
I'm in Morocco!
I'm in Morocco and it's amazing, just like being back home except not. When we got off the plane, it was cold enough out that I could see my breath and I was really glad that I had bought a winter jacket in Koutiala before leaving Mali. I'm a dork and I took a picture of the airport. Paris in T-4 hours!
Sunday, October 5, 2008
Oh Yeah . . . .
News I forgot yesterday - my dog Tozo gave birth to seven healthy puppies last Tuesday. They all look mostly like sausages at this point, but I think they are destined for immense cuteness in the coming weeks. See a picture of them with their proud mama.
Also equally cute, see a picture of my little host sister Asha and my host father Drissa. Asha and her mom Ami are relatives from my host family's village, and have been visiting for a few months. Asha's almost one year old and is good fun to play with (she can clap her hands!).
Also equally cute, see a picture of my little host sister Asha and my host father Drissa. Asha and her mom Ami are relatives from my host family's village, and have been visiting for a few months. Asha's almost one year old and is good fun to play with (she can clap her hands!).
Saturday, October 4, 2008
Update!
So it's been quite a while since I wrote in here (again). I'm in Koutiala right now, taking advantage of all day internet access, using one of the computers of the new volunteers, Maridee. So lately, things have been-- busy??? Yes, busy, and I think they will be at least through December. It's a nice feeling after spending much of the first year here "getting adjusted."
What has been making me busy, you ask? Well, first of all, I want to thank everyone who gave money or helped pass on information for the Badenya project. As of about three weeks ago, all the money was in (it only took a month!) and just last week I got a call from Peace Corps to tell me that the money was available to me here in Mali. So in the next few weeks, I anticipate putting up the new fencing for the garden. We'll also be digging two more wells in addition to the two that the women had dug in the garden space already, though that will have to wait at least another month or two until the rainy season here is completely over.
The women are being as industrious as usual. I visited the garden a week ago, and many had harvested or were in the process of harvesting their rainy season crops- peanuts, corn, millet, sorghum, beans, even some cucumbers and onions, which are more cold season than rainy season crops. Even better, last week they all participated in a week of training on gardening techniques that I organized as a part of the project. The training was one week for five mornings, three hours each morning, and covered topics ranging from how to prepare garden beds to how to make a compost pit to how to farm a variety of different kinds of vegetables. I had the help of Abdulye Kebe, one of the teachers from the school in my own village, the Centre d'Apprentissage Agricole. The training was held in one of the classrooms in the elementary school at Station N'Tarla (the village where the project is taking place). For four mornings we met and conveyed information to the women, who spent much time copying it down into their notebooks (a challenge for many of them, who have only begun working on literacy skills in the past year). On the fourth day, I gave a presentation on how to make natural pesticides with a method I had been trained on by the Peace Corps, and my homologue Souleymane Dao came to help out with another presentation on using urine as fertilizer, something we both learned about at April In Service Training in Bamako. The fifth day, we all met at one of the women's houses and Kebe gave a demonstration on how to fill in a compost pit using the method he had described in class, then went to the garden to prepare a few sample beds.
The week was a very rewarding experience, especially because of the enthusiasm of the women. Over the course of the week, over forty women showed up, with an average of thirty women present each day. So again, thank you to everyone who contributed. You contribution is really making a difference for the women at Station N'Tarla.
In other happenings, we have had the pleasure of welcoming four new volunteers to the Koutiala area in the past two or three weeks: Maridee in Koutiala itself, Audra in a village about forty km outside of Koutiala in the direction of Sikasso, and Jenn and Hannah out in the M'Pessoba area with me and Amanda, replacing Greg and Murv. So far things are going well and it looks to be a good group. We've also recenty obtained a house of our own in Koutiala, a small apartment in the same concession with Maridee's house. It has a beautiful concession with the shade of a few mango trees cooling things off, as well as our own outdoor nyegan (toilet) with a flushing toilet and a shower head (definite luxuries in Mali). We'll be working on furnishing it over the next few weeks, and hopefully be all settled in by November.
Well, I think that's it for now. I have some pictures from the training that I'll try to get up online in the next week or two- unfotunately I couldn't take a lot because my camera batteries died just before the trainings were to take place. In any case, hope all is well in Ameriki to anyone reading this there. Best!
What has been making me busy, you ask? Well, first of all, I want to thank everyone who gave money or helped pass on information for the Badenya project. As of about three weeks ago, all the money was in (it only took a month!) and just last week I got a call from Peace Corps to tell me that the money was available to me here in Mali. So in the next few weeks, I anticipate putting up the new fencing for the garden. We'll also be digging two more wells in addition to the two that the women had dug in the garden space already, though that will have to wait at least another month or two until the rainy season here is completely over.
The women are being as industrious as usual. I visited the garden a week ago, and many had harvested or were in the process of harvesting their rainy season crops- peanuts, corn, millet, sorghum, beans, even some cucumbers and onions, which are more cold season than rainy season crops. Even better, last week they all participated in a week of training on gardening techniques that I organized as a part of the project. The training was one week for five mornings, three hours each morning, and covered topics ranging from how to prepare garden beds to how to make a compost pit to how to farm a variety of different kinds of vegetables. I had the help of Abdulye Kebe, one of the teachers from the school in my own village, the Centre d'Apprentissage Agricole. The training was held in one of the classrooms in the elementary school at Station N'Tarla (the village where the project is taking place). For four mornings we met and conveyed information to the women, who spent much time copying it down into their notebooks (a challenge for many of them, who have only begun working on literacy skills in the past year). On the fourth day, I gave a presentation on how to make natural pesticides with a method I had been trained on by the Peace Corps, and my homologue Souleymane Dao came to help out with another presentation on using urine as fertilizer, something we both learned about at April In Service Training in Bamako. The fifth day, we all met at one of the women's houses and Kebe gave a demonstration on how to fill in a compost pit using the method he had described in class, then went to the garden to prepare a few sample beds.
The week was a very rewarding experience, especially because of the enthusiasm of the women. Over the course of the week, over forty women showed up, with an average of thirty women present each day. So again, thank you to everyone who contributed. You contribution is really making a difference for the women at Station N'Tarla.
In other happenings, we have had the pleasure of welcoming four new volunteers to the Koutiala area in the past two or three weeks: Maridee in Koutiala itself, Audra in a village about forty km outside of Koutiala in the direction of Sikasso, and Jenn and Hannah out in the M'Pessoba area with me and Amanda, replacing Greg and Murv. So far things are going well and it looks to be a good group. We've also recenty obtained a house of our own in Koutiala, a small apartment in the same concession with Maridee's house. It has a beautiful concession with the shade of a few mango trees cooling things off, as well as our own outdoor nyegan (toilet) with a flushing toilet and a shower head (definite luxuries in Mali). We'll be working on furnishing it over the next few weeks, and hopefully be all settled in by November.
Well, I think that's it for now. I have some pictures from the training that I'll try to get up online in the next week or two- unfotunately I couldn't take a lot because my camera batteries died just before the trainings were to take place. In any case, hope all is well in Ameriki to anyone reading this there. Best!
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Badenya Project
Hi All,
So it's been a while now since I updated my blog. Things are going pretty well at site. Since the rainy season began a month or two ago, everyone in village has been busy working in the fields. I've been going out with them to help myself, spending a morning here and there weeding corn or millet fields with my host family. It's hard work, and my host father is out in the fields every day for five or six hours. Needless to say he spends most of the evening sleeping in his hammock.
In Feremuna, the women's organization has been busy. Every rainy season, they plant a field crop in the garden. This year we discussed a number of possible crops, including rice and millet, but settled on planting beans. We also took a day to go work on enforcing the fence that surrounds the garden, since the cows have been getting in and munching on the women's vegetables. We put up a few wooden posts to replace iron ones that had been stolen by roaming children and also planted some new gytropha bushes along the perimeter. The previous volunteer had started working on this 'live fence,' and hopefully in the next year or two the women will have planted enough to surround the entire garden, providing a more permanent fence.
In addition to working in the fields and in the garden at Feremuna, for the past few months I have been working with another women’s organization in Station N’Tarla, a small settlement down the road from Feremuna. It is with this organization that I plan to base the remainder of my 2008 work, a garden project that will increase the yearly income of the women’s cooperative.
The women’s cooperative of Station N’Tarla, Badenya Ton, has been in existence for over ten years. Since becoming a state-sanctioned cooperative in 2005, their activities have included farming two hectares of corn, millet and beans during the rainy season, the profits from which are used to support each individual woman’s small commerce activities during the rest of the year. Every three months following the growing season, women are able to take small loans of 2500 to 7500 CFA (about 6-18 USD) to buy materials for their small businesses, which range from buying and reselling rice to preparing refrigerated drinks to sell in market. In addition to these activities, the women have recently begun literacy training, which took place during the hot season from March to May of 2008.
For the past year and a half, the women have also been planning a community garden project in hopes of increasing the financial power of the cooperative. At the time that I first met with the cooperative, in December of 2007, they had already begun preparing the garden for work in 2008, obtaining permission for the use of a 1 hectare parcel of land from the village and a donation of wire fencing from the French NGO Fondation Pour L’Enfance. From March to May of 2008, they commissioned the digging of two wells in the garden space and are currently growing rainy season crops of corn, beans, rice, and peanuts.
My work with Badenya Ton will focus on preparing the garden for vegetable gardening during the 2008 cold season, including the installation of the wire fencing to protect the area from roaming animals and the digging of two more wells to ensure adequate water for the area. I also plan to conduct a series of trainings on gardening techniques I have studied during training with Peace Corps. The project will be executed through the Peace Corps Partnership Program, which allows me to raise funds directly through family, friends, and interested parties in the US. Our goal is to raise $1958.75 out of a total project cost of $2621.25. Badenya Ton will contribute the equivalent of $662.50 (about 25 percent of the total project cost) to cover the cost of labour for digging the wells and installing the fencing. We hope to raise the funds before the beginning of the cold season in October so the area will be ready for a full season of vegetable gardening.
I believe this is a worthy endeavour and I hope that you are interested in helping the women’s cooperative of Station N’Tarla to expand their activities and grow as an organization.
To make a donation, go to https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.donors.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=688-270 , enter the amount you would like to give (any amount is greatly appreciated!) and click Donate. Your contribution is completely tax deductible, and Peace Corps will send you a receipt. If you cannot make a donation yourself, please forward a copy of this letter to anyone you think would be interested. If you have any questions please email me and I’ll get back with you as soon as possible.
If you would like to see some pictures of the Badenya Ton at work, I have posted some at
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2023802&l=7e693&id=10301328
Thank you, merci, i ni che from myself and the women of Station N’Tarla.
Shall write a new more 'blog-like' entry soon.
Meg
So it's been a while now since I updated my blog. Things are going pretty well at site. Since the rainy season began a month or two ago, everyone in village has been busy working in the fields. I've been going out with them to help myself, spending a morning here and there weeding corn or millet fields with my host family. It's hard work, and my host father is out in the fields every day for five or six hours. Needless to say he spends most of the evening sleeping in his hammock.
In Feremuna, the women's organization has been busy. Every rainy season, they plant a field crop in the garden. This year we discussed a number of possible crops, including rice and millet, but settled on planting beans. We also took a day to go work on enforcing the fence that surrounds the garden, since the cows have been getting in and munching on the women's vegetables. We put up a few wooden posts to replace iron ones that had been stolen by roaming children and also planted some new gytropha bushes along the perimeter. The previous volunteer had started working on this 'live fence,' and hopefully in the next year or two the women will have planted enough to surround the entire garden, providing a more permanent fence.
In addition to working in the fields and in the garden at Feremuna, for the past few months I have been working with another women’s organization in Station N’Tarla, a small settlement down the road from Feremuna. It is with this organization that I plan to base the remainder of my 2008 work, a garden project that will increase the yearly income of the women’s cooperative.
The women’s cooperative of Station N’Tarla, Badenya Ton, has been in existence for over ten years. Since becoming a state-sanctioned cooperative in 2005, their activities have included farming two hectares of corn, millet and beans during the rainy season, the profits from which are used to support each individual woman’s small commerce activities during the rest of the year. Every three months following the growing season, women are able to take small loans of 2500 to 7500 CFA (about 6-18 USD) to buy materials for their small businesses, which range from buying and reselling rice to preparing refrigerated drinks to sell in market. In addition to these activities, the women have recently begun literacy training, which took place during the hot season from March to May of 2008.
For the past year and a half, the women have also been planning a community garden project in hopes of increasing the financial power of the cooperative. At the time that I first met with the cooperative, in December of 2007, they had already begun preparing the garden for work in 2008, obtaining permission for the use of a 1 hectare parcel of land from the village and a donation of wire fencing from the French NGO Fondation Pour L’Enfance. From March to May of 2008, they commissioned the digging of two wells in the garden space and are currently growing rainy season crops of corn, beans, rice, and peanuts.
My work with Badenya Ton will focus on preparing the garden for vegetable gardening during the 2008 cold season, including the installation of the wire fencing to protect the area from roaming animals and the digging of two more wells to ensure adequate water for the area. I also plan to conduct a series of trainings on gardening techniques I have studied during training with Peace Corps. The project will be executed through the Peace Corps Partnership Program, which allows me to raise funds directly through family, friends, and interested parties in the US. Our goal is to raise $1958.75 out of a total project cost of $2621.25. Badenya Ton will contribute the equivalent of $662.50 (about 25 percent of the total project cost) to cover the cost of labour for digging the wells and installing the fencing. We hope to raise the funds before the beginning of the cold season in October so the area will be ready for a full season of vegetable gardening.
I believe this is a worthy endeavour and I hope that you are interested in helping the women’s cooperative of Station N’Tarla to expand their activities and grow as an organization.
To make a donation, go to https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.donors.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=688-270 , enter the amount you would like to give (any amount is greatly appreciated!) and click Donate. Your contribution is completely tax deductible, and Peace Corps will send you a receipt. If you cannot make a donation yourself, please forward a copy of this letter to anyone you think would be interested. If you have any questions please email me and I’ll get back with you as soon as possible.
If you would like to see some pictures of the Badenya Ton at work, I have posted some at
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2023802&l=7e693&id=10301328
Thank you, merci, i ni che from myself and the women of Station N’Tarla.
Shall write a new more 'blog-like' entry soon.
Meg
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Journal, June 7, 2008
I did work today! It felt like work, anyway, which was lovely since I hardly feel like I've done anything since I got here . . . I guess that's not true. I've spent a lot of time talking with people about things I could do as projectsm etc., but I just feel like all I've done is talk so far- ideas come and go, rejected because people don't seem interested or motivated or I don't feel interested or motivated or qualified . . .
In any case, today I felt like we did some important work. The ladies' organization here in Ferme seems like it's been floundering for various reasons since the last volunteer left- they were supposed to get a grant from the World Bank to do chicken-raising and expand on their gardening and that didn't go through, they're missing money that the members were supposed to pay as dues but are late with or haven't paid for whatever reason, the wells in the garden are of course still apt to go dry in the hot season (though they didn't this year) so the women can't count on doing gardening during the entire year. Etc., etc. In addition to all of this, I feel sometimes as if they lack initiative, or maybe just are't used to doing certain things themselves. I feel sometimes like we don't have meetings unless I call them, and I know that Dao has expressed exasperation before that the ladies are slow to organiwe if he doesn't do it for them.
Example: the bilan. The ladies were supposed to meet in early January to renew the board of people who handle various organizational tasks - president, secretary, etc. in addition to this meeting, they were supposed to write their bilan, a document summarizing how much money they made the previous year and what activities they carried out. For months now, Dao has been complaining about how they haven't done this, they haven't done that, and to top it off, they still haven't written that bilan. Instead, Abu was working on it. Very slowly, I might add.
There are some perfectly logical reasons why things are in this state - Abu has always done this job for them, so they're not used to doing it, and until a few years ago, they probably couldn't have done it, because they don't have the literacy skills.
So at our last peeting a month or two ago, before I went to Ghana, I suggested that we get together and take a look at what Abu had put together and have him explain the process so next year they can do it themselves. We finally had that meeting today - me, Safiyatou (my Bambara teacher and the ladies' literacy coach), Asha (the president of the ladies organization), and Abu sat down and went over numbers and papers for three hours. We started off looking at the group's financial records, and it became obvious that we were going to need the ladies to start writing those themselves, in Bambara. Abu has always written everything himself, in French because that's what he's used to, so at the moment if the ladies wanted to write the bilan themselves with no help it actually wouldn't be possible, since they don't understand French.
After discussing this, we started to look over the part of the bilan that was the summary of what activities the ladies had done in 2007. I suggested that we translate some of it into Bambara so the ladies could look at it later when they were writing the bilan for 2008. Somehow this turned into 1-2 hours of translating the entire document (which is actually not finished in the first place). It was kind of a tedious process, but it was really great to see the ladies sit and listen to Abu and then put their writing skills to a practical use. And to feel like I had spurred this. It would make me really happy if they could do this kind of thing by themselves after I left.
I'm still not quite sure what my contribution to Ferme will have been by the time I leave. I have some ideas for smaller things we could do the next few months - organize composting in the garden, work on the live fence that the previous volunteer started, maybe try out some new kinds of natural pesticide, try out this innovation that a fellow PCV is promoting of using urine as fertilizer. Finish dying the cloth that we started a month ago and work on selling it.
In addition to this, i think I'm going to do a funded project down the road with another women's organization that is working on their own garden project but are missing funding for fencing. They're pretty active and already used to running things themselves, so I feel good about trying to get funding for them. They also do literacy classes, and I've been attending those on and off for the past three months or so.
So I am actually feeling pretty positive lately. There's still the day to day boredom of beoing in village, but I've been working on 1) Accepting that as the way things are in the middle of nowhere in Africa and 2) Keeping myself busy with a lot of crocheting. I've also been going for short jogs in the morning with my very energetic dog Towo. Trying to keep the endorphins up.
In any case, today I felt like we did some important work. The ladies' organization here in Ferme seems like it's been floundering for various reasons since the last volunteer left- they were supposed to get a grant from the World Bank to do chicken-raising and expand on their gardening and that didn't go through, they're missing money that the members were supposed to pay as dues but are late with or haven't paid for whatever reason, the wells in the garden are of course still apt to go dry in the hot season (though they didn't this year) so the women can't count on doing gardening during the entire year. Etc., etc. In addition to all of this, I feel sometimes as if they lack initiative, or maybe just are't used to doing certain things themselves. I feel sometimes like we don't have meetings unless I call them, and I know that Dao has expressed exasperation before that the ladies are slow to organiwe if he doesn't do it for them.
Example: the bilan. The ladies were supposed to meet in early January to renew the board of people who handle various organizational tasks - president, secretary, etc. in addition to this meeting, they were supposed to write their bilan, a document summarizing how much money they made the previous year and what activities they carried out. For months now, Dao has been complaining about how they haven't done this, they haven't done that, and to top it off, they still haven't written that bilan. Instead, Abu was working on it. Very slowly, I might add.
There are some perfectly logical reasons why things are in this state - Abu has always done this job for them, so they're not used to doing it, and until a few years ago, they probably couldn't have done it, because they don't have the literacy skills.
So at our last peeting a month or two ago, before I went to Ghana, I suggested that we get together and take a look at what Abu had put together and have him explain the process so next year they can do it themselves. We finally had that meeting today - me, Safiyatou (my Bambara teacher and the ladies' literacy coach), Asha (the president of the ladies organization), and Abu sat down and went over numbers and papers for three hours. We started off looking at the group's financial records, and it became obvious that we were going to need the ladies to start writing those themselves, in Bambara. Abu has always written everything himself, in French because that's what he's used to, so at the moment if the ladies wanted to write the bilan themselves with no help it actually wouldn't be possible, since they don't understand French.
After discussing this, we started to look over the part of the bilan that was the summary of what activities the ladies had done in 2007. I suggested that we translate some of it into Bambara so the ladies could look at it later when they were writing the bilan for 2008. Somehow this turned into 1-2 hours of translating the entire document (which is actually not finished in the first place). It was kind of a tedious process, but it was really great to see the ladies sit and listen to Abu and then put their writing skills to a practical use. And to feel like I had spurred this. It would make me really happy if they could do this kind of thing by themselves after I left.
I'm still not quite sure what my contribution to Ferme will have been by the time I leave. I have some ideas for smaller things we could do the next few months - organize composting in the garden, work on the live fence that the previous volunteer started, maybe try out some new kinds of natural pesticide, try out this innovation that a fellow PCV is promoting of using urine as fertilizer. Finish dying the cloth that we started a month ago and work on selling it.
In addition to this, i think I'm going to do a funded project down the road with another women's organization that is working on their own garden project but are missing funding for fencing. They're pretty active and already used to running things themselves, so I feel good about trying to get funding for them. They also do literacy classes, and I've been attending those on and off for the past three months or so.
So I am actually feeling pretty positive lately. There's still the day to day boredom of beoing in village, but I've been working on 1) Accepting that as the way things are in the middle of nowhere in Africa and 2) Keeping myself busy with a lot of crocheting. I've also been going for short jogs in the morning with my very energetic dog Towo. Trying to keep the endorphins up.
Friday, June 6, 2008
Quick Update
So here's a super-quick update.
Am in Koutiala right now for a quick overnight before going back to site. I've been away from site a fair amount lately. After April In Service Training, I spent two weeks at site and then went to Ghana for two weeks with fellow PCVs Beth, Phil, Rachel, Nicole, and Ben. I've uploaded some of those pictures onto facebook at:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2022132&l=64f5b&id=10301328
Also, see some extra pictures from Mali at:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2021762&l=fd393&id=10301328
Things are going well at site, though I'm still getting settled in after being away for so long. Hopefully will be getting some projects in order soon. Update on that later . . .
Am in Koutiala right now for a quick overnight before going back to site. I've been away from site a fair amount lately. After April In Service Training, I spent two weeks at site and then went to Ghana for two weeks with fellow PCVs Beth, Phil, Rachel, Nicole, and Ben. I've uploaded some of those pictures onto facebook at:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2022132&l=64f5b&id=10301328
Also, see some extra pictures from Mali at:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2021762&l=fd393&id=10301328
Things are going well at site, though I'm still getting settled in after being away for so long. Hopefully will be getting some projects in order soon. Update on that later . . .
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Journal: Monday, April 21 2008
It rained all last night. It was the amazing: the first real rain in many months. It rained once in March, the first time since October, but that was really just a small rain.
Yesterday's rain began on my way back from M'Pessoba market. As usual, I had spent the whole day chatting with Murv and Greg - Sunday's our day to meet up. We usually get into M'Pesso around 10 am or so, go make a trip into the market (I buy food for my host family), then go hang out at Boua's boutigi. Actually, two boutigis (general store type places), both run by men named Boua. We leave our bikes with Boua Diakité, a twenty year old kid who runs a store for his father selling shoes and clothing, and then usually spend most of the day with Boua Coulibaly, another young man with an adorable stutter and a jovial temprement. Yesterday, we spent all day sweating at Coulibaly's boutigi. The heat has been worse lately, and I've finally felt like it's the hot season. It has gotten to the point where even if you don't move, you just sit there sweating. It's really not possible (or at least recommended) to leave M'Pessoba and bike home until the heat breaks, around four or five in the afternoon. Yesterday we traded gossip and joked around until 4:30 or so and then set off back home.
I had just gotten out of M'Pessoba on the paved road when I saw it - a great mass of red dust straight ahead of me. It was cloudy when I left M'Pessoba, but I hadn't imagined that it actually meant there was a storm coming. As I biked, the wind grew stronger and stronger and sand began blowing in my face. I tried to continue on, but had to stop and face away from the wind. For ten minutes or so, wind and sand beat at my back and then - rain! Rain came, just a little, but it was definitely there. A few minutes later, the storm eased and I was able to bike home. There were puddles on the paved road, and I as I rode through them I watched drops of water leap to the side as my wheels cut trhough them with an acute satisfaction. I hadn't seen thes phenomenon in a good seven months.
When I returned to Ferme, I was presented with the aftermath of the storm: magoes. Everywhere. Unrip ones, knocked down by the wind, dotted the main road through Ferme. I had to get off my bike and walk it the rest of the way home to avoid running over mangoes.
When I got home, I took my camera and went for a walk. I met my friend Mama Wedragu at her house. She lamented the fact that so many mangoes had fallen unripe. Usually, they fall to the ground when they're ripened, May or June, and the villagers go out with baskets iand collect them to eat or sell. Even the animals roam the village, looking for mangoes.
In the aftermath of the storm, the villagers had run to pick up the few ripe mangoes, so by the time I set out on my walk, most of them had been collected. I found one small mangoe, the size of a plum, and took it with me to the other end of the village, where a mangoe tree had been torn in half by the wind. A few village men were busy chopping the rest of it down, a group of children gawking at the spectacle.
Eventually, I made my way back to my house and took my evening bucket bath before heading over to Drissa and Jelika's for dinner and conversation. The village cheif's daughter came over and chatted with Jeilka while I worked on studying for the GRE. As it got late and was time to leave, it began to rain again, a little at first and then pouring so I had to run home.
The rest of the night it rained and rained. It was raining when I woke up and now it's really cloudy and cool. My yard is a mess, full of broken branches and unripe magoes and puddles. Some really big puddles
Yesterday's rain began on my way back from M'Pessoba market. As usual, I had spent the whole day chatting with Murv and Greg - Sunday's our day to meet up. We usually get into M'Pesso around 10 am or so, go make a trip into the market (I buy food for my host family), then go hang out at Boua's boutigi. Actually, two boutigis (general store type places), both run by men named Boua. We leave our bikes with Boua Diakité, a twenty year old kid who runs a store for his father selling shoes and clothing, and then usually spend most of the day with Boua Coulibaly, another young man with an adorable stutter and a jovial temprement. Yesterday, we spent all day sweating at Coulibaly's boutigi. The heat has been worse lately, and I've finally felt like it's the hot season. It has gotten to the point where even if you don't move, you just sit there sweating. It's really not possible (or at least recommended) to leave M'Pessoba and bike home until the heat breaks, around four or five in the afternoon. Yesterday we traded gossip and joked around until 4:30 or so and then set off back home.
I had just gotten out of M'Pessoba on the paved road when I saw it - a great mass of red dust straight ahead of me. It was cloudy when I left M'Pessoba, but I hadn't imagined that it actually meant there was a storm coming. As I biked, the wind grew stronger and stronger and sand began blowing in my face. I tried to continue on, but had to stop and face away from the wind. For ten minutes or so, wind and sand beat at my back and then - rain! Rain came, just a little, but it was definitely there. A few minutes later, the storm eased and I was able to bike home. There were puddles on the paved road, and I as I rode through them I watched drops of water leap to the side as my wheels cut trhough them with an acute satisfaction. I hadn't seen thes phenomenon in a good seven months.
When I returned to Ferme, I was presented with the aftermath of the storm: magoes. Everywhere. Unrip ones, knocked down by the wind, dotted the main road through Ferme. I had to get off my bike and walk it the rest of the way home to avoid running over mangoes.
When I got home, I took my camera and went for a walk. I met my friend Mama Wedragu at her house. She lamented the fact that so many mangoes had fallen unripe. Usually, they fall to the ground when they're ripened, May or June, and the villagers go out with baskets iand collect them to eat or sell. Even the animals roam the village, looking for mangoes.
In the aftermath of the storm, the villagers had run to pick up the few ripe mangoes, so by the time I set out on my walk, most of them had been collected. I found one small mangoe, the size of a plum, and took it with me to the other end of the village, where a mangoe tree had been torn in half by the wind. A few village men were busy chopping the rest of it down, a group of children gawking at the spectacle.
Eventually, I made my way back to my house and took my evening bucket bath before heading over to Drissa and Jelika's for dinner and conversation. The village cheif's daughter came over and chatted with Jeilka while I worked on studying for the GRE. As it got late and was time to leave, it began to rain again, a little at first and then pouring so I had to run home.
The rest of the night it rained and rained. It was raining when I woke up and now it's really cloudy and cool. My yard is a mess, full of broken branches and unripe magoes and puddles. Some really big puddles
Sunday, March 9, 2008
Journal Monday, March 3, 2008
It feels like a long time since I've written in here. Here I am sitting on my porch, admiring the view. The sun is setting in a pinkish fashion this evening, and I'm not sure how long I'll be able to write, but I feel as if I had an interesting day, perhaps one that is worth writing down.
It's had some ups and downs. I got up this morning around 7:30, to the sound of Na at my door with breakfast in hand. Breakfast was beans leftover from last night, a treat for me. Jelika had saved them from the night before because I didn't get to eat any (and I had bought them in the market that morning) because I went over to Dao's house to eat last night. Two of the CAA professors were going to leave and zork in a different place and all the other teachers had a party for them. It was a very male-oriented affair - all the teachers from the school were there, plus Hamadoune and Baliandou from IRCT. They sat around playing cards, listening to loud booming music and drinking tea (for what else to men do in Mali?) and I sat around feeling fairly awkward as usual. I got some of them to teach me the game they were playing, which was a bit more complicated than the usual Mali UNO game. I kind of got it, played a few hands.
Then Dao stood up and gave a speech about all the good work that they had done the past year, and awarded them each a new mosquito net. Actually, I was selected to give them the mosquito net, I think because I was the only woman there or because I was the toubab. After this little ceremony, I sat around for a while feeling restless and then finally begged off to go sleep.
In any case, none of this has that much to do with today, except that when Dao came over to tell me about the meeting of the men, he also said that he had arranged a meeting for me with the ladies at IRCT. We had talked about going back to IRCT and N'Tarla to have another meeting with the people there about work, after I complained a few weeks back about having nothing to do. So he said the plan was for me and Abou Diabate to go up to IRCT in the morning to talk with the ladies and then up to N'Tarla to greet the dugutigi and set up a meeting there. Dao would go himself but had some business to take care of for the school.
So this morning, after having eaten my beans and spent a half hour or so working on digging a pit I'm going to put compost in, Abou came by and we went up to IIRCT together.
IRCT is the research institute up the road 4 km from Ferme, and it's fairly well off - Id say even more well off than Ferme - they have electricity and a tap water system. Whenever we do baby weighings at the maternity on Wednesdays and a giant baby shows up with a well clad mama, you know that they came from IRCT or from Ferme. I guess this is part of what made me uneasy about going up there - I wasn't sure if I really wanted to concentrate my efforts on helping a group of people who are already fairly well situated.
When we got there, we greeted some of the workers and then went to the "center," where the women study Bambara sometimes. The meeting was to be held there. It took about 45 minutes, but eventually the place filled up and we began the meeting. It mostly consisted of greetings, then some explanation on the part of the women as to what their current activities are. During the rainy season for a number of years now, the women have gone out to work their field together, harvesting peanuts and two types of millet. During the cold and dry seasons, the ladies take the money they've made from the farming and individually partake in small commerce activities, returning money to the caisse with some interest later on. They've made a fair amount of money this way, and for the past few years have been trying to get things together to have a garden as well. Things have started to fall into place as far as that is concerned in the past few months. They got permission to use some land near IRCT as the garden, dug one well, got the president's (of Mali) wife to donate garden tools somehow, and are using all of their money to take a loan out of the bank to dig another well and clear some of the land. They need some money, however, for a fence which they said would cost between 500 and 1000 USD. They also said they were looking for some money to help with books to study for their literacy classes and buy a blackboard.
After this explanation, I was asked to speak and explain where I stood on things. I said I couldn't say what I could do as far as the money was concerned at the moment, but maybe once they got the garden going we could bring some people in to do formations on gardening. Abou pointed out that they needed money to get things in order before they could do any formations. Which makes sense, and thinking it over now, I think that might have been an insufficient answer to give them. But I wasn't really prepared to be asked to give money right on the spot and give a definative answer. And I told them this, that I wanted to go look at the garden and talk to PC a bit and know them a bit better and then maybe start a project. But Abou kept bugging me to clarify my answer and objecting that maybe I hadn't understood when I felt like I had said what I was going to for the moment. And then I felt annoyed and uneasy and kind of guilty that I couldn't answer right away. Then Rosaline, the president of the women and a tall and sort of impressive woman, asked what I could say to the women so they would keep up their spirits. That annoyed me even more, but I said they had done good work and God willing, they would be able to do more good work. Which felt kind of insufficient again, because the way they had presented it, it wasn't just God who had the power to decide if they would do more good work, but me.
So basically, I felt kind of bullied and uncomfortable. But then we took a turn around the area where the garden would be and I began to perk up a little more; it felt good to be out of that particular situation. The garden area was very large, and I'm not sure exactly how they're planning to water everything with the two wells they have planned, assuming they use the majority of the land. There's a large stretch of land covered in underbrush that they said they're going to try to clar, and one well that is already dug. All in all, things seemed remarkably in order, especially for Mali, and I began to think it might not be a bad thing to try and help them with some money. They certainly give the impression of being well-organized and motivated.
I still felt a bit annoyed, though, as abou kept saying how I could just help them with this and explaining the situation over again, just in case I hadn't understood the first three times.
After our turn around the garden, we went to Rosaline's house, a large house typical of the area, and sat down and talked for a while, a bit about PC and a bit about Ferme and a bit about the ladies at IRCT. Well, actually for the most part they talked and I picked up what I could of what they were saying and once in a while someone bothered to direct a question my way.
Then the remaining ladies left, leaving me with Abou, Rosaline, and Rosaline's husband. Rosaline's husband and Abou talked for what seemed like forever before Rosaline invited us inside to eat. They actually had a dining table inside with bowls and spoons for rice (the first I've seen of this in Mali) and I ate with the men while Rosaline ate outside.
After lunch we sat around for a while, then Abou and Rosaline wandered off to have a "meeting." They were in their meeting for a very long timem but eventually they came back, and when they returned I asked them what they had been talking about and abou said they were talking about marriage. How two people can respect one another in that situation. Since for various reasons I've been feeling lately like I understand the relationship between men and women in Mali less and less, and I was a little annoyed about the way they made me feel about everything in the morning, I decided to spark some conversation and told Abou outright that I don't understand how men and women here relate to each othere.
He said, okay, what don't you understand? I started off with why do women do all the cooking here. Malians always get a kick out of my insistence that men should cook, and it's my standard response to would-be suitors I meet on the streets to explain to them how my husband is back in Amerikim and by the way he does all the cooking for me, just to get a laugh out of them (or a look of incredulity) and distract them from their attempts to get my number and address. Abou explained how men do cook if there are no women around, but if there is a woman around, she cooks, and that's just how it is.
I then commented on how women do a lot of work here- cooking, cleaning, raising the children, and why don't men do the work, too. Abou said men do help with the children-take them to the doctor if they're sick, for example. And how men work and women work, they just don't do the same work.
So I asked then, what about education? Why are so many women here less educated than men? This was where we started to get a bit more confused. Abou said something about women reaching the age of puberty and then running off and thinking they could act like men and go "tulonke" (play) and get pregnant. And how it was their fault if this should pass and they will have shamed their parents. How in Mali, it's very important for people to keep their dignity and having a daughter get pregnant robs them of their dignity. I made some further inquisitions and learned that in Mali, it's always the woman's fault if she gets pregnant. According to Abou, it's always the woman who goes to the man to get pregnant, never the man who initiates the sexual relationship.
That made me so mad. I guess I was asking for it, and in a way it's good to have had the conversation, but it left me feeling kind of sad and disillusioned that my friend thought these things. And Abou seems to me a very honorable and good person for the most part.
So I said to him, okay, you're not going to convince me of your viewpoint and I'm not going to convince you of mine, but I guess we can try to explain things. And he said, that's true because we come from different cultures with different ways, and that's why we see things differently.
So I tried to explain to him what I thought, which is maybe just as much my personal version of things as much as a representation of American culture. I said that in my view, being pregnant outside of marriage is not a shameful thing in and of itself. It is something that has downsides and upsides, good and bad in it, but in and of itself it is not shameful, to the woman or her parents. And furthermore, that sex is a thing that involves two people, a man and a woman. And if the woman becomes pregnang, she can't point her finger and say it's the man's fault, at the same time as he can't to the same thing to her because they both decided to have sex.
Which seems to me perfect reasoning, but of course Abou just reiterated what he said, and to top it off said that a man can't force a woman to have sex. And I said he can't? And Abou said, can't she scream if she doesn't want it? Thankfully that was just a side conversation that I didn't ask him to explain anymore, because I don't want to think of what he would have said.
In the end, we didn't reach any big conclusions. Throughout most of it, Rosaline kept quietm though she made it clear at various junctures that she more or less agreed with what Abou had said. We agreed to reconvene on Saturday, because Rosaline said she would teach me some Malian cooking. The tentative agreement was for Abou to come along too and Rosaline made some crack about getting him a skirt for the occasion. Ironically, perhaps, I realized this evening that Saturday is March 8, Women's Day in Mali.
The whole conversation left me feeling ready to write a really long journal entry and get it all sorted out and compartmentalized, but I'm not sure if I can. I've always prided myself on being able to see both sides of an argument and to respect other people, but I realized there are some things I can't respect, even if I don't think I can really change them. I generally find Abou to be a very good person, and I know he cares for his wife and is very involved in helping out the women, but I just can't agree with him on this point. I suppose as far as pregnancy goes, it's not even the rule in American society that pregnancy out of wedlock wouldn't make someone feel shameful, or that some wouldn't point the finger at the woman. I don't agree with Abou that this is just a matter of our cultures being different. Yes, Malian and American cultures are different and therefore the roles of women and men are not going to be the same. But women are not naturally subordinate to men, and to chalk the kind of inequality that exists in this society up to culture is erroneous. Gender inequality exists in the US as well, but we identify it as a problem instead of just saying that it is they way God willed it.
Following this conversation, later this evening I happened by Mama Wedragu's house on the way home from watering the garden and stopped to chat as I do fairly oftern. We were sitting there talking when Adiaratou happened by and told us that Odile, one of the ladies who's been working at the maternity lately, had just had a baby girl. Which surprised me because I hadn't known that she was pregnant. Which then made me feel sheepish because she's the third one of my coworkers at the maternity in the past two months or so who has had a baby and who I didn't know was pregnant. And also, none of them had husbands. Add to this Bintou, also working at the maternity and also an unwed mother.
So despite having my head kind of tired from my talk with Abou, I had the same talk with Mama. Mama was in agreement that having a child out of wedlock was a shameful thing in Mali and said that if a woman had a baby out of wedlock people wouldn't come to the baby's baptism because the baby had no father. I explained to her what I thought and she tooke it in stride. Mama is completely aware of the injustice of the way women are treated here. She's constantly being held back by her husband from going to one social event or another and complains to me about it, even as she follows his orders. And she has told me numerous times the story of how her mother forced her to marry her husband when she was fifteen, even though she refused and wouldn't even go to her own wedding. And yet here she is, 25 years and seven or eight children later, living with him and doing as she's told.
I don't have any good way to respond to this. I don't know whether to ask her why she doesn't leave him (two of his other wives did, after all), just like I don't know how to feel towards Abou, knowing what he thinks about all of this. The bottom line, I guess, is that all of this is probably what most people in this country feel. They have this set of cultural beliefs to live up to and live up to them to one degree or another.
Somehow that feels insufficient. That doesn't feel like a conclusion but rather just another "mogo te kelen ye" (people aren't the same) cop-out. There must be some values that are constant, something that is right and something that is wrong, and something in between. I just feel at a loss to try and identify which is which.
Oh dear, my brain is tired now. I suppose I'll just have to keep some of these questions safe for another day.
It's had some ups and downs. I got up this morning around 7:30, to the sound of Na at my door with breakfast in hand. Breakfast was beans leftover from last night, a treat for me. Jelika had saved them from the night before because I didn't get to eat any (and I had bought them in the market that morning) because I went over to Dao's house to eat last night. Two of the CAA professors were going to leave and zork in a different place and all the other teachers had a party for them. It was a very male-oriented affair - all the teachers from the school were there, plus Hamadoune and Baliandou from IRCT. They sat around playing cards, listening to loud booming music and drinking tea (for what else to men do in Mali?) and I sat around feeling fairly awkward as usual. I got some of them to teach me the game they were playing, which was a bit more complicated than the usual Mali UNO game. I kind of got it, played a few hands.
Then Dao stood up and gave a speech about all the good work that they had done the past year, and awarded them each a new mosquito net. Actually, I was selected to give them the mosquito net, I think because I was the only woman there or because I was the toubab. After this little ceremony, I sat around for a while feeling restless and then finally begged off to go sleep.
In any case, none of this has that much to do with today, except that when Dao came over to tell me about the meeting of the men, he also said that he had arranged a meeting for me with the ladies at IRCT. We had talked about going back to IRCT and N'Tarla to have another meeting with the people there about work, after I complained a few weeks back about having nothing to do. So he said the plan was for me and Abou Diabate to go up to IRCT in the morning to talk with the ladies and then up to N'Tarla to greet the dugutigi and set up a meeting there. Dao would go himself but had some business to take care of for the school.
So this morning, after having eaten my beans and spent a half hour or so working on digging a pit I'm going to put compost in, Abou came by and we went up to IIRCT together.
IRCT is the research institute up the road 4 km from Ferme, and it's fairly well off - Id say even more well off than Ferme - they have electricity and a tap water system. Whenever we do baby weighings at the maternity on Wednesdays and a giant baby shows up with a well clad mama, you know that they came from IRCT or from Ferme. I guess this is part of what made me uneasy about going up there - I wasn't sure if I really wanted to concentrate my efforts on helping a group of people who are already fairly well situated.
When we got there, we greeted some of the workers and then went to the "center," where the women study Bambara sometimes. The meeting was to be held there. It took about 45 minutes, but eventually the place filled up and we began the meeting. It mostly consisted of greetings, then some explanation on the part of the women as to what their current activities are. During the rainy season for a number of years now, the women have gone out to work their field together, harvesting peanuts and two types of millet. During the cold and dry seasons, the ladies take the money they've made from the farming and individually partake in small commerce activities, returning money to the caisse with some interest later on. They've made a fair amount of money this way, and for the past few years have been trying to get things together to have a garden as well. Things have started to fall into place as far as that is concerned in the past few months. They got permission to use some land near IRCT as the garden, dug one well, got the president's (of Mali) wife to donate garden tools somehow, and are using all of their money to take a loan out of the bank to dig another well and clear some of the land. They need some money, however, for a fence which they said would cost between 500 and 1000 USD. They also said they were looking for some money to help with books to study for their literacy classes and buy a blackboard.
After this explanation, I was asked to speak and explain where I stood on things. I said I couldn't say what I could do as far as the money was concerned at the moment, but maybe once they got the garden going we could bring some people in to do formations on gardening. Abou pointed out that they needed money to get things in order before they could do any formations. Which makes sense, and thinking it over now, I think that might have been an insufficient answer to give them. But I wasn't really prepared to be asked to give money right on the spot and give a definative answer. And I told them this, that I wanted to go look at the garden and talk to PC a bit and know them a bit better and then maybe start a project. But Abou kept bugging me to clarify my answer and objecting that maybe I hadn't understood when I felt like I had said what I was going to for the moment. And then I felt annoyed and uneasy and kind of guilty that I couldn't answer right away. Then Rosaline, the president of the women and a tall and sort of impressive woman, asked what I could say to the women so they would keep up their spirits. That annoyed me even more, but I said they had done good work and God willing, they would be able to do more good work. Which felt kind of insufficient again, because the way they had presented it, it wasn't just God who had the power to decide if they would do more good work, but me.
So basically, I felt kind of bullied and uncomfortable. But then we took a turn around the area where the garden would be and I began to perk up a little more; it felt good to be out of that particular situation. The garden area was very large, and I'm not sure exactly how they're planning to water everything with the two wells they have planned, assuming they use the majority of the land. There's a large stretch of land covered in underbrush that they said they're going to try to clar, and one well that is already dug. All in all, things seemed remarkably in order, especially for Mali, and I began to think it might not be a bad thing to try and help them with some money. They certainly give the impression of being well-organized and motivated.
I still felt a bit annoyed, though, as abou kept saying how I could just help them with this and explaining the situation over again, just in case I hadn't understood the first three times.
After our turn around the garden, we went to Rosaline's house, a large house typical of the area, and sat down and talked for a while, a bit about PC and a bit about Ferme and a bit about the ladies at IRCT. Well, actually for the most part they talked and I picked up what I could of what they were saying and once in a while someone bothered to direct a question my way.
Then the remaining ladies left, leaving me with Abou, Rosaline, and Rosaline's husband. Rosaline's husband and Abou talked for what seemed like forever before Rosaline invited us inside to eat. They actually had a dining table inside with bowls and spoons for rice (the first I've seen of this in Mali) and I ate with the men while Rosaline ate outside.
After lunch we sat around for a while, then Abou and Rosaline wandered off to have a "meeting." They were in their meeting for a very long timem but eventually they came back, and when they returned I asked them what they had been talking about and abou said they were talking about marriage. How two people can respect one another in that situation. Since for various reasons I've been feeling lately like I understand the relationship between men and women in Mali less and less, and I was a little annoyed about the way they made me feel about everything in the morning, I decided to spark some conversation and told Abou outright that I don't understand how men and women here relate to each othere.
He said, okay, what don't you understand? I started off with why do women do all the cooking here. Malians always get a kick out of my insistence that men should cook, and it's my standard response to would-be suitors I meet on the streets to explain to them how my husband is back in Amerikim and by the way he does all the cooking for me, just to get a laugh out of them (or a look of incredulity) and distract them from their attempts to get my number and address. Abou explained how men do cook if there are no women around, but if there is a woman around, she cooks, and that's just how it is.
I then commented on how women do a lot of work here- cooking, cleaning, raising the children, and why don't men do the work, too. Abou said men do help with the children-take them to the doctor if they're sick, for example. And how men work and women work, they just don't do the same work.
So I asked then, what about education? Why are so many women here less educated than men? This was where we started to get a bit more confused. Abou said something about women reaching the age of puberty and then running off and thinking they could act like men and go "tulonke" (play) and get pregnant. And how it was their fault if this should pass and they will have shamed their parents. How in Mali, it's very important for people to keep their dignity and having a daughter get pregnant robs them of their dignity. I made some further inquisitions and learned that in Mali, it's always the woman's fault if she gets pregnant. According to Abou, it's always the woman who goes to the man to get pregnant, never the man who initiates the sexual relationship.
That made me so mad. I guess I was asking for it, and in a way it's good to have had the conversation, but it left me feeling kind of sad and disillusioned that my friend thought these things. And Abou seems to me a very honorable and good person for the most part.
So I said to him, okay, you're not going to convince me of your viewpoint and I'm not going to convince you of mine, but I guess we can try to explain things. And he said, that's true because we come from different cultures with different ways, and that's why we see things differently.
So I tried to explain to him what I thought, which is maybe just as much my personal version of things as much as a representation of American culture. I said that in my view, being pregnant outside of marriage is not a shameful thing in and of itself. It is something that has downsides and upsides, good and bad in it, but in and of itself it is not shameful, to the woman or her parents. And furthermore, that sex is a thing that involves two people, a man and a woman. And if the woman becomes pregnang, she can't point her finger and say it's the man's fault, at the same time as he can't to the same thing to her because they both decided to have sex.
Which seems to me perfect reasoning, but of course Abou just reiterated what he said, and to top it off said that a man can't force a woman to have sex. And I said he can't? And Abou said, can't she scream if she doesn't want it? Thankfully that was just a side conversation that I didn't ask him to explain anymore, because I don't want to think of what he would have said.
In the end, we didn't reach any big conclusions. Throughout most of it, Rosaline kept quietm though she made it clear at various junctures that she more or less agreed with what Abou had said. We agreed to reconvene on Saturday, because Rosaline said she would teach me some Malian cooking. The tentative agreement was for Abou to come along too and Rosaline made some crack about getting him a skirt for the occasion. Ironically, perhaps, I realized this evening that Saturday is March 8, Women's Day in Mali.
The whole conversation left me feeling ready to write a really long journal entry and get it all sorted out and compartmentalized, but I'm not sure if I can. I've always prided myself on being able to see both sides of an argument and to respect other people, but I realized there are some things I can't respect, even if I don't think I can really change them. I generally find Abou to be a very good person, and I know he cares for his wife and is very involved in helping out the women, but I just can't agree with him on this point. I suppose as far as pregnancy goes, it's not even the rule in American society that pregnancy out of wedlock wouldn't make someone feel shameful, or that some wouldn't point the finger at the woman. I don't agree with Abou that this is just a matter of our cultures being different. Yes, Malian and American cultures are different and therefore the roles of women and men are not going to be the same. But women are not naturally subordinate to men, and to chalk the kind of inequality that exists in this society up to culture is erroneous. Gender inequality exists in the US as well, but we identify it as a problem instead of just saying that it is they way God willed it.
Following this conversation, later this evening I happened by Mama Wedragu's house on the way home from watering the garden and stopped to chat as I do fairly oftern. We were sitting there talking when Adiaratou happened by and told us that Odile, one of the ladies who's been working at the maternity lately, had just had a baby girl. Which surprised me because I hadn't known that she was pregnant. Which then made me feel sheepish because she's the third one of my coworkers at the maternity in the past two months or so who has had a baby and who I didn't know was pregnant. And also, none of them had husbands. Add to this Bintou, also working at the maternity and also an unwed mother.
So despite having my head kind of tired from my talk with Abou, I had the same talk with Mama. Mama was in agreement that having a child out of wedlock was a shameful thing in Mali and said that if a woman had a baby out of wedlock people wouldn't come to the baby's baptism because the baby had no father. I explained to her what I thought and she tooke it in stride. Mama is completely aware of the injustice of the way women are treated here. She's constantly being held back by her husband from going to one social event or another and complains to me about it, even as she follows his orders. And she has told me numerous times the story of how her mother forced her to marry her husband when she was fifteen, even though she refused and wouldn't even go to her own wedding. And yet here she is, 25 years and seven or eight children later, living with him and doing as she's told.
I don't have any good way to respond to this. I don't know whether to ask her why she doesn't leave him (two of his other wives did, after all), just like I don't know how to feel towards Abou, knowing what he thinks about all of this. The bottom line, I guess, is that all of this is probably what most people in this country feel. They have this set of cultural beliefs to live up to and live up to them to one degree or another.
Somehow that feels insufficient. That doesn't feel like a conclusion but rather just another "mogo te kelen ye" (people aren't the same) cop-out. There must be some values that are constant, something that is right and something that is wrong, and something in between. I just feel at a loss to try and identify which is which.
Oh dear, my brain is tired now. I suppose I'll just have to keep some of these questions safe for another day.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
"Ne te decourage pas"
"Don't be discouraged."
This is what my homologue, Souleymane Dao, told me two Thursdays ago back at site after I talked to him about my work, or rather the lack of it. The past few weeks have been discouraging, to say the least, partly because the work I had been hoping to do at site has been stalled, partly because of difficulties adjusting back to being at site after three weeks away.
I got back to site a bit over three weeks ago, tired of traveling and ready to settle in for a while. I had decided that I wanted to try and break out of my habit of spending a week and a half or two weeks at site followed by a few days away in Koutiala or another city, all the better for my integration, I thought. I was going to spend all of February at site and become super-integrated. So for the first week or two, I worked dilligently on my Bambara, tried my best to spend free time with people instead of holed up in my house reading, and got Jelika and Adiaratou to give me some Malian cooking lessons. I painted the furniture in my house and posted some pictures on the wall in an effort to make it feel like home. Made French toast with the kids during one of our nightly tutoring sessions. Went to the baptism of one of Drissa's cousins and even managed to get myself to go for a run one morning! Okay, so going for a run doesn't have anything to do with integration, but it was a positive thing to do . . .
All of this was very well and good, but unfortunately being "integrated" also means that you have to deal with the annoyances of living in a culture much different from your own. In Mali, this means children yelling "toubab" at you as you walk down the street, having your progress on the language narrated by everyone you meet, having to greet EVERYONE ALL THE TIME, everyone asking you for money or gifts all the time, having people constantly asking you why you're not married, and being bored and lonely because there's no one who understands your own culture. This is not to say that there aren't plenty of things that I like about Malian culture/Mali in general (for example, people here are open to social interaction in a way that most Western cultures aren't, which makes it easier to feel welcomed into the community) just that after an extended period spent at site, the negative can begin to overshadow the positive.
In addition to these frustrations, as I've learned a bit more about the situation in my village in the past few weeks, I've become more and more uncertain of what kind of work I can do for the next 20 months (it's been 7 months here today!). The women's organization had a meeting the week that I got back to summarize the work they did last year and plan work for this year. Apparently, 2007 wasn't a year where a lot of work got done- they made soap three or four times and dyed cloth once. They hadn't done either of these activities since I got here. The soap making has become difficult because the oil prices went up so it's no longer a very profitable activity, and the cloth dying costs a large amount of money to get going. At this meeting, the ladies asked me if I could donate money to buy cloth to let them dye cloth, which took me aback a bit. I asked them how much, and they said 70,000 CFA, which is about $140. A lot of money, in other words, and not something I'm willing to donate, since I don't really see it as my job to give them my own money.
After this meeting, I had a look at their financial records, which was pretty eye-opening. Apparently the previous volunteer did donate a large amount of money to get them going on the cloth dying, and then made regular trips to Bamako to sell the cloth for the ladies. They made a large amount of money this way, about $400. However, looking at the records, there was a moment where a large portion of this money suddenly disappeared from the caisse. Talking with some of the women later, I found out that the women all decided to buy a large amount of cloth to dye the same color and make into clothes to wear togheter. Each woman would pay for a few meters of cloth. Unfortunately, not everyone had the money to pay for the cloth, and so even now, over a year later, there is a large amount of money owed.
In addition to this, the grant money from PACR looks like it's not going to come. I talked to their representative in M'Pessoba, Pascaline, who told me that someone higher up in the organization in Sikasso had decided that because some of the women are the wives of men who work as professors at the school or at IRCT (the research institute down the road), they had less need for the money. Additionally, she also said that the people of Feremuna live in the area because of the school (CAA), and if the state should one day decide to close the school (no sign of that as far as I know) and leave the land, the people would leave too, and PACR's investment in the land will have been for naught. Everyone in Ferme is pretty pissed, and understandably so. No one from PACR has come to the village to explicitly explain this decision. I had to go to the mayor's office four times before I finally managed to talk to Pascaline.
And Kolomuso . . . apparently the matrone has just begun doing baby weighing days and vaccinations again. However, talking to Adiaratou about the situation, I learned that women are not going to the maternity to have their children. For example, Hamadoune (the doctor at Ferme) just got a report from the matrone that last month, six women had their children at home and only two had them at the maternity. He says when we went up to Kolomuso for the vaccination campaign in December, he went and talked with some of the ladies, who said that they don't go to the maternity because they don't like the matrone and think she is incompetent. The matrone, Fanta, is completely aware of this, I learned when I went up last week to talk with them again. She gave me the impression that she would like to go somewhere else herself to find work, but she's married to someone in the village and so is tied down to the area. I have no idea at this point whether she really is incompetent, and each time I go up there I leave feeling frustrated because each time I go up we have trouble communicating and she complains that I don't speak Bambara as well as the previous volunteer.
So all of this leads me back to that discussion with my homologue. Don't be discouraged, he said, and I'm trying not to be, but sometimes I just feel like my head is going to explode. Which is why I'm in Bamako right now, taking a little mini vacation. Had my first hot shower in seven months Monday evening (felt so wonderfully clean . . .) and putzed around town yesterday, buying toubab food (read: ice cream, cheeseburgers and M&Ms). Made a visit or two with people at the Peace Corps bureau to discuss the way things were going. Might go see the museum in Bamako today.
Maybe when I get back to site things will start going better. The women did finally make soap on Monday before I left, so that's a good sign, right? Wish me luck.
The ladies make soap!
Relaxing in Bamako at Relax.
This is what my homologue, Souleymane Dao, told me two Thursdays ago back at site after I talked to him about my work, or rather the lack of it. The past few weeks have been discouraging, to say the least, partly because the work I had been hoping to do at site has been stalled, partly because of difficulties adjusting back to being at site after three weeks away.
I got back to site a bit over three weeks ago, tired of traveling and ready to settle in for a while. I had decided that I wanted to try and break out of my habit of spending a week and a half or two weeks at site followed by a few days away in Koutiala or another city, all the better for my integration, I thought. I was going to spend all of February at site and become super-integrated. So for the first week or two, I worked dilligently on my Bambara, tried my best to spend free time with people instead of holed up in my house reading, and got Jelika and Adiaratou to give me some Malian cooking lessons. I painted the furniture in my house and posted some pictures on the wall in an effort to make it feel like home. Made French toast with the kids during one of our nightly tutoring sessions. Went to the baptism of one of Drissa's cousins and even managed to get myself to go for a run one morning! Okay, so going for a run doesn't have anything to do with integration, but it was a positive thing to do . . .
All of this was very well and good, but unfortunately being "integrated" also means that you have to deal with the annoyances of living in a culture much different from your own. In Mali, this means children yelling "toubab" at you as you walk down the street, having your progress on the language narrated by everyone you meet, having to greet EVERYONE ALL THE TIME, everyone asking you for money or gifts all the time, having people constantly asking you why you're not married, and being bored and lonely because there's no one who understands your own culture. This is not to say that there aren't plenty of things that I like about Malian culture/Mali in general (for example, people here are open to social interaction in a way that most Western cultures aren't, which makes it easier to feel welcomed into the community) just that after an extended period spent at site, the negative can begin to overshadow the positive.
In addition to these frustrations, as I've learned a bit more about the situation in my village in the past few weeks, I've become more and more uncertain of what kind of work I can do for the next 20 months (it's been 7 months here today!). The women's organization had a meeting the week that I got back to summarize the work they did last year and plan work for this year. Apparently, 2007 wasn't a year where a lot of work got done- they made soap three or four times and dyed cloth once. They hadn't done either of these activities since I got here. The soap making has become difficult because the oil prices went up so it's no longer a very profitable activity, and the cloth dying costs a large amount of money to get going. At this meeting, the ladies asked me if I could donate money to buy cloth to let them dye cloth, which took me aback a bit. I asked them how much, and they said 70,000 CFA, which is about $140. A lot of money, in other words, and not something I'm willing to donate, since I don't really see it as my job to give them my own money.
After this meeting, I had a look at their financial records, which was pretty eye-opening. Apparently the previous volunteer did donate a large amount of money to get them going on the cloth dying, and then made regular trips to Bamako to sell the cloth for the ladies. They made a large amount of money this way, about $400. However, looking at the records, there was a moment where a large portion of this money suddenly disappeared from the caisse. Talking with some of the women later, I found out that the women all decided to buy a large amount of cloth to dye the same color and make into clothes to wear togheter. Each woman would pay for a few meters of cloth. Unfortunately, not everyone had the money to pay for the cloth, and so even now, over a year later, there is a large amount of money owed.
In addition to this, the grant money from PACR looks like it's not going to come. I talked to their representative in M'Pessoba, Pascaline, who told me that someone higher up in the organization in Sikasso had decided that because some of the women are the wives of men who work as professors at the school or at IRCT (the research institute down the road), they had less need for the money. Additionally, she also said that the people of Feremuna live in the area because of the school (CAA), and if the state should one day decide to close the school (no sign of that as far as I know) and leave the land, the people would leave too, and PACR's investment in the land will have been for naught. Everyone in Ferme is pretty pissed, and understandably so. No one from PACR has come to the village to explicitly explain this decision. I had to go to the mayor's office four times before I finally managed to talk to Pascaline.
And Kolomuso . . . apparently the matrone has just begun doing baby weighing days and vaccinations again. However, talking to Adiaratou about the situation, I learned that women are not going to the maternity to have their children. For example, Hamadoune (the doctor at Ferme) just got a report from the matrone that last month, six women had their children at home and only two had them at the maternity. He says when we went up to Kolomuso for the vaccination campaign in December, he went and talked with some of the ladies, who said that they don't go to the maternity because they don't like the matrone and think she is incompetent. The matrone, Fanta, is completely aware of this, I learned when I went up last week to talk with them again. She gave me the impression that she would like to go somewhere else herself to find work, but she's married to someone in the village and so is tied down to the area. I have no idea at this point whether she really is incompetent, and each time I go up there I leave feeling frustrated because each time I go up we have trouble communicating and she complains that I don't speak Bambara as well as the previous volunteer.
So all of this leads me back to that discussion with my homologue. Don't be discouraged, he said, and I'm trying not to be, but sometimes I just feel like my head is going to explode. Which is why I'm in Bamako right now, taking a little mini vacation. Had my first hot shower in seven months Monday evening (felt so wonderfully clean . . .) and putzed around town yesterday, buying toubab food (read: ice cream, cheeseburgers and M&Ms). Made a visit or two with people at the Peace Corps bureau to discuss the way things were going. Might go see the museum in Bamako today.
Maybe when I get back to site things will start going better. The women did finally make soap on Monday before I left, so that's a good sign, right? Wish me luck.
The ladies make soap!
Relaxing in Bamako at Relax.
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
IST
So I've been at Tubaniso now for about a week and a half, unbeknownst to me blog readers (whoever you are). I came last Sunday for In Service Training (IST), the tail end of my 12 weeks of training in Mali. Now that the first three months are up and I can speak some Bambara (kind of), it's time to get some work done.
Hm. Work.
Around the time of Thanksgiving, I remembered belatedly about that "work" thing. We were supposed to have followed the "NATCAT" process (don't ask me what that stands for- during one of our training sessions someone asked the agriculture official what it stood for and he didn't know- neither was it written on the packet- it was left to further investigation, results to be reported later) the first three months at site, which we found described in a packet hurredly dispensed to us one of the last days at Tubaniso before installation at site. I had glanced at it during my first weeks at site and kind of dismissed it because the process it described seemed kind of unrealistic to me and not entirely applicable to my situation. The first month at site we were supposed to conduct interviews with key members of the community. Then the second month at site we were supposed to work with small groups of community members to try to assess their needs. The third month we were supposed to bring these groups together and emerge with a rounded understanding of what our community's needs were.
Which all sounds very nice. Except. I'm at a site where there have already been two volunteers, so a large part of what I will be doing will be to continue their work. There's basically one community group with which I'm supposed to work, the women's group, and they already have clearly expressed what they want to be doing (chicken raising, gardening, soap making and cloth dying). Plus to be quite frank, the first few months at site I spent a lot of time thinking about going home and how unhappy and lonely I felt, and since this the way things seem to work with me, I really needed to feel settled in before I wanted to think about calling meetings (scary!). Nevermind about language issues as well.
So, in the last month or so at site, I decided I would focus on what seemed to me reasonable actions to take to understand my community's needs. I made up an interview to do with each of the woman, and made a list of "key community members" that I was going to go interview (my homologue Dao, the doctor at the CESCOM, the mayor of M'Pessoba, Ferme's dugutigi, the matrone at Kolomuso etc). I also arranged with Dao to go to the surrounding villages and meet with their dugutigis just to know who they were and understand a bit about what organizations they had had contact with and whether or not the villagers themselves had organized cooperatives and other village organizations to carry out small income activities like my ladies. Dr. Traore had suggested this a few months ago but Dao didn't have time to go with me til after Seliba.
Things went more or less according to plan. I didn't talk to nearly as many of the women as I had wanted (ended up having done three interviews in all) but I did feel like I got a feel for how things work and got to talk to one or two of the women who I hadn't had a chance to talk with a lot. I got to see the mayor in M'Pessoba and asked some questions about the local government and which NGOs were in the area. Talked to Ferme's dugutigi, which I had been putting off for many a month, and I made it up to Kolomuso to find out more about the situation there. The trips to the area dugutigis were six in number. Most of them went pretty well, especially since Dao was there to translate everything into French for me and to say everything I had said in Bambara over again to them. He also came up with what I thought was a pretty moving speech about how if there was no water for gardening and times were tough in the villages we visited, so they were in Ferme as well and we were all in this together, etc. Made me happy that he is my homologue. He's busy a lot of the time, but he's pretty well put together and very smart.
The results were many and left me feeling a bit overwhelmed and a bit unsure of what I see myself accomplishing in the long run. The women seem to have things together in the garden (at least to my inexperienced and honestly fairly ignorant eye). They've done formations with the previous volunteers on subjects ranging from composting to natural pesticides. They haven't done soap making or cloth dying since I got there, but I don't think we'll have a problem getting it together when I get back.
The interviews with the dugutigis and the mayor left me a bit more informed on who's been in the area development-wise. There are a couple of health and education organizations in town, working in the surrounding villages doing formations, though according to the mayor, this kind of presence is relatively new, within the past 3 or 4 years. Before that, it looks like organizations would come up every once in a while from Koutiala. Three of the villages I visited- Berebougou, Sobala, and Kemessoroula- had had World Vision come about 15 years ago to work with women's cooperatives on soap making and sheep raising as small income endeavors, and two others had had other organizations come to install pumps and tap water systems.
In addition to gathering this info, a couple of the meetings left me with unfinished business. The main problem facing my ladies in Ferme right now is that they were supposed to get some money from a local organization called PACR for to fund chicken raising activities and building better wells in the garden (since currently they go dry in March or so) and the money never came. The explanation for this is a bit up in the air and I don't really feel like recording the technicalities here, but basically I need to go talk to the local representative of PACR. Which I tried to do before I left for Bamako, three times, but had no success because she was out for the holidays.
In Kolomuso: Previous volunteer constructed a maternity. Things were going well when she left but since then they encountered some sort of difficulties in getting the vaccination materials there for the baby weighing/vaccination days (they have to come to Ferme's CESCOM to get them) and the vaccination days stopped hapening. When the incentive of free vaccinations was lost, so was the attendance of the women and so no one comes for baby weighing days anymore either. Problem I can solve? Maybe.
In any case, collecting all this information was a lot of stuff to do, and I ended up feeling pretty stressed the last few weeks I was at site because of it (and of course there was also garden work and general socializing to do . . .). Did a fair amount of traveling in the midst of it all. I went to another volunteer's village about 40 k away for Christmas, to Segou for New Years, and to Koutiala once or twice for brief visits. By the time the day arrived to leave site, I was pretty overjoyed, because it meant a few weeks of not feeling like I needed to be doing this or that or talking to this person or that person in Bambara in village. Went to Koutiala to write my NATCAT results, then hightailed it here to Bamako.
Training so far has been somewhat intense but also kind of discouraging in some ways. We have sessions scheduled every day from 8:30 to 5ish, with optional language training squeezed in if we so choose. Subjects of training have ranged from composting to cooking with solar cooking pots (see pictures below) to organizations in Mali. A lot of the time I emerge from these sessions exhausted from trying to absorb a lot of information. A lot of the time, I also feel as if the information I have absorbed isn't that useful. For example, I went to a session on nutrition one day, but ended up listening to a two hour lecture on the programs of Helen Keller International, some which had to do with nutrition, but others which didn't and none of which told me some of the basic information I wanted to know.
Probably the most useful sessions have been a couple of ag sessions that have demonstrated gardening techniques on a practical level and had us try them out. The garden here at Tubaniso is pretty impressive. Large, with beautiful soil (which I notice now after working pale clay-ey soil for the past three months).
Overall, training has left me feeling kind of drained and ready to go back to village and see what I can do. I still don't feel as if I have any ideas for big, long-term projects, but I'm slowly collecting ideas for some smaller ones, and a number that I can get started on when I get back to village. More on that later. Have some ranting and raving to do, but it'll have to wait a while because I just wrote a looot.
Nighty night.
Hm. Work.
Around the time of Thanksgiving, I remembered belatedly about that "work" thing. We were supposed to have followed the "NATCAT" process (don't ask me what that stands for- during one of our training sessions someone asked the agriculture official what it stood for and he didn't know- neither was it written on the packet- it was left to further investigation, results to be reported later) the first three months at site, which we found described in a packet hurredly dispensed to us one of the last days at Tubaniso before installation at site. I had glanced at it during my first weeks at site and kind of dismissed it because the process it described seemed kind of unrealistic to me and not entirely applicable to my situation. The first month at site we were supposed to conduct interviews with key members of the community. Then the second month at site we were supposed to work with small groups of community members to try to assess their needs. The third month we were supposed to bring these groups together and emerge with a rounded understanding of what our community's needs were.
Which all sounds very nice. Except. I'm at a site where there have already been two volunteers, so a large part of what I will be doing will be to continue their work. There's basically one community group with which I'm supposed to work, the women's group, and they already have clearly expressed what they want to be doing (chicken raising, gardening, soap making and cloth dying). Plus to be quite frank, the first few months at site I spent a lot of time thinking about going home and how unhappy and lonely I felt, and since this the way things seem to work with me, I really needed to feel settled in before I wanted to think about calling meetings (scary!). Nevermind about language issues as well.
So, in the last month or so at site, I decided I would focus on what seemed to me reasonable actions to take to understand my community's needs. I made up an interview to do with each of the woman, and made a list of "key community members" that I was going to go interview (my homologue Dao, the doctor at the CESCOM, the mayor of M'Pessoba, Ferme's dugutigi, the matrone at Kolomuso etc). I also arranged with Dao to go to the surrounding villages and meet with their dugutigis just to know who they were and understand a bit about what organizations they had had contact with and whether or not the villagers themselves had organized cooperatives and other village organizations to carry out small income activities like my ladies. Dr. Traore had suggested this a few months ago but Dao didn't have time to go with me til after Seliba.
Things went more or less according to plan. I didn't talk to nearly as many of the women as I had wanted (ended up having done three interviews in all) but I did feel like I got a feel for how things work and got to talk to one or two of the women who I hadn't had a chance to talk with a lot. I got to see the mayor in M'Pessoba and asked some questions about the local government and which NGOs were in the area. Talked to Ferme's dugutigi, which I had been putting off for many a month, and I made it up to Kolomuso to find out more about the situation there. The trips to the area dugutigis were six in number. Most of them went pretty well, especially since Dao was there to translate everything into French for me and to say everything I had said in Bambara over again to them. He also came up with what I thought was a pretty moving speech about how if there was no water for gardening and times were tough in the villages we visited, so they were in Ferme as well and we were all in this together, etc. Made me happy that he is my homologue. He's busy a lot of the time, but he's pretty well put together and very smart.
The results were many and left me feeling a bit overwhelmed and a bit unsure of what I see myself accomplishing in the long run. The women seem to have things together in the garden (at least to my inexperienced and honestly fairly ignorant eye). They've done formations with the previous volunteers on subjects ranging from composting to natural pesticides. They haven't done soap making or cloth dying since I got there, but I don't think we'll have a problem getting it together when I get back.
The interviews with the dugutigis and the mayor left me a bit more informed on who's been in the area development-wise. There are a couple of health and education organizations in town, working in the surrounding villages doing formations, though according to the mayor, this kind of presence is relatively new, within the past 3 or 4 years. Before that, it looks like organizations would come up every once in a while from Koutiala. Three of the villages I visited- Berebougou, Sobala, and Kemessoroula- had had World Vision come about 15 years ago to work with women's cooperatives on soap making and sheep raising as small income endeavors, and two others had had other organizations come to install pumps and tap water systems.
In addition to gathering this info, a couple of the meetings left me with unfinished business. The main problem facing my ladies in Ferme right now is that they were supposed to get some money from a local organization called PACR for to fund chicken raising activities and building better wells in the garden (since currently they go dry in March or so) and the money never came. The explanation for this is a bit up in the air and I don't really feel like recording the technicalities here, but basically I need to go talk to the local representative of PACR. Which I tried to do before I left for Bamako, three times, but had no success because she was out for the holidays.
In Kolomuso: Previous volunteer constructed a maternity. Things were going well when she left but since then they encountered some sort of difficulties in getting the vaccination materials there for the baby weighing/vaccination days (they have to come to Ferme's CESCOM to get them) and the vaccination days stopped hapening. When the incentive of free vaccinations was lost, so was the attendance of the women and so no one comes for baby weighing days anymore either. Problem I can solve? Maybe.
In any case, collecting all this information was a lot of stuff to do, and I ended up feeling pretty stressed the last few weeks I was at site because of it (and of course there was also garden work and general socializing to do . . .). Did a fair amount of traveling in the midst of it all. I went to another volunteer's village about 40 k away for Christmas, to Segou for New Years, and to Koutiala once or twice for brief visits. By the time the day arrived to leave site, I was pretty overjoyed, because it meant a few weeks of not feeling like I needed to be doing this or that or talking to this person or that person in Bambara in village. Went to Koutiala to write my NATCAT results, then hightailed it here to Bamako.
Training so far has been somewhat intense but also kind of discouraging in some ways. We have sessions scheduled every day from 8:30 to 5ish, with optional language training squeezed in if we so choose. Subjects of training have ranged from composting to cooking with solar cooking pots (see pictures below) to organizations in Mali. A lot of the time I emerge from these sessions exhausted from trying to absorb a lot of information. A lot of the time, I also feel as if the information I have absorbed isn't that useful. For example, I went to a session on nutrition one day, but ended up listening to a two hour lecture on the programs of Helen Keller International, some which had to do with nutrition, but others which didn't and none of which told me some of the basic information I wanted to know.
Probably the most useful sessions have been a couple of ag sessions that have demonstrated gardening techniques on a practical level and had us try them out. The garden here at Tubaniso is pretty impressive. Large, with beautiful soil (which I notice now after working pale clay-ey soil for the past three months).
Overall, training has left me feeling kind of drained and ready to go back to village and see what I can do. I still don't feel as if I have any ideas for big, long-term projects, but I'm slowly collecting ideas for some smaller ones, and a number that I can get started on when I get back to village. More on that later. Have some ranting and raving to do, but it'll have to wait a while because I just wrote a looot.
Nighty night.
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Amadou et Miriam
I've been trying to listen to Malian music a bit lately. The kids (Sinali, Amadou and Na) really like it when I play music when we hang out at night- they love dancing, so when I finally got a tape-player (most music here is available in casette-form), I went out and bought some tapes. So far my Malian music collection includes Ali Farka Toure, Rokia Traore, Djeneba Sec, Oumou Sangare, and Amadou and Miraim. Amadou et Mariam are my current favorites. Check out a video of their song "Senegal Fast Food" at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShzhsPD3K0E&feature=related. French lyrics can be found at http://www.lyricstime.com/amadou-et-mariam-s-n-gal-fast-food-lyrics.html. I think most of the images in the video are actually from Senegal, but it looks pretty similar to Mali, with the exception of the numerous shots of the ocean, and generally looking less poor and run down.
Just for fun, here's my translation of the lyrics:
It is now five o'clock on the dot
It's for Manhattan Fast Food, Dakar, Senegal, the Paris theater
That I leave tomorrow
The stations in Dakar, Bamako, Mopti
Any problems there? All is well
Today I'm getting married, I have faith
Amoul solo, Gao, l'Algérie, Tunisie, Italie
No problems, I'm in love!
At Manhattan Fast Food, Dakar, Senegal, the Paris theater
I've got an elevator to the ghetto
Chorus:
It's midnight in Tokyo,
Five o'clock in Mali
What time is it in heaven?
It's midnight in Tokyo,
Five o'clock in Mali
What time is it in heaven?
For those of us who leave our country
We ask that those we leave behind don't forget us
Those of us who are a part of this, this
which none of us know how to name
We who are in far away countries
We ask that those we leave behind don't forget us
It's at Manhattan Fast Food, Dakar, Senegal
Grandmother's at the Dantec hospital doing fine
I'm here, you're there, the visa's at the consulate
Number 39, I'm waiting
For the civil state (of marriage) in the year 2000, already 2000 years at Manhattan Fast Food, Dakar, Senegal, the Paris theater
Chorus
Dakar, Bamako, Rio de Janeiro
Where is the problem? Where is the fronteer? Weaving between the walls in the elevator to the ghetto
At Mahattan Fast Food, Dakar, Senegal, the Paris theater.
Chorus
Hmm, well, it could be better, hope it's comprehensible!
M
Just for fun, here's my translation of the lyrics:
It is now five o'clock on the dot
It's for Manhattan Fast Food, Dakar, Senegal, the Paris theater
That I leave tomorrow
The stations in Dakar, Bamako, Mopti
Any problems there? All is well
Today I'm getting married, I have faith
Amoul solo, Gao, l'Algérie, Tunisie, Italie
No problems, I'm in love!
At Manhattan Fast Food, Dakar, Senegal, the Paris theater
I've got an elevator to the ghetto
Chorus:
It's midnight in Tokyo,
Five o'clock in Mali
What time is it in heaven?
It's midnight in Tokyo,
Five o'clock in Mali
What time is it in heaven?
For those of us who leave our country
We ask that those we leave behind don't forget us
Those of us who are a part of this, this
which none of us know how to name
We who are in far away countries
We ask that those we leave behind don't forget us
It's at Manhattan Fast Food, Dakar, Senegal
Grandmother's at the Dantec hospital doing fine
I'm here, you're there, the visa's at the consulate
Number 39, I'm waiting
For the civil state (of marriage) in the year 2000, already 2000 years at Manhattan Fast Food, Dakar, Senegal, the Paris theater
Chorus
Dakar, Bamako, Rio de Janeiro
Where is the problem? Where is the fronteer? Weaving between the walls in the elevator to the ghetto
At Mahattan Fast Food, Dakar, Senegal, the Paris theater.
Chorus
Hmm, well, it could be better, hope it's comprehensible!
M
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