Hi all,

I’m back in Koutiala after two weeks at site (first full two weeks I’ve spent there since Septemberish! I’m so proud of myself). Things are going well. I was on vacation for most of February with my parents, who came right at the end of January and then toured Mali and sat on the beach in Senegal for a few days with me. We had a good visit, spending four nights at my site the first week and then heading up north to Dogon country to tour the cliffs up there (sort of an American southwest-ish scenery) with our guide Hassimi. In Senegal, we headed straight to the beach and spent three nights in Toubab Diallo, a beach community not too far from Dakar, where we ate some good fresh fish and sat on the beach. Back in Dakar, we took a day trip to Goree Island, a small island right off the coast where there had been a colonial settlement.

After my parents had gone home, I spent another week or so in Senegal to play softball in the annual softball tournament put on by Peace Corps Senegal. We had about 27 volunteers from Mali- we didn’t win any games (and I struck out while batting . . .) but we had fun, and it was great to meet with other volunteers from West African countries. People came from most of the countries surrounding Senegal- Mauritania, Guinea, the Gambia, etc. After the weekend of playing softball, I headed to the beach again with about 20 other volunteers, where we rented a house on the beach for two nights and played a lot of Spades and once more ate a lot of fish and drank a bit of beer.

Back at site, things have been going well. I’ve been trying to finish up my project with Badenya Ton at Station N’Tarla. We put up the fencing in February and are currently working on resolving the water situation in the garden- the women have hired someone to dig the wells which had gone dry a bit deeper and are planning to dig two more; I’m just hoping the new wells will have enough water in them. At Ferme, I’m still working on organizing the nutrition education project at the maternity, getting the women’s organization together to learn how to do porridge demonstrations that we’re scheduling to take place in April. We’ve also been talking more about doing some further training on cloth dying techniques, hopefully including some business training along with the cloth dying.

I’ve been keeping myself busy working out (been jogging pretty consistently since I got back in December, though I had a lapse during February while traveling) and cooking for myself since I finally (I know, 20 months into service) got a stove. In Koutiala the past few days, I’ve been enjoying the privilege of having an internet connection and a stove/oven at our stage house- both of which we had been waiting for for months.

Hope everyone is doing well, I’ll write again when I get a chance.