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

To honor and OBEY

DISCLAIMER: The Views Represented on this Website Are Expressed as a Private Citizen, and Do Not Necessarily Represent Those of the Peace Corps or the U.S. Government.

THIS IS BULLSHIT! Just when Mali starts to make progress on equal rights, the president pushes it way back. It's so disheartening!

The following information is taken from an article on BBC news:

The president of Mali has announced that he is not going to sign the country's new family law, instead returning it to parliament for review.

Muslim groups have been protesting against the law, which gives greater rights to women, ever since parliament adopted it at the start of the month.

President Amadou Toumani Toure said he was sending the law back for the sake of national unity.

Muslim leaders have called the law the work of the devil and against Islam.

More than 90% of Mali's population is Muslim.

Some of the provisions that have proved controversial give more rights to women.

For example, under the new law women are no longer required to obey their husbands, instead husbands and wives owe each other loyalty and protection.

Women get greater inheritance rights, and the minimum age for girls to marry in most circumstances is raised to 18.

One of the other key points Muslims have objected to is the fact that marriage is defined as a secular institution.

Mali's current law specifically states that a wife must obey her husband, and that is the way things should stay says Mahmud Dicko, president of Mali's High Islamic Council.

"We're not trying to make women slaves. Not at all," he says.

"It's just the way our society is organised. The head of the family is the man, and everyone in the family has to obey him.

"It's like that to create harmony."

Tens of thousands have turned out at protests in Bamako in recent weeks and there have been other demonstrations against the law across the country.

Drought

The rains started and everything went from brown to green almost overnight.  But the beauty of the lush grasses does not offset the fact that the rains have come too late, and not enough.  For a country that is already facing a food crisis, the onset of a drought is desperately grim for those living off of the land.

I'd like to share something one of my fellow volunteers wrote, which sums up the feelings in Mali so eloquently:

Waiting for Rain by Jessie Luna

I’ve often enjoyed awkward pauses in conversation, laughing inside at the clumsy silence hanging between two people. This evening, however, the pause lingering in the air presses against me like a growing balloon, and there’s no inner smile to break its taut skin.

“I ni su Yaya. K’u jooni? Pi-ar-denni?” I’ve crossed paths with my close friend Yaya in the faint blue afterglow of twilight, and his white smile glows at me in the darkness. We exchange greetings, which flow naturally between us, overlapping, advancing and retreating like waves. When the tide ebbs, I complain about the topic that no one can avoid,

“I was sure rain was going to come this afternoon. The wind kicked up, the sky darkened, and then it vanished.”

“I thought it was going to come too.  I really did.”

“How many millimeters have you measured this month?”

“Not even twenty. Last year we had more than 200 by this time. I’ve never seen anything like this. No one has.”

            His words drop into the night air and leave only a hole, a gaping silence that I don’t know how to fill. I look up at the emerging stars, that lovely sight that has become ominous in its unabashed verification of a clear and cloudless sky. It’s been twelve days since the last rain fell in M’Pedougou, and everything and everyone watches the sky in angst. The corn plants, poking their puerile heads out of the ground, complain amongst each other in soft parched murmurs about the drought and the noisome clouds of dust.

            The silent balloon pressed against my flesh starts to hurt, but I don’t know what to say to Yaya. He rescues me with a gentle, “A be na nogoya,” It’ll get better. We’ll get out of this. I nod and affirm his blessings, and we continue on our paths. The silence, though broken, still clings to me and I can’t shake off its sticky tendrils.

            What if it doesn’t nogoya? What if this is a symptom of global warming, and Mali (and the world) is in store for more and more extreme weather events that will disrupt our ways of life and of living? I look up at the sky again, trying to locate the shreds of guilty silence still weighing on me in the darkness. The sticky part of the silence is the part gnawing its way into my conscience: the awareness of my own contributions to that unseen but present layer of greenhouse gases. The stars wink down at me through these layers, and I remember with greater guilt that I’m going home soon. Back to the land of gas-guzzling cars, heaters, air conditioners and TVs and rampant, blind, blithely rapacious energy use that we use to entertain ourselves and to make our lives “comfortable” and “easy.”

            Standing here in the dark on a well-worn footpath in this small African village, I have felt no greater shame. It will be Yaya, the man with the warmest smile I’ve ever known, who will have to sell some cows this year to help his family get by. It will be Alimatu, my host mom who tells stories late into the night, who will have to scrape at the dry earth with her short-handled hoe to re-plant crops when the first planting has died of thirst. It is these people, who have worked outside under a blistering sun their whole lives, who have never known the luxuries of light switches, running water, refrigerators, or cars in which to zip down to the 7-11 for a slurpee and a bag of chips, who will suffer (first) through the consequences ofour behavior.

The true irony lies in their desire to be like us. They are people who traditionally lived only off the interest of their “natural bank account,” leaving the principal alone so their kids would have something to live of off. Then they see and hear of America, which is eating away directly at its principal and proclaiming itself “wealthy,” and they are envious of our wealth. It’s normal, it’s only human, but it’s also tragic. 

How can I go home and go back to the American life, after seeing and knowing what I do now? Now that I know that when I hop into a car or buy food shipped from across the country, doused with fertilizers, and processed in a fume-emitting factory… that in merely participating in the American lifestyle, I’m (in an indirect way, but as part of the larger problem) making the soil just a little bit dryer for my dear friends Yaya and Alimatu. They won’t blame me. When I leave they’ll thank me profusely with heaps of peanuts and chickens for coming to “help” them, and I’ll smile guiltily and glance up at their dry skies. That will be an awkward pause that sticks with me for awhile.

The Blog is Back!

Sorry it been so long since my last post!  So many people  have asked me to keep posting, so here it is!

I came back to Mali in May after a wonderful month in America seeing family and friends and eating good food.  Now its back to work and back to "toh."  It's rainy season here now, which means that it's hot during the day, with torrential downpours at night.  But with the rains come lots of vegetables that are now available at the market!  Yum!

The school project is finally becoming real and work is happening fast now.  We've teamed up with a group called BuildOn who is helping us iron out the details and we'll start making bricks in november! (Inshallah!)

In the meantime, I've been keeping myself busy!  One of the highlights in recent weeks was my friend Solo's wedding in Cinzana.  All the guests were instructed to buy the same fabric and have an outfit made (see below).  So my teammate Kyle and I each had something made and rocked it at the wedding.  However, the wedding was a 2 day affair.  We showed up the first day wearing the "uniform" only to discover that we'd jumped the gun and were the only ones.  We went home and changed.  After the ceremony, which consisted of everyone cramming into the Mayor's office and watching the bride and groom sign into the registry, there was big meal, followed by dancing.  In the afternoon, everyone showed up wearing the matching outfits.  So we went home again and put them back on.

(the party was BYOB, or bring your own bench!)

Another fun occasion was going to my friend John's village for the dedication ceremony of his completed women's garden project.  Malians really like to give long speeches on formal occasions, and this was no exception.  After listening to words from the chief of the village and the mayor, John also gave a speech in Bambara to thunderous applause.  We were treated as distinguished guests, adored by the kids, and given a gourmet meal of beans.

The last time I was in Bamako, I took a trip to the "Jardin Zoologique" (or Zoo).  Although the park was surprisingly well maintained, and they had more animals than expected, conditions in the zoo were a little depressing.  The cages were small and the animals looked terribly malnourished.  

The low point was a dead manatee in a broken tank.  How or why they ever brought a manatee to west africa is beyond me...  

But the highlights included a baby elephant, and a brontosaurus!

In between all these exciting events, I've just been hanging out in Tongo, Cinzana, and Segou.  As may of my fellow volunteers start heading back home after finishing their 2 years, I'm preparing for my 3rd and hopefully best.

As always, comments, emails, letters, and care packages are greatly appreciated!!!