So, it’s been a while (again) since I wrote in here. Sorry, can’t think of any other way to begin this entry. My instincts tell me I should think of some catchy phrase to get your interest, but my brain is not cooperating.

The last three months or so have been pretty busy work-wise, but also pretty low-key in general. I spent most of March getting prepared for the work at the maternity that we were organizing with the women’s group and the local clinic and also writing up a proposal to do a cloth-dying training with the women’s organization in Ferme. For the most part, that went pretty smoothly. At the maternity, Adiaratou (the midwife) and Hamadoune (the medical technical/director of the CSCOM) and I met with the women’s cooperative from Ferme to organize everyone into four groups, one group for each week of the month. Adiaratou and I also told the women coming into the maternity on Wednesdays for baby weighing days throughout March to bring the ingredients for making improved porridge (those ingredients being corn, millet, sorghum, peanut and bean powder).

When April arrived, each week the group of women from the cooperative that was going to come give a presentation would go to Adiaratou to go over the information they had to communicate and then head to the maternity on Wednesdays and Fridays to convey that information to the women coming in and to give porridge demonstrations. It all went over pretty smoothly, and I think it’s the project that I’m the most proud of since I’ve been here- it’s sustainable, didn’t involve giving people money, and involves teaching people new things. The women have been pretty good about coming in as well without me bugging them about it, and most days that there have been presentations at the maternity, the whole women’s cooperative shows up to listen to what the day’s presentation is.

The past few weeks, we’ve put the maternity project on hold, however, to have our cloth dying formation. I had written up the proposal in March after a few months of searching for a trainer and discussing with the ladies what they wanted to study. The idea for the formation began in November when I had a meeting with the women’s cooperative in Ferme to ask them what they wanted to do with me as far as work was concerned for the rest of my time here. They said they wanted to do a more advanced cloth dying training to learn more about mixing colors and tie dying. We decided on Awa Keita, who had been working in the garden with the women as an agricultural extension agent and who also had knowledge about cloth dying, as the trainer. A few weeks after I submitted my proposal, we got the funding, and we spent a week or two making purchases and meeting with Awa to discuss the training. When I got back from close of service conference in late May (more on that soon), we made some final arrangements and began the training. In general, it went pretty well. Awa taught the ladies a whole bunch of new color combinations (they had said they weren’t very strong on mixing colors and to tell the truth a lot of the time I felt like the colors they produced were too bright or just off in some way) and helped them prepare swatches of cloth to use as samples to show to potential buyers. They also practiced some more complicated tie dying patters. See pictures of the training (and also the maternity work) at http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2031291&id=10301328&l=63ed1be532

Aside from work, things have been pretty low key and probably will be for the next three months. In mid May, I went to Bamako for COS conference and got a date for when I will be leaving Mali, September 2. I think I am going to go to Europe for a few weeks before coming home- my plan is to go WWOOF-ing- find an organic farm or two to work on, either in France or England or both. Or maybe Italy. Who knows. After I get back, who knows what I’ll be up to . . . I’m feeling pretty much at loose ends right now. Part of me wants to go to graduate school and start a career and settle down, but part of me still wants to travel more or feels like there is other stuff for me to be doing. I’m not exactly sure how to reconcile the two, but I guess we’ll see. Life goes on, right?