This blog post will be a compilation of stories as opposed to a fluid essay. I have been at site a month now and will go into Bamako Wednesday, October 4th… can’t wait! I’ll stay that night at my friends Greg and Rebecca, they are a married ex-pat couple and I met Greg through Peace Corps because he wanted to sponsor a maternity clinic. He did Peace Corps Mali in the 70’s, he was the second group that dame in. A group of two men… very different from the Peace Corps that I know now. Rebecca works for USAID. They have lived all over the world, really great people. They have a beautiful house stocked with food from Costco and comfortable furniture and showers, I cannot wait. Then Wednesday Cary gets in town, so we will have a few days together before he leaves for a vacation in London on Friday night. Then Anderson comes in for a low key birthday on the eight- his real party is on the 15th but I don’t blame him for not wanting to spend it at site. So that will be fun, small group dinner and drinks and then back to site Sunday. October is a crazy month though, especially compared to this one where I was at site the entire time. Saving money! Once I hit my savings goal, I am going to get the 20 dollar brunch at the Radisson hotel. But anyways October 15th I'll be back into Bamako for Andersons real birthday party, joint with my friend Beth’s who also went to Elon strangely enough. Then back into Bamako the 22nd for Cary’s return and maybe back to my site for a few days with him, or we might go to SIBY, this beautiful ‘suburb’ of Bamako with great climbing, hiking, waterfalls, and relatively touristy standard activities minus the annoyance of big dirty crowded Bamako. Then Halloween in Bougouni, a small town two hours outside of Bamako where it has been decided that the party will be. Then site, Seliba (a giant festival) is November seventh, then thanksgiving in Sikasso. Sikasso is in the south, practically in Cote d’Ivoire, and it has fruit and greenery and waterfalls. Thanksgiving there is an annual thing, with a week of activities. I couldn’t go last year so I am really excited for this year. Even my teacher at site was like, ‘oh, you’re going to Sikasso in November right? Everyone does it. Teneba and Djeneba went too. SO fun!’ Teneba and Djeneba, or Lindsey and Becky, were the volunteers before me. Then off to London on December 19th for a few weeks. So the next few months will fly by, for better or for worse.
But anyways, below are the stories from things that have happened recently that I have no written about. I hope it doesn’t seem like I only write about sad things- there are more happy times than sad for sure. Like the afternoons that I spend watching mad men on my computer with my host sisters and host mom, who just sleeps with two or three babies on her lap. Or my new hobby of taking kids heights on the door frames of their house- they love it. Could be a good way to get kids to eat well to get taller.
One thing that I have been noticing around here is that a lot of people have large, raised, scars on the center of their breast bone. 2 inches square, sometimes bigger, but the part that is so strange is that they are so raised. It is obvious that it was not accidental. Not everyone has these. I can’t find a pattern in age or location, so it must just be some villages and then in Bamako it gets all mixed up, or when someone marries into another village. But turns out that the scar was to prevent tuberculosis. I wonder what happened when the person died regardless. Scarification has many roles in Mali but this is not the only example of when it is used to prevent or treat disease. For example, the other day I went to my homologues house and her second wife’s new baby had three razor cuts on his forehead. I asked why and she said that it was because he had a head ache. And she is a supposed village health worker. The best part is that she paid for this treatment. People here justify paying for a lot of seemingly ridiculous things- the amount of money that my host father makes spitting and rubbing peoples stomachs is absurd. And more absurd is the distance at which people travel to see him, in directions opposite that of the hospital. But death is never analyzed; it is all gods’ will.
Back in late august was the end of Ramadan festival, Seli Ni. On this day everyone makes a lot of food, but not too much because this is the ‘hungry season’. People only grow enough food for maybe 6-9 months of the year, so the other months, people or borrowing or depending on relatives and finding any work they can to try to find ways to get food. Harvest is beginning now though so I guess things will be good for a little while. Why they haven’t evolved their ways is beyond me. It all comes down to not enough money, but that doesn’t explain the cigarettes and tea. The women are so much smarter than the men (the majority). Women stretch every cent and invest in the family. Men show off to their friends with cell phone music. I have read it in reports before and now I see it’s true. But anyways, the purpose of this story was to tell about some girl time that I was spending at my homologues house with other older ladies. Maybe 30s and 40s. Few teeth, many babies. We were sitting around and then my favorite old lady comes by and makes a grab at my boob, massaging it, and starts telling all the ladies that now that Ramadan is over and people can have sex again, that my husband is going to give me tons and tons of babies and so she is going to help ‘get me ready’. It was really funny.
A few weeks ago I went to a 3 day formation at the mayor’s office put on by a Malian NGO about female circumcision. They had two females and two males from 6 villages around my market town. I was pretty excited, I thought that the meetings would really motivate the Malians present to go back to village and talk about what they learned. These were, after all, selected people from each village who supposedly really wanted to be there. Then I found out that we each got ten dollars for being there, which explains a lot. But the meeting turned out to be a stunning waste of opportunity. No one cared. There are so many ways which they could have given the people present a plan of action, a speech to read, shocking facts; but everyone left as bored as they came. Peace corps tells us not to get involved with this issue because the Malian government said that the change had t some from Malians. This they have right. But it’s not just Malians, it has to come from the village people itself, and so far nothing has worked. I know they stopped doing it in my friend’s village after thirty girls died in one year from it. They were all circumcised together in December, as tradition follows. But that night I was shelling peanuts with my neighbor Nantene and asked her about it. She said that she knows that it is really bad, that there is no point, and that it is really painful. I wanted to ask if she would subject her daughters to it but I know it isn’t her choice, it’s her old bipolar mother in laws choice. It doesn’t look promising. The only good thing is that the woman who does the cutting is really old, so maybe when she dies no one will pick it up. But she makes good money so I am sure someone will seize the job. I’ll have to ask.
A few nights ago we have one of our village dance parties at the ‘dancing place’. They bring in massive speakers, a generator, lights, chairs, and tons and tons of people come from the surrounding smaller villages. Always cracks me up when I remember that my village is a sort of commercial capital. But all ages come, little kids dance early and then slowly teenagers and unmarried men come, and then the married women with their babies might come see but it is really only for single people. It never occurred to me that the people at these parties were looking to meet other people to have sex with; I always just thought they were flirting and dancing. But I was walking home to get my camera and a boy, maybe 15, stops me and asking if he can ask me a question. He was very polite and asked me if I had any condoms. I Sid no but said that the boutique did. I told him that if he gave me money that I would go buy them. He got embarrassed and said that he would find me later. So I bought a ton of condoms at eh store and then told Fode hat had happened and asked if he thought it was ok for me to kind of hand them out at random to boys, in an un-noticeable manner. He said sure. So I stood outside and watched some boys flirting with some girls and when the girls left and it was just the two boys, I said that I was a doctor working in this town and asked if they wanted free condoms. I didn’t realize that these boys weren’t from my village and therefore didn’t know me, and I didn’t know them. It went poorly, they were stuck up teenage boys, and I wasn’t sure if they were messing with me or not when they said that they didn’t know how to use them. So I told them to ask their friends and left quickly in search of Fode because I didn’t like the tone they had. They were telling me that condoms aren’t for Africans and started pestering me about getting my phone number so I said my husband was waiting. I told Fode and asked if he could hand them out, and he said sure again. I watched him for a minute before I left and he was really good- he knows everyone and everyone knows him, and people apparently ask him for them all the time so he was perfect for the job. Before the next dance party I’ll have to give condoms to my friends and tell them to tell their friends to buy them from Fode. Seems word is spreading because the day after I was trying to find my friend who sells beans and one of her friends asked me to step into her house. I thought that was weird and figured she was going to ask me to look at a sick kid, but she asked where she could get the birth control shot. So that was good. I told her to go to the doctor’s office so I hope she goes. She wanted me to give it to her; I hope she isn’t too scared or embarrassed to ask the doctor.
Fodes mom boils these leaves every night and I asked her what they were and she said medicine. Then the other night I asked her again and Fodes wife explained that it is to keep the Jellies away- the ghost type fairy things. Thought that was funny. Some old people get really scared when they see white people for the first time because they think that we are jellies. There is a lady in Cary’s town who drops what she’s doing and runs away screaming every time she sees him.
The other night Nakoya, Fodes wife, all the sudden got really excited. It was pitch black, no moon, and after dinner quit, chatting time. She had just bathed and was wearing her towel thing when she ran over, grabbed a plastic bag and was jumping around until she triumphantly yelled, ‘I got it!!!’ She had caught this giant gross bug and was in the process of ripping off its legs so that she could give it to her yen year old boy so that he could roast it and eat because they are ‘soooo gooood”. The set him on a piece of plastic next to me and went to get dressed and find Mohamadou. I was concerned about the bugs close proximity to my chair so a few minutes later I told Fode that we should move him. He turned on the flash light and the giant legless bug was gone. Bummer. Disappointment to all Fode and his family.
One of my favorite men in village is Mansa. He is humble, quiet, gives me guinea fowl eggs all the times, and is just really genuine. Especially compared to all the people who treat me strange or just see me as money. But he is really great so the other day when I ran into him and he told me that his one year old daughter was sick with a fever, I knew that he was serious and not just trying to get free medicine. And it was refreshing to hear the truth, something other than ‘I'm fine’. So that afternoon I walked over and saw his little one year old daughter. She didn’t look bad so I was relieved but decided to offer to pay for her medical care anyways. This is big no no in Peace Corps, but this was a special case and I love this family. She wasn’t skinny or anything, just feverish. I have seen way worse. She was a little bleary eyed but again, I had seen worse. Then I looked over at his little son, maybe 3 or4, and asked why he looked so uncomfortable. I lifted the sheet off his leg and saw that 75% of his leg to his waist was raw burnt skin. Turns out that the day before some kids were in the kitchen getting warm after a bath and the boiling water spilled on him where he was sitting. But again, there was no money, and he had rubbed dirt and some sort of African medicine all over it, making it green and scaly. So we took both kids to the doctor. I don’t know why he didn’t even mention the burn victim. The doctor came and cleaned and dressed the little boys leg, he will be fine if it doesn’t get infected and if he eats and drinks fluids even though h is in pain. He looks skinnier, I saw him yesterday… but the leg is healing so I hope it turns out ok. The girl got some syrup for the malaria and had a shot- cloroquine I am guessing. Our malaria is quinine resistant. The next day we went for more shots for her, morning and night, and the little boy went every other day. Then I got an intestinal infection and was house bound for a few days while the cipro kicked in. But I only missed one day of visits with Mansa and his little girl. So when I was walking there in the evening and passed by the doctors mom on the road, I said where I was going and she gave me a dead person blessing- turns out the little girl had died, the malaria had gone cerebral. They had just buried her by the house. So I went to the doctor and asked if this was true, it was, just malaria. Not unusual in the least. He was angry that Mansa had waited, angry that he had assumed that since he had no money that he couldn’t talk to the doctor. So I went to Mansa, gave him so blessing, checked on the burn victim. I was crying and it was awkward so I left. Malians women have a weird way of smiling sometimes when they are sad, so I left. Mansa was visibly distraught and as I was walking away yelled, ‘don’t cry Awa!’ So I went to the fields for a little to relax before dinner with Fode. We are so lucky that we have a doctor and a maternity clinic- while it is barely anything, I can’t imagine how much worse it is in the other villages around us, 8, 9, 10 kilometers away from even our little clinic.
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Getting down to business.
Things at site are going well right now. As usual, it’s awesome on one front and pretty poor on another. My new birth spacing education campaign is going very well. It’s not at a point of perfection yet where I can mass produce it but it will be soon. I need to go to Bamako and get the HIV/AIDS Tool Kit. This kit includes props and demonstration materials. We have been putting condoms on flashlight sand not only is that confusing, it’s hard to explain everything fully in Bambara without using inappropriate sign language so I really need those props and some translated materials. My plan so far has just been talking to my friends casually and this has held good results. It also usually draws a small crowd. I need to HIV/AIDS Tool Kit though before I can talk to the teenage boys who live next door to me and play cards outside my house every evening. They are a really fun bunch that help me do soak pit work sometimes and we joke about their girl friends, and I know that they each have at least one. Normally this is secret but that the glory of being an American- I am a third party that I guess they don’t feel too weird talking to. Especially since they are only a few years younger than me and they have seen my boy friend come visit too. Though to my village, he’s my husband.
I know that results are going well though because not only have women asked me for condoms, I have had women get the shot and one women waited at my house for me one day while I was at the market so she could ask me about it. She had heard through the grape vine and she wanted to hear my speech about the benefits of birth spacing. So that was really exciting. My plan is to go door to door basically since scheduling a meeting rarely happens. I will just find the women sitting around working together and talk to them there and the same for the men. And then for those who I can, I think it would be nice to talk to both the man and the woman together as a couple and talk about their plan for the future and children.
The soak pit project is not done yet and I am really lacking motivation. People want it but they just aren’t willing to work for it, not quickly or efficiently. I just want it done. We are so close but there are a lot of people who are still short rocks or this and that and they are never home and when they say they will do t, I feel like it never actually happens. Even when the rocks are in a giant pile next to our unfinished mosque.
I know that results are going well though because not only have women asked me for condoms, I have had women get the shot and one women waited at my house for me one day while I was at the market so she could ask me about it. She had heard through the grape vine and she wanted to hear my speech about the benefits of birth spacing. So that was really exciting. My plan is to go door to door basically since scheduling a meeting rarely happens. I will just find the women sitting around working together and talk to them there and the same for the men. And then for those who I can, I think it would be nice to talk to both the man and the woman together as a couple and talk about their plan for the future and children.
The soak pit project is not done yet and I am really lacking motivation. People want it but they just aren’t willing to work for it, not quickly or efficiently. I just want it done. We are so close but there are a lot of people who are still short rocks or this and that and they are never home and when they say they will do t, I feel like it never actually happens. Even when the rocks are in a giant pile next to our unfinished mosque.
Monday, May 23, 2011
Firsts.
May 2011!! I am in my parent’s house in London right now. We spent two days in Bamako, then we sent three days in my site, then one week in a Moroccan surfing town, and now we are in London as a family until June 3rd. This blog was written from site in April because I had to write about when I went to the president’s house and when I delivered my first baby. (That part is kind of graphic and really sad because the baby was dead and I wrote the part right after… my apologies for the most depressing blog ever) I also had to write about Cary’s visit to my site because it was really fun.
To start from the beginning, on April first I went to my friend Lizs site because she had organized an AIDS awareness bike ride to three small villages and her own in cooperation with two non profits. There were six Peace Corps volunteers, three nonprofit employees, and a few doctors. We rode bikes to these villages and then spent a few hours watching their traditional welcoming ceremony, dancing, talking about aids, and then testing people. Of the 4 villages, only three people came back positive. It is crazy that there is someone with aids in Lizs village. Getting treatment is not easy though. It can only be obtained in a village south of Lizs, though it is free. I wonder about the quantity of it though, and where it comes from. We also handed out cards to urge people to get conunseling, no matter what the result of their test. I don’t think that the results are entirely accurate though. Not everyone was tested, out of fear or what not, and most importantly it wasn’t the most vulnerable population which came out. Liz’s town is a truck stop, an area notorious for the spread of aids. Truck drivers sleep with women in these towns and if one of them has aids, he spreads it like wild fire along the truck route. We didn’t test them though or the prostitutes. I think this is really important and I would love to do it again next year where we only focus on bars and the people at them.
Then I went to Bamako for a few days to do some work and then Cary and I went to my site together April 6th to April 11th. This was really fun; I introduced him as my husband in hopes of setting an example to my village of a healthy American relationship. Cary cooked and cleaned and I hoped that this would make people notice. It seemed only to make women judge me negatively though as a slave driver of sorts and they would tell me constantly, “Awa, Fabure is tired, he should rest and you should be cooking and cleaning and doing his laundry.” It was all in good fun though and it made for a really entertaining week.
Now I have been back at site a few days since all this, trying to get my soak pit project done in the next two or three weeks. But today I was walking home after some rounds of nagging people to dig their soak pit holes to get my nail polish and go back over to my friend’s house because she and her girlfriends wanted to paint nails. But then I saw fode and the doctor sitting on a bench so I stopped to say hello. As I was walking over there, I was again intercepted by an old lady I had never seen before saying that her stomach was hurting. I said ok well Adama is right here, let’s ask him. Turns out, it wasn’t her stomach that was hurting but it was another lady who was pregnant. I was ecstatic, thinking that this was finally my chance, the moment i had been looking forward to forever. Her friend had just gone to the doctor’s office 4 k away by bike; I guess someone actually did know that something was wrong. But we walked over to her house to find her sitting alone in a room with a toddler next to her. I sat in there for a while fanning her and giving her water through her contractions while we waited for a moto to come to take her to the maternity. When we got in, we set her up on the delivery table and got her situated. I don’t know if the matron, the old lady, already knew that things were bad at this point. But as we examined her I noticed that something was already protruding, I assumed it wasn’t the baby’s head. But as the contractions intensified and as the delivery progressed, it was in fact a head that came out. A silent head with a strange shape. The matron must have known now that things were bad. The head was stuck and for ten minutes she pulled and pushed on the silent out of place head. She slid a bed pan under the pregnant womans body to collect he blood. She made the pregnant woman reposition but this put the baby’s head at a strange angle, and pushing against the bed pan. She must have known it was dead by the way she was handling it, at this point only working for the mother. The mother was still silent through and through, fighting the contractions that hardened her tired body. Finally she began to get a hold of the shoulders and get the torso out. I should have known it was dead but you never want to believe that something is dead and I didn’t know what signs to look for nor did I have another birth experiences to compare this against. The baby was laying there, blue and still and silent. I passed her the suckers and other tools I deemed necessary and she looked at them and at me and touched the babies skull-less head and the brain that was not attached and the clearly broken spine that seemed to protrude from the back in a way that could not have held the head on. Then she looked back at me blankly, the only way that she and I could effectively communicate. The mother just stared, still having contractions. I hoped there was another one in there. Just the placenta came out though. She tried to get me to cut the umbilical cord but I told her not today. None of us were wearing gloves, so as much as I wanted to get close, I was afraid. And that was all. I hung around while she cleaned things up a bit and the woman got off the bed and wrapped the dead baby up in cloth. Her friend came over with a smile that one has when you expect to see a new baby. Her friend started crying. I hugged her and cried with her, two actions foreign to Malians, as the old lady berated her for not having prenatal consultations. She said that she couldn’t get them because she didn’t have money. I walked home with her carrying a bucket of blood and afterbirth while she carried a bundle of clothes and her friend carried the dead baby ahead of us. Like a silent funeral procession. I walked rubbing her back and she cried in the street. We got back to her house and she sat in her room. She had a few friends doing things in the room with her so I went back to help the matron lady clean up. I was actually intending on running home but saw Fode and Adama in the distance so I made a quick detour in the maternity. She commented to me how ridiculous it was that this woman didn’t get prenatal consultations. Unfortunately its part of a bigger problem, one that I am supposed to understand and attempt to alleviate at least a little. We went to the woman’s house to give blessing together. She was sitting alone in a room with the dead baby still wrapped up. I don’t know what will happen next. I was torn about what to do so I sat with her a second and then left, gave some more blessings, and went home. As much as I wanted to stick around and see what the matron would say, I couldn’t.
To start from the beginning, on April first I went to my friend Lizs site because she had organized an AIDS awareness bike ride to three small villages and her own in cooperation with two non profits. There were six Peace Corps volunteers, three nonprofit employees, and a few doctors. We rode bikes to these villages and then spent a few hours watching their traditional welcoming ceremony, dancing, talking about aids, and then testing people. Of the 4 villages, only three people came back positive. It is crazy that there is someone with aids in Lizs village. Getting treatment is not easy though. It can only be obtained in a village south of Lizs, though it is free. I wonder about the quantity of it though, and where it comes from. We also handed out cards to urge people to get conunseling, no matter what the result of their test. I don’t think that the results are entirely accurate though. Not everyone was tested, out of fear or what not, and most importantly it wasn’t the most vulnerable population which came out. Liz’s town is a truck stop, an area notorious for the spread of aids. Truck drivers sleep with women in these towns and if one of them has aids, he spreads it like wild fire along the truck route. We didn’t test them though or the prostitutes. I think this is really important and I would love to do it again next year where we only focus on bars and the people at them.
Then I went to Bamako for a few days to do some work and then Cary and I went to my site together April 6th to April 11th. This was really fun; I introduced him as my husband in hopes of setting an example to my village of a healthy American relationship. Cary cooked and cleaned and I hoped that this would make people notice. It seemed only to make women judge me negatively though as a slave driver of sorts and they would tell me constantly, “Awa, Fabure is tired, he should rest and you should be cooking and cleaning and doing his laundry.” It was all in good fun though and it made for a really entertaining week.
Now I have been back at site a few days since all this, trying to get my soak pit project done in the next two or three weeks. But today I was walking home after some rounds of nagging people to dig their soak pit holes to get my nail polish and go back over to my friend’s house because she and her girlfriends wanted to paint nails. But then I saw fode and the doctor sitting on a bench so I stopped to say hello. As I was walking over there, I was again intercepted by an old lady I had never seen before saying that her stomach was hurting. I said ok well Adama is right here, let’s ask him. Turns out, it wasn’t her stomach that was hurting but it was another lady who was pregnant. I was ecstatic, thinking that this was finally my chance, the moment i had been looking forward to forever. Her friend had just gone to the doctor’s office 4 k away by bike; I guess someone actually did know that something was wrong. But we walked over to her house to find her sitting alone in a room with a toddler next to her. I sat in there for a while fanning her and giving her water through her contractions while we waited for a moto to come to take her to the maternity. When we got in, we set her up on the delivery table and got her situated. I don’t know if the matron, the old lady, already knew that things were bad at this point. But as we examined her I noticed that something was already protruding, I assumed it wasn’t the baby’s head. But as the contractions intensified and as the delivery progressed, it was in fact a head that came out. A silent head with a strange shape. The matron must have known now that things were bad. The head was stuck and for ten minutes she pulled and pushed on the silent out of place head. She slid a bed pan under the pregnant womans body to collect he blood. She made the pregnant woman reposition but this put the baby’s head at a strange angle, and pushing against the bed pan. She must have known it was dead by the way she was handling it, at this point only working for the mother. The mother was still silent through and through, fighting the contractions that hardened her tired body. Finally she began to get a hold of the shoulders and get the torso out. I should have known it was dead but you never want to believe that something is dead and I didn’t know what signs to look for nor did I have another birth experiences to compare this against. The baby was laying there, blue and still and silent. I passed her the suckers and other tools I deemed necessary and she looked at them and at me and touched the babies skull-less head and the brain that was not attached and the clearly broken spine that seemed to protrude from the back in a way that could not have held the head on. Then she looked back at me blankly, the only way that she and I could effectively communicate. The mother just stared, still having contractions. I hoped there was another one in there. Just the placenta came out though. She tried to get me to cut the umbilical cord but I told her not today. None of us were wearing gloves, so as much as I wanted to get close, I was afraid. And that was all. I hung around while she cleaned things up a bit and the woman got off the bed and wrapped the dead baby up in cloth. Her friend came over with a smile that one has when you expect to see a new baby. Her friend started crying. I hugged her and cried with her, two actions foreign to Malians, as the old lady berated her for not having prenatal consultations. She said that she couldn’t get them because she didn’t have money. I walked home with her carrying a bucket of blood and afterbirth while she carried a bundle of clothes and her friend carried the dead baby ahead of us. Like a silent funeral procession. I walked rubbing her back and she cried in the street. We got back to her house and she sat in her room. She had a few friends doing things in the room with her so I went back to help the matron lady clean up. I was actually intending on running home but saw Fode and Adama in the distance so I made a quick detour in the maternity. She commented to me how ridiculous it was that this woman didn’t get prenatal consultations. Unfortunately its part of a bigger problem, one that I am supposed to understand and attempt to alleviate at least a little. We went to the woman’s house to give blessing together. She was sitting alone in a room with the dead baby still wrapped up. I don’t know what will happen next. I was torn about what to do so I sat with her a second and then left, gave some more blessings, and went home. As much as I wanted to stick around and see what the matron would say, I couldn’t.
Update to Donors
This is an email that I sent to a donor group. It is a basic summary of what I am doing as well as the thank you letter and I just figured I would post it for the basic update information.
Dear NMPCA,
Thank you so much for your generous donation of supplies and your monetary donation! The village was so excited about it and it was much appreciated. Once I arrived in village, I showed the donated supplies to my teacher Fode and he and I set up a meeting with the village chief. He in turn told all the elders and the health committee leaders. The following Friday afternoon we had a ceremony in his special meeting hut. We laid all the goods out in the middle of the room and we all sat around the edges. Each elder went around saying how thrilled they are that people care and have not forgotten about the maternity, like the last doctor did when he disappeared. The village chief thanked the NMPCA and Americans in general for all the nonprofit work that has been done in this town. The donation included everything that we needed as far as nonprescription items go. Already I have directed a few mothers to the maternity to have the doctor give them bandages and antibiotic ointment for burns and infected cuts on their children. With the $50 donation, I have bought a few mosquito nets that we give to pregnant women who come to prenatal consultations. I am working on finding a constant source of mosquito nets right now, as they are $5 each and this is too pensive.
However, the maternity is still facing challenges. Our doctor left about the time I arrived and we still have not found a new one. I have left the search up to the village, and they say that they are on the trail of some good motivated doctors in Bamako who may come out. I am more interested personally in the search for now matrons and midwives. We had a few but I have never met them. My teacher Fode told me a few weeks ago that he fired them because they were never working and there was no point in paying them. So now the hunt for a new matrone is on, and this one is more promising than finding a doctor. There is one in my market town 4 kilometers away who may move out here. Village initiated discussions have begun. We currently have one basic illiterate midwife but she is very old and one is not enough. Especially since she cannot do prenatal consultations or register births. Currently, the doctor in training and I have done a few prenatal consultations but I am trying to discourage this, because first of all I don’t have training and second of all, no one will be here to do it when I leave so it is not sustainable. This elderly mid wife is really great though and sometimes she invites me to deliver babies with her. Unfortunately the last one that we delivered was a still born. It was disturbing to find that the cause of death was declared as lack of prenatal care and poor birth spacing, which really tells me that I desperately need to figure out this prenatal consultation situation. I have started talking to my teacher Fode about what it would take to send a girl from m village to matron midwife training in our regional capital 25 kilometers away though this idea is just in the beginning stages now and I don’t know if it is actually possible.
Since then, I have received funding from USAID on a project to help fight malaria. Malaria season has just now begun with the early rains. I received funding to build 30 soak pits in my village in the first round and then I estimate I can do about 10 to 12 more with left over funds. Soak pits are holes dug behind the bathroom which collect the waste water. The bathrooms are similar to out-houses but they are spare mud buildings. Usually, this water drains out the back into a giant puddle. Mosquitoes and germs breed in these pools of dirty water, and sometimes children can be seen playing in or near them and animals drink the water. Soak pits are a solution to this. We dig a hole one to three meters deep and fill it with head sized porous volcanic rock. Then we extend a pipe from the back of the bathroom to the hole. Next we build cement slabs with rebar inside which we place on top and then seal the sides with cement. It looks better, decreases malaria, and eliminates these pools of standing bathroom runoff water which carry disease and parasites.
In addition, we are still doing frequent baby weighing and formations on oral rehydration drinks. I plan to start talking to my friends about condom use, birth spacing, and birth control options after my vacation this month. Peace Corps offers kits for this with demonstration aids. Once I have a routine down, I will then move onto bigger groups and class rooms where I will teach general health topics.
Thank you again for you support and interest in Tegue Coro. They are very aware of your efforts and are excited to see Greg again next time he visits. I will keep you updated as our search for maternity staff continues and how work is progressing with the multiple projects going on. My parents and sister visit me this week and we will all go to my village together, so a big celebration has been planned and we will do more work on the soak pits and do a baby weighing. I hope all is well in America and I look forward to sending the next update!
Best,
Emily Albert
Dear NMPCA,
Thank you so much for your generous donation of supplies and your monetary donation! The village was so excited about it and it was much appreciated. Once I arrived in village, I showed the donated supplies to my teacher Fode and he and I set up a meeting with the village chief. He in turn told all the elders and the health committee leaders. The following Friday afternoon we had a ceremony in his special meeting hut. We laid all the goods out in the middle of the room and we all sat around the edges. Each elder went around saying how thrilled they are that people care and have not forgotten about the maternity, like the last doctor did when he disappeared. The village chief thanked the NMPCA and Americans in general for all the nonprofit work that has been done in this town. The donation included everything that we needed as far as nonprescription items go. Already I have directed a few mothers to the maternity to have the doctor give them bandages and antibiotic ointment for burns and infected cuts on their children. With the $50 donation, I have bought a few mosquito nets that we give to pregnant women who come to prenatal consultations. I am working on finding a constant source of mosquito nets right now, as they are $5 each and this is too pensive.
However, the maternity is still facing challenges. Our doctor left about the time I arrived and we still have not found a new one. I have left the search up to the village, and they say that they are on the trail of some good motivated doctors in Bamako who may come out. I am more interested personally in the search for now matrons and midwives. We had a few but I have never met them. My teacher Fode told me a few weeks ago that he fired them because they were never working and there was no point in paying them. So now the hunt for a new matrone is on, and this one is more promising than finding a doctor. There is one in my market town 4 kilometers away who may move out here. Village initiated discussions have begun. We currently have one basic illiterate midwife but she is very old and one is not enough. Especially since she cannot do prenatal consultations or register births. Currently, the doctor in training and I have done a few prenatal consultations but I am trying to discourage this, because first of all I don’t have training and second of all, no one will be here to do it when I leave so it is not sustainable. This elderly mid wife is really great though and sometimes she invites me to deliver babies with her. Unfortunately the last one that we delivered was a still born. It was disturbing to find that the cause of death was declared as lack of prenatal care and poor birth spacing, which really tells me that I desperately need to figure out this prenatal consultation situation. I have started talking to my teacher Fode about what it would take to send a girl from m village to matron midwife training in our regional capital 25 kilometers away though this idea is just in the beginning stages now and I don’t know if it is actually possible.
Since then, I have received funding from USAID on a project to help fight malaria. Malaria season has just now begun with the early rains. I received funding to build 30 soak pits in my village in the first round and then I estimate I can do about 10 to 12 more with left over funds. Soak pits are holes dug behind the bathroom which collect the waste water. The bathrooms are similar to out-houses but they are spare mud buildings. Usually, this water drains out the back into a giant puddle. Mosquitoes and germs breed in these pools of dirty water, and sometimes children can be seen playing in or near them and animals drink the water. Soak pits are a solution to this. We dig a hole one to three meters deep and fill it with head sized porous volcanic rock. Then we extend a pipe from the back of the bathroom to the hole. Next we build cement slabs with rebar inside which we place on top and then seal the sides with cement. It looks better, decreases malaria, and eliminates these pools of standing bathroom runoff water which carry disease and parasites.
In addition, we are still doing frequent baby weighing and formations on oral rehydration drinks. I plan to start talking to my friends about condom use, birth spacing, and birth control options after my vacation this month. Peace Corps offers kits for this with demonstration aids. Once I have a routine down, I will then move onto bigger groups and class rooms where I will teach general health topics.
Thank you again for you support and interest in Tegue Coro. They are very aware of your efforts and are excited to see Greg again next time he visits. I will keep you updated as our search for maternity staff continues and how work is progressing with the multiple projects going on. My parents and sister visit me this week and we will all go to my village together, so a big celebration has been planned and we will do more work on the soak pits and do a baby weighing. I hope all is well in America and I look forward to sending the next update!
Best,
Emily Albert
WWS Letter
This is one of my letters to Mr Coghlans 7th and 8th grade class as a part of the World Wise Schools Program. Mr Coghlan did delete some of the more controversial material about FGM before distributing the letter to his students.
Hello!
I hope all is well in Florida and that you are all getting ready for a great summer. This will probably be my last note to you all for this school year, as I will be on vacation for the next month. My parents and sister are coming here on May 11th, and then we will spend a few days at my site before heading out to Morocco for a week and then I will go home with them, to England where my parents are living right now. So I won’t be back until June 4th and I assume that you guys will be enjoying your first days of summer vacation. For those of you going onto Nease or whatever high school they send you guys to now, feel free to contact me if you ever do projects on Mali or Sub Saharan Africa. I would love to help and give you first hand information and pictures on whatever topic you’re studying. My email is epalbert9@gmail.com, and if you lose that, Mr. Coghlan has my contact information as well.
I wanted my last note to be a bit of a shocker so that Mali will stay in your mind and so that your ears will perk up if you ever hear it mentioned on the news or in conversation. I went through my Gender and Development Hand Book for this and took out some of the statistics. Peace Corps does a lot of work to help women become equal members of society in rural villages and learn to respect their own word as much as the word of a man. These statistics and the many others seem unreal especially when compared to those of America.
First I will start by discussing the female role in the government. Currently, there are only 15 women in the 147 member National Assembly. Accordingly, there are six women in the 29 seat cabinet, five women on the 33 member Supreme Court, and three women on the nine member Constitutional Court. In my village, all power positions are held by men. The mayor and all his employees are men, as is my village chief and all the people he invites to meetings to discuss important matters. In general, women do not hold powerful positions in the government or in the public sector. Women constitute only 15% of the national labor force. In the US, women account for 46.8% of the work force.
As I told you in a previous letter, it is not uncommon to see men beating their wives or to see people beating children. Domestic abuse is a crime, but not illegal. Police are reluctant to intervene as this is a ‘private family matter’ and Malian culture sees a very distinct line between private and public issues. Women are not very likely to report abuse because that could just make it worse, by provoking their husband or angering the police. They fear that this would be grounds for divorce and in that case, they would be unable to support themselves and their children.
During the 2006/2007 school year, 58% of Malian children attended primary school (51% of girls and 66% of boys). 99% of men and women in the US over age 15 can read and write, but in Mali only 53% of men can and 39% of women are able to. The Malian school system is facing many challenges and I unfortunately don’t see it improving on a national level in the near future. Mali is currently investing in infrastructure, and allowing China to loan them money to build roads and improve Bamako.
Women face many issues when making decisions about reproductive issues. They often do not have the knowledge or access to birth control and family planning information as we do in the United States. Even more concerning is that women often do not have skilled attendants present when they are giving birth and rarely receive postpartum care. I have helped deliver babies and it has always just been me and this very old illiterate midwife. The last baby we delivered was still born and the cause of death was determined as lack of prenatal care. Another factor could be that she had over nine children already and that her body was too tired. In Mali, there are 113.66 deaths per every 1,000 live births. In the United States, there are 6.14 deaths for every 1,000 live births. Access to STD testing is limited for both men and women, but even more so for women because a female doctor would be required. The fertility rate in Mali is 7.3 children per woman, as opposed to 2.06 children per woman in America.
The legal age for marriage is 15. To get married before the age of 15, you must have parental consent and the permission of a judge. However, judges will create false documents allowing a child to married. The rule is irrelevant in my village though, because few people know their real age. Just last night I had a conversation with Fodes family where one of the boys thought he was ten, and this ensued in a ten minute discussion of how he couldn’t be more than eight, so they compromised on nine. Another reason that this law in ineffective is because in village, a girl can be married to a boy even at age 9, and then she will live with her new mother in law until she is able to have children. In most cases, the man is at least ten to twenty years older than the woman, especially by the second, third, and fourth wife. This is an issue that I try to bring up often in conversation, by saying that I am 22, not married, and without children. They all are shocked and tell me that women in my village are married by age 12 and then begin having children at 15. A few days ago I did a prenatal consultation on a 15 year old in her second pregnancy. The first baby died, though I don’t know how. She had her first prenatal consultation in Bamako though and her papers exam papers said she was 19- my suspicion is that she lied while in Bamako to avoid judgment and problems. The early age at which women begin having children and then the frequency at which they have them causes problems in their 30’s and 40’s when they are onto their 10th pregnancy or so because the body is simply tired. A few weeks ago with the elderly illiterate midwife and I delivered a baby to a 40 something year old woman and it was a still born, cause of death was that she had too many children too close together and a lack of prenatal care.
Prostitution is also an issue which faces young boys and girls working in large cities. Prostitution is legal and I believe that most men participate. I know that when men in my town go to Bamako, they will usually meet up with other women, though they choose to call them ‘girlfriends whom they pay’. Children between the ages of 12 and 18 are most vulnerable, especially those who work as street vendors, domestic servants, are homeless, or are victims of child trafficking. Prostitutes are most commonly found on borders, transportation routes and in mining areas. The country has a rape law which defines 18 as the minimum age for consnsual sex, though this is inconsistent with the legal age to marry. Many of the women whom I give prenatal consultations are under the age of eighteen or had their first child before then.
Most shocking is that 95% of women in Mali have undergone female genital mutilation (FGM). There are no laws prohibiting FGM, though non profits are working hard to eradicate the practice. FGM is preformed on women from the age of six months to the day before their wedding. The practice is harmful and potentially deadly for the young girls. It can result in hemmorageing, infection, the spread of blood borne diseases, and difficulty in child birth, not to mention general pain and discomfort and frequent infections for the rest of their lives. The practice continues because it is deeply rooted in their culture. FGM is believed to help preserve a girl’s virginity and bless her with many living babies. FGM Is prohibited in government funded health centers, but my maternity for example has no government funding.
Lesbian women and Gay men also face many challenges. I have been in Bamako and accidently come across anti-gay rallies before. But the police have prevented gay activist rallies, even when the activists used the angle of supporting AIDS/HIV awareness. There are no publicly gay or lesbian organizations in the country, and they are actually illegal because the government states that they exist for an ‘immoral purpose’.
Overall, Mali is much different than America. In America, we have access to as much information as the world can offer and we have the right to make our own decisions and access to a fair and honest legal system. I think that we are very lucky to have been raised in a free country, especially since so many right now are fighting for that very right.
Hello!
I hope all is well in Florida and that you are all getting ready for a great summer. This will probably be my last note to you all for this school year, as I will be on vacation for the next month. My parents and sister are coming here on May 11th, and then we will spend a few days at my site before heading out to Morocco for a week and then I will go home with them, to England where my parents are living right now. So I won’t be back until June 4th and I assume that you guys will be enjoying your first days of summer vacation. For those of you going onto Nease or whatever high school they send you guys to now, feel free to contact me if you ever do projects on Mali or Sub Saharan Africa. I would love to help and give you first hand information and pictures on whatever topic you’re studying. My email is epalbert9@gmail.com, and if you lose that, Mr. Coghlan has my contact information as well.
I wanted my last note to be a bit of a shocker so that Mali will stay in your mind and so that your ears will perk up if you ever hear it mentioned on the news or in conversation. I went through my Gender and Development Hand Book for this and took out some of the statistics. Peace Corps does a lot of work to help women become equal members of society in rural villages and learn to respect their own word as much as the word of a man. These statistics and the many others seem unreal especially when compared to those of America.
First I will start by discussing the female role in the government. Currently, there are only 15 women in the 147 member National Assembly. Accordingly, there are six women in the 29 seat cabinet, five women on the 33 member Supreme Court, and three women on the nine member Constitutional Court. In my village, all power positions are held by men. The mayor and all his employees are men, as is my village chief and all the people he invites to meetings to discuss important matters. In general, women do not hold powerful positions in the government or in the public sector. Women constitute only 15% of the national labor force. In the US, women account for 46.8% of the work force.
As I told you in a previous letter, it is not uncommon to see men beating their wives or to see people beating children. Domestic abuse is a crime, but not illegal. Police are reluctant to intervene as this is a ‘private family matter’ and Malian culture sees a very distinct line between private and public issues. Women are not very likely to report abuse because that could just make it worse, by provoking their husband or angering the police. They fear that this would be grounds for divorce and in that case, they would be unable to support themselves and their children.
During the 2006/2007 school year, 58% of Malian children attended primary school (51% of girls and 66% of boys). 99% of men and women in the US over age 15 can read and write, but in Mali only 53% of men can and 39% of women are able to. The Malian school system is facing many challenges and I unfortunately don’t see it improving on a national level in the near future. Mali is currently investing in infrastructure, and allowing China to loan them money to build roads and improve Bamako.
Women face many issues when making decisions about reproductive issues. They often do not have the knowledge or access to birth control and family planning information as we do in the United States. Even more concerning is that women often do not have skilled attendants present when they are giving birth and rarely receive postpartum care. I have helped deliver babies and it has always just been me and this very old illiterate midwife. The last baby we delivered was still born and the cause of death was determined as lack of prenatal care. Another factor could be that she had over nine children already and that her body was too tired. In Mali, there are 113.66 deaths per every 1,000 live births. In the United States, there are 6.14 deaths for every 1,000 live births. Access to STD testing is limited for both men and women, but even more so for women because a female doctor would be required. The fertility rate in Mali is 7.3 children per woman, as opposed to 2.06 children per woman in America.
The legal age for marriage is 15. To get married before the age of 15, you must have parental consent and the permission of a judge. However, judges will create false documents allowing a child to married. The rule is irrelevant in my village though, because few people know their real age. Just last night I had a conversation with Fodes family where one of the boys thought he was ten, and this ensued in a ten minute discussion of how he couldn’t be more than eight, so they compromised on nine. Another reason that this law in ineffective is because in village, a girl can be married to a boy even at age 9, and then she will live with her new mother in law until she is able to have children. In most cases, the man is at least ten to twenty years older than the woman, especially by the second, third, and fourth wife. This is an issue that I try to bring up often in conversation, by saying that I am 22, not married, and without children. They all are shocked and tell me that women in my village are married by age 12 and then begin having children at 15. A few days ago I did a prenatal consultation on a 15 year old in her second pregnancy. The first baby died, though I don’t know how. She had her first prenatal consultation in Bamako though and her papers exam papers said she was 19- my suspicion is that she lied while in Bamako to avoid judgment and problems. The early age at which women begin having children and then the frequency at which they have them causes problems in their 30’s and 40’s when they are onto their 10th pregnancy or so because the body is simply tired. A few weeks ago with the elderly illiterate midwife and I delivered a baby to a 40 something year old woman and it was a still born, cause of death was that she had too many children too close together and a lack of prenatal care.
Prostitution is also an issue which faces young boys and girls working in large cities. Prostitution is legal and I believe that most men participate. I know that when men in my town go to Bamako, they will usually meet up with other women, though they choose to call them ‘girlfriends whom they pay’. Children between the ages of 12 and 18 are most vulnerable, especially those who work as street vendors, domestic servants, are homeless, or are victims of child trafficking. Prostitutes are most commonly found on borders, transportation routes and in mining areas. The country has a rape law which defines 18 as the minimum age for consnsual sex, though this is inconsistent with the legal age to marry. Many of the women whom I give prenatal consultations are under the age of eighteen or had their first child before then.
Most shocking is that 95% of women in Mali have undergone female genital mutilation (FGM). There are no laws prohibiting FGM, though non profits are working hard to eradicate the practice. FGM is preformed on women from the age of six months to the day before their wedding. The practice is harmful and potentially deadly for the young girls. It can result in hemmorageing, infection, the spread of blood borne diseases, and difficulty in child birth, not to mention general pain and discomfort and frequent infections for the rest of their lives. The practice continues because it is deeply rooted in their culture. FGM is believed to help preserve a girl’s virginity and bless her with many living babies. FGM Is prohibited in government funded health centers, but my maternity for example has no government funding.
Lesbian women and Gay men also face many challenges. I have been in Bamako and accidently come across anti-gay rallies before. But the police have prevented gay activist rallies, even when the activists used the angle of supporting AIDS/HIV awareness. There are no publicly gay or lesbian organizations in the country, and they are actually illegal because the government states that they exist for an ‘immoral purpose’.
Overall, Mali is much different than America. In America, we have access to as much information as the world can offer and we have the right to make our own decisions and access to a fair and honest legal system. I think that we are very lucky to have been raised in a free country, especially since so many right now are fighting for that very right.
Monday, March 21, 2011
Saturday, March 19, 2011
World Wise School Correspondance 2
Hello again! I hope all is well in Florida and I look forward to receiving your letters that Mr. Coghlan mailed to me. Once I get those then we can really get this conversation going. But for now, as I said in my last letter, I will give you an introduction to three of my closest friends in village and describe the food and animals for you. Also included are some pictures of the weird animals that we eat and pictures of my daily life.
My closest friend and work partner at site is Fode Keita. He is a forty something year old man and a prominent figure in town. He has one wife and I still, after almost eight months at site, am not sure how many kids he has. Or what kids are his. Somewhere around 8 I believe. And the miraculous part is that his wife uses birth control, so eight (or more, we will see) was their desired number by this age. That is one difference of Malian culture and American culture- we use birth control to not have children when we don’t want them. They use to leave about a year or two between each pregnancy, but rarely to actively prevent pregnancy for extended periods of time. But anyways, Fodes religion is not Islam but what he calls ‘totems’. I don’t even know what the translation of this into English would be exactly but it is a religion based upon ancient family tradition and nature. For example, he doesn’t eat hippos because they apparently once saved his family by carrying them across the river in a war. So now they are sacred. So he is one of the few men who dont go to pray at the mosque every time the call to prayer is sang. He is a fisherman and gets other incomes from his garden and seasonal crops. He also works for a nonprofit documenting children and getting western families to sponsor them to go to school. He is very different from other Malians, in that he has big well articulated dreams of going to England one day, learning English and finding people ‘like him’. He says that there is no one like him in this town, and he is right. He is motivated to keep up with health initiatives, such as animal and children vaccination schedules. When I want to talk about deeper issues like abortion, politics, or teen pregnancy in village, he is the only one I feel comfortable talking with. He really is one of a kind and I am really lucky to be working with him. He provides the local language skill and village support that are so hard to navigate alone.
My next closest friend lives in my market town. Her name is Suzanne, but she goes by Bartoma because it is hard for people to remember a Christian name. She is a little over fifty and has three kids. Already, I am sure you can tell she is not the average small town Malian. I go to eat lunch her on the days that I ride my bike to market four kilometers away to gather food for the week, but I stop by on other days too just because her food is so good. She is wealthy enough to buy meat sometimes, something I never see in my village. She is interesting because she is a working woman. And unfortunately, like many of the working mothers that I have met, she lives about 125 kilometers from her husband who lives in Bamako, the capital of Mali where he is a university teacher. All three of her children are in school, including her two daughters. Her son is 23 and studying at university to become a lawyer. She also has a 19 year old daughter who I have never met who also goes to university. They both live with their father. The youngest is about 16 and in school in the town where her mother lives. Suzanne always brags that her kids are first in their class, and I believe it. She is a truly nice lady and she is another person that I can talk to about project plans and ideas, or problems that I am having in village. She was born and raised in Bamako and one can tell by watching her. She was once a tailor, then a doctor, and now she works for a nonprofit doing small village outreach educating them on child and maternal health. She is a great role model for young girls and I plan on having her talk to my girls group in the future.
Lastly I will introduce you to my friend Nantene. She lives next door to me and is one of the two women in my little circle of houses who I feel the closest too. She is 19 and has a two year old girl with her husband. I think she has another daughter who is about 7 but I'm not sure, that doesn’t seem possible but I don’t know who else this little girl’s mother would be, and she lives with them. Last year a twelve year old got pregnant in village with a boy from the neighboring town though so it wouldn’t be the first time. Whenever I cook or prepare food I always sit with her and her little daughter and give them some. She is really captivating and I wonder what her life would be like if she lived in a society where she was given more opportunity. Her husband beats her publicly and often, which is really hard to see. Whenever it happens in the yard, all her friends hit him and yell at him until it stops but it has been pretty bad before. Fode says that he is a bad man, and that it was a forced marriage which she did not want. He says that her husband’s mother has an equally cold heart and everyone in village knows that he is a strange man. It is equally as sad when she turns some of her range to her daughter after these beatings. But she is pregnant again, for better or for worse, and it seems there is no other option but to keep going. She is a cookie cutter example of a Malian woman from a small village. Limited opportunity, forced marriage, no way out.
Food in my village is rice. Rice rice rice. That’s all we ever eat. I am used to the lack of variety now, and I cook my own breakfast and lunch to give myself some freedom. So I make rice oatmeal with crushed peanuts in it for breakfast. This is a meal that most Malians don’t get to eat because they can’t afford to not sell all their harvested peanuts, even though they are an important source of protein for kids and adults alike. For breakfast Malians have left over dinner or rice oatmeal. Then for lunch I make peanut butter honey sandwiches, Malians think it’s hilarious. But they keep coming back and asking me to share. Most Malians eat rice and green leaf sauce, onion sauce, or ‘naji’, which literally translates as ‘sauce water’. For dinner, I eat with Fode. We usually eat rice oatmeal, corn oatmeal, or if we are lucky, rice and one of the assorted sauces with fish. I buy him a sack of rice everyone in a while and bring sugar each night as a payment.
Now that I am talking about animals, I will also talk about the lucky opportunity that we get to eat one. Fode often travels out into the bush with his gun and machete, and sometimes comes back with a surprise. When this happens, a little face pops up at my door and one of Fodes many children calls me over, giddy with excitement, to take a picture. It is normally a giant 3 foot lizard, fish with teeth that live on land in the dry season and swim in the rainy season, electric eels that he has caught in his fish trap, rabbits, bush rats, or other surprises which I haven’t seen yet. All the lions and real animals were hunted to extinction in this area in the last fifty years, but I have to say I am kind of relieved about that. My bike rides would be terrifying if I had to worry about lions along with all the other scary things I worry about.
One of the most recent pressing issues in my life is the weather. Normally a conversation fall back, the weather here is impossible to ignore. It is over one hundred degrees until well after dark. It is unbelievable how hot it can stay until well after the sun goes down. Hot season started over night. One day it was fine, and the next day never cooled off that evening and I couldn’t even sleep. People have started sleeping outside and I am thinking about it but I like the privacy and security of my own home, and ability to sleep in if I want. So never again complain about Mr. Coghlans AC habits… I remember we used to complain it was too hot or two cold alternating with the season, despite the fact that he protested that he kept the room at a steady 68 degrees. A solid 40 degrees colder than it is in my hut right now. Soak up that AC and send it to the 200 Peace Corps volunteers in Mali. No one ever stops sweating, even right after bucket baths in outdoor bathrooms. My parents and sister are coming in May, and everyone said that it was just plain mean to take your family to village during hot season but I figured, how miserable can it be? At least it is the beginning of mango season. There always has to be a silver lining.
The other most recent pressing issue is safety and security. Right now, more than ever, I am really concerned about the threat that Al Queada in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) is posing to my safety. I don’t know if this reaches news in America, but the threat has slowly been encroaching on Peace Corps Mali and yesterday it made its debut. They are responsible for the kidnapping and murder of French volunteers all over West Africa, and they are the reason that we are not allowed to go in over two thirds of Mali. They are the reason behind Peace Corps Niger’s recent evacuation and I believe also the reason behind Mauritania’s. Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, and Guinea were all also recently evacuated but for different reasons. Mali, it seems, is the last man standing. But now in the past week peace corps has issued warning on two more of the cities that we are working in, and then yesterday, peace corps sent out a security text message about a planned attack and kidnapping at the American embassy and the American school, both in Bamako. This is really alarming and scary to me because they used to say that the threat was only to the French, which wasn’t very soothing but was good enough. But now it seems they can no longer use that excuse, and I am, for the first time, hoping for an evacuation. My banking town is Bamako, and it is about 125 kilometers west of my village. AQIM was never supposed to be this far south, into our ‘safe zone’. There was a bombing of the French embassy a few weeks ago, but that was ‘only targeting the French’. So I hope that none of you are too attached to Mali, because in my dream world, I want to get evacuated and then when they give us country change options for those of us who aren’t going to quit, I want to go to Benin, Togo, or Senegal. Hopefully I can learn more French. The timing couldn’t be worse but then again, there is probably no good time for a spontaneous evacuation. I am really not happy about this though. So keep your eyes on the news and we will see how the next week unfolds. Check the New York Times website in the world news, Africa section if you’re interested; that is my go to news source. Maybe even the Peace Corps website of the US state department if you really want to read the controversial stuff. I am writing this from my hut on March 11th, so maybe by Monday there will be more news. I am supposed to be going into Bamako on Monday to change my malaria prevention medicine and I hope I can still go.
Alright, I hope this reaches you all in good health and hopefully things will work out here as well. I don’t know what this means, ‘to work out’, as I say, but regardless, something must happen. I look forward to getting your letters and again, keep your eyes on the news and follow what is going on. I never would have known about this if I had lived in America so consider me your front line news source. Thanks again for participating in this program with me, I am enjoying it very much and I hope that you are as well. K’an ben kofe, Allah ka tile here caya!
The letter was written while I was at my site, but this closing paragraph I am writing from Bamako. Last week I received another text from Peace Corps saying “following the most recent warden message, Bamako is currently off limits to all peace corps volunteers. Please don’t come to Bamako without approval and please leave ASAP if you are here.” This was really concerning. I am not however in Bamako, as they have now opened it back up to volunteers and have deemed the threat not credible. So, this doesn’t calm my nerves completely but it is good enough. Situation resolved I guess.
My closest friend and work partner at site is Fode Keita. He is a forty something year old man and a prominent figure in town. He has one wife and I still, after almost eight months at site, am not sure how many kids he has. Or what kids are his. Somewhere around 8 I believe. And the miraculous part is that his wife uses birth control, so eight (or more, we will see) was their desired number by this age. That is one difference of Malian culture and American culture- we use birth control to not have children when we don’t want them. They use to leave about a year or two between each pregnancy, but rarely to actively prevent pregnancy for extended periods of time. But anyways, Fodes religion is not Islam but what he calls ‘totems’. I don’t even know what the translation of this into English would be exactly but it is a religion based upon ancient family tradition and nature. For example, he doesn’t eat hippos because they apparently once saved his family by carrying them across the river in a war. So now they are sacred. So he is one of the few men who dont go to pray at the mosque every time the call to prayer is sang. He is a fisherman and gets other incomes from his garden and seasonal crops. He also works for a nonprofit documenting children and getting western families to sponsor them to go to school. He is very different from other Malians, in that he has big well articulated dreams of going to England one day, learning English and finding people ‘like him’. He says that there is no one like him in this town, and he is right. He is motivated to keep up with health initiatives, such as animal and children vaccination schedules. When I want to talk about deeper issues like abortion, politics, or teen pregnancy in village, he is the only one I feel comfortable talking with. He really is one of a kind and I am really lucky to be working with him. He provides the local language skill and village support that are so hard to navigate alone.
My next closest friend lives in my market town. Her name is Suzanne, but she goes by Bartoma because it is hard for people to remember a Christian name. She is a little over fifty and has three kids. Already, I am sure you can tell she is not the average small town Malian. I go to eat lunch her on the days that I ride my bike to market four kilometers away to gather food for the week, but I stop by on other days too just because her food is so good. She is wealthy enough to buy meat sometimes, something I never see in my village. She is interesting because she is a working woman. And unfortunately, like many of the working mothers that I have met, she lives about 125 kilometers from her husband who lives in Bamako, the capital of Mali where he is a university teacher. All three of her children are in school, including her two daughters. Her son is 23 and studying at university to become a lawyer. She also has a 19 year old daughter who I have never met who also goes to university. They both live with their father. The youngest is about 16 and in school in the town where her mother lives. Suzanne always brags that her kids are first in their class, and I believe it. She is a truly nice lady and she is another person that I can talk to about project plans and ideas, or problems that I am having in village. She was born and raised in Bamako and one can tell by watching her. She was once a tailor, then a doctor, and now she works for a nonprofit doing small village outreach educating them on child and maternal health. She is a great role model for young girls and I plan on having her talk to my girls group in the future.
Lastly I will introduce you to my friend Nantene. She lives next door to me and is one of the two women in my little circle of houses who I feel the closest too. She is 19 and has a two year old girl with her husband. I think she has another daughter who is about 7 but I'm not sure, that doesn’t seem possible but I don’t know who else this little girl’s mother would be, and she lives with them. Last year a twelve year old got pregnant in village with a boy from the neighboring town though so it wouldn’t be the first time. Whenever I cook or prepare food I always sit with her and her little daughter and give them some. She is really captivating and I wonder what her life would be like if she lived in a society where she was given more opportunity. Her husband beats her publicly and often, which is really hard to see. Whenever it happens in the yard, all her friends hit him and yell at him until it stops but it has been pretty bad before. Fode says that he is a bad man, and that it was a forced marriage which she did not want. He says that her husband’s mother has an equally cold heart and everyone in village knows that he is a strange man. It is equally as sad when she turns some of her range to her daughter after these beatings. But she is pregnant again, for better or for worse, and it seems there is no other option but to keep going. She is a cookie cutter example of a Malian woman from a small village. Limited opportunity, forced marriage, no way out.
Food in my village is rice. Rice rice rice. That’s all we ever eat. I am used to the lack of variety now, and I cook my own breakfast and lunch to give myself some freedom. So I make rice oatmeal with crushed peanuts in it for breakfast. This is a meal that most Malians don’t get to eat because they can’t afford to not sell all their harvested peanuts, even though they are an important source of protein for kids and adults alike. For breakfast Malians have left over dinner or rice oatmeal. Then for lunch I make peanut butter honey sandwiches, Malians think it’s hilarious. But they keep coming back and asking me to share. Most Malians eat rice and green leaf sauce, onion sauce, or ‘naji’, which literally translates as ‘sauce water’. For dinner, I eat with Fode. We usually eat rice oatmeal, corn oatmeal, or if we are lucky, rice and one of the assorted sauces with fish. I buy him a sack of rice everyone in a while and bring sugar each night as a payment.
Now that I am talking about animals, I will also talk about the lucky opportunity that we get to eat one. Fode often travels out into the bush with his gun and machete, and sometimes comes back with a surprise. When this happens, a little face pops up at my door and one of Fodes many children calls me over, giddy with excitement, to take a picture. It is normally a giant 3 foot lizard, fish with teeth that live on land in the dry season and swim in the rainy season, electric eels that he has caught in his fish trap, rabbits, bush rats, or other surprises which I haven’t seen yet. All the lions and real animals were hunted to extinction in this area in the last fifty years, but I have to say I am kind of relieved about that. My bike rides would be terrifying if I had to worry about lions along with all the other scary things I worry about.
One of the most recent pressing issues in my life is the weather. Normally a conversation fall back, the weather here is impossible to ignore. It is over one hundred degrees until well after dark. It is unbelievable how hot it can stay until well after the sun goes down. Hot season started over night. One day it was fine, and the next day never cooled off that evening and I couldn’t even sleep. People have started sleeping outside and I am thinking about it but I like the privacy and security of my own home, and ability to sleep in if I want. So never again complain about Mr. Coghlans AC habits… I remember we used to complain it was too hot or two cold alternating with the season, despite the fact that he protested that he kept the room at a steady 68 degrees. A solid 40 degrees colder than it is in my hut right now. Soak up that AC and send it to the 200 Peace Corps volunteers in Mali. No one ever stops sweating, even right after bucket baths in outdoor bathrooms. My parents and sister are coming in May, and everyone said that it was just plain mean to take your family to village during hot season but I figured, how miserable can it be? At least it is the beginning of mango season. There always has to be a silver lining.
The other most recent pressing issue is safety and security. Right now, more than ever, I am really concerned about the threat that Al Queada in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) is posing to my safety. I don’t know if this reaches news in America, but the threat has slowly been encroaching on Peace Corps Mali and yesterday it made its debut. They are responsible for the kidnapping and murder of French volunteers all over West Africa, and they are the reason that we are not allowed to go in over two thirds of Mali. They are the reason behind Peace Corps Niger’s recent evacuation and I believe also the reason behind Mauritania’s. Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, and Guinea were all also recently evacuated but for different reasons. Mali, it seems, is the last man standing. But now in the past week peace corps has issued warning on two more of the cities that we are working in, and then yesterday, peace corps sent out a security text message about a planned attack and kidnapping at the American embassy and the American school, both in Bamako. This is really alarming and scary to me because they used to say that the threat was only to the French, which wasn’t very soothing but was good enough. But now it seems they can no longer use that excuse, and I am, for the first time, hoping for an evacuation. My banking town is Bamako, and it is about 125 kilometers west of my village. AQIM was never supposed to be this far south, into our ‘safe zone’. There was a bombing of the French embassy a few weeks ago, but that was ‘only targeting the French’. So I hope that none of you are too attached to Mali, because in my dream world, I want to get evacuated and then when they give us country change options for those of us who aren’t going to quit, I want to go to Benin, Togo, or Senegal. Hopefully I can learn more French. The timing couldn’t be worse but then again, there is probably no good time for a spontaneous evacuation. I am really not happy about this though. So keep your eyes on the news and we will see how the next week unfolds. Check the New York Times website in the world news, Africa section if you’re interested; that is my go to news source. Maybe even the Peace Corps website of the US state department if you really want to read the controversial stuff. I am writing this from my hut on March 11th, so maybe by Monday there will be more news. I am supposed to be going into Bamako on Monday to change my malaria prevention medicine and I hope I can still go.
Alright, I hope this reaches you all in good health and hopefully things will work out here as well. I don’t know what this means, ‘to work out’, as I say, but regardless, something must happen. I look forward to getting your letters and again, keep your eyes on the news and follow what is going on. I never would have known about this if I had lived in America so consider me your front line news source. Thanks again for participating in this program with me, I am enjoying it very much and I hope that you are as well. K’an ben kofe, Allah ka tile here caya!
The letter was written while I was at my site, but this closing paragraph I am writing from Bamako. Last week I received another text from Peace Corps saying “following the most recent warden message, Bamako is currently off limits to all peace corps volunteers. Please don’t come to Bamako without approval and please leave ASAP if you are here.” This was really concerning. I am not however in Bamako, as they have now opened it back up to volunteers and have deemed the threat not credible. So, this doesn’t calm my nerves completely but it is good enough. Situation resolved I guess.
Sunday, February 27, 2011
First World Wise School Correspondance
Aw ni che, Aw ni sogoma! Hello and Good day from Mali! My name is Emily Albert and Mr. Coghlan was my English teacher when I was in seventh and eighth grade, about 9 years ago. To begin, I will explain what this letter is- this is the first correspondence letter that I have written as a part of the World Wise Schools Program. This is a program designed for Peace Corps volunteers to get in touch with classrooms and teachers back in America to exchange letters, art, and other interesting things that fit into a ‘show and tell’ type category. I am a Peace Corps volunteer in Mali, West Africa. Mali is a landlocked, predominantly Muslim country about twice the size of Texas that was a French colony until fifty years ago. It is also the third poorest country in the world where about one in three kids under the age of five die and only about 30% of the population can read. I have been here for seven months now and have about a year and a half to go until I finish my service. A brief description of my life these days is that I speak the West African dialect of Bambara which has no written form, live in a mud hut with no water or electricity in a village has about 1,500 people, and I work at the maternity clinic. But before I get lost in all the differences between here and Ponte Vedra Beach, let me start from the beginning.
The Peace Corps is a United States government agency which has been in existence since1961. It is a 27 month (3 months training and 24 month service) program for people who want to volunteer and work abroad. 95% of volunteers have college degrees but it is not necessary, and anyone from a 22 year old opera singer to a 65 year old chemical engineer can apply. There are five sectors and each volunteer is assigned to one during the application based on previously held skills. The sectors are health education, water sanitation, small enterprise development, education, and environment. My assignment is health education. As a result, I live in a little town with more witch doctors than regular ones and I am supposed to work to introduce modern health practices and combine them with the herbal medicine traditions. One can do this by building a maternity center, training doctors, or just teaching people about why it is important for people to wash their hands. For example, in Mali, many people don’t believe in germs and never wash their hands. This is even more alarming when taking into account that we eat with our hands. But Peace Corps is really what you make it to be, and I am incorporating this World Wise Schools program into my service because I think it is a fun way to connect my classroom here with yours even though sometimes I feel like I am on another planet.
There is so much that I want to say that it is hard to start with such a broad letter. A huge amount of the population here is children, as each woman has about 8 living children and each man has up to four wives. So if you lived in my village instead of in Ponte Vedra, you would be living a much different life. Your day would begin with the sun, at which time you would pound rice, fetch water from the well, and take care of your siblings. Then you would eat rice for breakfast with some sugar on it and run to school at 8:00. There you would be in a class room with mud wells and a tin roof with about sixty to one hundred other children. Since you are in seventh or eighth grade, it would be mostly boys. At this point, girls stay home to help their moms and are getting ready to be married off and they will move to the house of the man who pays the largest dowry. But for those lucky enough to stay in school, you would be learning French, math, geography, and English. But the Malian education system is one that simply enforces rote memorization because the French left a system full of standardized testing and corruption, and then the following twenty five years of dictatorship didn’t do much to improve the system. Then you would go home for lunch and do dishes, wash clothes, or sweep the yard and huts. Then you would go back to school for a little in the afternoon, but it is very hot out so class is shorter. Then you go home after and help your mom clean fish, cook rice, and if you are a girl you would wash your little siblings. If you are a boy, you would go play soccer or wait for your friends who were herding cattle to come home to play too. Then you would all gather around a communal bowl, rinse your hands in a communal cup of water, and eat with your right hand only. Then it is dark so there is nothing left to do but the dishes, fetch water, bathe, and pound more millet, rice, and corn, for the next day’s meals. If you have home work, you would do it by the fire and maybe practice your multiplication tables in the dirt with friends.
The school structure is very authoritarian as a result of colonization and the following dictatorship so teachers must stick to a very regimented teaching plan. Even if you do pass your standardized tests year after year, after ninth grade when the time comes to go to lycee, you will see almost no women and many students have bought their way in with family connections. You will also have to move to a bigger town which is simply not possible for those who don’t have family there. And then few jobs are available other than working in the government and you can only get a job there if you know the right people. So you may ask yourself, what is the point of going to school if you live in a village when you could be working? And what is the point of going to school when the only job option is working and living in the village? There are plenty of statistics boasting that extended education reduces the number of children women have, makes them more open to modern medicine and birth control, and that an educated woman is a more empowered woman who as a result has healthier children and a healthier marriage. But when it comes down to it, the motivation is often not there for parents to send their kids to school. Fortunately, my town has a school and teachers who are paid. A non-profit takes care of that. And my teachers are all great, despite the fact that many did not choose this profession. Until recently the Malian government chose your profession for you based on your exam scores at the end of ninth grade. Can you imagine if president Obama looked at your SAT scores after ninth grade and told you what your only option was? Overall, we should be thankful that our teachers in America don’t beat us or go on strike, as is the norm around here.
But that is enough on the unfortunate lasting impact of colonization. There are plenty more in the health care system but I don’t want to bore you. As for my personal projects while here, so far I do baby weighing to screen for malnutrition and I give information sessions on different health care topics such as the importance of birth control, hand washing, and certain aspects of child nutrition like making rice with peanuts to add protein.
Please write down questions or thoughts that you would like me to elaborate on. I can send Mr. Coghlan a slide show of pictures of my village and things for him to show you with a projector if you want. After being here for what seems like such a long time, things actually seem normal so writing this letter has made me reevaluate all the strange habits and customs of life in Mali. In Peace Corps the days are years and the years are days. The best part though is simply forming personal relationships with people in my village so in the next letter I will give you an introduction to some of my closest friends and work partners. Ill also talk about the animals and food that I eat. Unfortunately all the lions and wild animals have been killed for the most part… but there are still some weird ones. In a few days I am going to Dakar with most of the other Peace Corps Mali volunteers by bus( which takes approximately 25 to 40 hours) for the West African Invitational Softball Tournament which is organized by Peace Corps volunteers in Senegal to get everyone together, so that will be my first real vacation. It’s embarrassing though because most people in my town can’t even afford the five dollar ticket to get to Bamako, and here I am going to Senegal for a week.
The Peace Corps is a United States government agency which has been in existence since1961. It is a 27 month (3 months training and 24 month service) program for people who want to volunteer and work abroad. 95% of volunteers have college degrees but it is not necessary, and anyone from a 22 year old opera singer to a 65 year old chemical engineer can apply. There are five sectors and each volunteer is assigned to one during the application based on previously held skills. The sectors are health education, water sanitation, small enterprise development, education, and environment. My assignment is health education. As a result, I live in a little town with more witch doctors than regular ones and I am supposed to work to introduce modern health practices and combine them with the herbal medicine traditions. One can do this by building a maternity center, training doctors, or just teaching people about why it is important for people to wash their hands. For example, in Mali, many people don’t believe in germs and never wash their hands. This is even more alarming when taking into account that we eat with our hands. But Peace Corps is really what you make it to be, and I am incorporating this World Wise Schools program into my service because I think it is a fun way to connect my classroom here with yours even though sometimes I feel like I am on another planet.
There is so much that I want to say that it is hard to start with such a broad letter. A huge amount of the population here is children, as each woman has about 8 living children and each man has up to four wives. So if you lived in my village instead of in Ponte Vedra, you would be living a much different life. Your day would begin with the sun, at which time you would pound rice, fetch water from the well, and take care of your siblings. Then you would eat rice for breakfast with some sugar on it and run to school at 8:00. There you would be in a class room with mud wells and a tin roof with about sixty to one hundred other children. Since you are in seventh or eighth grade, it would be mostly boys. At this point, girls stay home to help their moms and are getting ready to be married off and they will move to the house of the man who pays the largest dowry. But for those lucky enough to stay in school, you would be learning French, math, geography, and English. But the Malian education system is one that simply enforces rote memorization because the French left a system full of standardized testing and corruption, and then the following twenty five years of dictatorship didn’t do much to improve the system. Then you would go home for lunch and do dishes, wash clothes, or sweep the yard and huts. Then you would go back to school for a little in the afternoon, but it is very hot out so class is shorter. Then you go home after and help your mom clean fish, cook rice, and if you are a girl you would wash your little siblings. If you are a boy, you would go play soccer or wait for your friends who were herding cattle to come home to play too. Then you would all gather around a communal bowl, rinse your hands in a communal cup of water, and eat with your right hand only. Then it is dark so there is nothing left to do but the dishes, fetch water, bathe, and pound more millet, rice, and corn, for the next day’s meals. If you have home work, you would do it by the fire and maybe practice your multiplication tables in the dirt with friends.
The school structure is very authoritarian as a result of colonization and the following dictatorship so teachers must stick to a very regimented teaching plan. Even if you do pass your standardized tests year after year, after ninth grade when the time comes to go to lycee, you will see almost no women and many students have bought their way in with family connections. You will also have to move to a bigger town which is simply not possible for those who don’t have family there. And then few jobs are available other than working in the government and you can only get a job there if you know the right people. So you may ask yourself, what is the point of going to school if you live in a village when you could be working? And what is the point of going to school when the only job option is working and living in the village? There are plenty of statistics boasting that extended education reduces the number of children women have, makes them more open to modern medicine and birth control, and that an educated woman is a more empowered woman who as a result has healthier children and a healthier marriage. But when it comes down to it, the motivation is often not there for parents to send their kids to school. Fortunately, my town has a school and teachers who are paid. A non-profit takes care of that. And my teachers are all great, despite the fact that many did not choose this profession. Until recently the Malian government chose your profession for you based on your exam scores at the end of ninth grade. Can you imagine if president Obama looked at your SAT scores after ninth grade and told you what your only option was? Overall, we should be thankful that our teachers in America don’t beat us or go on strike, as is the norm around here.
But that is enough on the unfortunate lasting impact of colonization. There are plenty more in the health care system but I don’t want to bore you. As for my personal projects while here, so far I do baby weighing to screen for malnutrition and I give information sessions on different health care topics such as the importance of birth control, hand washing, and certain aspects of child nutrition like making rice with peanuts to add protein.
Please write down questions or thoughts that you would like me to elaborate on. I can send Mr. Coghlan a slide show of pictures of my village and things for him to show you with a projector if you want. After being here for what seems like such a long time, things actually seem normal so writing this letter has made me reevaluate all the strange habits and customs of life in Mali. In Peace Corps the days are years and the years are days. The best part though is simply forming personal relationships with people in my village so in the next letter I will give you an introduction to some of my closest friends and work partners. Ill also talk about the animals and food that I eat. Unfortunately all the lions and wild animals have been killed for the most part… but there are still some weird ones. In a few days I am going to Dakar with most of the other Peace Corps Mali volunteers by bus( which takes approximately 25 to 40 hours) for the West African Invitational Softball Tournament which is organized by Peace Corps volunteers in Senegal to get everyone together, so that will be my first real vacation. It’s embarrassing though because most people in my town can’t even afford the five dollar ticket to get to Bamako, and here I am going to Senegal for a week.
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Hippos and Alligators
In Bamabara Mali means Hippo and Bamako means Alligator. I havent seen either.
2011… starting this year in the bush, ending it in the bush. I recently read a cool quote though that says “for some, traveling is more of a going away from rather than a going toward…” and lord knows that there are days when both of these things may be true for me, but overall, this is most definitely a going towards. It has been quite the month since my last blog post. It started with 2 weeks of in service training (IST, gotta love the governments appreciation for acronyms) in Tubaniso till December 19th, and then after that began my first vacation as a working woman and boy was it well earned. First I went to Manantali, the closest you can get to a beach in this land locked desert. Manantali is a full day of travel, mostly on a dirt road, North West of Bamako. It is kind of like the Hamptons of Mali… I imagine rich people would build lake houses there near a dam that was built by Germans to provide energy for Senegal. Lots of dam workers live there so there are bars and hotels and tubab stores. It was a week of not wearing anything but a bathing suit, good music, good company, cheap gin, and many abstract parallels drawn to how this was the weirdest Christmas ever. Then after that I spent a night in Bamako while en route to Segou for new years. We stopped in my friend Eric’s site for a few days to break up the trip. My friends Cary, Ryan and I stayed there and killed time while Eric worked and then we took the always exciting and unpredictable Malian greyhound bus equivalent to Segou. Segou is about 4 hours east of Bamako, on the river and really nice. Spread out, big trees, kind of reminds me of St. Augustine a tiny bit… there are lots of cool hotels because apparently tourists go there, though the only tubabs I met were French people escaping debt and depression and such. Interlude- just got this text from Anderson- “ONLY 37 DAYS TILL WE SEE THE OCEAN.” Since then, I have 2 other people send countdowns to that effect… needless to say; we are all very excited about WAIST (West African invitational softball tournament) Yep. Anyway, we were joined by many more friends and stayed in a catholic mission house on New Year’s Eve and the night after. It was quite the party, everything typical about new years and then all the rogue waves that Mali will throw at you as well. But successful over all, I had a great time. Lived off street food, I think my stomach has iron/bleach walls now. Then on the second, Cary and I returned to Bamako to disperse with everyone else back to site until WAIST essentially… so that was melancholy but after a straight month, I needed sometime alone to think and digest everything that had happened.
And now I am back at my site, it is January 10, 2011 right now and I got back on the 4th I think, I don’t really know. At first I just hopped back into my routine, some soccer here, holding babies there, greeting ten thousand people, holding more babies… but then I realized that for the sake of my sanity and to justify taking days off, I had to get some projects going. So I talked to some people and have a plan! I want to stand on a moutain top and proclaim- I have a project and an agenda and am no longer counting down days to Bamako but am now counting down by tasks that must get done! I am working on informing my village about soak pits right now, septic tanks basically to dispose of standing water. The girl before me made a bunch 2 years ago but didn’t finish an most have collapsed unfortunately, so this time we are going to cover them with cement which will be more expensive and time consuming but more sustainable. So I need to get a list of everyone who wants in on this project before I go to Bamako, so I can work numbers while I am there and apply for funding. My town will provide 33% of the money via labor, supplies, or cash. Update- it is not January 20th, 28 people signed up for my soak pits and the dugutigi and Fode did pretty much all the work, which is good, it has to be the villages project, not mine. So now I am in Bamako starting to dig through red tape and millions of forms trying to start applying for funding to buy cement and pipes. Sometimes I get feel pretty down when i think of how much people give Mali… so much money and projects and schools and I guess they are better off from that. They say peace corps is different because we don’t just drop cash and run away like some NGO's but it’s still disheartening sometimes, to think maybe we should just leave them alone. There was a satirical article recently written in the Senegal PC news paper I think called “why god hates peace corps volunteers”, and it was about how we are messing up gods plan… sure it’s funny but sometimes I wonder. If we didn’t give them all this money, would they have done it on their own? I know soak pits are important for a ton of reasons, preventing malaria and making the town prettier, so it does save lives but I doubt my town would do it if I didn’t push them into it. Hmm.
Also, I am now working on the World Wise Schools Program with my teacher from 7th grade, Mr. Coghlan. This is a program that links teachers in America with Peace Corps volunteers to facilitate a cross cultural exchange between the Peace Corps volunteers’ town and the classroom in the US. I will write letters and send packages in show and tell form, and his class will send me letters as well to give to kids here. Sometime soon, I will talk to the school director and tell him about this so that we can get a buddy system going and the class can exchange drawings and things… the language barrier may be an issue, along with the fact that most kids here can’t read or write… but I will find a way around that. The purpose is mostly to educate kids in the US about Peace Corps and about another culture so that side will be easy. I wish I had been in a class with this when I was little!
Most notably, I have been talking to this American Doctor who works at the embassy and this former Mali Peace Corps volunteer who now works in USAID as well about getting supplies for my maternity. The USAID man, Greg, wants to do an “Adopt a Clinic” program and already has some supplies and money ready to go, so I am getting a complete list of needs from the doctor while here and then I will meet Greg in Bamako next time I am in, I can’t wait! We are going to dinner Friday. He said he already has one hundred dollars to buy meds locally with for my maternity, once I get the list of meds. So that is looking up. But once again, if I really took the time in my village and made them an income generating activity like making Shea butter and selling it on a big scale or something, couldn’t they buy their own meds? Maybe. But lord knows the Malian government isn’t going to help out the health care system in my town.
I am starting to realize how much work will need to be done in Bamako though… I need to apply for funding for my project, meet with Greg, work that out, get prices and quotes for all the supplies for my project, write a letter to Mr. Coghlan… there is as much work to be done there as there is to do here at site. It’s frustrating though, because people here judge work based on manual labor. So when I go get water from the pump, they all stop and say ‘good work! You’re a regular Malian woman and we appreciate you!’ But when I left my hut this morning all excited, just off the phone with Greg and bursting to tell someone about the news, no one cared. I told two women about how he had some supplies for the maternity and they didn’t even crack a smile, and I know my explanation was clear. Frustrating. I really wish I had a house in Bamako to get work done at as well.
And now here I am, in Bamako, desperately trying to find the work ethic that I once had so that I can sit down and run numbers and write the paper for my SPA (small project assistance) funding… I am in Bamako until Saturday morning and then I am going to Kita, a city 2 hours north, for the weekend to see Cary. So that will be really fun, I haven’t been to Kita yet and it sounds like a cheap little place.
2011… starting this year in the bush, ending it in the bush. I recently read a cool quote though that says “for some, traveling is more of a going away from rather than a going toward…” and lord knows that there are days when both of these things may be true for me, but overall, this is most definitely a going towards. It has been quite the month since my last blog post. It started with 2 weeks of in service training (IST, gotta love the governments appreciation for acronyms) in Tubaniso till December 19th, and then after that began my first vacation as a working woman and boy was it well earned. First I went to Manantali, the closest you can get to a beach in this land locked desert. Manantali is a full day of travel, mostly on a dirt road, North West of Bamako. It is kind of like the Hamptons of Mali… I imagine rich people would build lake houses there near a dam that was built by Germans to provide energy for Senegal. Lots of dam workers live there so there are bars and hotels and tubab stores. It was a week of not wearing anything but a bathing suit, good music, good company, cheap gin, and many abstract parallels drawn to how this was the weirdest Christmas ever. Then after that I spent a night in Bamako while en route to Segou for new years. We stopped in my friend Eric’s site for a few days to break up the trip. My friends Cary, Ryan and I stayed there and killed time while Eric worked and then we took the always exciting and unpredictable Malian greyhound bus equivalent to Segou. Segou is about 4 hours east of Bamako, on the river and really nice. Spread out, big trees, kind of reminds me of St. Augustine a tiny bit… there are lots of cool hotels because apparently tourists go there, though the only tubabs I met were French people escaping debt and depression and such. Interlude- just got this text from Anderson- “ONLY 37 DAYS TILL WE SEE THE OCEAN.” Since then, I have 2 other people send countdowns to that effect… needless to say; we are all very excited about WAIST (West African invitational softball tournament) Yep. Anyway, we were joined by many more friends and stayed in a catholic mission house on New Year’s Eve and the night after. It was quite the party, everything typical about new years and then all the rogue waves that Mali will throw at you as well. But successful over all, I had a great time. Lived off street food, I think my stomach has iron/bleach walls now. Then on the second, Cary and I returned to Bamako to disperse with everyone else back to site until WAIST essentially… so that was melancholy but after a straight month, I needed sometime alone to think and digest everything that had happened.
And now I am back at my site, it is January 10, 2011 right now and I got back on the 4th I think, I don’t really know. At first I just hopped back into my routine, some soccer here, holding babies there, greeting ten thousand people, holding more babies… but then I realized that for the sake of my sanity and to justify taking days off, I had to get some projects going. So I talked to some people and have a plan! I want to stand on a moutain top and proclaim- I have a project and an agenda and am no longer counting down days to Bamako but am now counting down by tasks that must get done! I am working on informing my village about soak pits right now, septic tanks basically to dispose of standing water. The girl before me made a bunch 2 years ago but didn’t finish an most have collapsed unfortunately, so this time we are going to cover them with cement which will be more expensive and time consuming but more sustainable. So I need to get a list of everyone who wants in on this project before I go to Bamako, so I can work numbers while I am there and apply for funding. My town will provide 33% of the money via labor, supplies, or cash. Update- it is not January 20th, 28 people signed up for my soak pits and the dugutigi and Fode did pretty much all the work, which is good, it has to be the villages project, not mine. So now I am in Bamako starting to dig through red tape and millions of forms trying to start applying for funding to buy cement and pipes. Sometimes I get feel pretty down when i think of how much people give Mali… so much money and projects and schools and I guess they are better off from that. They say peace corps is different because we don’t just drop cash and run away like some NGO's but it’s still disheartening sometimes, to think maybe we should just leave them alone. There was a satirical article recently written in the Senegal PC news paper I think called “why god hates peace corps volunteers”, and it was about how we are messing up gods plan… sure it’s funny but sometimes I wonder. If we didn’t give them all this money, would they have done it on their own? I know soak pits are important for a ton of reasons, preventing malaria and making the town prettier, so it does save lives but I doubt my town would do it if I didn’t push them into it. Hmm.
Also, I am now working on the World Wise Schools Program with my teacher from 7th grade, Mr. Coghlan. This is a program that links teachers in America with Peace Corps volunteers to facilitate a cross cultural exchange between the Peace Corps volunteers’ town and the classroom in the US. I will write letters and send packages in show and tell form, and his class will send me letters as well to give to kids here. Sometime soon, I will talk to the school director and tell him about this so that we can get a buddy system going and the class can exchange drawings and things… the language barrier may be an issue, along with the fact that most kids here can’t read or write… but I will find a way around that. The purpose is mostly to educate kids in the US about Peace Corps and about another culture so that side will be easy. I wish I had been in a class with this when I was little!
Most notably, I have been talking to this American Doctor who works at the embassy and this former Mali Peace Corps volunteer who now works in USAID as well about getting supplies for my maternity. The USAID man, Greg, wants to do an “Adopt a Clinic” program and already has some supplies and money ready to go, so I am getting a complete list of needs from the doctor while here and then I will meet Greg in Bamako next time I am in, I can’t wait! We are going to dinner Friday. He said he already has one hundred dollars to buy meds locally with for my maternity, once I get the list of meds. So that is looking up. But once again, if I really took the time in my village and made them an income generating activity like making Shea butter and selling it on a big scale or something, couldn’t they buy their own meds? Maybe. But lord knows the Malian government isn’t going to help out the health care system in my town.
I am starting to realize how much work will need to be done in Bamako though… I need to apply for funding for my project, meet with Greg, work that out, get prices and quotes for all the supplies for my project, write a letter to Mr. Coghlan… there is as much work to be done there as there is to do here at site. It’s frustrating though, because people here judge work based on manual labor. So when I go get water from the pump, they all stop and say ‘good work! You’re a regular Malian woman and we appreciate you!’ But when I left my hut this morning all excited, just off the phone with Greg and bursting to tell someone about the news, no one cared. I told two women about how he had some supplies for the maternity and they didn’t even crack a smile, and I know my explanation was clear. Frustrating. I really wish I had a house in Bamako to get work done at as well.
And now here I am, in Bamako, desperately trying to find the work ethic that I once had so that I can sit down and run numbers and write the paper for my SPA (small project assistance) funding… I am in Bamako until Saturday morning and then I am going to Kita, a city 2 hours north, for the weekend to see Cary. So that will be really fun, I haven’t been to Kita yet and it sounds like a cheap little place.
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