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.

time is going too fast!

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

a poorly written rant

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.

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.

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.

Desert Sunrise

Where the wild things are
Dad- this is for you- Fode: "Do yewwwww knowwww Pheeeeeel Cooooleeeens?" hahahaahha

Excuse the confusion but I have decided to begin this post with the end- because last night was too priceless and I am worried that the rest of the post is too boring and the people may just miss out on this gem. So last night was Friday and it was the last day of this seliba party. Little did I know, seliba was not only Wednesday but more of a party that lasted an entire week. With all the old friends, students, and family that came in from Bamako, they had soccer tournaments and dance parties and all kinds of events every day. I missed the soccer championship which I am bummed about… there definitely would have been some good pictures too. Though I did not take any pictures last night at the dance party… they would have been awesome. But so I get to Fodes house at dinner time wearing pants and a boring shirt because I had been working around my house and yard all day. His daughters were like ‘we are going dancing tonight! You’re wearing that?! We can’t take you anywhere!’ or at least this is what I imagine they said, so I went home and changed into a full Malian outfit, the one I had made for the swear in ceremony. When I left my hut all my neighbor friends gathered around to see, who knew I could go from so masculine to so feminine in 30 seconds. They all laughed at me but I could tell my host sister is now coveting my outfit. So then I went back over to Fodes house which took forever because everyone had something to say about my new outfit and the fact that I am now a Malian woman. What I have always wanted to be! But then we eat dinner, moseyed around, my friends change into western clothes so now I am the only one in full Malian wear… and then at around 8 one of my friends with a baby tied to her back says that we are going dancing, right now. So I left dinner and she and I went to the ‘donke yoro’, which literally means dancing place, and we joined this giant circle of girls aged 7 to 25, half of which had babies strapped on like back packs. I tried to make my friend give me her baby but she wouldn’t… I think she was laughing too hard at everything else going on. So we are dancing, I look up and everyone else on this dancing stage is doing some sort of synchronized dance except for me… so I tried to join in, and then I look at the DJ and he is laughing at me, and breaks into the music on his microphone “OUAIS!! COMME CA!! It’s like that!! YOU CAN DO IT!!” I almost died. I was already laughing hysterically to myself just because the whole thing was so funny, and I think I may have scared the posse of 5 year olds gathered around taking turns touching me and then running away, but it was a sight to be seen, let me tell you. So then the little girls dancing around me seemed to be getting annoyed at always stepping on my heals and vice versa as I tried desperately to not stand out too much, and my friend and I left the circle and danced on the edge of the stage for a little while, much to the amusement of my other friends standing around chatting… “Dear god, pretend we don’t know her!” that’s what I imagine they were thinking… it was kind of like being a celebrity. Then my friend and I went back to Fodes house to kill some time before the real party started. Apparently, I found out a few hours later, that was only some sort of pre party that formed while they were testing the speakers and setting up. So then around 9 Fode and I went back to sell tickets- I was really confused until I saw that it was exactly like a middle school dance but way more intense. Everyone in the town and from the surrounding towns between 5 and 30 was there waiting to buy tickets. Motos were showing up left and right and people dressed to the nines in both western clothes and Malian clothes were there. It was like ‘the fast and the furious’ and the whole place smelled like Moto exhaust, like when you’re sitting in the water behind a ski boat waiting to get pulled up. All the guys had to show off their motos. And all the girls had to dance and drown you in their perfume as they walked by. You can really tell who is from Bamako… its odd. So then they start hanging up all these dead animals by their feet and apparently you can buy snacks, they had sodas, and little seating areas were popping up as people passed chairs and tables over the walls. Then some guy comes over with a cup of pastis and asks repetitively, “you drink? You drink?” I turned down that option, drinking pastis of all things with a bunch of guys I don’t know… could have been fun but it’s not like I can understand the conversation anyways. It was kind of like being in a club, there’s that same sense of excitement when you spot one of your friends. So then I sat with Fode and helped him sell tickets to the swarms of little kids, it was about 20 cents for kids and 55 cents for adults. About 9 zillion girls were dancing on the stage by this point and all the guys were gathered around in the chairs or just dancing for their friends. Some skanky girls were sitting on random guys laps, I wonder if they were prostitutes. Who knows. I went home at 10 30 but I am pretty sure that things were still only getting started and the music kept going till one… quite the party.

First day back at site for another 3 week stint till thanksgiving… I am going to try to only go to my market town and other than that, not leave at all. Since it is the first day back I am still really excited about it. Going into Bamako for Halloween and things was really fun, stayed at my friend Fletchers house in Bamako with my friends. I love being in Bamako because you see other volunteers, and I always have a good time when I go out with people from the stage group ahead of us. They always have good stories and are real fun to be with. I can’t wait till the February stage comes in. Such a fun visit though, I miss my friends already and cannot wait until thanksgiving. Plus I am officially going to the party at the ambassador’s house. There will be 30 Peace Corps volunteers and then an assortment of USAID employees and I am sure a few other groups present as well. And I hear that she flies in all her food from America, turkey and whipped cream for the pies that she is known for included. I have met the ambassador a few times, she is so nice and cried at our swear in ceremony.

Trying to get back to site was as usual, an adventure. I tried to get out one day but transport still hadn’t left after waiting at the bus stop for 7 hours and I didn’t want to travel in the dark, given their track record so far. So I went back to stage house, which turned out to be awesome because I got to go out with a group of people from the Dogon country who were in for medical exams and stuff. But it was a fun night and even though I was ready to go back to site, I definitely can not complain about a free night at the stage house with fun people. That’s one of the perks of having Bamako as my stage house, while it sucks that we have to share it with everyone else who comes to Bamako for this and that reason, we get to meet a lot more people that the other regional capital stage houses. But so day 2, I got to the bus station at 7 because they said we were leaving at 8, and we finally got out around one. Typical. But it was fun because I knew I was going to get out before dark, so I just made friends with the people I had met the day before. Now I have a nice group of friends to hang around and wait with. By friends I mean the banana lady and an assortment of child laborers selling bread and things. It was also cool to be there so early and see everything getting set up for the day. I used to love airports and I guess I have started to love this bus station. I see people I know and there is always an interesting conversation to be had. While a schedule and bathroom would be nice, it’s ok. It was incredible though because I met 2 Liberian refugees. There are a few in my town but they are older and scary. But these 2 guys, as soon as I saw them, I knew they weren’t Malian for some reason. But they came up to me and asked if I spoke English and then we ended up talking for over an hour. They had endured the 14 year civil war in Liberia but were desperately trying to get out, so when their paperwork went on hold for asylum in America, they had to flee because they couldn’t be in country any more. So they went to Sierra Leone, but by the time they returned, the paperwork was lost and their family and cousins had already got to America. So then they took land transport via different traffickers around to Benin, then up through the deserts of Niger, Mali, Algeria, and morocco. It was as horrible as you have read in the news papers, people died and the traffickers took advantage of their vulnerability and there was not food. But they finally made it onto a boat in morocco and set sail for Spain. Unfortunately, they got caught by immigration officials in the water and were sent back to Algeria. As he said “Arabs don’t like us very much”, so there time in the desert and in hiding was difficult. Somehow they ended up on Red Cross transport through kidal and goa (both cities in northern Mali where we aren’t allowed to go because of al queada) and now they are in Bamako. After three days at the Red Cross center sleeping on mats and getting some clothes, the Red Cross was done with them and could not help them anymore. And that how they ended up stranded in Bamako, trying to get back to the country they were forced to flee, to try to start again and try to get to America. He didn’t ask for anything except help in immigration, which I certainly can’t help with. But I gave him phone credit and water and exchanged emails. So sad and so crazy to meet face to face. In Denmark it was one thing, when I was working at the Red Cross asylum center, but this was unreal. Maybe I’ll get masters in immigration issues… complicated but so interesting to me. I just wish there was more I could have done for him.

Then I finally got back to site, stopped at Andersons to get my bike and chat with people in his town and surrounding towns, and continued on. Getting back was nice though, things finally felt really familiar and I have a lot to do before thanksgiving and December.

So lately I have been looking for other 22 year olds to hang out with, as opposed to the posse of 14 year old girls that I have joined. But today i finally figured out that there are no 22 year olds in Mali, theoretically. Or anywhere with a culture like this. you are either 14 and single (maybe) or 22 with 3 dependant kids, 2 of whom are breastfeeding and are always tied to your back and hanging on your legs as you pound rice or corn. So this is why I feel like I don’t have friends at village. But now that I have realized this, I have embraced my club of 14 year old girls and so now things are great. Even more concerning is the issue of my sex Ed class prospective students. I was imagining rounding up all the 15 and 16 year olds maybe, but now I see that I need to get the 12 year olds… do I need to have them get parental consent forms signed? Or verbally in this case since most adults can’t read or write? Or maybe that just an American thing. But the other day I was talking to my 14 year old new best friend and I was asking her some of the questions in my baseline survey, which I had done with her parents a few weeks before. When I got to the part about STDs and family planning, I felt weird being alone with her even though I wanted her opinion without her moms influence… but I called her mom over because I didn’t want my question to come out wrong and then have her think I said something weird about sex. But before I got her mom over, I asked her what STDs she knew of and she said “Malaria!” …no…. not really. And then her mom corrected her and Fatim obviously had no idea she was even wrong. Hello sex Ed class inspiration! Malaria does seem to be a catch all around here… if you have anything out of the ordinary, then you have malaria and you have to eat papaya leaves. That’s all. O wonder they thing that papaya leaves work… because half the time it’s just a cold, and then when the person actually has malaria and dies because they didn’t get treatment, well that’s just the normal margin of error. Obviously. Malian logic wins again.

I started my baseline survey though and things have been really interesting. Even though they lie about washing their hands and stuff, just my asking again and then being around forces them to make their kids start washing their hands, so that’s good. Like the other day I saw my teachers kids eating fish and their mom actually made them wash their hands, and this is the first time I have ever seen this, so that was good. And apparently my teacher sells condoms from his house so that is good. If it seems to be relevant, maybe I will tell the kids in my sex Ed class that I will sell them too… but this is controversial so I will have to think about it. But I want them to come to me so I can tell them the facts straight instead of typical Malian fashion, which is dancing around the bush and never telling the cold hard truth. And these kids certainly wouldn’t go to my teacher to buy condoms anyways; they just aren’t using them because they can’t buy them without the whole region knowing. I think the girl before me may have sold them, but I think I will regardless. But they won’t get away without a big long talk first.

Things have been great lately because I told Fode that I wanted more time to spend with families other than his, especially my host family, and he understood so that was good. So since then I have been cooking lunch in my hut and giving some to my host family and neighbor sometimes, and I have had more time to wander the village and stop in with new people. Fode is a life saver but I swear, I was never alone and he always knew where I was. I felt like a puppy and totally not in control… I am glad I have that back now. And now I can actually eat lots. The last few days I have been making huge quantities of food, intending to give food to my friends but instead I ate it all each time… but that’s good. Gotta gain back some weight. Though I think I am back to normal so that’s good. That’s got me thinking about thanksgiving again… not an hour goes by where I don’t get excited about it.

Tomorrow is market day and it will be crazy since the Seliba festival is next Wednesday (supposedly). I am excited about that though and I have a new outfit being made at the tailors, matching with my host family… ill take lots of pictures don’t worry. They will probably make me wear a head scarf too so get excited about those pics when I put them up on face book at thanksgiving. I need to buy a bunch of stuff for my kitchen though, now that I am cooking, so that will be fun too. I also need to avoid the women on town who keep asking me to buy their kids new outfits for seliba…

I helped to pre natal consultations again at the CSCOM and again wondered if ‘avortement’ really meant abortion in English. I had asked the matron and she had explained but maybe I just couldn’t believe that it was such a common question, at every prenatal conversation, and that the answer was so often ‘yes, I have had this many’ while looking at the floor. The majority of women it seems have had at least one or two. And a girl of 14 who lied and said she was 16 until we pressured her to tell the truth came in pregnant too. The thing is that these girls always seem older, and in a way they are. They are usually married with kids by 17 so there is no such thing as the 22 year old that I am used to hanging out with in America. So yesterday I asked my teacher what the deal with abortion was around here and what the little pregnant girl was going to do. It turns out that it is the typical story of a developing country with strict religious beliefs incorporated into their laws and culture- abortion is completely illegal and doctors and patients will go to jail if caught. (Enter bribes) but as is custom in these situations, doctors or nurses or midwifes will sometimes do them if offered enough money to offset the almost invisible risk. There are no legal limits like in the states, where abortions cannot be preformed after the first trimester or so unless in certain cases, for many reasons including the fact that the risk is higher for the mother. So I would imagine that in a country without reliable pregnancy tests ( peace corps tells us never to use the French tests sold here in the pharmacy because of often false positive results) and high rates of anemia, that It would be hard to really know if you’re pregnant before 2 or 3 months go by. By this time, it is too late for the abortion method of taking a series of 2 pills, at least by US standards, and the other method, involving a vacuum and such, would be used. But in a land where both the medical facilities in my region have unreliable or no electricity, this means that both abortion methods approved as safe in the US are not possible here. So what results are untrained people doing abortion with substandard dangerous methods. My teacher was very animated when talking about his and cited cases where the women bleed to death, get infections which cause infertility or death, complications that also cause infertility or death, and the chance that all following pregnancies will fail early in the term. So if so many women at the CSCOM have had abortions, what percent of the women are infertile or dead? And where do they get the abortions? I know you can go to Bamako and get a relatively safer abortion but only the wealthy can afford this. Fode said that it is done in the woman’s home often times but that the doctors in this area are too scared. I don’t believe that they are too scared; I bet I could find a doctor who did them. I know one of my friends, she worked at a CSCOM and her homologue was the matron, and she performed abortions. Enter my sex Ed class. But how do you convince a boy of 15 of these issues and have him feel the same sense of frustration and push for action that a 20 year old does when faced with family planning methods? It almost seems like abortion is a form of birth control here. A very expensive, the most expensive actually and the most dangerous for sure. But when a 19 year old is pregnant, has kids at home, a husband thank god, and has already had 2 abortions- it is definitely a form of birth control. And if it is so common, it starts to feel not so bad, and easier to rationalize. So then Fode and I were talking about whether or not I should give out condoms in my little reproductive health class. We decided that this would in a way give the kids permission, but I decided that I will keep a bunch in my house and tell the kids that they can come get them from me for free. But how do you make that seem appealing to a kid… but kids here can’t buy them, there are no secrets, so we do what we can. And now for that poor unmarried 14 year old who looks 25, she cannot go to school anymore if she even was before and now boys see her as someone they can sleep with and not have to marry, if they didn’t see her as that before… especially when the father may be just as young, they are too young to legally marry even in Mali.

There is one girl here who is a curious case. I won’t identify who she is just in case somehow someone gains access to this blog. (its happened before… someone’s host mom stopped talking to her after she posted pictures on her blog, one of which had the 3 year old naked She is 17 and has the attitude of a 25 year old super model. I have tried and tried to give her the benefit of the doubt, invited her to lunch, given her nail polish, but she is impossible. So yesterday I was talking to my friend and told him that I failed again at making friends with her. And he said that it’s fine, that everyone around here knows that she is impossible, and that is exactly why no one around here is going to want to marry her. He said, at the risk of sounding harsh, that boys were going to see her as someone they can sleep with and then ignore, and he said that she will soon be 40 and still living at home with 3 kids from 3 different dads. His speech was humorous but he is right… and that is sad.

Another bummer is that I just found out that one of my favorite girls from my little posse of preteen girls is going to cote d’ivoire next week to live her aunt and her aunts daughters and go to school there… and that she will be staying there until she is doe with school, which will be a long long time, well after I leave Mali. So that is really sad. Her dad says it is because he didn’t get the education that he wanted but he wants his daughters to have it. So one I already in Bamako but luckily she is coming home Monday for the Seliba party and to say good bye to her sister… he says there will be lots of crying. He also said that if she stays here, that she will never got the chance to leave, that she will end up gallivanting around at night with the other kids who aren’t educated and couldn’t get out for whatever reason, and that she will end up pregnant. I am starting to see this town as the sort of place that the educated want to flee, not just the educated but the ones who want more than what their parents had… it’s sad.

Just another typical day in Mali… spent the morning pounding shea nuts and now my hands have blisters all over them… I hate how that keeps happening. Makes the other women think that I have fragile hands. But another event of the day was when the 10 year old daughter of my host family was crying. I don’t know why but she was really upset. She was in and out of the hut and we were all sitting out front under the cover. She was really upset but I guess she decided that sitting outside would make her feel better. But as I have heard is custom around here, her 2 host moms and older sister just alternated laughing at her and making fun of her and asking me to take pictures of her because she was crying. It was just ridiculous, she is the one child in the family who really works and certainly deserves respect from her older lazy sister especially. Now there are plenty of reasons that she could be crying about, one being that she is a Malian girl or maybe that she has like 5 siblings under the age of 5 who are always crying simultaneously… but there isn’t a way in Bambara to say, why are you upset? So I saw this as a wonderful opportunity to make her my friend and show her family a lesson. I got up and told her to come with me to my house and sat her down in my comfy chair, let her pick a crystal light packet, and gave her a stack of gossip magazines. I just did my dishes and such but she calmed down a lot and then once she was totally composed, left. But I hope that she will see my house as a little island away from Mali sometimes… I want her to come over more. And this will make her older sister jealous, that she got special treatment, so it served 2 purposes because now her older sister will maybe be nicer to me to try to get to come to my little island of freedom.

Yesterday was Seliba. A Muslim holiday of some sort, I don’t know what it is about or even what its name in English is. But it was kind of like the African bush version of thanksgiving… if you can picture that. Tons of family members came to my town on Tuesday and most will leave on Saturday or Sunday. Everyone gets their hair done, feet and hands hennaed, eye brows waxed off and new gigantic Aladdin Barbie-esque ones drawn one. We all got new clothes too and people here love to be matching with their friends or family… so needless to say my host mom and neighbors got me in on their outfits… there are some very attractive pictures on my face book. They are priceless. So that morning I woke up feeling like a little kid on Christmas morning for some reason, and actually took the time to do my hair and wear mascara, only to have my host mom tie this giant scarf on my head and attempt to put charcoal on my eyes. Then I went to Fodes house because we they were killing a goat at 10. As we were killing the goat, Fode casually mentioned that a baby was being born and that my homologue had been at the maternity all night because one was born late last night too, so I raced over there to see what was happening in time to see the comatose woman walk out and the little baby being carried to the resting room next door. So I hung out with the matrons and my homologue while they collected all the body parts to be buried in the yard for good luck and while they cleaned the place. And to think, they even used soap and one woman was wearing gloves! Turns out that the new mom, who I have met at pre natal consultations before, is from Cote D’Ivoire originally but when her husband died, she took the option of marrying her husband’s younger brother, to ensure that someone would pay for her kids schooling and such. Apparently she could have stayed single and remarried on her own if she wanted, but in this culture, that isn’t really an option. This is one of the main arguments for why AIDS spreads faster in Muslim countries… exhibit A.

There are a lot of things about Peace Corps that sometimes I would rather not write about and just forget about. Malians seem to be pros at beating their kids with one half of the brain while greeting you, all smiles, in the same instance, with the other half. Or in this instance, watching your friend get beat by her husband in the courtyard as she screams ‘you’re a killer!’ and he pushes her down and stomps on her back with a host of ladies yelling at him and pushing him. And then ten minutes later be back to work, all smiles. Then he goes to wash his hands and feet off only to go back for round two, to once again humiliate and abuse every aspect of his wife, all the while avoiding eye contact and never showing any emotion. To such a degree, that in the beginning when I heard her screaming from my hut and went outside and saw him, I thought he was just joking around. it’s nice to know that the ladies have each other’s backs to a certain extent, like right now the woman who was beaten (age 19, beautiful and so nice, one of the ladies who I had matching outfits with) is hiding in one of their houses with her cute little three year old daughter who spent the event crying on the side lines. All the ladies were yelling at him, something about children, and everyone seems to be angry at him but that is all. It will happen again and again. Just goes to show, yet again, that even the nicest, shyest seeming man can turn around and beat the hell out of his young wife whom he has children with. I was planning to spend the afternoon in my hut and now I definitely feel justified in doing so. There are some things that I really hate about Mali and their acceptance of domestic, child, and animal abuse is up there. And it’s safe to say that their dispute was cut short by the crowd of angry women and for all I know, it will continue behind closed doors this evening, where it is even more socially acceptable. That is how our teacher once explained it- domestic abuse is fine behind closed doors, in the privacy of one’s home, but rude when done in public. How considerate. Needless to say, yet another Malian mind has lost my respect. Sure someone is probably reading this right now saying that it’s a circle of violence, that he was raised in that manner and that it’s the only way he knows, that really it’s not his fault, its Malian society’s fault for allowing it to continue. Well it will continue forever unless some man sees it as the dehumanizing act that it is, sooner or later. If everyone in Mali believes that it is justified, when will the belief change? I talked to Fode about it that night at dinner. He said that she was forced to marry her husband by her parents but that she didn’t want to. She’s 19 and has a 3 year old so she couldn’t have been more than 16… it’s so sad, she is completely stuck.

But tomorrow I am baby weighing and handing out vitamins to kids… and then Wednesday I will go to Bamako for thanksgiving!! I cannot wait.

BAMAKO TOMRROW THANK THE LORD. 3 straight weeks at site… haven’t spoken English except on the phone… won’t even say how many times I washed (or should I say didn’t wash) my hair… if Bamako if now the land of the free then that makes America… heaven? Just talked to my dad, he’s on a plane going to America to meet up with my mom and sister at my aunt’s house in Greensboro, so jealous!! But it’s crazy to picture an airplane right now; I bet Fode is the only person in my village who has ever seen a plane, none the less been on one. And he was in a stripped cargo plane flying from north Mali to Bamako. That’s all. My dad’s eight hour flight across an entire ocean is how long it takes me to drive the 125 k to Bamako in a bush taxi sometimes… there is no doubt that this is a parallel universe. This can’t be the same planet.

Things like ‘relative poverty vs. extreme poverty’ that we talked about in class in college don’t even touch this world that I am in right now. 33% of kids under 5 die. Blame it on the colonial legacy, the culture, the religion, whatever you want. On a side note, in the book I am reading right now, The End of Faith by Sam Harris, explains this a little. It also says that (is Mali an Arab country? I guess not… but similar) the GDP of all Arab countries combined is less than that of Spain and Spain has translated more books into Spanish this year than the Arab world has since the 9th century. And on that note, according to a survey done by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, when Malians were asked if suicide bombing and terrorist attacks in defense on Islam are justifiable, 54% of Malians said a flat out yes, not even including the ‘probably’ and ‘don’t know/maybe’ groups. I highly recommend this book; it is the best book in the subject that I have read. Some books on this issue frustrate me and I can’t finish them, like the God Delusion, for example. But this one, I have nothing but good things to say.