Pig Roast

Festival of Masks

In the meantime

As we wait with bated breath for the school construction to commence, the temperature gets hotter and hotter.  It got up to 120 degrees today - hard to believe for those of you still laden with snow!

In the meantime, we've been keeping busy with smaller projects.  This week we repaired a pump in the school garden in Cinzana that had been broken for nearly 10 years!  The garden is tended by schoolchildren who sell what they grow to buy pens and books for class.  Now that the pump is working, we'll fix the fence around the garden, and help finance seeds to begin planting.

Then of course these are those very small projects, like teaching kids to burn ants with a magnifying glass, to keep us busy:

Changes and Frustrations (We should be starting any day now...)

For the sake of candor, I feel obliged to write about the bad was well as the good regarding this epic school project.  First let me say that we still expect to start buying materials and making bricks any day now.  We've been saying that for almost a year now.  Here's where we're at:  Kyle and I raised over $20,000 (thanks to many of you) toward the cost of the school.  We then partnered with the organization BuildOn to fund the remainder of the budget and help oversee construction.  BuildOn cannot finalize their commitment to the project until we know all the details of the budget, i.e. total cost of the project.  We can't finalize the budget until we stop making changes.  Which should be any day now.  

Last week, we thought we had a final budget until it turned out the total cost of the project was nearly $80,000 - much more than we expected.  The original goal of the design was to introduce the technologies of compressed earth bricks and rainwater harvesting, to develop a LESS expensive alternative to Mali's standard cement construction.  But so much had been added to the design that this benefit was no longer discernible.  Thus we began the process of value engineering.  We have since settled on a scheme that keeps the original goals of design intact and takes out the unnecessary expensive materials (like I-beam columns and metal roof trusses).  These changes brought the budget down to $60,000 which is a much more manageable figure. 

 But we're still not out of the woods.  Construction in Mali has to happen in within a precise window of time based on seasonal changes and farming calendars.  It's very difficult to continue projects during the hot season, the rainy season, or during the harvest.  Even if we start construction now, there's a chance we'd be encroaching these seasons before we finish, pushing the project's completion back even further.

So that's where we're at.  Pending finalization of the budget, we should be starting any day now.

Postscript - If anyone knows how Madonna manages to pop out $15 million schools in Malawi so effortlessly please let me know.

Noma: "The Face of Poverty"

Noma (derived from the Greek "nomein" meaning "to devour") is a devastating gangrenous disease which attacks children, quickly destroying their mouth, nose, and face, and which can prove fatal after just a few weeks. Without prompt treatment, mortality rates from this disease are as high as 70-90%. I won't post pictures.  If you are curious and have a strong stomach, search "noma disease" in google images.

Why am I talking about Noma disease?  It's a long story that starts about a week ago in Cinzana.  Kyle and I were packing our things to go back to Segou when Adama, Kyle's host father, shows up with a young couple and their newborn baby.  The baby has a cleft palate and the couple wants to know what we can do to help them.  Not wanting to give them false hope, we say we'll look into it when we return to Segou. Later that day, while leafing through an old Rolling Stone magazine, an ad serendipitously catches my eye:

Smile Train is an organization that provides free cleft surgery for children in developing countries.  I shot them an email.  Their quick reply brought news that not only do they work in Mali, but there was a team of Canadian doctors coming to Bamako the first 2 weeks of February to perform free surgeries!  Within a few days we were on a bus to Bamako with mother and child, headed for the hospital.  

The baby, less than 1 month old, was severely malnourished and underweight (only 3 lbs!).  The doctors told us they couldn't operate on the cleft until the child was in better health.  They arranged for them to stay at the hospital, free of charge, while the baby was given a strict regiment of proper nutrition.  

In the meantime, we had been contacted by another family from a neighboring village that had heard about the project.  They had a daughter in need of cleft surgery, and they met us at the hospital in Bamako.  Upon examination, the doctors informed us that the girl's condition was not actually a cleft palate, but rather an infection called "Noma."  Half of her mouth and her entire cheek had been destroyed by the disease.  Due to the severity of her condition, she was transfered to a special clinic outside Bamako designed specifically for Noma patients.  There she will receive free treatment for the infection and eventually free surgery to reconstruct her face.

In the developed world, children who acquire an infection of this sort are simply treated with penicillin and cured.  The disease has been virtually eradicated in America.  In countries like Mali, the same infection, when combined with malnutrition and poor oral hygiene, often causes death.

The moral(s) of this story: 1. Don't take your health (or your healthcare system) for granted.  2. There are groups out there doing amazing work.  I don't often make plugs like this, but if you're looking for a good place to make a donation, I recommend Smile Train, a light at the end of the tunnel.  

BuildOn

BuildOn, the group we are working with on the school project, was just featured in a 2 part segment on the Today Show.  Learn more about them and what they do stateside:

Dream within a dream

Going from Mali to America and back to Mali, it's hard to decide which feels more like a dream.  I got to spend the holidays home with family and friends and had a wonderful time, ate good food, and generally lived it up:

Now I'm back, and I'd almost say it seems like I never left.  I got quickly back to work on the school project, and progress is slowly being made!  We had a big meeting at the mayor's office in Cinzana with all the key players involved, many of whom were meeting for the first time.  Now that we're all on the same page, the next step is to finalize the budget, which means negotiating.  No one in Mali can ever just say what the price of something is.  Sometimes getting prices can be like talking to a small child: " How much is cement?" "I don't know, how much IS cement? How much can you give me?"  Infinitely frustrating.  But we're all still optimistic about starting soon.  It's amazing to think that this dream of a project which started almost 2 years ago as an inkling of an idea, is now so close to being actualized.  Exciting!

In the meantime, life in Tongo goes on.  The garden project is a total success.  The women have planted tomatoes, onions, peppers, cabbage, papaya, okra, and whatever else suits their fancy.  They show such pride in their accomplishments, and compete for the most luscious plot: 

I've also found a little spare time to relax by the river.  Kyle and I went fishing and caught several plastic bags, an old shirt, and a huge mango tree (twice).  We think we need to go a little farther upriver...

And apparently I'm famous now - check out these links about the project:

http://architectafrica.com/Mali-School-in-Tongo

http://theroofabovemyhead.blogspot.com/2010/01/escola-no-mali.html