transitions, some peaceful some not

this is an exterpt from an email update to the NMPCA who have supported many of my projects and even come to visit a time or two- I just copy and pasted but it is an update on how my village handled the coup and such...

The most pressing issue right now is the recent military coup. Since
Greg filled you in on the situation in Bamako, I won’t go into that
and I am honestly not too familiar with everything quite yet. I was
in my village until Monday evening without radio, internet, and
unusually bad cell phone reception, so I only had my village friends
to keep me updated. And boy did they keep me updated- there are
conspiracy theories running rampant through the Malian grape vine.
Stories about how ATT planned this or about how France sent the
weapons to the Touraegs so that they could have a reason to fight and
regain control of Mali.

The first response of my friends in village was excitement. On
Thursday morning, after I received a phone call from Greg telling me
that the night before the military had taken over the presidential
palace, I ran outside and asked my host dad what was going on. He was
very excited, and said that ATT wasn’t treating the military or their
families well in light of the situation up north. He said that the
rebels were winning and that ATT wasn’t doing enough. They didn’t
propose solutions to the problem; they only expressed their new found
dislike for ATT. It is strange because they used to love ATT and
respect him for his actions in the past promoting and upholding
democracy. The village changes their opinions so quickly based on
popular opinion from the radio.

Another example of this flip flop attitude is when NATO began bombing
Libya; suddenly it seemed that all of Mali had begun hating Obama
vehemently over night. Suddenly, even my most educated friends, were
telling me how terrible it was that ‘Obama killed Gaddafi with his own
two hands. What nerve!’ In one situation with close friends I
offered a counter argument to this statement only to feel the mood
going in the wrong direction and had to change the subject.

The whole situation is very sad though. There will soon be a severe
food shortage in my village. If rains aren’t sufficient this year,
the problem will become very serious. If all the aid pulls out, these
people will be left with no help to get them to the next year. The
education system was already suffering and I am sure that the military
government does not have education at the top of its list of
priorities, especially when funding runs low. Currently in Bamako,
everyone is pulling their money out of the bank near where I am right
now and the Air France and Air Brussels airline offices around the
corner are over flowing with Malians trying to get out. The already
struggling tourism industry will be finished. Projects in our Peace
Corps villages are on hold until we can hopefully go back. There are
Touraegs fleeing the north, 200,000 already in fear of ethnic
conflict. The homes of some Touraegs were burned in the city of Kati,
45 minutes north of Bamako. With the upcoming famine, things just
couldn’t be worse. The situation is unfortunate to say the least.

On a lighter note, a lot has been going on in village. Jon Markle
donated funds to do a child nutrition program in my village. With the
money, we created a program to put emphasis on vitamins and
preventative care as a complimentary program to the clinics core
function. Through vitamin enrichment and village baby weighing we
will improve the diet of women and children and educate them on the
importance of a complete and balanced diet. With this donation we
purchased mosquito nets, de worming medicine, prenatal vitamins, and
children’s vitamin supplements to work hand in hand with our
complimentary education program. We completed a ten day HEARTH
nutrition program with ten mothers and their 2 year old malnourished
children. My mom and her two friends came to visit to help and we had
a great time. The HEARTH program was first introduced to Peace Corps
health volunteers a few years ago in Guinea which has since gained
credibility and popularity. HEARTH is a community based program
designed for small groups of ten mothers and their malnourished child
to promote nutritional rehabilitation and behavior change. HEARTH
brings together a group of women to be lead in discussion by mothers
with healthy, successful habits including but not limited to birth
spacing, hand washing, and vaccinations despite the difficulties. The
objectives are to rehabilitate these ten malnourished children by
cooking ameliorated porridge daily, to educate mothers on basic health
issues, and to demonstrate through the ‘role model’ mother what is
possible even in village with limited means. We selected participants
during a regular baby weighing, and then had a meeting with all the
village leaders to formally invite the women into the program and make
sure that they understood the time commitment.

We also recently received a donation of over $90,000 worth of lightly
used medical equipment from the US Military, Department of Defense.
The doctor is so excited and had just begun outfitting our clinic with
the new goods when I left village on Monday. He also plans to build
another building next to the clinic to include a pharmacy, male
recovery room, and well lit operation room. He recently did a hernia
surgery with a flash light. The goods include new beds, mattresses,
surgical gowns, wound dressing, IV kits, exam tables, and desks. It
is truly a blessing and I owe many thanks to Greg and the US embassy
for securing this donation. I haven’t gotten to take pictures of the
goods yet but will first thing when (hopefully) I get back to village.

Moms Visits!

On February 22, my mom, Lu goodall, and Debbie Blackshear came to visit!! After planning this trip since around November, it was incredible to finally see them get off the airplane and emerge from Bamako’s little airport, and amazingly with all their bags in tow. It was such a great reunion. We went back to the sleeping camel hotel run by these British guys for pizza and beer and to catch up a little. We had a big 12 days ahead of us, full of Malian bush food and potential parasite infections so the time to eat and drink is always now. Ironically enough they had met some other Peace Corps volunteers on the flight and people from my Peace Corps office were even at the airport waiting to pick up other new kids. Small ex-pat world. We went to our room with a working ac unit; they opened some of their presents, which at this point consisted of goat skin body back packs for the husbands. The Malian love these back packs and they are used for everything from getting water from the well to cross desert expeditions- they chop off a goats head, skin it, sew up the holes, turn the skin inside out, braid the legs together, and then you have a nice back pack. The top is the neck hole. Trendy! Ps- my American friends Lu and Debbie, I am writing this from my hut while savoring one of my precious cans of meat ball spagettios.

The next morning we got up and had a nice brunch while we waited for out hired 4x4 to arrive and take us to the grocery store and then to site. He threw a minor hissy fit when he saw how much stuff we had but thankfully, due to many problems from him like missing gas money, he was fired. We had lots of coffee and final showers, final looks in the last mirror they would see for ten days, and then off we went. We arrived at my village in the early afternoon and had time to unpack, organize, and then do a walk around the village to alert the ladies that in the evening, there would be a meeting for the 10 ladies participating in the HEARTH child nutrition program. The meeting was really fun, and everyone actually came. This one lady even brought this super cute puppy that she knows I love. He came to most of the sessions as well; I figure it’s a good way to teach them about how to treat animals.
The next morning, after our first night sleeping out in the bush, I got up early to run some errands and then everyone else got up and we made coffee, sandwiches, and bought beans for the ladies to eat with their coffee when they got to my house. The first morning we had hearth at this communal place in village but that was no fun, not personal at all. So from then on we had it at my house. I think it would have been a good idea to rotate houses from participant to participant to encourage the woman to clean up and do everything like washing hands correctly on her own turf but it was so nice doing it in my own yard… I was really surprised after the first 2 days how well it was going. The women were showing up, paying attention, and using the time to relax, drink the coffee we made them each morning, and gossip. The added bonus of having my mom, Lu, and Debbie there definitely kept them coming back as well. Especially once my crazy old lady Fune started coming over and leading these hilarious dance sessions; that spectacle definitely kept them coming back. The mornings overall were really great- the project was a success and would not have been nearly as fun or successful if my mom, lu, and Debbie hadn’t been there to liven the mood! They even made them adorable little present packages when the program was over to give to each woman.

Quite possibly my favorite part of the day though was the Gatorade happy hours that would have sometimes twice a day. We would set up our chairs in the shade, fill my pitcher with water and add Gatorade mix, and then bring out these 4 little cute cups that my mom brought from a picnic set. Then we would sit around and tell stories about old boyfriends, they would give me advice on things and reassure me that I haven’t gone crazy out here, and talk about their kids lives too. Then in the evenings we would have gin and tonic or anything from the assortment of drinks that we brought; my is American liquor easy to drink compared to the stuff they make here.
No two days were the same though. We ate incredibly well, painted murals, painted hundreds of nails, played with puppies and babies, lu did the Malian woman sexy dance; had quite the vacation. Just like sex and city after all!

Then we went into Bamako in quite a rush to have lunch with my friends Anderson and Ryan, a cocktail cruise on Rebecca’s boat, an art show at the embassies house (cough cough mom jaja), and then dinner at a nice Indian place where none of us could come even close to finishing our plates. The next morning we had brunch with my friend pierce, then went to the artist market and then to the big Malian market where we scrutinized fabric and I butchered my Bambara real bad, due to the heat… ha then we went home, had a giant late lunch at the sleeping camel, showered, and went to dinner for them to meet Cary! At yet another pizza place. Man people must think all I do is eat pizza and drink beer. Then we took them to the airport… all a whirlwind but that’s the sign of a good vacation. Going back to site without them was terrible so I ran away to Anderson’s house for a week before I built up the courage to come back and face the bush life alone once again. 3 more months…. Nothing to worry about.

Obama killed Gaddafi with his OWN TWO HANDS!!!

The other day I was sitting having lunch with my friend Bartoma in my market town. She is Christian, her real name is Suzanne, but she changed it so that the people she works with would remember it better. She is a retired doctor and now is a village health worker for an NGO. Her family lives in Bamako where her husband is a professor but she is currently on contract out here, so she visits her family on some weekends and holidays. She has an intern of sorts, a Malian guy currently at university studying anthropology. But since the university is on strike, he works with her mostly. The other day they asked me if I like Obama. This question is normal in Mali; I probably get asked it at least once every time I meet someone new because everyone loves him so much here. I said well sure, I like him. And then I changed the subject to our upcoming elections. He interrupted and said “no, Obama is a bad guy. No one likes him anymore because he killed Gaddafi.” I thought he was joking, or at least still just making casual conversation; I know him pretty well. But he kept going, asking why Obama would do such a thing; kill Gaddafi with his own hands after all Gaddafi has done for his people. I was stunned, this can’t be real; I stated some general facts and figures that I thought were common knowledge about the corruption and murderous ways of Gaddafi and his family. The conversation became awkward though, and I could tell that this was no light matter to my friends- so I had to drop it and quickly change the subject. But it just goes to show how well propaganda works against even the most educated people in a terribly poor country that depended upon Gaddafi for so long.

Magical Bullets

I just finished a really good book called the ‘glass palace’. Among other things, it is about the way countries under colonial rule were used by the ruling country during international conflicts. In this story, the British used Burmese and Indian men as ‘bat men’, what I think is similar to a servant to a man in combat. Gets bullets, retrieves the man if he is wounded; puts his own life on the line for his master. So I asked Fode if Mali played a role in WW2. He said that France had come here to collect men to go to battle. Village by village, they would collect ten or so from each one. Fode said that few wanted to go, and the women were always left crying and screaming. All the men from my village came back alive though, some missing limbs but they all made it back. They are all dead now but Fode said h used to go to talk to them a lot about stories from their time abroad. He says that the men all survived because they were all blessed by the village witch doctor before going, which made them indestructible. Bullets could not penetrate their skin. Bombs wouldn’t throw them to the ground. This is why men lived. I said well actually that may not be the case Fode, many men did die and bullets can always pierce a man. But Fodes belief in witch magic, his and every other person in my village it seems, attribute their home coming to the magic of the witch doctor. It’s funny how different his version of history is from that of a child educated in the United States. I can’t remember the details now but the reasons behind WW2, according to Fode, are pretty funny. The death of the 6 million Jewish people made Fode pretty upset, as if he were hearing it for the first time. It reminds me of the Peace Corps volunteer who told his friend about September 11th, and the Malian cried.

Malian Business Strategy

For Tabaski, the Muslim holiday, my friend invited a woman over to the stage house who could do henna, nails, fake eye lashes and that sort of thing. She was in her early twenties and really sweet. She came over at 9 to just do my friend Paula but as everyone else in the stage house woke up, one by one all the other girls signed up in a list to have henna and things done as well. She did mine, did an awesome job and charged $3. She ended up staying till 9 that night and even came back the next night to do hair. She said it was the best day she had had in a while and felt more respected than she could remember. Turns out, that Paula had run into her in a salon originally, where this woman worked. Paula really liked the job that she did so she asked for this woman’s phone number so that she could do house calls. After Paula left, all the other ladies in the salon got really angry because she had received special attention for the job that they all do. Their jealousy caused this girl to have to leave the salon because the other girls were being so mean. I have seen this many times in Malian business strategy and everyday life- Malian culture seems to crush individualism and individual drive to such a point that no one can succeed. Or if you do manage to succeed alone, you end up having to western union money transfer your income to other family member and tons will move in with you as well. Another example is that in my village, we have 5 boutiques. They all sell the exact same thing. All at the exact same price. And are all within 100 meters of each other. Why not lower ones price, have sales, buy varied merchandise? It makes no sense. They say they don’t want to lower their process because it will hurt the others. Sweet but illogical.