Monday, December 15, 2008

Journal: Thursday, December 11, 2008

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.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

It was great to see you, too, Meg! Thanksgiving in Shorewood was fun.
Greetings from snowy Cambridge.

AndrĂ¡s