The Great Mango Epic, and Other Adventures

Sorry for the excruciatingly long delay in posting; I know everyone has been waiting on the edge of their rolley chairs! In addition to projects keeping me busy, I've been entertaining some delightful visitors. My sister Amy flew in last month, and agreed to help me plant some trees at the site for the new school. While this sounds like a simple task, it proved to be a quite epic adventure. We bought 4 mango trees in Bamako, and by the time they reached their new home they had ridden on 8 different forms of transportation! We checked them under the bus (1) from Bamako to Segou, which broke down somewhere mid-way, and finally dropped us on the side of the road around 3 a.m. just outside Segou. With no taxi in sight, we hired a "push-push" driver (2), (similar to a wheelbarrow), to walk them, and our luggage, to the hotel. On the way there we hitched a ride in a good samaritan's car (3), with the trees poking out of the trunk. The next morning they rode in a taxi (4) to the bus stop, and then under the seats of a bachée (5) to Cinzana, where Kyle (my closest fellow volunteer) lives, and where we'd find the road to my village. Once there, they (both Amy and the trees) were piled onto a donkey cart (6) to Kyle's house, where we spent the night and had a fantastic chicken dinner.




The next morning we were up at sunrise to load them onto the roof of a van (7) that would drop them off in my village, 20 kilometers away.




While the trees sped down the road, Amy and I made the trip on bikes, arriving 3 and a half hours after them.



Once in my village, we took the rest of the day to rest, greet the chief, and clean up my mud hut. The next day was spent measuring the footprint of the new buildings on the site and staking out the spots for the trees, which were brought to the site tied to the back of a bike (8) and planted the following morning.





With the great mango epic concluded, Amy and I headed up to Mopti to see Dogon country. We did a 3 day hike up and back down a cliff, through animist villages and ancient granaries, then enjoyed a brief though scenic boat ride on the Niger river. (Amy might be able to tell you a different version of the story, but I'll leave that up to her.)










After the trip we hauled it back to my village, biking another 20K, to kill a goat and throw a party. Now, some of you might know that I'm not a big fan of small children, and I've spent the last year training them to stay away from my house. Amy, being a good-hearted kindergarten teacher, spent the entirety of the party tickling, playing frisbee with, and giving stickers to the little kids. A whole year of hard work ruined in one day. They keep asking when she's coming back...



I had a couple weeks after Amy's visit to work on projects, although some inevitable setbacks kept me from getting much done. Even though we can't start digging the well until after the rainy season, we can start to make the bricks now, saving some time later on. I purchased 60 bags of cement in Cinzana, and arranged for some people from my village to come pick them up on donkey carts. When the day arrived, I got a phone call saying that another baby had died in my village, and we'd have to wait until the next day to transport the cement. The next day came and we loaded up the carts. A few hours later I got another phone call saying that it had started raining on the road, and some of the bags had gotten wet. They weren't too badly damaged, so we arranged to start work the day the well technician was scheduled to come. The day came, but the technician didn't. He had come down with malaria, and would be unable to start for a few days.

In the midst of all this mayhem, after some delayed flights and a little confusion about dates, my boyfriend Seth flew in. He survived the 20K ride to my site, was greeted by the entire council of elders, and received a warm welcome from the chief, after whom he was named (Isa Coulabaly). Since he's here, I'll let him tell the rest in his own words:



Hello everyone; Seth here. The trip to get here was certainly eventful. After missing my connecting flight in New York, I spent the night at JFK waiting to get put on the next flight to Casablanca. Unfortunately, that meant waiting around until 8:40 p.m. Luckily, however, I met an exceedingly nice Moroccan man and his family who had also missed the flight, which made the time pass easier. Getting into Casablanca at 8:30 a.m., I had (after a little help from Hicham (the gentleman I met in New York) to get me to the right gate) an exciting 16 hour wait for my flight to Bamako. Not having foreseen some of the difficulties of international travel, I was not prepared for the fact that the airport did not accept plastic currency. Luckily, I had a bag of trail mix in my carry-on and enough American money to buy a bottle of water. Needless to say, I passed the time mostly by sleeping. My travels ended at about 4:45 a.m. when I got to the Bamako airport and found Mary waiting for me (luckily, as there was some mix up about when exactly I would be arriving!) with a taxi to take us into the city.

Since that initial difficulty, it has been a wonderful trip. Mary was kind enough to ease me into Malian life so as not to overwhelm me right at first. We spent the first day in Bamako, enjoying air conditioning and good food. I was able to meet some of the other volunteers here and find out a little bit more about the Peace Corps life. Then, we headed off to Segou, where I was once again pampered by getting a ride on a Peace Corps shuttle (with comfortable seats and air conditioning!). After Bamako, Segou was a nice contrast: While Bamako is a big, bustling city, Segou is much easier to take in. We spent a day there as well, enjoying good food once again and air conditioning at the hotel. The next day would begin my real Malian experience.

Getting out to Mary's site, we had to wait at a stand for whatever available transportation came our way. Mary always says that one thing she has learnt here is patience, and that certainly held true in this case. While we waited, I got to try my first real Malian food...rice with peanut sauce from a street vendor. It was actually quite good, and I even tried a little bit of cow stomach. Amazingly, our luck with transportation held, and we were able to catch a ride with two guys in a nice jeep. Even more astonishing, the passenger of the jeep had spent two years studying entymology in Columbus, Ohio. A small world indeed! The car dropped us of in Cinzana, where we were greeted by the sight of a celebration for the Japanese ambassador's arrival to the village. Probably the starkest moment of that party was the crowd of men with old muzzle-loader rifles firing their guns into the air; the noise was unbelievable!

After spending the night in Cinzana (my first time under a mosquito net, as well as my first experience of eating Malian fashion (with my hands)), we prepared for the trek out to Mary's village.




Considering the fact that the longest consecutive ride I've taken on a bike since I was a child has been about a mile, then 12.5 miles out to Tongo was a slightly daunting proposition. It is a beautiful ride through the country (even if at the time I was not in the best condition to appreciate it), and it was a pleasure to finally see Mary's village. The people there are beyond nice and spent no time in making me feel welcome.





We spent the next couple of days at her site, relaxing during the day and greeting people at night. It was a little strange to hang out with people when I have no grasp of the language, but of course Mary made it easier on me. I got to enjoy the Malian tea ceremony quite a few times, which is a fascinating processes to watch, and delicious to indulge. After a few days, it turned out that we had to return to Segou to purchase some materials for Mary's project, which entailed another bike ride to Cinzana, after which I got to experience another form of transportation, the reconditioned charter bus.

Spending another night in Segou, we returned to Cinzana the next day, replete with wheelbarrow and shovels. As we walked with them down the early morning streets of Segou, we received a multitude of humored stares and comments about the white people walking with a wheelbarrow. Luckily, a passing donkey cart was kind enough to pick us up and take us to the place where we could find a bachée to transport us and the tools to Cinzana, The wait was a short one, and luckily the bus was going past Tongo, so we were able to get the driver to drop the stuff of at the village while we spent the night in Cinzana, biking back to Tongo the next. This bike ride was the easiest, and the most beautiful. We left in the afternoon, so we didn't have to worry about beating the noon heat and were able to take out time and enjoy the scenery. After spending another day in Mary's village, we came back to Segou (another bike ride...50 miles in six days!), where I finally met Mary's friend Amy. We had a fun night, including a walk down to the river for sunset and sharing a drink with a crippled poet of Mary's acquaintance.




The next day, we came back to Bamako by charter bus, then went for a quick trip to Siby, which is about an hour south of the city. Siby is a truly beautiful part of Mali, up in the mountains with some wonderful opportunities for hiking. The way the wind and rain of carved out the rock is truly beautiful, and there are apparently some gorgeous waterfalls in the area, although we didn't spend enough time there to really experience them.








Overall, the trip has been amazing. It is nice to finally experience first hand what Mary's has been talking about during the past year. The people here are among the nicest I have ever met, and I can honestly say that I like this country (although I'm not sure that I could live here; it makes for me even more impressive what Mary has done). I'm glad I came during rainy season, as I'm fairly certain I wouldn't have been able to function had the weather been any hotter. I'm sad to have to leave tomorrow, but I'm happy that I was able to make this trip and see a part of what that past year has been for Mary. It has definitely been more than worth it.

Economics 101

I mentioned that I submitted a proposal for funding to dig a well. WELL, (*pun intended*), just after I submitted it the price of cement nearly doubled and the American dollar dropped yet again. Since the funding comes in US dollars, this would have been a bit of a problem. So I un-submitted the proposal and adjusted it for the dynamics of our global economy. This delay, however, pushes the project back into the rainy season when it is not advisable to be digging wells. After rainy season comes the millet harvest, when everyone has to work in the fields. So we may not be able to start the well until September. But no sweat - it gives me time to finalize details for the school construction, teach my village the joys of compressed stabilized earth bricks, and maybe read War and Peace.

Bad Apples

I feel like I sometimes sugar-coat things when talking about my experiences here, so in this post I'm gunna tell it how it is and say a few words about harassment. Being a young, white, unmarried woman is not an easy thing in this culture. Every conversation with a male Malian goes one of two ways; in the first scenario, he asks if I'm married, I say no, he asks if I will marry him, I ask why, he says he wants to marry a white woman, I say no, he asks if I'm racist. In scenario number two he asks if I'm married, I say yes, he says where is your husband, I say he's in America (or Bamako, or Segou, or wherever), he asks if my husband is white, I say yes, he asks if I'm racist. I say, yes, obviously I'm racist since I chose to live in Africa for two years doing development work!
In addition to marriage proposals and accusations of racism, lets talk about physical harassment. The other day I was buying sugar at a boutique, and a man grabbed my ass. I turned around and yelled at him, and then he LAUGHED. And the other men sitting around watching also laughed. I don't know which was more infuriating - the harassment or the absolute lack of respect conveyed by the laughter.
Later that day, walking through the city, I was followed by a group of children chanting "tubabu" (white person) and asking for money. When I said 'no' and walked on, they began throwing rocks at me. I turned around and yelled at them, and they laughed.
These bad apples, of which there are many, make it necessary to approach every situation with caution, and make it difficult to trust even the good apples, of which there are also many. It's easy to forget, after a bad experience, about the abundance of wonderful people I've met here and it's easy to write off all Malians as peccant and offensive.

This kind of harassment has never occurred in my village. There, I feel like a welcome addition to the community. Everyone knows my name, and shows me an incredible amount of respect and hospitality. It's a welcome change after leaving the anonymity vexation of the city.

Send Me Some Ice!

It's been so long since my last post I don't even know where to start. There have been a lot of developments with my school project. We're definitely going ahead with it and my village couldn't be more excited. I think I was hesitant at first to get going because I wasn't sure if it was something that the village really needed or it was just my own interest in doing a construction project, but after many community meetings I'm convinced that it's definitely a beneficial project for the village. I learned that the construction of a new schoolhouse in Tongo has been on the "5-year plan" of the commune for a long time, but there was never enough resources and organization to make it happen. Some things have already been set in motion, though. Last year the village secured a plot of land and had it surveyed. They led me out to the site and I was amazed to see that they had already staked out exactly where they want the new building and already built a house for the new teachers! I also met with the mayor of the commune who was incredibly enthusiastic and agreed to do what it takes to hire more teachers. There are currently 2 teachers in Tongo, and the school goes from the first to the fourth grade. Yet since there are only 2 classrooms and 2 teachers, first and second grade students attend in the morning and third and forth grade attend in the afternoon. The "premier cycle" of the educational system here is 6 grades, after which you pass on to second cycle, then high school, then college (if you're lucky and not needed to work in the fields). But the closest school with fifth and sixth grade is 20 kilometers away. Most students in Tongo complete the fourth grade and never go on past that. So the plan is to construct a 6 room school house with 6 teachers. The building also incorporates a large rainwater catchment system to be used for irrigation in the garden. The design is finished, and I'm now in the process of pricing all the materials. Everything is going to be built by the community and everything except the sheet metal and columns for the roof is local, sustainable material. We're using compressed earth bricks and a rammed earth foundation. I'm even trying to convince them that we can make some window screens out of a calabash.
The first step now is to get water. I just submitted a grant proposal to get funding to dig a well on the site, which we can hopefully finish before the millet harvest. We're scheduled to start construction of the school in January and it would be nice if we had water on the site first!
I definitely feel like I'm challenging myself with this project, working as architect, contractor, and construction manager. The hardest part for me is knowing when to admit that I need help with things and then asking for it. I'm also realizing that the level of community participation that I advocated in my thesis is extremely difficult to achieve - at least much more so than I expected! Coordinating illiterate villagers to take up responsibilities like putting together and managing a budget is a task that I never anticipated or addressed in my thesis, but which I now realize is one of the most useful skills that I can transfer.

In the meantime, I'm still having a great time here, filled with innumerable wonderful experiences. I just got back from a brief trip to Bamako where I ate so much delicious food! Now it's back to snot sauce as I return to my village. Although I must confess that I'm kind-of starting to like the food... It's hot season here, which is pretty close to unbearable. Even the Malians don't move out of the shade between 10am and 5pm. I hear it's spring in America? How's that going for ya'll?

I Heart Dakar

Senegal was amazing. I couldn't get over how developed it is; Dakar is like a little new york city.





Our team did pretty well at the softball tournament, but our biggest success was our uniforms: dogon hats and bogolan shirts - very Malian.





Between games, I got in a lot of good beach time, too.





Ah, the beach...




I also got to explore Dakar a little, and went to the African Art Museum (IFAN), whice is supposed to be the best in West Africa. But if this is the best, I'd hate to see the worst. I was mostly disapointed by the 'modern' art section (although happy that they even HAD a modern art section).





The rest of the museum was mostly displays of masks and costumes used in ceremonies.



One display in particular was especially interesting. ...When I first got to Segou, and was furnishing my house, I bought a blanket at the market that was really neat looking - black and white checkers and really soft. It's been on my bed ever since and was great during the cold season. However, I learned at the museum that it is, in fact, the burial blanked used in traditional ceremonies. Oops.





The way back from Dakar was possibly the hardest journey I've ever made. Not because it was tough to leave behind the beach and all the good food, but because transportation is TERRIBLE. On the way there, I was reading a book on international development, emphasizing the importance of developing the infrastructure for landlocked countries to have access to shipping ports. Ironically, the road was so bad that I could barely focus on the words on the page.



On the way home, I had planned to take the train all the way to Bamako, and was really excited about the idea of seeing the country side in such a romantic way, but it derailed on it's way into Senegal and was out of service. So I was stuck on a hot bus for 4 days that kept breaking down, was stuck on the side of the road several times for many hours, and generally sucked.

I did get to at least SEE the train station, though, and got to go inside one of the old cars. Maybe next year...




But I got back to Segou in one piece, and decided to extend my vacation by a few days and go see the village across the river where they fire all the pottery that's sold in the market here. We took an hour long boat ride, and got there just in time to see them lighting the fires. Rather than baking the pots in a kiln, they stack them on the ground, cover them with sticks and grasses, and light the whole pile on fire.

Building With Dirt

I just got back from Bamako, after attending the TERRA 2008 INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON EARTHEN ARCHITECTURE! It deserves all caps, because it was just that exciting. I met hundreds of people from all over the world who love building with dirt as much as I do! Who knew? And they all wanted to give me lots of money to build this school that I'm working on. So yay! It was all fantastic. We talked about different ways to build with dirt, different ways to preserve earthen structures, what additives to mix with earthen mortar, how to stabalize earthen structures with bamboo to resist earthquakes, and so many other fun topics! And it all happened right in my own back yard: Bamako!

So here's the update on the school project:

This is the condition of the current school:





The village is totally stoked about the idea, and I'm trying to keep them included in every step of the process. When I get back to site, I'm going to work for a day with the kids in the school to draw pictures of what they want the new building to look like. Then we're having a community meeting to look at the kids drawings, my interpretations of them, and get any other input that people feel strongly about.
We're leaning toward using compressed earth bricks, because the village wants concrete, which is expensive and not really available locally, over adobe bricks, so we settled in the middle with compressed earth bricks. I'm still looking for engineers to help with the water harvesting system.

As for the women's garden, things have started growing, and a few of the plots are doing great. We're having a little trouble with chickens getting in and eating everything, so the next step looks like we'll have to improve the fence, either by getting a metal fence, or planting really thorny bushes all around it.




All of the millet harvesting is finished, so the village is now busy with adobe brick production to fix up their houses before the rainy season:




I'm off to Senegal in a few days, to play softball, lay by the beach, and eat fish! I couldn't be more excited.

p.s. This is the inside of my house (since I've never posted a picture of it):
Cozy, huh?