Saturday, January 17, 2009

Journal: Wednesday, January 14, 2009

The past week or so has felt like what I always thought Peace Corps should be. It's weird it's taken 18 months, but here I am at a place where I'm actually more or less happy with the way things are here, and it's kind of almost over (if 8 months left is almost over). I don't know whether to take this positive feeling and go back to Ameriki with it or to take it and extend for a third year . . . a debate for another time, though.

I've been very busy since I got back from all my vacationing for Christmas, New Years, Thanksgiving, etc. Last week I made a trip to Koutiala, partly to hang out with local volunteers, but largely to meet with someone about the possibility of doing more training on cloth-dying with the ladies in Ferme. I got in contact with a woman who dyes cloth and does training through the local artisan organization that Koutiala volunteer Maridee works with, and she showed me photos of some of her work and around her work station at her house. She seemed like she'd be great for them, except for her price tag, which was 45,000 CFA a day (about $90), an astronomical sum, considering a full time teacher in a Malian primary school might get paid only about twice that in a month. So I don't know if that will go anywhere, but we'll see if we can either get that price down some or find someone else.

When I got back to Ferme, I started the week with some work at the maternity. I've been talking with the doctor at the clinic in town lately about doing some work on malnutrition at the maternity for the remainder of my service. I helped him put together some statistics on malnourished children coming into the maternity in the past year for a report he's doing. Looked over the registers and found the number of children at 70% of the ideal weight and under (about 9 over the year, out of about 170 childre aged 0-10 months or so coming into the maternity), and a few other numbers. I worked on that in addition to the ususal work on the baby-weighing and pregnancy consultation days. Today we talked about the prospect of possibly training some women in village to go do education at the maternity on a regular basis. I'm supposed to ask some of the ladies from my women's organization if they'll be up to it. I hope they will be.

Outside of the maternity, I've been working in the garden with the ladies when I can and getting a fair amount of exercise, two activities that have left me physically exhuasted much of the time. I've been keeping to my regime of jogging and bike riding, working towards that marathon . . . All last week, my back was aching unpleasantly, I think from the bike rides to and from Koutiala, but from weeding and watering things in the garden as well. Watering the garden now takes the women about two hours each day, pulling water from the well and watering 40 beds (1 by 5 meters each). The potatoes have really sprouted up and the cabbage and tomatoes are also growing, though the cabbage isalso being attacked by some small pests. I've been trying to get things together to try the urine fertilizer on some tomatoes as well, but it's slow going, as I haven't had a lot of time to go work in the garden myself, and these things don't magically happen by themselves, though the ladies have been helping me.

To add to the physical exhaustion, I've started hanging out with some of the female students from the Centre d'Apprentissage Agricole, working out together in the evenings. It's not much of a workout, to tell the truth, just two laps around the soccer field and a few jumping jacks. But I'm really excited to hang out with a group of women more or less my age who are educated. And to hang out with some more students from CAA- so far most of my contact has been pesky male students coming to my door to woo me or ask for money (a sneaking suspicion that they are one and the same . . .). So yay, female friends! Unfortunately school is over mid February and they're all going home then, but I'll take what I can get.