Dan in Mali

bazin training...

2011-03-20T08:31:00.001-07:00

So I’ve been sitting on this story for a long time, and for no particular reason. But just the other day, I was inspired to finally write it down.

Work as a Peace Corps Volunteer is really hard. Things in village that work don’t need your help, and things that don’t are really difficult to solve. If it was easy, somebody would have done it already. I think that most volunteers leave after two years with little certainty that their work will continue to positively impact peoples’ lives in village.

I feel that way about the bank I worked with in Narena; I feel that way about the cashew project. They’re both good ideas, and I gave them both everything I had, but it’s hard to tell if they’ll end up making a lick of difference in the long term. Some projects just fade away.

But I think it’s fair to say that my last project before leaving village is a winner.

***

With about six months left in village, after months of flailing for answers on a number of projects, I was approached by a group of women led by my closest work-partner and adopted mother, Rokia. There is a traditional fabric called bazin (pr: ba-zahn), that is dyed in a rather-involved process. They wanted to learn to do it, and they wanted me to help them.

At first it sounded really frou-frou, and I balked at the idea. ‘Rokia and her friends want me to supply them with outfits,’ I thought. I would do no such thing.

But saying ‘no’ isn’t an option in Mali. I had to convince them that it was a bad idea, or give them enough homework to drown them in procedure. So I shrewdly told them that if they wanted me to support the activity, they would have to show me that it would be profitable. I explained profitability to them, and gave them a long list of questions to answer. I made them define – among other things – the necessary materials, the size of the local market, their competition’s practices, and their sales strategy.

I didn’t hear from them for a couple weeks, and figured that was probably the end of that.

***

So one afternoon I’m sitting at Rokia’s. She’s almost certainly trying to convince me that I’m hungry, because that’s what adopted Malian mothers do. And she tells me that the women have done their research, and they’ve answered most of my questions. She wants to go to Bamako in the next couple weeks to price materials, and wants me to come with them.

I can’t say no.

***

The market in Bamako is helplessly packed and winding and disorganized, but Rokia has a brother of some sort that has a shop, and he loans us a helper for the day to navigate the mess. We talk to the people who sell the raw fabric; we talk to the people who sell the dyes; we talk to the ladies who sell finished bazin in large baskets on their heads. Rokia judiciously takes notes. I take it all in, adding only a few questions. I insist that Rokia talk to at least two sources for all materials: sometimes people in market lie.

Back in Narena, Rokia puts this all into an excel spreadsheet (I taught her that, btw), and with some help she’s able to tell me exactly how and why she’ll make a profit dyeing bazin.

Not only is she right, she’s displaying all the tools I’ve taught her over countless hours of one-on-one business coaching. I don’t think there’s a person here in whom I’ve invested more time, and I’m thrilled to see it all coming together.

Me having set the bar high, and her having cleared it, the ball was back in my court. But also, I was running out of time in village; with rainy season coming and all the work that entails, soon nobody would have time for this. My window was short.

By a stroke of luck, there’s a good trainer who’s a friend-of-a-friend, and the vast majority of my project plan could be plagiarized directly from Rokia’s business plan (already conveniently organized in an excel spreadsheet).

***

About six weeks later, we’re right back in that teeming mass of humanity that is the Bamako market. We go back to the people we’d interviewed, this time with cash. We buy enough fabric and dye to make nearly eighty outfits. We buy washbasins and gloves and facemasks.

Over ten days, these nine women come every day. They come early, and leave at dusk with homework. They actively participate, and work through some fairly difficult hands-on practicum. I told them that if they wanted it that bad, they’d have to commit to showing up no matter what. Most of them have kids and husbands at home, and they have to get up early to do the day’s cooking and chores. Many of them have never been to school. Most of them have infant children strapped to their backs all day long. One of them is eight and a half months pregnant (I am charged with making her sit down often).

These are the kinds of people whose stories and lives and kindness all come together to overwhelm you. I am, frankly, humbled that the universe has conspired to give me the chance to help them.

I promise myself that one day I’ll write about them.

And write I shall, but that’s for another post.

***

Here we are eight months later, and I’ve been gone from village for awhile. Upon returning from my visit to America, I call Rokia to tell her of an upcoming fair, and to see if she wants to come sell her bazin. She doesn’t have much in stock, but with only a couple days notice, she commits to coming. She brings four of the women together, and they do the work in a day. Two days later I’m standing next to her at a table filled with fabric and bursting with color.

Throughout the day, she sells most of what she brought, again judiciously noting every sale into her notebook. At the end, she adds it all up and asks me to check her math. After paying for her materials and transport, she’ll be bringing home nearly a hundred dollars to split between the women.

In a place where most people will work all day in the sun for two bucks, I am prepared to categorically declare success.

***

Here’s a few photos from the training…

happy birthday to...

2011-03-02T12:00:00.000-08:00

So yesterday, Peace Corps turned 50. I celebrated it with a strategic planning session for Peace Corps Mali, and a dinner party hosted by a former volunteer.

It gave me a rare chance to reflect on my service in a greater context. Here’s the things I’m thinking about:

- While we call this ‘service’, it has been a tremendous opportunity for me. Though certain obvious sacrifices are involved (mostly the lack of cheese), I consider it a classic case of ‘nothing ventured, nothing gained’. I am tremendously grateful for the opportunity to be here. I have learned so much about the world and my place in it, and those are things I could not possibly do in the comfort of the place I call home.

- Looking around at my fellow volunteers, I’m trying to put fifty years and 200,000 volunteers into perspective. Volunteers learn to speak to people in their own language, which implies that we care about them and respect them. Volunteers work from within communities in ways that most aid organizations and charities can only dream of. To their communities, volunteers represent and embody the energy and promise of America – beliefs in freedom and equality and hard work. Around the world, volunteers reach people in ways that nobody else does.

- America is a big place, and I get how it came to be that many-to-most Americans never leave the country. But the world is getting smaller, and our lives are tied to that of our neighbors in so many more ways than before. We see it in business and communications and economics and environmental issues and in politics. Whether we like it or not, a smaller world will mean a slightly different way of living for everyone. Having bridge-builders like Peace Corps Volunteers will make those transitions easier.

***

So today I’m sending a shoutout to President Kennedy and the 200,000 people he inspired to answer his call to service of our country and the world. I don’t think Peace Corps has ever been more relevant to the lives of ordinary Americans than it is today.

And on Peace Corps’ 50th birthday, I’m especially proud to be a part of the tradition.

why i'm still here...

2011-02-20T03:56:00.000-08:00

So the months of October and November were hard. After leaving village, beating malaria, and saying goodbye to the bulk of my friends in Peace Corps, I figured a quiet few months spent focusing on my work would be good for me.

But then my computer was stolen out of my apartment, setting my work back by weeks, shaking my trust of Malian character, and irrecoverably losing a treasure trove of photography. When I was mugged a month later, my disposition turned sour and stayed there. For the first time in over two years, I seriously weighed the option of going home.

***

Around that same time, I went out with a research team to visit Saving for Change groups in Western Mali. It was a good break from Bamako and served as a reminder of the myriad reasons I love Mali.

As we rolled up in many villages, we were greeted with drums and dancing. Our arrival was a break from the ho-hum routine of village life, and was therefore an excuse to party. Many of our hosts used their group funds to get spiffed up in matching outfits; some even killed animals so that we could share traditional fried rice with meat (in villages that are too small to support a butcher, meat is reserved for special occasions or religious celebrations – generally only a few times a year). It was a good reminder of the overwhelming graciousness of Malian hospitality.

Our interviews with SfC groups demonstrated again the program’s effectiveness in empowering women to gain financial control of their own lives, with tremendous rippling impacts in their self-confidence and other undertakings.

It was in one such interview that I met Tene.

Tene is what we call a Replicating Agent. When SfC first goes into a village, it’s with a paid agent from outside the village, who we’ve selected and trained and equipped. But thereafter, groups are to be trained by a Replicator like Tene.

Illiterate, about forty years old, and mother of eleven, Tene fits the profile of most of our Replicators. She was picked by her village because she’s smart and motivated; for most Replicators, this is both a tremendous honor and a burden.

That day, we attended a meeting with one of her seven groups. I admired her quiet confidence as she explained the saving procedure to this fledgling group. She patiently coached the group’s President and Treasurer as they attempted to run through the process for the first time. When they got it right, Tene led them in the SfC-hallmark 1-1-3-3-1 clap.

That day, my team’s mission was to evaluate the Replicators’ Guide, which is a pictorial instruction manual that guides people like Tene through the ten-meeting process of establishing a new savings group.

We pulled her aside for question-and-answer after the group meeting, and discussed her challenges as a Replicator.

Tene’s seventeen-year-old daughter is literate, and helps her to prepare for sessions. With seven groups, she spends about half of every day on SfC. She is not paid.

After a few minutes, Tene began to open up about the difficulties of being a Replicator. She hasn’t been to her peanut field in two weeks; one of her children has been sick, and between SfC and household work, she doesn’t have time for much else. Her husband is displeased, and thinks she should stop her work as a Replicator and spend more time at home. As we talked, she tended to her youngest, who is still breastfeeding. Tension was obvious in her face and her posture.

So when I asked her why she keeps committing to new groups, I was surprised by her sharp answer.

She knows how valuable this program is because of how much it’s helped her; when other women ask for help starting a new group, she can’t possibly refuse. And besides, among those groups of women, she’s respected. Her role has given her a chance to use her talents to impact her village. She has gained self-confidence and status in the village.

***

On our way out of the village, we made a point of visiting her family. I shook hands with her daughter, who seems every bit as brilliant as her mother described. I told her husband how impressed we are with his wife’s work. She’s talented, and her work helps other people a lot. It must be hard to have her away from home like that, and I appreciate his sacrifice and understanding in allowing her to be away that much.

Tene looked on with watery eyes.

***

And all of a sudden, the sacrifices I make to be here seemed pretty insignificant. Working with and for amazing people like Tene just might be one of the most important things I ever do with my life, and by that I am honored, driven, and humbled.

And it’s for people like her that I have chosen to stay.

new beginnings...

2010-09-09T13:28:00.000-07:00

ala ka here k'i nye

***

So I am officially and unmistakably moved out of my village. Tuesday was the big move. Here's what's new...

I extended with Peace Corps for another year. That means I'm here until October 2011. Yikes!

I moved into an apartment in Bamako. It has running (cold) water, power, fans, a bathroom, a kitchen counter and sink, balcony, and tile floors. I'm on the third floor of a pretty new building. Below me are a convenient store, two tailor shops, and a Senegalese restaurant. I'm already making friends, mostly at the restaurant (I know where my bread's buttered).

I have two work assignments...

First is with Oxfam, working in their Savings for Change program. They set up groups of 20-25 women who save money and lend it to each other (with interest). This encourages savings, facilitates entrepreneurship, and helps guard them from the worst shocks of life in Mali (sickness, crop failure, etc). Oxfam has scores of agents around the country supporting hundreds of these groups. Among other things, my mission is to facilitate partnerships between these agents and Peace Corps volunteers on the ground, who have a lot to offer each other.

click here for a video clip promoting the Savings for Change program

Second is at the Peace Corps bureau, where I'll be supporting other volunteers and staff in various projects. It's pretty broad for the moment, but once I get into it I think there are some exciting opportunities.

And that's what's new.

another apology...

2010-09-09T13:05:00.000-07:00

a kera fama ye...

***

So here I am again, apologizing to my readers (who I'm finding out are more numerous than I once thought) for not writing in decidedly too long.

The last few months were so jam-packed with goodbyes that I've had trouble keeping up with other parts of my life. I am now in a place with regular internet, and will try to clear the backlog of updates and blog themes in the coming days and weeks.

So, sorry it's been so long, and thanks to the people who have convinced me to stick with the writing. This time it'll be better.

malaria...

2010-07-29T20:00:00.000-07:00

ala k'a ban pewu...

***

So I got malaria.

Despite unwavering devotion to my prophylaxis and near-religious use of my bed-net, I came down with severe headaches and mild fevers last week. I identified it very quickly, and was tested the next day. It took two rounds of medication to knock it out, but I've been malaria-free for a few days now, and will head back to village in the morning, inshallah.

All things considered, I had a pretty mild case - it helped that I got testing and treatment immediately.

I think this is a good moment to mention that I live with people who consider malaria a fact of life. Of course, they have the advantage of genetic and developed immunity that I most certainly do not. Rainy season (now) is when malaria is most prolific, and it is paired with the heaviest workloads. While I had the luxuries of daily medical attention, top-notch pharmaceuticals, and an air-conditioned house, many people I know have to work in the field through days or weeks of malarial fevers. Needless to say, I'm counting my blessings.

Thanks to everyone who sent get-well wishes - it's always nice to know that my village in Ameriki is thinking of me.

cashews

2010-05-22T05:31:00.000-07:00

So the cashew training happened, and since nobody in America has any idea what a cashew looks like, I’ve decided to take this opportunity for a little show and tell. Apologies, but my witty prose will be largely absent from this post.

***

It turns out that the delicious cashew nut that we know in America comes attached to a delicious fruit, which has a sweet, but mildly astringent taste. These fruits only last a couple days after they’re removed from the tree, which is why you can’t buy them in your local supermarket. The fruits pictured below are already beginning to go bad…

***

In our training, we learned how to press the juice from cashew fruits with the medieval-looking gizmo below. Once pressed, the juice can be boiled to a syrup, which if bottled correctly, can preserve for up to a year…

***

The nuts come attached to the top of the fruit, and are encased in an impossibly hard, mildly toxic shell. That’s why Malians, who have been living in close proximity to cashews for at least a century, aren’t familiar with the delicious nut that we have come to love in America. (Note: it didn’t occur to me until too late to take a picture of the fruit and the nut while attached – if you’re really interested, click here)…

***

To release that toxic business and soften the shell for cracking, the nuts are steamed in the contraption below. For those who are thinking this cooking setup is rather Flintstones-esque, you’re right. Almost all village-Malian kitchens look like this…

***

Cool the nuts and dry them in the sun, and then it’s time to get cracking. For the sake of a free shoutout, the gentleman pictured in the picture here is the president of the cooperative that brought this whole thing together, and a dear friend. He deserves credit for the making of cashews in Narena – and frankly a lot more than that (see previous post where I talk about him introducing the cucumber). Also - the white guy featured below is yours truly…

***

Some other steps follow – there’s a ‘skin’ inside the shell that has to be removed, and then the cashews are roasted, salted, packaged, etc. All of which leads to the beautiful sight featured below – roasted, salted, packaged cashews, ready for sale. I should note that within only a couple days of the training, all our cashews were sold-out. That puts money in peoples’ pockets, bodes well for the future of the project, and makes me a very happy business-development volunteer…

***

And here are the people who did it…

sheep update...

2010-05-22T05:06:00.000-07:00

So it’s time to fess up – I didn’t want to tell you, but you're all grown-ups, so here goes… my sheep died.

We had bought her from someone who lives on the other side of town. Since her family is there, she would run off to spend her days with them, and we would go to pick her up in the evenings. After awhile, she started coming back on her own, and it never really bothered me that she didn’t want to hang out with me during the day. Besides, I have work to do, and there’s only so much entertainment to be gained from a sheep.

But her family lived on the other side of the street, and one day about six weeks ago as she was crossing to come home in the afternoon, she was hit by a moto. She made it home, but died that night, leaving us to care for her one-month old lamb.

Yes it was sad – especially to see her hurting in the last hours, and to hear the baby cry for a number of days with unmistakable emotion. She had become a part of the family, and shall be missed.

***

Not to minimize the loss, but some humorous moments followed.

A day after she died, it became clear that we were going to have to do something to keep the baby fed. At one month, he was not even close to weaning.

And so that morning I walked out of my house and into my family’s courtyard to the sound of a sheep screaming bloody murder. Host mom had ahold of its neck, host sister its back legs. They both looked at me with an embarrassed smile – like I had caught them, hands in the cookie jar. It took me a minute to figure out that they were not so much torturing this sheep as feeding the lamb.

So every day, we set millet chaff out for any four-legged passersby – of which there is no shortage in Narena. The cows, goats, and man-sheeps were quickly chased away. The woman-sheeps were allowed to stay for a moment, then cornered, then pinned.

Anyone who has ever kept animals can tell you that chasing them is potentially frustrating, but undeniably fun. The whole family got in on the act – partly because our lamb needed it, but mostly because it was hilarious to try to track down these passing sheep, grab and pin them so that the baby could eat. And success came quickly; with the whole family in on the act, the baby ate numerous times daily, and grew at a surprising rate.

We tried not to tell too many people – after all, this is not far removed from stealing. But after awhile it became impossible to hide what we were doing. Unfortunately, word also got out among the village sheep, and they stopped coming around.

But as luck would have it, by then the neighborhood kids had witnessed the thrill of feeding our orphaned lamb, and became more than willing participants – thus multiplying our forces, and increasing our coverage area tenfold.

We would sit around drinking tea, and occasionally an out-of-breath four year old would run into our courtyard, addressing my host-mom, “Sayon, we got one!” At which point Sayon would jump up, hurriedly grab the lamb, and run over to wherever the kids had pinned some poor, unsuspecting passerby.

The lamb, named Senidia, has mostly moved on to big-sheep food and powdered milk, and occasionally people-food and sheep’s-milk when he gets lucky. He now follows my host-mom to the morning market to buy vegetables, and is the darling of the neighborhood.

He is doing just fine, but it took a village.

it's a boy!

2010-03-22T05:11:00.000-07:00

By popular demand, I bring you my baby sheep (lamb, if you prefer), at about two days.

bits of life

2010-03-10T03:56:00.000-08:00

Just a couple little bits as I’m on a one-day swing through Bamako:

1) My last post garnered a lot of check-ins from friends and family, for which I am tremendously grateful. It’s nice to know someone’s still paying attention. I also received more than one gentle correction on my use of the phrase “baby sheeps”. Yes, they are “sheep”, not “sheeps”. Also, a “baby sheep” is more properly called a lamb. “Baby sheeps”, therefore, are lambs. Thank you to the English majors and shepherds (lambherds?) among you. Extra points for anyone who can tell me definitively if the owner of one sheep qualifies as a shepherd. Does the title necessitate an entire herd, or can one be a herder (a herd?) of a single sheep? I only ask because, as of this writing, there are still no baby sheeps. My family says “any day now”, but they’ve been saying that for like a month, which kind of calls their credibility into question.

2) On the phone the other day, my father noted that he had checked the temperature in Bamako the other day. Until he barged in with his internets, all I knew was that it was “stinking hot”. Apparently, we’re hitting 107 daytime, and at 2am one morning (my time), he checked to find it was still 90. I don’t want to whine, because it’s about to get a lot worse, but its probably ten degrees hotter inside my house. For a second, I thought I was just being a wimp, but then Mali’s national press carried a story about how this is the hottest beginning of March on record. In reality, this means that nobody goes to bed before midnight because it’s too hot to go inside. Also, I do absolutely nothing between lunch and 4pm, which if you ask me is a perfect nap-time window, except that it’s infringing on actual work. To be honest, except for the sleeping thing, it’s not yet intolerable… more whining to come.

3) In Mali, we have cashew fruits. I know, most readers are more familiar with the delicious cashew nut, but it turns out that in its natural state, the nut is encased in an impossibly-hard, un-tasty knob on the end of a juicy, delicious red or yellow fruit. In fact, I didn’t recognize said fruit as “cashew” until another Volunteer explained it to me. Anytime I’ve told Malians about cashew nuts, they look at me like I have three heads. When I tell them what we pay for said nuts in Ameriki, five heads. I’m hoping to do a training on how to extract, package, and sell said nuts. Cashew season is in full-swing, so I’ll need to hurry.

some updates...

2010-02-24T05:21:00.000-08:00

I realized that it's been forever since I gave an update as to what and how I am doing. Without trying to catch everyone up on the last year of my life, I'll try to hit some high points, rapid-fire.

1) I just got back from a much-needed vacation in Senegal. Despite a few run ins with pick-pockets, thieves, and corrupt policemen and border officials, I really enjoyed Senegal. For those who are worried, the pick-pockets got nothing, nor did the corrupt border officials (besides a few hours of my life). And I only parted with a couple bucks to get away from the shady policeman - well worth the story, imho. Dakar was beautiful and cool (as in not hot) and very metropolitan - a huge difference from Bamako. I also went south of Dakar to sit on the beach for a few days and get fat and tan. Mission accomplished.

2) Here we are at the very beginning of another hot season. I fell apart in the last hot season, and can only hope the lessons of last year make me more comfortable this time. Sleeping is getting hard already, and this won't end until June.

3) My two-year service technically ends in September, though I have been exploring options for a third year. It's not confirmed yet, but seems likely that I will still be here come October. That is if hot season doesn't kill me first.

4) My mobile bank has been in trouble for awhile now. There's a lot of demand for the services, but not enough qualified people to run it. It's kinda my job to get people qualified, but all the people I can find are very busy supporting their own families, and many of our best workers have fallen away from the program. It's disappointing, but I am currently looking for ways to dissolve the mobile bank while preserving some of the better-working parts. It promises to be difficult, and a little messy, but I'm glad we're doing it now, in an orderly fashion, and while I'm available to help troubleshoot.

5) My artisan's cooperative is finally starting to take off. Meetings have become more regular and more productive. We have formed smaller subgroups (masons, carpenters, tailors, fabric dyers, etc.) and are starting to identify strategies for each subgroup to help themselves and each other. It's really rewarding to see my Malian counterparts begin to coalesce around a shared vision, and to step into the active leadership roles. I can't express how thrilled I am that this is working.

6) I started working with a rock-star gardener in my town. He claims to have introduced the cucumber to my town in the 1980's, and likes to recount how he had to teach people that cucumbers should be eaten raw, not boiled for hours like most other Malian food. In the early days, he had to give a few people's money back. Now cucumbers are a seasonal staple. He has also had some luck introducing carrots, and is now trying with green onions. I have really enjoyed working with him, and we have started a number of projects. My favorite is cultivating basil, which grows like a weed here, but nobody realizes it can be eaten. In the next few weeks I'm planning to make pesto for him and my host family. We are also joint-teaching improved tree-planting methods and urine fertilization (only mildly more complicated than "pee on your plants"). He's really brilliant, and frankly I think he's teaching me more than I can teach him, but it's been fun for both of us, and I'm finding that to be most important anyhow.

7) I bought a sheep. Her name is Rokia, and she was an investment - a joint venture, if you will. The deal was that I would buy her, my host mom would take care of her (since I know next to nothing of shepherding), and host mom would get all the babies. Host mom has taken these duties quite seriously, and Rokia has become a part of the family. All the women at the morning market now know Rokia because she follows Sayon (host mom) to market and back every day. It's pretty cute, and the whole town regularly asks me how my sheep is doing. I've been away from village for a couple weeks, but there should be baby sheeps by the time I get back. Pictures to come (inshallah).

There's plenty more to say, but I think I've said enough for the moment. I'm back to Narena this afternoon - wish me luck.

gold rush

2010-02-02T05:23:00.001-08:00

So I've been meaning to publish this for a really long time, but had trouble uploading the photos, and I didn't think I could do the story justice without.

Almost a year ago now, I went down to the mine. There are a ton of mines throughout Mali, and trade in gold was responsible for the rise of many of Mali's empires in the past. Indeed, the city of Timbuktu gained its legendary status as a center of the gold trade in the 14th century. Today, Mali's mines come in a couple flavors - we have the highly-producing mines, which are usually taken over by European (or South African) companies and highly mechanized; the moderately-producing mines that bring in miners from all over the country, but do not produce enough gold to bring outside investment; and the community mines, which act as a significant income supplement for locals who usually live less than a day's walk from the mine, but don't produce enough to bring the more serious prospectors.

These places have rules, mythologies, and spiritualities all their own. In many ways they remind me of the legends I heard in grade school about the California gold rush. For the mechanized mines, and more producing local mines, whole towns pop up on the outskirts of the mine, with basic services like bakeries, restaurants, and hotels. This year's hotspot is the Dagala mine, about fifty kilometers on a bad road from Narena. Hundreds (maybe more) of men and women have left town to try their luck.

The mines are loosely organized, and for a small fee anyone can prospect there. You keep what you find. Apparently at Dagala, the success of a site is measured in how many motos the gold will buy. Obviously, not everyone can just up and leave town, and thus the smaller local mine remains active as well. Most women, who simply don't have the strength to dig all day long, will go to wash the dirt from the mine in search of few flecks of gold (a technique similar to the panning methods I learned in fourth grade). My host mom does that fairly regularly, and a day's work usually yields about a tenth of a gram, which she can sell for about two bucks.

In search of some greater understanding about the operation of these places, I went to the small Djelibani mine, which many of my villagers walk to daily. I chose a day when they were giving a sacrifice to open a new section of the mine (As a sidebar: in my rather uninformed opinion, it really shouldn't qualify as a sacrifice if you're going to eat it, but I'm not in charge). The atmosphere was that of a prayer service - about a hundred and fifty men (women don't do sacrifices) were seated on the ground, and the important ones were all given a chance to speak.

I've left out the photos, but they sacrificed a bull, consecrating the site of the new mine.

After that, they arranged themselves in lines, with about fifteen feet between people. And sat on the ground.

Then they raised their picks and struck the ground, loosening the soil until there was enough to fill a bucket, which they dumped a few feet away. Pick to dirt, dirt to bucket, bucket up out of the well, dump a few feet away, lower bucket back down, pick to dirt, repeat.

And they kept digging... At Djelibani, they have to dig about fifteen or twenty feet before hiting groundwater (in the dry season). At that point, they tunnel between wells, in search of veins of gold. Sometimes they find some, sometimes, they don't. Then they find a new place to sit on the ground, and do it again.

To address some of the crazier points of this occupation, allow me to elaborate...

It takes about a week to dig fifteen feet. In the best stories of Djelibani, one well can wield up to fifty or a hundred dollars worth of gold. At Dagala (where yields are measured in motos), they have to go much, much deeper - I've heard twenty meters, which takes about two months. The work is brutally hard (see shoulders of the gentleman above). They often have to pick their way through boulders. Most of this happens in the hottest part of the year.

Not to restate the obvious, but twenty feet is a long way down (not to mention twenty meters). For a person to get into these holes, they use no elevators, mechanical contraptions, or even ropes; they simply put their back against one side of the well and their feet in front of them, against the other side of the well. Then they slowly walk their way down. It's the same to get out.

There are no engineers for this process, and the mines often collapse. Most collapses happen long after the people have left the mine, but there are really no guarantees. Two years ago a collapse nearby killed dozens of people. They tell me that the next day, everyone was back at it.

There is really no way to backfill these things once they are dug, and sheep and cows occasionally wander into the mine, and fall into a well. Very rarely, children do the same.

Needless to say, I was blown away by my visit there. My most striking realization, however, was that this is one of the better economic opportunities available, at somewhere between two and eight dollars a day.

god's will...

2010-01-26T13:50:00.000-08:00

I can still recall my introduction to “god’s will”, sitting in a panel discussion of entrepreneurs during Pre-Service Training. A talented tailor, and seemingly equally-talented businessman was asked about his selection of a fantastically visible location for his shop. He thought about it for a moment – as though he hadn’t considered it – and replied that it was simply “god’s will” that he have a great shop in a great location on a busy road. You could practically hear the collective eye-roll of eight hard-charging, highly-educated Americans as we tried to unpack that bit of nonsense.

As we continued through training, it came up so often that it stopped surprising us. As business-development volunteers, we came to teach entrepreneurship, planning, organization, and analysis. It has often seemed that these things are exactly opposed to the popular conception of “god’s will”. It’s become so cliché that, among volunteers, we use phrases like “inshallah” (Arabic for “god willing”) and “ni ala sonna” (Bambara for the same) with that now-familiar sarcastic eye-roll.

***

The end of hot season is like a sneeze that just won’t come. The heat is relentless, the air is thick. Every day you look skyward, certain that this is it – it can’t build up any more. Every night over dinner, everyone expresses absolute certainty that it can’t last another day. I’m confident that if rain doesn’t come this week, I’m quitting. Sleep is fitful at best.

For me it’s just about escaping the heat; for them, it’s a lot more. If the rains come early, everyone has to make a gamble – do we plant early, and hope it isn’t a false start, or do we wait a couple weeks and maybe miss valuable weeks of the growing season. If the rains come late, or not at all, what happens then? In this game there are no safe bets, and the stakes are high.

The end of rainy season is much the same. The millet is tall (sometimes twelve feet or more), but the grain isn’t quite ready for harvest. Last year’s grain is probably gone; food is scarce, expensive. Things are starting to dry out. In this state, pests are a tremendous threat to the nearly-ready crops. A high wind right now could knock out a whole year’s worth of food. Fire could do the same.

At these times especially, it is absolutely palpable in this community of subsistence farmers – the whole village is holding their breath.

***

Now that I’ve seen one whole sky (or rain, or year, depending on your translation), I can see how each of these moments effects all the others. I can remember asking last year how Diarra felt about the harvest. His response was a half-hearted “it’ll do”. It’s hard to tell in moments like that if people are just being modest, or concealing the fear that it won’t.

Throughout the year, we spoke rarely of the family’s grain stores. Once or twice, Diarra expresses to me how he’s glad to have guests – he always has some family member staying for weeks or months – but that his grain stores are diminishing faster than he had hoped. Somehow they always manage, but that doesn’t make the situation any better. I could see the desperation in his eyes.

They’re my family, and so when I returned from America, I bought a $40 bag of millet (100 kilos), telling them it was a gift from my American family to my Malian one. The next day, Diarra told me he hadn’t slept that night – that each moment he had one eye on that full sack of grain, pondering his luck. He later told me that at that moment, the family didn’t have two weeks worth of grain (and about five months to go before the harvest). 100 kilos of millet makes a lot of to, but it doesn’t last five months, and they ended up taking corn on loan from a family member to fill the gap. In those last weeks before the harvest, we ate a lot of corn.

***

This year, Diarra invited me to come view the harvest, “Wolo, you must come to my fields – I want you to see it.” Despite being an incredibly busy Peace Corps Volunteer, I was thrilled to lug my camera the couple miles to their fields for a guided tour.

Knowing the story of last year, I was a little afraid to ask: How much millet did we harvest this year? How much last year?

It turns out that Diarra’s eyes had kept him away from the fields last year – time in the sun causes tremendous dryness and headaches, and he does his best, but he’s getting old. This year he felt a lot better, and was able to go to the fields regularly. Last year’s harvest was 350 kilos (he knew he was lying with “it’ll do”). This year, with pride, he tells me that we’re sitting on about 1,000 kilos.

Thrilled, I tell him, “That’s great, Diarra, good work.”

Modestly, he replies, “It was God’s will.”

I can’t disagree.

***

a ton of millet

***

peanuts

Faces

2009-10-23T07:29:00.001-07:00

Just wanted to share a couple pictures of some of my villagers from the end-of-Ramadan feast.

I mentioned last year that for this feast, all the kids get dressed up in the afternoon, walk around town looking for unsuspecting adults, and then give them a number of blessings. For this dubious service, they expect a financial contribution to their pockets. I gave in a couple times this year. Here's one group...

This little man, Solo, is the youngest of the mayor's sixteen children (that's by my own, unofficial count). He's for sure one of daddy's favorites, and it's easy to see why...

Another of the mayor's family, Burama, often quizzes me about his favorite rappers, Aykon, Snope Dog, and a number of others whose names I can't decipher...

There are a number of children in village who are incredibly afraid of my white skin. This one's mother insists on me taking photos of her anyhow...

And finally, I never got all of them together, but there was a whole family of kids running around with these shirts. I would bet that Barack Obama is the top-selling clothing brand in Mali right now.

A follow-up on "Desertification"

2009-10-23T07:15:00.000-07:00

My "Desertification" post described a number of themes common throughout Africa. Natural resources are more valuable than human ones (labor, invention, etc). Resources - in this case, wood - are often extracted with little regard for the environmental impact. The communities are too poor to stop said extraction, leading both to a loss of their natural resources, and to environmental difficulties down the road.

In this case, the specific environmental impacts concerned are significant. At the very least, they lose the wood with no compensation, causing people to have to go farther and farther for firewood (which they require daily for cooking). But potentially worse, the impact expands to include desertification, which can lead to crop failures and food shortages.

And the village ends up dealing with the consequences because they don't have the power to stop it.

Except when they do.

And so it came to pass that, after the election of a new mayor (not the gentleman mentioned in my story), the commune of Narena began seizing charcoal by the truckload. All illegally harvested, all headed for Bamako. It came in to the mayor's office over a series of weeks, and sat there for days - a warning to all other would-be wood-bandits. After discussions with the community, the mayor's office sold it themselves, returning the proceeds to the commune.

It was a rare victory for good governance in a place where victories are hard to come by.

And I thought you'd like to know.

sorry guys...

2009-10-23T07:13:00.000-07:00

I've been away from the blog for too long. It's partly because I've been busy; since my last post, I've been to America, trained Peace Corps Mali's new volunteers, and increased the amount of work I'm doing with my mobile bank. It's partly because sometimes I have so much to say that it doesn't fit neatly into a blog entry. It's partly because as my Bambara gets better, my English actually is getting worse, and my writing feels sloppy. And it's partly because this doesn't feel new to me anymore, and there is therefore less to say.

Not to mention, as one dear reader put it, it's partly because I just look so good rocking that Obama shirt, I didn't want to cover it with a new post.

And while those are all halfway decent excuses, I must acknowledge that it's largely because I just haven't done it. So please excuse.

Now, on with the show...

Maison des Artisans

2009-06-03T21:20:00.000-07:00

On Monday, I had the great pleasure of celebrating the inauguration of a meeting and training center for my artisans' cooperative. It took a lot of hard work in the hot African sun with no power tools and a number of other barriers. We celebrated with a ribbon-cutting, and one very large sheep.

In truth, I deserve very little credit for their success. The project was conceived and funded with help from my predecessor, Pete (who was on hand for the inauguration), was built by the masons in the cooperative, and was managed superbly by the president of the cooperative (who happens to be the cooperative's only female member).

I am proud of them for what they have accomplished, and glad to be a part of the team. I hope the energy around our new building will translate into classes and collaboration and better business managers.

It was great to celebrate this milestone, and I look forward to many more with them. But there's lots of good and exciting work still to be done.

... and in case you were wondering, I am indeed wearing a shirt made of Barack Obama fabric.

Desertification

2009-04-29T05:34:00.000-07:00

Desertification is a big word that I learned in that fancy private school I went to.

It means that the Sahara is growing. By some estimates, the sand is creeping southward by fifty kilometers every year. I don’t think anyone knows for sure whether it’s caused by global warming, or amplified by human activity. Some years some scientists say it’s getting better. That’s all subject to debate.

But among the locals, there is no such debate. They tell me that is that desertification is happening. They tell me that every year feels a little hotter than the last. They tell me that every year, the sky gives a little less rain, and the ground gives a little less food. The vegetation is thinning, and the desert continues to creep.

***

I live in a small town on a good road, not that far from Guinea, and not that far from Bamako. Bamako is a densely populated, highly underdeveloped capital city. In Bamako, there are banks and restaurants, air conditioning and power. But the vast majority of Bamakoans eat meals that have been cooked over fires. Fires that are made with wood. Wood that doesn't grow in Bamako.

In fact, that wood comes in from all over the region. It comes in big trucks that are loaded with thousands of sacks of charcoal. In Bamako, those sacks of charcoal are sold for a lot of money, and some even continue further north, deeper into the sand.

The other day, sitting at my bus stop with one of the candidates in the mayoral election (he lost), I watched as four men loaded one such truck until it was brimming with charcoal. I listened as the man-who-would-be-mayor told me how much he hated watching those trucks leave Narena. He estimates they go at a rate of five a day. At that rate, he calculates that Narena's way of life will be threatened within one generation.

***

A few weeks ago, there was an important meeting at the mayor's office. People came early and sat waiting for hours as parties from far-flung border villages trickled in. Representatives came from Guinea.

As is often the case, I was completely in the dark, and had to ask for an explanation. This is what I got:

Away from the road, nobody has bothered to mark the boundary between Mali and Guinea. Every village knows that it is in one country or the other, but the space between villages is a kind of no-man's land. Or, perhaps more appropriately, every-man's land.

In one such every-man's land, a small international incident has broken out. It's over wood. Men just like the ones who cut wood in Narena to sell in Bamako have been operating further south as well. Apparently, some have gone too far into every-man's land, and the small Guinean village next door has begun to push back.

By push back, I mean that they have taken prisoners and torched houses. Natural resources are serious business anywhere in the world, and this is no exception. The mayor's office staff tells me that similar circumstances sparked the war with Burkina Faso twenty years ago. Everyone takes this meeting seriously, and it is the first of many. Patrols are set up to try to keep the peace.

***

The man-who-would-be-mayor tells me that he doesn’t know what else to do.

The commune has issued ordinances against the cutting of wood destined for Bamako, but it is filled with legal and logistical holes. Besides, who’s going to enforce it? There is a tax on trucks of charcoal – a little over a hundred bucks each. My own back-of the-envelope guess says it needs to be ten times that to make any difference.

As I get ready to leave the bus stop, I realize that he isn't done talking. It's rare that someone who knows the history and complexities of a problem like this also has the time and the patience to explain it all to me. I let him finish.

"Sure," he says, "they make good money cutting all that wood and hauling it to Bamako. But most of them don't live here, and when the wood is gone, so are they. And my children will be left impoverished because of it."

A day in the life...

2009-04-24T09:23:00.000-07:00

I've been getting lots of questions about my work. Looking at what I've written here, I realize that I've written very little about it, though it takes up a tremendous portion of my time. It's hard for me to know where to start - how to explain that I'm in charge of a lot, but not in charge of anything? How to explain "mobile banking" that doesn't include internet and cell phones?

I thought it might be best, at least to start, with a blow-by-blow of a day in the life.

One quick note for journalistic integrity: not all days are this busy. This particular sampling makes me look like a model volunteer. Which I am. Some days.

At 6am I get up. I'm the last one in my concession awake. A bucket of water sits outside my door for bathing. I start some tea on my gas stove (the Malians cook over fires), and run to shower. It's well water, and in the seventy-degree morning chill, it’s fantastically refreshing.

At 7am my bike is packed, and I step out to greet my family. Diarra greets me with the same complex set of questions and blessings as every other day (ending with my favorite, "May God find big money for us to put in our pockets"). I respond with an especially enthusiastic "Amen" to that one. I am going on collections today.

On my way out of town, I stop by my butiki (Bambara for the French "boutique") for fresh bread – I didn't have time for millet porridge on my way out. I head West, towards the Guinea border, and a small village called Bayan. The air is fresh and the sky is clear - it's going to be a hot day. In five miles of riding, I see only a couple cars. Just before getting to Bayan, I stop to put on my dress shirt. It's not quite freshly pressed, but I'll look professional when I show up.

The mobile caisse in Bayan turns three weeks old today. They have four clients, two collectors, and me. I missed their collection last week, and spend the first half-hour reviewing their books for mistakes - we have a ways to go. As I review the errors with the collectors, I congratulate myself for resisting my American impulse to push for more clients at the beginning.

Our clients each put away twenty or forty cents a day. On a weekly basis, that comes to a buck and change. My collectors diligently gather all of it, recording it in the clients' books, and in their own. Each client invites us to sit and talk. We give in once.

Collections done, we go back to do the day's accounting. With four clients it's a breeze, but I'm certain they couldn't do it with twenty. My target for them is forty (they don't know that). There are thirty dollars in the caisse. So far, so good.

They invite me to stay for tea. It's ten, and I'm not excited to go back in the heat. I agree to the first round (they always have three). They offer me peanuts, cigarettes, mangoes, and kola nuts. I refuse only the cigarette. After the second round of tea, with the sun getting high, I tell them I have to go. They lodge mild objections, but tell me they will allow it. They walk me to the street.

Back in Narena, I immediately take a bucket bath. I don't bother drying off - it's pointless. Aside from eating, the next four hours are spent avoiding the sun, and putting wet pieces of cloth over myself as I lay in my hammock. I make no attempts to work. Thinking makes my head hurt.

I have another bucket bath at three to cool down before the big ride to Solabuguda. There's a meeting at four, and I ride hard for thirty minutes in the stifling heat to get there. I've asked the Peace Corps for permission to ride a moto on these trips, and today's ride makes me curse the bureaucracy still "processing" my request. My head pounds when I get to Solabuguda. My partners, who travel by moto, were to pray at four and then leave. They make it around quarter to five.

The meeting is to explain the mobile caisse to potential clients in the villages. We already have two collectors and a dozen clients (mostly men), but after a year, the village's initial enthusiasm has not turned into people saving money. I've asked my partners in the village to make sure women are well represented at this meeting. At many village meetings they're not excluded, they're just not asked to come. Some show up. I repeat my motto “small changes” as I notice them sitting behind the circle of men, as is customary.

They ask lots of questions - about fees, withdrawals, and security; about who calls the shots, and how their collectors are compensated. All things I expected, all things that should have been clear a year ago. In a mostly illiterate society, there are no glossy brochures to advertise, only word of mouth. Misperceptions grow exponentially. I constantly repeat myself.

With the meeting over, I confirm the details of our first collection. Everyone agrees it was a good meeting, and we may have some potential clients. I'm excited for what my next visit holds.

My job there done, I hop on my bike and ride back to the main road, turning west into the setting sun. A cool breeze rushes past me as I push it into high gear, glad to have made it through another day, not at the office.

Fatoumata

2009-03-16T11:10:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, we buried my host sister's three-week-old daughter.

Her name was Fatoumata, and she was, of course, beautiful.

The details of her death are still too raw for me to share.

Among those she left behind are: her mother, Nana, who only cries when nobody's looking, and her twin brother, Lassina, whose odds of survival increased with her passing, but remain daunting.

And me, who is trying to find sense and meaning in something that simply has no reason.

I am sad, but mostly angry - and I hope this marks the low point of my service.

A follow-up on stars

2009-03-11T03:12:00.000-07:00

There's always more to say than there is time to say it, and especially so this time. This trip to Bamako was almost entirely business, but I couldn't leave without sharing this story:

So the other night, like many nights, I'm hanging around and chatting with my host family after dinner. With no television, internet, or electricity, it's not like there's much else to do.

I don't recall exactly, but somehow we get on the subject of NASA. My 28-year-old host mom, Sayon, who is the least educated adult in the family, asks what it is. I pondered for a minute how I might explain space explanation, satellites, and other NASA creations. I don't have words for those things in Bambara, and I suspect she doesn't either. So I tell her that they make things that fly. They can fly really, really high, and go really far. Yes, higher than airplanes. Yes, sometimes they put people in them.

She nods, and immediately I know that my first attempt didn't quite deliver the impact of "exploring outer space". So I tell her that one time, they made an airplane that flew to the moon, and that a man got out and walked around.

She looks up, ponders it for just a moment, and then looks back at me and asks, "Like at night?"

* * *

... I know its good for a laugh. Hell, I laugh every time I think about it. But I hesitated to post that story. In America, if I had that exchange with a non-child, I would consider them incredibly, hopelessly stupid. I know that in releasing this story into the wild, I risk caricaturing Malians in a way that mocks them.

In approaching Malians in their own environment, and on their own terms, I can appreciate the ways that they are smarter than me. Indeed, nine times out of ten it is "this guy" who asks the juvenile questions. When I go to work in the garden, I am usually assigned a seven-year-old, who makes sure I am pulling the right plants, and then adds insult to injury by working circles around me.

But after months of wondering what they see when they look at the stars, I'm finally starting to get it.

short and sweet...

2009-02-25T03:19:00.000-08:00

A few rapid-fire items for your reading pleasure (all three of you)...

1) Cold season is over. It's not hot season yet, and daily temperatures are "only" in the high nineties or low hundreds. Yuck.

2) With the heat comes the mangoes. I had a couple the other day that ripened early, and they were fantastic. In my town, the fruit is still green, but the trees are sagging from their weight. I have to watch my head as I walk around town, because some of them are low enough to bop me. I'm told that at the height of mango season, they go for roughly a penny each in my town - if you're too lazy to pick your own.

3) I'm trying to build a mango dryer to take advantage of the "hundred mangoes for a buck" ridiculousness that is coming. I've asked around town and nobody here believes me when I tell them you can dry mangoes. When I tell them how much we pay for them in America, they're utterly appalled.

4) I bought a hammock and strung it up in front of my door, under the banana tree. It's hand-made, and I paid about five bucks for it to be made and installed. My host family is convinced that I got ripped off - I mean, that could buy five-hundred mangoes. In its first week, my hammock was host to four naps and the reading of one entire book.

5) Despite all the nap-taking, book-reading, hammock-laying, and mango-dryer-making, I am actually getting a few things done here that more directly relate to my job. Right now we are constructing a building for the Artisans' Cooperative. It's going slowly, but we now have walls, and the roof will go on in the next couple weeks. I am quickly learning that Americans spend way too much money on tools when pointy rocks would do. My biggest problem is trying to convince the members of the cooperative that the most important part of the building comes in using it after it's built. Again, progress is slow.

6) We're in the middle of dry season, and until the rains come again, the earth is too cracked and dry for any real farming, so people around town have lots of time. Many are going to the gold mine that is about ten kilometers outside of town. They work all day in the heat, and it's extremely dangerous. For a day of mining, they can usually find a little less than a tenth of a gram, which fetches about two bucks. I'm convinced they're getting ripped off by the local buyers, but don't know enough to be sure.

7) Tomorrow there is a traditional ceremony that officially opens the gold mine for the year, complete with masks, divinations, and the consumption of at least one cow. Yes, I'm going. Yes, I'm bringing my camera. Hopefully I'll get the pictures up for your viewing pleasure next time.

8) My twenty-year old host sister had twins over the weekend. She intended to go to a hospital in Bamako to give birth, but she didn't know it was twins, and therefore didn't really guess that she would deliver early. She delivered at the maternity in Narena. It sounds like everyone is healthy - I'm going home to check it out and meet them.

I'm hopping a bus back to town in an hour, so I'd better get moving. There's always so much more to post, and so little internet with which to post it. Until next time...

Liar Liar

2009-01-27T05:28:00.000-08:00

It is customary here to invite passersby to come eat with you if you are eating. The appropriate response is invariably some form of “I’m full,” or, “Gee whiz, I just ate, but thanks!” Before I understood the rules, there were many occasions when I offended people by not “inviting” them to eat with me

Similarly, on an almost-daily basis I get invited to go to the fields with someone, which usually goes something like the following:

Them: “Tomorrow, let’s go to the fields together to cut millet.”
Me: “Sounds good, but... ooh, I’m all booked up for tomorrow. How about the day after tomorrow?”
Them: “Okay, that sounds good.”
Me: “Ooh… I might be busy that day too, but definitely the day after that.”
Them: “Okay, see you then.”

Anytime I have been in Bamako, people ask me where their present is (bread is a popular one). That goes something like this:

Them: “So you were in Bamako - how is everyone there?”
Me: “They’re all great, and they all said to say hi to you.”
Them: “Where’s my present?”
Me: “It’s coming.”
Them: “Okay, great.”

If I’m feeling creative, or trying to entertain a crowd, the following ensues:

Me: “You see, it was too big for me to put in my bag, so I hired a donkey cart and driver to bring it here. I’m sure it will be here soon.”
Them: “Great, so tomorrow?”
Me: “Maybe… for sure by the day after.”

If they’re persistent, two days later they’re back at it:

Them: “My present hasn’t come yet.”
Me: “It hasn’t! That’s unbelievable! The donkey cart driver must have run off with it. I’m so sorry.”

Another popular one is for people to ask for my stuff. I’m a little less crafty with that one, because it’s hard to separate the people who are just kidding from the ones who are simply shameless. They often ask for my watch, my glasses, my water bottle, or my shirt.

In that circumstance, I have a variety of distasteful options. If I’m pretty sure they are actually kidding, I can call their bluff (I’ve not yet gotten my shirt fully unbuttoned, but I’ve come close). I can pretend to not understand what they said for long enough that they simply give up – though someday soon that one won’t work anymore. Finally, if I’m pretty sure they’re not kidding, or if I’m simply sick of them (I’m a volunteer - not a saint), I can tell them that I’m not giving them my watch because I don’t like them, and if they want one like it, they should get a job. I try to avoid that last one, but hey, we all have bad days.

For the most part, it’s all cute and playful and fun, and it’s great language practice. The trouble is that I’m starting to know people enough that they’re not all kidding anymore. I’ve been invited to tea a number of times recently (the correct response is always “Yeah, this afternoon sounds great”), and clearly offended people when I stood them up. I’ve gotten so accustomed to blowing people off that I’m doing it out of habit now. They’re forgiving, but that’s particularly damaging for a new guy who’s trying to make friends.

Dogon Christmas

2009-01-27T02:55:00.000-08:00

This was my first Christmas away from home. I got a couple phone calls from home to "check in" (as in, "we hope you're not hungry, alone, and crying in your mud hut this Christmas"). To be honest, I was a little concerned too - despite my fierce independent streak, my family is important to me, and there's no time like the holidays for feeling far away. It was really nice to hear from family and friends, and I certainly appreciated all the love sent from various corners of home.

But in the end, I had a fantastic - if unconventional - Christmas with a number of Peace Corps volunteers in Dogon Country. We celebrated Christmas with roast pig and millet beer, and hiked for a few days around the cliffs. For those worried about the condition of my soul out here in Muslim-land, you'll be glad to know that I found a Church for midnight mass. Though the language was Dogon (I speak Bambara), and the mass was quite foreign, there were a handful of volunteers there, so it still felt comfortable.

The Dogon people have an incredible history. About a gazillion years ago, Tellem pygmies lived in the cliffs, which were replaced maybe half a gazillion years ago by the Dogon people. Apparently they lived in peace together (the Tellem in the cliffs, and the Dogon just below), which is evidenced by the average height of the Dogons. Because of their inaccessibility, they were incredibly insulated from the various empires that conquered other parts of Mali over the centuries. That preserved their culture and way of life through some very tumultuous times, and makes it a window on the past for tourists adventurous enough to make the journey.

In one of the villages, a man who is older than dirt sits at the entry. I was told that he is the oldest man in Dogon country, and that he is one hundred and six years old. In a country where nobody knows their birthday (even now), I doubt that this guy is actually a hundred and six, but for a moment, lets give him the benefit of the doubt. He has lived through two world wars and a cold war. Since he was born, the airplane, the radio, the telephone, the computer and the internet have come into the world. I looked at his gnarled hands and feet, imagining the life that he has lived. Not only has most of the last century not affected his way of life - I'm not even sure if he's aware of it. For a few minutes, I wished I could speak Dogon.

The Dogon people are known for their incredibly intricate doors and masks, and for their unlikely dwellings. I can't do them justice in words, so here's a few images to help:

... this is a people-sized house

... a classic model of Dogon door

... mask dance - one of the highlights

... this guy's mask is like twelve feet tall - he touched it to the ground in front of him and behind him, and whirled it around like a helicopter - it was pretty unbelievable

Djenne

2009-01-27T01:41:00.001-08:00

The Peace Corps requires that we stay close to home for our first three months of service. For me, that ended on the twelfth of December. Within days, I was packed and on a bus, headed northeast, towards Djenne and Bandiagara.

The whole day's journey getting to Djenne was, in a word, harrowing. I was once woken from something like sleep when the cargo door (previously under the bus) flew past my window. It stopped the bus for at least an hour as close to the middle of nowhere as this adventurer has ever been, but wasn't anything that bubble gum and bailing wire couldn't fix.

There is also a "transfer" to get into Djenne at a fork in the road where everyone's a bandit and I was the only white guy. The more upstanding of those bandits threaten tourists with the possibility of having to spend the night on the side of the road to cajole them into paying exorbitant sums for a half-hour car ride. The game there is to get out as quickly as possible without having to pay your life's savings to do it. Though I didn't end up resorting to hitchhiking, I can't say that I didn't consider it.

Since I was officially on assignment as a photographer for the Djenne Office of Tourism, I got a couple "extras" that many tourists don't get. Also, in a place that's accustomed to tourists, my Bambara helped me to get around in ways that impressed even me.

Djenne is known for its incredible mud mosque, which is reportedly the largest mud building in the world. The town has a long and incredible history as an important stop in the trans-Saharan trade, then rivaling Timbuktu as a center of Islamic learning. After only a few hours in the city, its long Muslim tradition was palpable.

One of my favorite things was a tour of the Djenne-Djeno archaeological site. I was accompanied by the archaeologist who opened the site in the 1970's, and who has made it her life's work to begin to understand the people who once lived there. Djenne-Djeno was the site of the original fishing village which quickly grew into a trading hub and subsequently moved across the river to the town's current site. The ground there is literally covered in pot shards that easily date back hundreds of years, and the few feet under the ground are filled with clues about the evolution of trans-Saharan trade, and the societies that occupied all ends of that trade when it was central to human civilization. Having a personal, guided tour with unlimited question and answer with the world's foremost expert on the site was a real treat.

The other, obvious highlight of my Djenne tour was the mosque. Since I was "on assignment", I went to the mosque one morning well before sunrise to document it as the sky changed colors. I stood in the refreshing morning chill and watched as the mosque changed from a barely-visible silhouette against the night sky to a deep red as sunrise hit it's face, and then faded to it's natural mud color. It's always beautiful, but in the eery stillness I was able to sit in the center of Djenne, unbothered by the usual players who are invariably looking for tourists' money. I heard the beautiful, lilting call of morning prayer that acts as the town's alarm clock. I saw the comings and goings of the mosque as the truly faithful shuffled in for morning prayer.

Because of its isolation and the people who refuse to leave tourists alone, Djenne is a punishing place to be an outsider. But in that still moment, it was apparent to me why people brave the drive, the heat, the sand, and the kids to sit in front of this building of mud and appreciate its beauty and the human history it represents.

... the mosque at sunrise

... inside the mosque

A Big Whoopsie...

2008-11-28T06:59:00.000-08:00

Well, I finally did it. I knew it was the cardinal rule, but I got comfortable and I got lazy.

See, I’ve found a way to make to more palatable. There is a tiny red pepper that they grow locally. They dry it in the sun, and grind it into a powder. It burns pretty fierce, which is exactly why it is perfect for eating with to. If all I can taste is the burn of little red peppers, I certainly can’t gag from the taste of to and snot sauce. So I’ve gotten into the habit of loading up the pepper at dinner time.

My host mom usually keeps this red-orange wonder-powder in a small can with holes poked in the top (a basic, homemade shaker). Since the shaker is primitive, and the pepper is crushed by hand, the shaker sometimes operates at less-than-optimal effectiveness. Furthermore, since I’m eating to, my right hand is usually covered in some combination of gloppy to and snotty sauce. I always reach for the shaker with my left, so as not to glop or snot the shaker itself – cause that’s gross.

Well this particular night, the to was particular gloppy, the sauce particularly snotty, and the shaker particularly ineffective. The only option in that circumstance is to open the can, reach in with a finger, and manually sprinkle the pepper on this West African deliciousness. I had a choice, go in with the gloppy, snotty right, and get glop and snot inside the shaker (not to mention get pepper helplessly caked on my hand), or go in with the clean, dry left. I wash with soap before meals (and make them do it too), and it was dark, so I made the call to go in with the left.

The first time, nobody noticed. The second time, something about it caught my host-mom’s eye, and she immediately let out a long string of fast, incomprehensible Malinke. I couldn’t understand her, and it wasn’t immediately clear that she was talking to me, so I went in for a third dip. Well, that finally did it. She stood up from her bowl, grabbed the shaker, and continued with the high-pitched gibberish. I swear my Bambara is better than that, but I couldn’t make out a single word in her two-minute long discourse. I got the point, and can’t imagine how sheepish I sounded apologizing.

She handed the shaker back to me, and told me to get back to eating. She demonstrated the proper, right-handed technique, and told me to do the same. My hands were still cover in glop and snot, but I was trapped. Not wanting to prompt another Malinke lecture, I did exactly as she showed me.

I grabbed a little bit of that fiery powder between the glop caked onto my right hand, and rubbed vigorously to get it to fall onto my bowl of to. Convinced that I had done all I could, I dug in for some to, then dipped it into the sauce, then brought it to my mouth. I was already red with embarrassment, but this turned me into a different, more painful color of red. I reached for a water bottle to find it empty. I hiccupped. Tears beginning to pour from my eyes, I resorted to the only option left. I dug in one more time for a tremendous handful of that tasteless glop, skipped the sauce, and went straight to my mouth. I repeated that a couple times, and though it took a little while, it did eventually calm the burn.

… best to I’ve ever had.

Quick Update...

2008-11-28T03:33:00.001-08:00

First I should apologize for being away much longer than I intended. I got sick and was useless for a little while, and then went back to Narena for awhile, then on a bike tour. The bad news: you haven't heard from me. The good news: there's plenty to talk about.

It kinda scares me how things are feeling so much more normal now. The food doesn't even make me flinch; the language is getting easier; Bamako is still dirty, but no longer crazy to me; public transport is scary enough that it should never feel normal, but doesn't really faze me anymore. My life here is beginning to find rhythm. Here are a few bits of recent news and adventures:

1) I was sick. How one gets a cold when it's a million degrees out is beyond me, but there I was. I did manage to get a couple nights in the air-conditioned Peace Corps medical unit out of the deal. They have hot showers, a four-burner stove, and an unbelievable video library. I took full advantage.

2) My village is burning things. They're burning the trash pile behind my house. They're burning the grass around the village. Everything is burning. I am told that they do it now, at the end of rainy season, so that it burns before the end of dry season, which could be disastrous. This has not helped the aforementioned sickness, but it's getting better.

3) Last week I went on a bike tour. Our caravan travelled 85 kilometers to visit seven villages over a week. The Malians were all impressed - they don't understand the concept of exercise for fun, and so assumed that we were all pretty miserable the whole time. I tried not to mention to my American friends that I've ridden that far in a day, though I think sometimes my impatience gave me away. We stopped in each village to do presentations on entrepreneurship, health, and government. One village greeted us with an amazing traditional ceremony. We were presented goats and chickens, were incredibly well-fed, and almost never were allowed to chip in for the food. Again, the ability of Malians to welcome complete strangers overwhelmed me, and made me love this place a little bit more. Also, I was the official photographer for the event, which was at moments like National Geographic, and at moments more like "Save the Children". I wish I could share all the photos, but internet here is finicky.

4) My caisse (village micro-finance bank) is doing research to pilot a new loan program that I think has tremendous potential to help small-business owners. Since the caisse is my most consistent job, I am helping them to make it work. In presenting the new concept, our national director, in a string of French and Bambara, used the English term "cashflow". I came to know and love that term in real estate, and my job over the next two years will largely be to teach people how that works. It can only have been dumb stinking luck that brought me into this project in this location, as the Peace Corps was unaware of this project's specifics. I feel sufficiently lucky to be in a place that matches my knowledge so well with the needs of my community, and am excited to see what we can do with it.

5) A number of Peace Corps volunteers met in Bamako for election night. We were hosted by a lovely ex-pat with a beautiful home, CNN, and a large projection screen. The first polls closed on the East Coast around midnight here, and continued on through the morning. When Obama spoke in Chicago, it was nearing dawn in Bamako, but none of us went to bed. Most of my family and friends know how it has pained this politics nerd to miss this election, and I was thrilled to get to watch it in all its glory on November 4th (happy birthday, Mom).

6) The new US Ambassador hosted a number of Peace Corps volunteers and Fulbright scholars for Thanksgiving dinner. You should all know that I have been roughing it, but I still can take full advantage of copious amounts of good food. There was turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing, green beans, and yams. I topped it off with two pieces of pumpkin pie (we were only given one, but you know me and dessert). The Ambassador was a lovely hostess, and I went home thankful for my Uncle Sam, who made the whole thing possible. I wanted to steal a cocktail napkin as a souvenir, as they were printed with the seal of the United States of America (so was my wine glass, and my plate), but alas they were bussed before I could stash one.

Those are the major points. I'm trying to get more blog posts written, because there is indeed a lot to share, and because I'm about to disappear into village until almost Christmas. Wish me luck!

Meet Mai

2008-11-28T02:11:00.000-08:00

I met Mai on a bad week. Just days before, I was heartbroken to attend the funeral of a 21-year-old who died giving birth. It happens, and it's really sad, and it disturbed me to see how quickly people moved on. I concluded that they had no choice, but it had me in a funk for days.

That was the scene when one afternoon I stumbled upon this beautiful child with wide eyes and a strong grip, who can't talk yet, but who babbles enough that I'm sure she has things to say.

Bambara is sometimes inexact, and it took a number of tellings before I grasped the overwhelming nature of Mai's story.

Apparently within moments of giving birth, Mai's mother dropped her into a well. She fell about twelve feet, into the ground water below. Her mother left her there.

I assume it was minutes or hours, and not days later that someone walking by the well heard Mai crying and went to investigate. He successfully pulled her out of the well, and took Mai in as his daughter.

I took a few moments to ponder the odds of Mai's survival. From the fall itself, to the fact that wells are sufficiently full of chilly water that a newborn should either drown or freeze inside one, contemplating how she survived made my head hurt. With all that against her from her first moments in the world, she is a perfectly normal, beautiful little person. She now has a mommy and a daddy that love her, and one white boy who secretly plots to smuggle her home to America in my... er his... backpack.

The story is really no more complicated than that. There's not much to do but acknowledge how truly awesome it is and then move on.

It's true that life everywhere is often fragile, random, or cruel. But sometimes it's equally surprisingly and randomly resilient and beautiful. It's more magnified here, but the basics still hold.

I've had moments when I wasn't sure if I could handle facing that duality on a daily basis. Then Mai, the girl who was found in a well, came along and somehow assured me I would.

Profile: Diarra Kone

2008-10-21T07:20:00.000-07:00

I have waffled between calling Diarra my landlord and my host-dad. I pay him rent and therefore he is, in fact, my landlord. But I also eat dinner with him every night, and we often drink tea together after dinner, making him something significantly more. If I ever have a problem - things often don't work here the way I expect them to - Diarra can usually fix it.

At fifty-seven years old, Diarra's body could easily be seventy-five. He began working in the fields when he was very young (his own recollection places it somewhere between seven and ten). Every year since he has spent a considerable amount of time doubled over, face close to the ground, working a short hand tool called a "daba", which has the blade of a hoe, but the short handle of a hatchet. His hands are rough and calloused, his feet cracked and hard. He can’t see very well, but I only know because sometimes he fumbles a little when he reaches for a glass of tea, and I think he struggles to recognize faces as they approach him. From up close, his eyes are visibly clouded with something that I'm sure, in the States, would be treatable.

At his age, he only makes the four-mile walk to his field a couple times a week. The rest of the family goes out at least double that. When he does go, he returns hot, dehydrated and weary. I always know when he's been out because he's much less jovial over dinner, and excuses himself to rest before tea is done. One day I went with him, and despite doing about half the work that he did, I returned in similarly poor shape.

Most days, Diarra can be found sitting in the shade in front of his house, greeting neighbors as they pass and occasionally shooing away chickens or goats that are getting close to the night's dinner. He enjoys a good belly-laugh, and his gift for finding comedy in daily occurrences allows him to sneak one whenever he can. His three-year-old grandson, Mamadou, is one of his continuing sources of pleasure and entertainment. I suspect there is nothing he would rather do than to pass the day drinking tea and talking with Madou. I often watch with glee and a hint of longing for my own grandfather as they compete to tell each other tall tales.

He speaks French at least as well as I do, which never surprised me until he told me he had never been to school. "Not one day in my life," he said.

One evening, as we sat waiting for dinner, I was feeling particularly curious about the details of this man's life, and so I asked. He has been married three times. His first wife died about seven years ago, he tells me with a hint of tenderness that is rare in a culture where marriage is more an economic arrangement than a life partnership. When I ask about his second wife, he asks if I know the term "divorce". It's uncommon here, and when he doesn’t come forward with the details, I allow him to leave it at that. His third wife, Sayon, is twenty-eight. Just to be sure, I ask if any of these marriages overlapped. He replies that they did not and, as if to assure me, he asserts that he never really understood how one man could provide for more than one woman and that many children.

I follow that line to ask him about his children. He has had ten - all by his first wife. I live with two of them, one twenty-one, and one nineteen. When I ask about the rest, he gets quiet. It's a fact of life that a lot of times kids don't make it here, and I assume that Diarra's family is no exception. I wait for him as he holds his head in his big, calloused hands, and assume he's trying to put a timeline on what must have been major events in his life. Six of them died before age five; "Sumaya," he says - malaria. Every illness here is malaria, but it's never a bad guess. "The other two?" I ask, praying that they are working in Bamako, or cab drivers in Europe. One, a boy, died at thirteen, he says. The other, a girl, died about five years ago, at seventeen. He takes a moment and looks me in the eye. "Ça, me derange," he says. I can't tell if his eyes are teary or just the usual cloudy.

Later, I go back to my French-English Dictionary to make sure I understood "derange", but "upset" doesn’t quite do it justice. I wonder if there are words in any language for that.

Election Special: Malian Punditry

2008-10-21T07:16:00.000-07:00

My host family was particularly interested in an issue of Time magazine that my mom sent me, so I handed it to them to check out. I was struck by the way they looked over it. They were unable to distinguish the ads from the stories, and navigated different texts, sizes, and graphics in a way that seemed totally unnatural to me. Without exposure to mass marketing on a regular basis, they are "fresh" in a way that Americans could never be. Long before American children have the skills to actually read a Time magazine, they can navigate it in ways that are more organized and predicable.

I could barely contain my amusement and delight when they turned to the election coverage that was packed into Time's pages. Having never been subjected to the 24/7 barrage of worthless election coverage provided by much of the American media, and with only the candidates' pictures to work from, I thought they summed up the themes of the election well.

Our discussion of American electoral politics went as follows:

John McCain...
Dad: "His hair is all white. He's really old."
Me: "Yeah - he's seventy-two."
Dad: "Wow, he's ancient! America can't have a president who's that old."
Me: "... yeah."

Barack Obama...
Dad: "This one's a little kid."
Me: "Well, he's forty-seven."
Mom: "But he looks so young. And handsome."
Dad: "He's black."
Me: "Yeah, his Dad is from Kenya."
Dad: "But how can America have an African president?"
Me: "Well, his mom is American, and he was born in America."
Mom: "Yeah, he's not really black."

Sarah Palin...
Dad: "Wow - she's hot."
Me: "... yeah."
Dad: "Maybe she will be my second wife."

Joe Biden...… did not appear in this issue of Time

*Special thanks to my Mom for sending the magazines. Also thanks for the Oreos. One night, I locked myself in my house with a book and ate the whole box in you honor.

Quick Update...

2008-10-09T02:38:00.000-07:00

I'm in Bamako to go to the bank, and internet is scarce, but here are a couple morsels of life in Narena while I have a second:

1) It's watermelon season. When I discovered this, I split a watermelon with another volunteer for dinner, accompanied by the necessary seed-spitting contest. I also brought one home to my family the other day, and we dug in with reckless abandon. After about fifteen minutes of quiet interrupted by occasional slurping, there were six sticky, smiling faces and a whole watermelon had been demolished. I am hoping to make a habit of this, as watermelon is significantly tastier than to.

2) I am starting to learn the names of people around town. The mayor has a small grandchild (at least I think he's a grandchild... these things are harder to sort out than you might think) whose name I asked for the other day. Their response sounded like "nahmbadr wahn". Go ahead... say it out loud. That's right, this poor child with a large, funny-shaped head has a nonsensical English name: Number One. Hearing them botch English in a big way in the middle of streams of Malinke is an unending source of pleasure for me. Some of my readers may also appreciate the unintended Star-Trek reference (Mike, Dad, this one's for you).

3) Ramadan is over (see previous post about the feast). People in my village are tremendously more affable now than they were when I arrived. Good thing, because that was rough.

4) I found an afternoon card game in the middle of town under the hugest Baobab tree I've ever seen. About ten men gather there every afternoon to play a fast-paced game that I still don't understand. There's about two hours of play, characterized by lots of arm-flailing, table-hitting, finger-pointing, and loud disagreements followed by high-fiving and back-slapping. For now, I just watch. It is going to be a great way to get to know people, and to learn some colorful language.

5) I'm starting to appreciate some of the people here on a personal level. My host dad (or landlord) is a really cool old man, and I spend most nights after dinner drinking tea with him, and shooting the breeze. He reminds me a lot of my grandfather, and we enjoy each others' company despite the communication barriers. I always leave laughing, and feel a little bit like I've just been to Texas. Hopefully more on him another day.

There's plenty more to say, but that's all the time I've got for the moment. I'll be back to Bamako in early November to watch the election results roll in through the night. I should have time to write then.

Until then...
- D

The Feast Of Ramadan

2008-10-09T02:10:00.000-07:00

Ramadan ended with a big feast that reminded me of a cross between Thanksgiving and Halloween, but with the stress of Christmas. It's officially a three-day feast, but the days of the feast get decidedly less intense as they progress. Everyone goes home, and public transportation the day before the feast (which I foolishly took) was packed with tired, stressed out people.

Since the month of Ramadan is all about fasting, the feast is, well, about feasting. On my way out of Bamako the day before the feast, I saw a large number of four-legged creatures slaughtered on the side of the road. I'll spare you the details, but rest easy that I'm not a vegetarian yet.

We ate non-stop the first day, consistently the second day, and a little more normally on the third day. This was the first time since I've been there that my host family has bought meat. Not a morsel was wasted, and we all enjoyed it thoroughly.

The kids all go around finding adults to sucker into giving them money. They start by showering you with a series of special blessings: "may you have many years, may you have many wives, may you have many children, my you have many grandchildren, may they all live forever..." This goes on long enough that it starts to feel a little ridiculous. At the end, you're supposed to give them some small amount of money. The kids make a business of this. Just like I used to map out the best neighborhoods for Halloween, they map out their richest relatives and acquaintances, and prioritize their precious time over the three day holiday. I think there's a run on candy at the general store in the following week.

I guess for the adults of the community, this is a cute thing. I, however, get hit up for money by kids I don't know on a nearly daily basis. It doesn't happen all the time in my village, because once they know me, it's decidedly more difficult for them to shamelessly ask me for money for no reason. Nonetheless, it happens often enough that I've developed strategies and vocabulary to deal with it. Because of the feast, kids who normally leave me alone suddenly found me to be a great target (which I wasn't quite ready for on the first day).

The Peace Corps encourages us to participate in festivals, ceremonies, and other cultural events as a way to integrate into the community. But I took a moment to ponder the lasting consequences. In a small village, what happens if word gets out that the white guy is giving money away? I decided to sit this one out.

Roughing It...

2008-09-27T03:41:00.001-07:00

I'm in Bamako to catch up on some good food, friends, and news from home. There's so much to say about my new home in Narena. Here's a rapid-fire account of my new living arrangements:

1) For move-in, the Peace Corps sent someone to help me figure out the basics of water, food, etc before leaving me alone in the middle of nowhere. My installer helped me get a lease signed with my landlord (not because my mud house require a lease - it's a ridiculous American rule that Peace Corps requires). As they were talking, my installer asked what the previous volunteer's arrangements were for meals. My landlord replied that breakfast and dinner with the family every day was included as a part of the rent. That arrangement isn't particularly surprising - except that my rent is about thirty bucks a month.

2) There used to be electricity to my house, but the line got cut down (still am not sure I've gotten a straight answer as to why). I may pay to have the wire replaced, or I might buy a solar panel. For now, my evening tasks are accomplished by lamp light, which I actually find kind of warm and comforting. I charge my phone at the mayor's office, and my ipod and computer currently lie unused.

3) I have a gas stove, but have not been able to open the valve - for now I just eat "to". Pronounced "toe", it is a substance with the consistency of play-doh, the color of cement, and a nutritional value that I imagine is only somewhat more than the aforementioned items. This delicacy is eaten from a common bowl, with the hands. It is dipped in sauce that is usually made with okra, and which has popularly been termed "snot sauce" by PCVs here. The first time I had it, I seriously wasn't sure I could keep it down. Now, I can eat it when I'm hungry, but it is decidedly un-tasty.

4) My sister, Annie, once asked "if their houses are made of mud, what do they do when it rains?" Well, let me tell you... in Keleya, one morning I woke up to find that our cooking hut had fallen down. Half of it just cracked, and from there simply crumbled. In Narena, it rained really hard one day, and my walls starting oozing in places where they are thin. By oozing, I mean that water from the outside had soaked through the wall, and was resulting in dried mud on the inside turning into wet mud. In the worst spots, this newly-wet mud was actually starting to creep slowly from it's rightful place on my wall towards the floor. The next day, as we were repairing said thin-spots, I learned that it's not just mud that they use in the walls, it's mud mixed with cow poop. Gross, yeah, but I guess once it dries it's not so bad.

5) It's Ramadan, and people are pretty useless. It's been really frustrating trying to find anything to do over the last couple weeks. They don't eat or drink all day, and then stay up eating and drinking (water) all night. It's hot. They're hungry, and tired, and dehydrated and grumpy. Not a pleasant combination. So for now, I've been reading for about half the day, and trying to find things to do for the other half. This works out okay, since my head turns mushy after a half day of speaking languages that aren't english.

On the less rough side of things:

1) I can find a pretty decent variety of fresh fruit here - though in different varieties than I'm used to. Oranges here are green (but still called oranges). Most of the bananas never turn yellow. You eat them when they're green, before they turn brown. I have banana trees in my yard, which I'm very much looking forward to eating (the bananas not the trees).

2) Fresh bread is available daily in town, and for just plain white bread is some of the best I've ever had. It's chewy and buttery and warm if I buy it in the morning. It's amazing with chunky Skippy and Nutella.

Joking Cousins

2008-09-27T03:37:00.001-07:00

There are really only a handful of last names in Mali, and many of them can trace their heritage back to the great Malian empires that most of us just glazed over in our history classes (Ghana, Mali, Songhai, etc).

Through some long and complicated historical process (that also isn't really written down), a national joke has developed in Mali whereby every family name is joking cousins with another.

As a Kone, I mostly joke with Traores, but also joke with the Coulibalys and a few others. When they meet you, people usually inquire about your last name to ascertain if they are your joking cousin. If they are, then you are free to say terrible things about each others' family - such as "Traores are donkeys"; "Traores are toads"; or "Traores eat beans" (because beans make you fart, and let's face it - farting is universally funny). Other variations on the theme include the less-creative but still totally acceptable, "Traore bad, Kone good," and the historically-insensitive, but somehow still funny, "Traores are my slaves" (I'm not yet culturally integrated enough to be comfortable with that one).

This is a ubiquitous part of the culture. I probably find new joking cousins at the rate of a couple a day, and maybe a dozen when I go to market. I have two joking cousins at the mayor's office, and we say bad things about each others' families when we greet every morning. It's especially nice for me, because it allows for instant ice-breakers, and people are additionally amused that the white boy is in on the whole thing.

It amuses me that this joke is the same every time, and is still just as funny. It's kinda like mom jokes, or "that's what she said" jokes. Ironically enough, the only thing off-limits within joking cousins is peoples' moms... go figure.

I can only imagine that this all arose out of a troubled past, in which these relationships were somewhat-less joking. From here, it seems like a brilliant way to bridge ethnicities, brush over historical rivalries, and prevent conflict. One can't help but wonder if this system might have helped my dear European ancestors.

quick update...

2008-09-15T19:02:00.000-07:00

I'm leaving for Narena tomorrow morning. Ack!

The last few days have been busy with wrap-up, preparing, and partying. There is so much that I have to say that I haven't yet found the time to type and post to the internet. Over the next few weeks, I should have loads of time, and daily access to power. I hope to package some of the stories from my journal into my blog as a way to pass the time. Unfortunately, there is no internet in Narena, so I'll only be able to post every couple weeks when I run into Bamako.

In the meantime, I must admit that I'm tremendously nervous for this upcoming transition. Until my language and relationships are up to par, I expect that this will be the most challenging part of my service. I will be more isolated even than I expected (though relative to other volunteers I'm about average). For anyone who is considering calling or sending letters, the next ten weeks would be a really good time.

My own fears of isolation aside, I go into this time deeply convinced of my mission here. I have seen just enough to understand how things work here, and where they fall short of really working. I think I know just enough to be able to do something about it. I know it will only work if I gain the trust of the people I work with, and if I work by their side to find workable solutions for their challenges.

Thanks to everyone who's checked in. Even if I haven't had the time to respond, it helps me to know that I'm not doing this alone. Please keep doing it, and I will get back to you individually over the next couple months.

Thats all for now. Wish me luck, and be in touch.
- D

The Great Power Crisis of 2008

2008-09-13T17:48:00.001-07:00

The town of Keleya has power for exactly four hours every night. It kicks on at seven, just as darkness falls, and it goes off at eleven, when most of the respectable citizens of Keleya are already in bed. Most families use it to power a fluorescent light or two, to charge their cell phones, and to watch the eerily ubiquitous Brazilian soap opera through a black and white snow.

Just for background: most Malians have never seen a microwave. I have seen one refrigerator in Keleya, and suspect that a second may exist. If you want power during the day, you have to run it off a car battery. When it rains, the power usually goes out.

Needless to say, it came as no surprise when the power didn't come on one night during a rainstorm. I was a little more surprised when the power didn't come on the following night under a clear sky. By the third night, I was laboring to formulate questions in Bambara to understand what was causing this (and when/how I might charge my dying phone).

My host dad told me that the power company is run by the local government (Mali has decentralized almost all its services to better serve its people, so almost all relevant government is local). As the price of gas has gone up, the government has been unwilling to change the price it charges for power. Apparently the power company ran out of money to buy gas. I related to my host dad that the same thing happens with our power regulators in America (though they never run out of money). He got a kick out of that.

Further digging revealed that the actual cause of the outage was a little more complex. It's the rainy season right now. Everyone's time is being devoted to farming, which is an with a "hopeful" payoff in the future. All other economic activity basically ceases so people can feed themselves, so people simply don't have any money. Paying for power that they have already consumed is, frankly, not a priority. On top of that, the government has never cut power to any individual customer. There are a number of people in the village who are three months or more behind on payments. The government continued to run the generator until it had no more gas and no more money with which to buy gas.

Last Friday, many of Keleya's men met at the schoolhouse to discuss the problem with the mayor and the power commission. They decided not to buy any more gas until people's accounts were caught up. My host dad said that should take a few days, now that the urgency was apparent.

It turns out that there are workarounds for pretty much all their power needs. There are a couple families with other access (small generators or car batteries), and they are currently charging about a dollar each to charge cell phones. At night everyone uses oil lamps.

Taking host dad's word for it, I assumed the power would be back on shortly, so I let my phone's battery run down. The night before I left about a week later, we were still using the oil lamps. For now, the village of Keleya sits in the dark as a minority of families uncomfortably continue to hold the village's power system hostage. Everything else is just as before.

As for me, I was irked to be without a phone for a few days, but I couldn't help being glad for some more starry nights.

It turns out that the great power crisis of 2008 isn't that great a crisis after all.

Leaving Keleya: Another Beginning's End

2008-09-09T14:28:00.000-07:00

I am back to Tubaniso after wrapping up my training in Keleya. There's so much to share, and I hope to find time to write more before Friday's Swear-In. I am excited to finally, officially become a PCV, but nervous for the hard months that lie ahead. More on that later...

I suppose this was exactly the purpose of training, but I am a little upset that I just got used to life in Keleya as I was getting ready to leave. My language was just getting good enough that I could ask more complex questions (and understand the answers if they were given to me in small bites). I no longer simply accepted things I didn't understand, and frankly, many things that originally appeared nonsensical made sense once I understood their context.

The day before we left Keleya, the village had a gathering in our honor - if everyone weren't fasting for Ramadan, it would have been a party. Many of the village's more prominent figures were in attendance, and all of the host families were invited. Our training group wrote a short speech to thank the village for their incredible hospitality. With the help of our language teachers, we translated it into Bambara, and I had the honor of delivering it on everyone's behalf. Without telling my host family that I would be delivering the speech, I tried to make sure they would be coming.

Like most events here, the details of our party were somewhat sketchy. We had at least one false-start when the mayor's office failed to get word to the appropriate elders. Even on the morning of the party, I was unsure exactly who would be doing what when, and tried to make sure my family would be ready to run over.

Much more quickly than I had anticipated, the village elders shuffled in to the schoolyard and sat against one wall. I hurriedly found a small child and dispatched him to my house, telling him to find my dad, and giving him a short message to carry. As everyone got settled for the meeting, I became antsy, looking around the corner every time I heard a moto pass. The host families each got a chance to tell a story about their trainee, and to thank them for their contribution to the family. As they continued around the circle, I tried to keep from showing my disappointment.

I delivered a near-flawless speech (...I think...) to the village of Keleya, but it felt a little empty showcasing my best Bambara without my family there.

The next morning, my departure came early. I packed the meager contents of my hut as my host brother fried up an egg for me. By the time I was packed and fed, I had just a few minutes to walk around the concession and say goodbye to my extended family before I had to catch the bus. Of course, I saved Senidia (Dad) for last, and Madou (bro) and a whole entourage of people carried my bags for me. As I made the rounds, it was hard to communicate the gratitude and connection I feel towards these people. "Thank you very much" didn't quite do it. There are a number of scripted Bambara blessings that help to fill the gaps, like, "may your journey be easy," or, "may we see each other again." I also had prepared a couple phrases, like "I will miss you."

After I said goodbye to host dad, I realized that I hadn't seen my host sister, Waraba. I called out to the concession, and she walked out from behind wherever she had been hiding. All I could get out was "thank you very much" before tears gathered in her eyes and she turned and walked away. Under my aviators, I cried too.

I hardly cried at the airport when I said goodbye to my real family. I don't know what happened, but I cried leaving Keleya. It surprised me.

Less than two months ago, these people were just faces I didn't know with names I didn't recognize. Their customs, their food, and their lives made little sense to me. For much of the time I was with them, we communicated in hand gestures. But when it came time for my speech, I wanted my dad to be proud of my Bambara. I felt like a second grader in a school play when he didn't show up.

Less than two months ago, they were foreign to me, and I to them. When the time came for me to leave, I was saying goodbye to family.

Scattershot Update

2008-08-19T14:42:00.000-07:00

So I'm officially more than halfway through training. It's been almost all language training to here, but we're starting to do more project-specific work, which is the exciting part of my job. Then again, if I can't talk to them, all the good ideas in the world end in my head.

I spent the last week at my soon-to-be home in Narena. There's a volunteer there currently, so he showed me around the town. I met all the people he works with, and it was nice to get an inside view of the town from an English-speaker. After a week of talking with him and getting his help in introducing me to the community, I am convinced that I will find friends there, and that the work remaining there is good, important, and utterly doable.

My host family there is small. My dad, Diarra (pr: jar-ruh) has lived a hard fifty-two years, and farmed probably since he was seven. He has had a number of wives, and I can't tell what the story is exactly, but he only has one now. I suspect that she is younger than me, but was too shy to ask. Dad has had ten kids, but only two of them are living - again, it's clear that he's lived a hard life. Drissa, his son, is about fifteen. Nana, his daughter, must be in her early twenties. She has a son, Mamadou, who is a good-hearted four-year-old that shows some classic signs of having been raised by a young mother and no father. Also, Diarra's nephew, Seydou moved in a few years ago when his father died. The bunch of them live in my concession (we share a courtyard, but live in a number of separate houses or huts).

My house has two rooms (about twelve feet square), a cement floor (most Malians just have dirt), mud walls and a high tin roof. It's small, but it will be mine alone, and it's enough that I won't get claustrophobic. Besides, most of life here happens outside, so I won't spend that much non-sleeping time there anyhow. There is a guy in town who runs a generator for a few hours every night, and for about ten bucks a month, I get power between dusk and bedtime to power a light and to charge my phone or ipod.

The town has a number of characters that I am sure will bring me endless amusement. The mayor, barely speaks above a whisper but is always listened to. The janitor is a poorly-informed, but highly opinionated former military man who tells stories that could not possibly be true. The bus-station man is a gregarious man who always sees me coming from hundreds of yards away, and spends the ensuing time thinking of ways to jokingly insult me (luckily, I'm on to the game, and learned very quickly to start firing at him before he can open up on me). The sous-prefet (a political position between mayor and governor, for which I don't really know a good American equivalent), is a tall, gregarious man who always has funny thing to say, but doesn't really inspire confidence in his intellect... reminds me of a number of politicians at home. I definitely look forward to getting to know these characters, and to introducing them to you.

Over the next few weeks, my training will be more focused on Small Enterprise. Already, I've been really impressed by what the volunteers here have accomplished. I am looking forward to getting underway. Obviously still enjoying training, but also looking forward to getting to work.

I'm back to Keleya tomorrow morning for the home-stretch of training. I'll be back to the internet in three weeks for updates. And I promise that I will figure out a way to upload photos (which are beautiful) before I leave for site mid-September.

Clocks, Currency, and Stars

2008-08-07T14:50:00.000-07:00

The other day, an eight-year-old looked at my watch and said, in French, "thirty-seven". I clearly lack the language skills to disavow him of the idea that "thirty-seven" is an appropriate way to read a watch, so I just smiled and nodded.

After dinner the other night, I had a conversation with my host dad about economics. First of all, Senidia (pr: sen-juh) is a reasonably well-educated man. He holds an important political position just under the mayor of Keleya. He speaks French at work, and often surprises me with how well he speaks English. However, on this night, some holes in his education became clear when he asked me the following: "I always hear about how the dollar rises and fals. The CFA (currency here) never rises and falls, why is that?" I tried to answer his question, but again, I don't think my language was good enough to explain the gold standard to him, or to convince him that the CFA actually does rise and fall.

After my meager and stumbling answer, he followed up with: "In the US, there is so much wealth, but still people are poor - why doesn't the US just print more money for them?" It's a good question - one that I remember my mother struggled to explain to me in my youth. Without giving a lecture on Latin American economic history, I tried briefly to explain the complexity revealed by his probing. Unfortunately I think my attempt to equate currency markets and commodities like mangoes fell well short of insightful. I was frankly taken aback at the seemingly uneducated nature of his reasoning because the rest of the time Senidia is a tremendously able-minded man.

All this got me to thinking about how people can be looking at exactly the same thing and can think or believe entirely different things about what they see.

The next night, the power went out. (Yes, they have power for exactly four hours every night in Keleya). On a clear night with no moonlight and no artificial light for miles, I finally glimpsed the stars I had always imagined. I saw the Milky Way in a depth and quality that brought new meaning to my understanding of "galaxy". I imagined that this was the way the Greeks saw the sky when they all drank into the night and told stories about the constellations. I saw Venus, Earth's nearest neighbor, in all it's green twinkling glory. I saw a satellite slowly tracking across its orbit, and a shooting star burning up on its way toward earth. I saw Scorpio, the Big Dipper, and the North Star.

Then I looked around at the faces beside me. I wonder what they see when they look at the stars.

My Assignment: Narena

2008-08-07T14:46:00.000-07:00

I got my assignment. For the next two years I'll be living in Narena. It's a medium-sized town of about 5,000 people (I'm still trying to figure out how they classify these things). It's on the road from Bamako to Conakry (capital of Guinea) less than 60 miles outside of Bamako and within spitting distance of the Guinea border. Apparently it's about two hours from Bamako by public transport, which is making many of the other trainees jealous (an extreme example being my friends Peter and Tim, who are about 25-30 hours away).

I will be working with a microfinance institution in Narena. They have just started a mobile-banking program in which "tellers" visit some of the smaller villages around Narena to collect deposits from members on a regular basis. Since there are no banking institutions here, banking money is a completely new concept to most people. This system allows people to build up some savings to cushion against the hard times (drought and sickness are most likely), or to fund larger business purchases. The mobile bank specifically is a way for people to learn the virtues of banking in a more hand-held way. Apparently the average deposit amount is roughly twenty cents.

I have been tremendously interested in microfinance since college, and since being here I've been so deeply convinced of the need for financial literacy among a population where many to most can't read, but almost everyone has some form of informal business. From selling excess crops to owning storefronts, and from women who sell mangoes on the street to those who make a living in shea butter, entrepreneurship is a necessity for survival here. A little education on marketing, feasibility, and calculating profit will go a long way here. This is decidedly important work, and I am very excited to get to the point that I can make myself useful.

I am headed to visit my new site next week, so I will have more to say on the topic in about ten days.

Keleya

2008-08-07T14:05:00.000-07:00

I'm back to Tubaniso for a couple days. Here's the update:

I've been training in a village called Keleya. It's a town of about 3,000 people on the road from Bamako to Abidjan (port city, in Cote d'Ivoire). There are eight other PC Trainees with me in the village. We each live with a host family, most of whom are related in some way. Our two language instructors are also living there while we're training.

In Keleya, I live in a mud hut with a thatched roof, in the concession of the village chief, whom I have been named after: Wolo Bagayoko. Since I kind of stand out already (maybe its my bright, gleaming personality), the whole town knows who I am. I consistently get called to when I walk around town, "Wolo, Wolo..." which is better than what some of the other PCTs get, "Tubabu, tubabu" (meaning foreigner, and generally chanted by children under the age of ten). It's a lot like college in that I stop to greet dozens of people in transit to and fro.

The people here have welcomed eight of us into their homes, though it is clear that we are more a project for the entire village than simply for our homestays. Most people don't speak French, and only a handful speak any English. On the day of our arrival, the village elders welcomed us with drums and dancing, short-lived though it was. Since then, I have hardly had an uncomfortable moment, though getting used to some of the cultural peculiarities has been difficult.

I have been there a while now, but allow me to share a bit from my journal (only slightly edited) from early in my stay:

Essentially, I am a two year-old. I eat and I sleep, and I disappear to class for large chunks of the day. I don't really communicate with them beyond basic functions that can be conveyed through pointing and simple hand gestures. My wimpy American immune system requires that they treat my food and water differently. When I eat with my hands (as they do), I get food on my face, on my clothes, and on the ground. The novelty of all this means that there are new mechanics to everything that used to be simple in my life: eating, washing, shaving, bathroom-ing. They specially cook my food. Either as a guest, or as a man, it is entirely inconceivable that I would ever make my own food or fetch my own water. They always rearrange the chairs to give me the best one, and my host-dad sorts the meat so that I get the best cuts (by his standards, which I can't quite make sense of yet).

All this is to say the following: I have come here as an American with my incredible education and lots of good intentions about how I will help them. It is humbling to be in a position where I am so unable to provide even my own basic needs and functions. As much as I have to offer them, I am absolutely worthless until I can learn to communicate and to function under these conditions. Furthermore, as poor as they are, they have welcomed me as a guest, and have provided for me luxuries they do not even allow themselves. As is true in many teacher-student relationships, it is sometimes hard to know who is gaining more.

Mauritania

2008-08-07T03:05:00.001-07:00

Hey all, more on my life soon, but I wanted to check in for the benefit of all the moms out there. There was a coup d'etat in Mauritania yesterday. Not to diminish the seriousness of the situation, but apparently the army did it with their Toyota pickups with mounted guns. With these war machines, they took over the radio and TV stations, and then walked into the Presidential Palace and arrested the President. Not a shot was fired, and most people in Nouakchott (that may be a terrible spelling) didn't know it had happened.

For those of you who didn't run to a map already, the Eastern sands of Mauritania border the Western sands of Mali. There are no guarantees, but for the moment things there appear calm. Peace Corps and US Embassy personnel are on alert, but aren't hurrying out of the country. Given the relative calm in Nouakchott, I don't foresee this conflict spilling across the sand and into Mali.

There's a story on the Peace Corps website for those who don't trust my interpretation of the events. Link here.

Zumanabugu - Camp Mali

2008-07-14T03:12:00.000-07:00

I'm writing this in my hut at almost midnight. I'll post it tomorrow, but we're playing a wicked game of assassins, and I think I might get taken out if I walk alone to our training center where there's internet.

I am currently residing in a hut with a thatched roof. Furniture includes three beds (all taken) and one small card table. But it has a fan (yay electricity), and screens on the door and windows for malaria prevention, which I'm all about (I took my pills, mom). It's been too hot to sleep many nights, but I've managed to get a few hours - I think the body takes what it needs to function. It feels humid enough that it might rain tonight, which would be really nice because that cools things down, so I can sleep. Oh yeah, it's rainy season... we got a storm the other night that blew our metal doors and windows open and shut all through the night. Family and former roommates will not be surprised to hear that I slept much better through the noise than through the heat.

All of our training has been centered around getting us ready for homestay. Basically, for the next nine weeks I'll be staying with a family within a hundred km of Bamako. These brave hosts have been trained to treat us with kid gloves, and not to expect much of our Bambara - or of our manners (yes, there are manners even when you eat with your hands). There will be a handful of Trainees in my village, and one trainer, who will meet us every day for eight hours of language and cultural training.

I'll come back to the training center about every ten days for a quick check-in, and then back out again. Expect some good stories then.

A couple bits for news and notes:

First, I spent a ton of time before departure practicing French - mostly because I was annoyed that I could hear my American accent (living in France trained me well). My french accent came back, but the African accent rolls "r"s like "d"s. In some sentences, it sounds exactly like Spanish, which is quite confusing since I'm becoming quadrilingual now (I may have just made that word up). There went some weeks of my life I'll never get back.

Second, I wanted to write yesterday, but the power went out. No power, no internet. Tonight, I wanted to do my laundry (yes, by hand), but the water stopped running. No water, no laundry. Welcome to Africa.

rapid fire, 3 - Flying over the Sahara was incredible. Might as well have been Mars.

4 - I ate rice with my hands today. Easier said than done.

*bridge*: I've never washed my hands so much in my life.

5 - The infamous "wiping situation" is not nearly as difficult once you understand the mechanics. Squatting over a hole is still no fun.

Finally, an interesting morsel: We're doing cultural sensitivity training. The Trainees were asked to list some stereotypes of Africans. Our Malian trainers were asked to do the same for Americans. Then we swapped. Near the top of both lists: "dirty". I'm sure I don't have to explain to my dear readers why it made our list, but I was interested to hear that they thought the same. See, they wash for prayer five times a day. We wash decidedly less - at least so far. We each think each others' "wiping situation" is less effective. The verdict's still out for me.

There is so much to tell, but I don't want to go too long. For now, we've been kept inside the Peace Corps compound so as to not get overwhelmed or overrun by what lies beyond the walls. My first venture out begins Tuesday, and I'll be back in twelve days or so. Expect to hear from me again around then (hopefully I'll figure out how to post photos then too).

Making friends

2008-07-14T03:10:00.000-07:00

*I wrote this a couple days ago, but couldn't find any internets by which to deliver it. Sorry for the delay...

I dooni diarra n ye...

After 24 hours of travel, I finally made it safely to Tubani So, the Peace Corps training center just outside of Bamako.

A couple quick stories...

I made a point to use my last flushy-swirly in the Paris airport. Goodbye, running water.

As we were all getting on the plane in Paris, a Malian man looked at me and asked (in French) if we were all going to Bamako. After responding that we were, I got to talking with him - slowly and in French. Knowing Malian people are generally have a sense of humor, I asked him if he had asked about us going to Bamako because he thought he was getting on the wrong plane. He responded with a big smile that there are never that many "toubabs" (Bambara for white folks) on that flight. I knew I was in.

The kid on the plane next to me was about 11 (and Malian). I helped him to figure out the in-flight entertainment system. When he finished his lunch, he gave me his Mars bar. Amarain, my first Malian friend.

Most of the Malians on the plane (and some of the white folks, which surprised me), were not familiar with the airplane lavatory system. I was waiting in line once, and the woman in front of me couldn't figure out how to push the door (the foldy one) to get inside. I helped her. When the flight attendant walked by, he noticed that I was waiting and tried the door, which, since this poor woman couldn't open, she certainly couldn't lock. That was awkward. The flight attendant locked it from the outside for her. Then when she was done, I could hear her struggling to get out. After discovering that throwing her weight against the door was ineffective, she finally figured it out . When I got in there, I found the ashtray loose in the sink. Now that I think about it, it does look strikingly like a door handle.

I've gotta run, so I'll stop there for now. So far so good.

Ready to go

2008-07-04T01:36:00.001-07:00

So I leave in 48 hours, and I've been meaning to post on here for days now, but there's been so much to do.

At this point, my bags are more or less packed, my goodbyes have mostly been said, and I have only to eat good food and be antsy for the next couple days.

Thanks to all my amazing friends, many of whom made tremendous effort to send me off in style. To all those who have taken me out over the past few weeks and months, and who have offered their support and prayers, it has meant so much to me.

I hope that I can keep in touch with everyone to a reasonable level through this shiny new blog, and email and stuff. As many of you already know, mail and telephone where I'm going will be at best inefficient.

I know this isn't the most artful of posts, but I've got to get something up here so you all know I'm serious about this thing. I'll write more when there are things to say.

In the meantime, I'm still taking all the prayers I can get. Just about time to hit the road.

Much love,
D