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!).

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!