to Sikasso and back

I just got back from “site visit,” which is when Peace Corps trainees (PCTs) visit the village/town/city we’ll be living in for the two years of our service. Last Monday my homologue, Salimata, came to Tubani So. A homologue, or counterpart, is our closest work contact. They are supposed to help us integrate into the community and provide support/assistance/guidance for projects that we do. On Monday we had some workshops to help orient the homologues to what we Peace Corps is all about and how to (hopefully) successfully work together.

The next day we left early in the morning with our homologues to travel to our region. My site is in Sikasso, the southernmost region of Mali, bordering with the Cote D'Ivoire, Burkina Faso, and Guinea. I was thrilled with my placement there, because Sikasso is renowned for having tons of produce, including avocadoes and mangoes. Supposedly during mango season there will be more mangoes than even I know what to do with. Sikasso city, the regional capital, is near the Burkina border. Two other PCTs and their homologues were on the same bus. Unfortunately we missed the early morning bus, so we had to wait at the bus station in Bamako for almost two hours.

The bus makes fairly frequent stops, to pay tolls in small villages on the paved road, and sometimes to let people go to the bathroom. It also makes longer stops at prayer times so that people can pray. I realized that this is the problem with traveling later in the day. Muslim prayer times are dawn, 2 p.m., 4 p.m., sunset, and 8 p.m. Once you hit the afternoon prayer times (which we did) the stops really slow you down. One time we stopped for a really long time in the middle of nowhere, and I’m not sure why. Buses also break down, but this didn’t happen, fortunately. When it stops in villages, people come up to the bus selling snacks such as hardboiled eggs, cakes, cold drinks, and roasted corn. Anyway, the trip down took about 8 hours.

My homologue and I were supposed to stay in a hotel in Sikasso city, but it turned out that she had family nearby, so she went and stayed with them and I stayed in the hotel. The hotel was in walking distance of a current volunteer’s house. I went to her house and we made dinner together, which was wonderful after a month and a half of not ever getting to cook for myself. The next day she took me to the bank where I was supposed to open an account, then on a tour of the city. It is the second largest city in Mali, after Bamako. Despite this, it is not at all cosmopolitan. There are only a few paved roads, and no tall buildings....and no ice cream! Or if there is ice cream, the volunteers in the area haven't found it, which would mean that they're missing their biggest potential market! There are however, stores that sell candy, a good assortment of cookies, Nutella, cereal, oatmeal, flour, etc. There are some patisseries, there is a hotel with a swimming pool, a bank, a hospital, bars and restaurants.

In the afternoon a Peace Corps vehicle took me and Salimata to my future village, Kafouziela. It is only 18 km outside of the city, but the road is unpaved and there is no public transportation to it except on Sundays. I will have a bike once I’m installed, however, so I’ll be able to bike back and forth easily.

My village is beautiful! It is on a small hill. There are tons of mango trees, and most of the buildings are made of mud brick with thatched roofs. It’s a village of about 2000 people. There are several wells, and one pump, but it doesn’t work right now. My house is the former mayor’s office, and it’s in its own concession (walled-in yard). It is made of cement with a corrugated tin roof, and has two rooms. It also has a large porch, which is wonderful because it means I can be outside even when it’s raining. There is a mango tree in my yard, and a BRAND NEW NYEGEN!!! If anyone missed this before, a nyegen is a pit that you go to the bathroom in. Starting off with a brand new one is sooooo nice because it doesn’t smell at all, and the concrete floor is freshly poured. Some have a separate bathing area. Mine doesn’t, but the whole thing is big enough that I can bathe at a comfortable distance from the hole. It doesn’t have a roof, but it has fairly high walls, which is also nice (some nyegens have walls that are only about 3 feet high, which can be embarrassing).

There is a well right next to my concession. I’m also right next to the market, which happens on Saturdays. I got to see it, and realized that I’d had unrealistic expectations. There were basically peanuts, “Malian eggplants” (not like eggplants, believe me), and hot peppers. Not a single fruit. To be fair, this is kind of an in-between time for fruit, but I think I’m going to have to do a lot of my marketing in Sikasso, which is no problem now that I’m prepared for that. While produce isn’t readily available in my village, bread, pasta and eggs are. Bread is kind of a luxury “en brousse” – because I’m so close to Sikasso, it is brought in from there.

I’ll be working at the CSCOM (“centre de santé communautaire” or community health center) in my village. It’s about a three-minute walk from my concession, and across the street from the concession where Salimata and my language tutor both live (they’re in the “fonctionnaire” concession – they are government employees and not from the village). It’s pretty nice looking (especially compared to other ones I’ve seen). Salimata is the matrone of the maternité, the clinic where women go for prenatal consultations, giving birth, family planning advice, etc. I sat in on a few prenatal consultations. Other than that, I didn’t really get a good idea of the CSCOM on this visit. Once I get back I will make a schedule of hours that I will regularly spend at the CSCOM.

The chief of the village gave me a live chicken as a welcome present. First it was tied up in Salimata’s compound. The next day it was beheaded and lying next to the cooking fire. Later in the day they took it away and de-feathered it, then cooked it for me for dinner. I think it was the first time I had seen a live animal, then known that that specific animal was on my dinner plate. It was delicious though.

On Sunday the Peace Corps vehicle was supposed to come pick me up, but it turned out that a PCV had had a medical emergency and they needed the car to take that person to Bamako. This was good practice for how they would get me out of my village if I had a medical emergency. My language tutor, Lassina, rode his motorcycle to the village 1 km away where there is a guy that owns a car. He arranged for the car to take me to Sikasso if we reimbursed them for gas. And that was that.

Much to the villagers’ consternation, one of Peace Corps’s rules is that volunteers are forbidden to drive or ride on motorcycles/mopeds/scooters. This is a recent rule – PC even used to provide them for some volunteers. Then they did a study and found that they were causing an inordinate number of the injuries and even deaths among PCVs. Volunteers in some countries are allowed to ride on them with a helmet, because in those countries it’s basically the only way to get around, but not in Mali. Anyway, tons of people in my village have motos so it’s kind of inconvenient that I can’t, but I would be afraid to anyway. The roads are so bad here and everyone rides without helmets.

When I got back to Sikasso, several other PCTs and volunteers were there. We went to the market and made Mexican food for dinner! We made flour tortillas from scratch and guacamole, plus ground beef, beans, and other taco toppings. It was so delicious.

I took the earliest possible but back to Bamako the next morning with two other trainees. It was a luxurious trip – the bus wasn’t full, so we each had two seats, and we barely stopped. It took about 6 ½ hours, so I think that’s about the least time it could ever take.

When we got back to Bamako, we learned that one PCT, who is in the same training village as I am, broke his leg that morning in Segou. It was one of those freak things -- he was just walking down a little hill and turned his ankle and it snapped. He is being MedEvac'ed to Washington because he needs surgery, but hopefully he'll be able to return.

That’s all for now. This is an excessively long entry.

An Ka Duminike!

I realized that I haven’t really talked very much about the ins and outs of my daily life, so I’m going to try to address that a little. First to describe my family’s compound. You enter through a gate, and there is a well to the left. My family uses well water for washing, but a boy with a donkey cart brings around robinet (tap) water every day or two that they use for drinking and cooking. Each of my host mothers has her own “domain” – a living room and bedroom. I haven’t actually been in Awa’s bedroom, so I don’t know about her, but Kadiatou also has a western-style bathroom. However, while the whole thing is set up like a bathroom in the U.S., with a toilet, sink and showerhead, there is no running water. Off the courtyard are also entrances to two bedrooms, one for me and one for my teenage host brothers.

There is also the “kitchen,” which is really a room where pots and pans and other utensils are stored. The cooking all takes place in the courtyard itself over either wood or charcoal fires. There is another storeroom on the other side of the courtyard where my Kadiatou keeps her supplies for the stuff she sells in the market.

In the courtyard there is also a double nyegen. A nyegen, again, is basically a hole in the ground. Luckily my family’s has a cement floor, which is much pleasanter than the ones with just a dirt floor. I use the nyegen about half the time, but I almost always take my bucket baths in Kadiatou’s bathroom, because they prefer that I do.

Cooking is really different here. Like I said, my family only uses charcoal or wood fires. There are no counters or tables. They prepare everything in the courtyard, usually sitting on a chair and cutting things up in their hands. We have a small mortar and pestle that they use to grind certain ingredients. In our back alley there is a large mortar and pestle used to pound millet or corn.

Which brings me to the food. My homestay family feeds me very well. There is not nearly as much variety in the food here. There are several staple starches that are eaten with a variety of sauces. There is, of course, rice. That can pretty much go with any sauce (tigadegenan, or peanut sauce, tomato based sauce, green leafy sauce, or prepared like fried rice, which is my favorite).

Then there is to. To is made from millet (it can also be made from corn), it’s basically ground and cooked into a paste, and eaten with okra sauce and a red sauce. My family has only given me to once. If you know what okra is like, you can imagine that okra cooked into a sauce ends up having the consistency of snot. Lots of Americans don’t like to, but I felt that maybe with a different sauce I would have found it tolerable.

Couscous, or bashi, is my nemesis. It is not like couscous in the U.S., which I think is Arab couscous. It is a much finer texture, and I always feel like I’m eating sand. My family really likes couscous though so we have it a lot. It is usually accompanied by a green leafy sauce but we had it with something else the other day. I just try to take a lot of sauce and a little couscous, and I can deal with it.

There is another starch that we only had one time, called nyenyesiri or something like that. It is made from ground corn, and it is kind of the texture of mashed rice. We had that with peanut sauce and I thought it was pretty good, but we haven’t had it again.

We eat from a communal bowl. The bowl sits on the floor and we all sit on low chairs around it, and eat with our hands. Before eating, everyone washes their right hand in a bowl of water. You never, ever, ever use your left hand to eat (there is a good reason). Women and men don’t eat from the same bowl. In my family, when there are no other men around, the teenage boys will occasionally eat with us, but not usually. Kadiatou (the first wife) is the one that spoons the sauce on to the rice, and gets puts more food out if she notices that everyone still seems hungry. Kadiatou and Awa alternate cooking days, but this is always Kadiatou’s role.

At dinner, I don’t eat from the communal bowl because they make me separate food for dinner. The Peace Corps gave the families some orientation before we went to live there, and told them that Americans like more variety in their food. My family almost always eats the same thing they had for lunch for dinner, so they make me something separate, which is usually either meat and potatoes or yams in sauce, or pasta and meat. I really like this because I get tired of rice and I almost always like the food they give me for dinner.

There are also two sweetened porridges that they make, siri and moni. Siri is made with rice, and in my family we usually eat it as dessert in the evening, but some people eat it for breakfast. I LOVE siri. Before leaving homestay this last time I was able to ask Kadiatou, in Bambara, if when I returned she could teach me to make it. Moni is made from millet and I can’t stand it. I know that I can like millet porridges prepared a certain way, but moni does not do it for me. My family usually eats this for breakfast.

For breakfast they give me bread and tea.

This was a lot about food, but it's actually proportional to how important a topic food is in the lives of PCTs. We talk about it constantly: what we eat at each meal, how we liked it, what we crave, and what we miss.

some pics!

My dogomusow (little sisters): Aminata, Mariam (called La Vieille) and Bintou.
This is a rooster in a tree next to where we have class. Whenever they decide to go in the tree they get really full of themselves and won't shut up, so we chase them out.
Wulu on a wall! My Bambara class is inside a family's concession. This dog patrols the concession from the top of the wall. She's adorable! And we think she's pregnant. She has rebuffed all attemts to make friends, however, so we just have to watch her.

This is the view of the Niger river at Tubani So (above).

This is the mother and baby at the first baptism I attended (above). Sorry it's sideways. The internet is slow; so I can't change it now.
This is a woman painting my feet. It's called Indu Jabi, and it was traditionally done with henna, but now they add something to make it black. After I had it done I heard that sometimes that something is rat poisoning. It's been 2 weeks and my feet seem to be doing ok, so let's hope it wasn't that.
This is Moribabugu, my homestay village. This is the paved road that runs from Bamako to Koulikoro. The rest of the town is dirt roads.

I originally tried to post this several days ago, but the power went out. So enjoy!

back at Tubani So

I'm back at the Peace Corps training site after almost 2 weeks in my homestay village. Things there have been going really well. My host family is wonderful. My host father has two wives, and they have four children: boys that are 15 and 17, and girls that are 9 and 10. In our household as well are the 14-year-old sister of the younger wife, plus the father's younger brother.

We basically spend all day learning Bambara (Bamanankan), with a two hour break for lunch. Sometimes there is a cross-cultural session thrown in as well. There are 11 PCTs in my village, but only 4 of us are doing Bambara (the others are doing French). Our village is actually more of a town. It's pretty big and pretty near Bamako. I haven't gone into Bamako yet though. It's nice to be in a larger town because there is a market every day, so we can buy fruit, cloth, cookies, whatever.

At my house we have luxuries like a refrigerator, which my mother uses to chill or freeze juices that she sells at the market every day. I know they are safe to drink because I know my family only uses robinet water, which is already treated, so it's nice to have access to that. I also have electricity in my room, and even a fan. My family is really respectful of my room and my belongings.

Our language classes are held at the concession (walled in compound) of a fisherman who lives by the Niger river. We have classes under some mango trees (no mangoes on them right now).

Can't write more now, but we should be finding out about our sites either tomorrow or Thursday!

N be Mali la

That means I'm in Mali in Bambara. I think. Anyway, I just tried to start writing when the computer I'm on decided to die, so I restarted it and I guess I can save as I go along. I'm at the Peace Corps training center outside Bamako; we arrived Friday night after quite a grueling journey. The training center is really nice. We are staying in huts with three people to a hut. They have ceiling fans, which I definitely wasn't expecting, and mosquito nets. Also, they provide toilet paper for the nyegen. A nyegen is a bathroom, but essentially a hole in a concrete floor. There is a shower with running water in the nyegen, which I was also surprised about. However, these luxuries are not for long.

We are here at the training center till Wednesday, when we will be "installed" in homestay villages where we spend most of training. I had been confused about the mechanics of this, but it turns out that recently they switched to a "community based training model," which means that we spend about two weeks at a time in rural villages, some right near Bamako, some up to 120 km away. There will be 5-7 of us per village, and an LCF (Language and Culture Facilitator) will be living in our village training us in the indigenous language we're supposed to be learning. Every two weeks or so we come to the training center for 2-3 days.

I don't know yet what language I'll be learning. I'm exicted for tomorrow, because we have a French placement test and our first interview with the APCD (I think that's Associate Peace Corps Director), which will have to do with site placement, and thus also which language we need to learn.

Today we had our first Bambara classes, which were really fun. No matter what language we end up learning, we need to know a little Bambara because it's the lingua franca in Mali (in addition to French). I may be learning a minority language (i.e. not Bambara, and the ones being taught this training are Dogon, Fulani/Fulfulde/Pulaar, Tamasheq, and Sonrhai), because they'll only teach you one if you already speak French (because if you only speak a minority language you can't get around most of Mali).

The weather had been pleasantly surprising. It's the rainy season, so I was expecting it to be unbearably hot and humid (because Senegal was when I was there at the end of the rainy season), but it's actually pretty pleasant. It's in the 80s during the day but really cools down at night, and it's less humid than Philly! I even went running this evening and it was just fine. It rained this afternoon which really cooled it down.

Tonight I had my first experience with to, a pasty millet porridge that I will probably be eating a lot. A lot of people don't like it but I didn't mind it. The food here at the training center is very good. I was dismayed to discover that it's apparently the end of mango season, but they gave us mangoes last night and for lunch today, and I just have to say, African mangoes are sooooooo much better than any mango you could ever get in the U.S.! Mmmmm. Besides the to, the food has mostly been rice and sauce dishes very similar to those in Senegal, but I'll have a better idea of authentic food once I've been with a family for a little while.

There is supposed to be wireless at the training center, but it's not worknig right now and neither is the power adapter for my computer. They have four computers available for us, so my time is probably up on this one. Everyone email me!

Staging

So I arrived safe and sound at staging after a perilous journey from Narberth to Old City. It turns out that there are 82 trainees departing for Mali with me! So many that we have been divided into two groups for staging. I arrived right on time for registration today, which meant that once I was all registered we basically sat around a hotel conference room for 2 hours as more people trickled in, sort of getting to know each other. At 3:00, the activities started. We talked about the goals of the Peace Corps, some statistics, how it was founded, the meaning of "development," etc. Later we talked about some of our fears and what we hoped to accomplish, and some basic safety issues. Things wrapped up at 7 or so.

I went out for dinner with a couple people, then swimming in the rooftop pool! I guess they don't want us to start roughing it right away...

Tomorrow morning we get our vaccinations, then have more sessions in the afternoon.

So I'm going to Mali...

On July 17th, I will be leaving to spend two years in the Peace Corps in Mali. In this post, I'm going to answer a few general questions about how it all works. The Peace Corps is a 27-month commitment. That includes three (ish) months of pre-service training, which takes place in-country, then two years of service.

What is the Peace Corps?

Here's the official party line from the Peace Corps website:

In 1961, President John F. Kennedy established the Peace Corps to promote world peace and friendship.

The Peace Corps' mission has three simple goals:

1. Helping the people of interested countries in meeting their need for trained men and women.
2. Helping promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served.
3. Helping promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans.

Peace Corps has several general categories for the volunteers based on what type of work they'll be doing, including education, health, business, and agriculture. I am a health volunteer. My official assignment is "Health Education Specialist."

All volunteers in Africa do some work related to HIV/AIDS no matter what their primary job is. As a Health Education Specialist in Mali, I will most likely be living in a rural village with no electricity or running water. Much of the focus of the health program in Mali has to do with reducing child mortality. I may be doing stuff related to pre- and post-natal consultations, nutrition, promoting HIV/STI awareness, promoting breast feeding, family planning stuff, vaccine campaigns, malaria prevention. And that's not even the whole list. This doesn't mean that I'll be doing ALL this stuff; I'll know more when I get assigned my post.

Here's how the first couple months work. On July 17th, I meet up with my staging group in Philadelphia. This will be all the trainees going to Mali, both for Health, Agroforestry, and Small Enterprise Development. We spend two days in Philadelphia getting vaccinated and filling out paperwork, then we fly out on the 19th. After a looong layover in Paris, we arrive in Bamako late in the evening on the 20th. They take us to the Peace Corps training site, called Tubani So, where we stay for an undisclosed length of time.

Next we get broken up into smaller groups and go to villages near Tubani So, where we will live with families for basically the duration of our training period. I believe our villages are selected based on what indigenous language we will need at our future sites. This part I'm slightly unclear about because they don't know for sure what our sites will be.

Anyway, Pre-Service Training focuses intensively on language learning, but there is also "technical" training as well (i.e. how to do the job I'm supposed to be doing). Four or five weeks into training, they will tell us where our posts are going to be (they will have conducted some interviews with us to try to figure out a good match). The post is where I will spend the two years of my service. After we find out, we go stay with the volunteer that is currently at our post, or regional volunteers if we will be the first volunteer in that village, then come back to finish training. My training is supposed to end Sept. 21.



Here's some fast facts about Mali, from the CIA World Factbook and the Peace Corps' Welcome Book.

Population: about 12 million

HIV prevalence: about 2% (compared to about .4% in the U.S., about .8% in Senegal)

Official Language: French

Bambara is the most common indigenous language, and is spoken by about 80% of the population.

It is a landlocked country a little less than twice the size of Texas, with three climate zones: desert, sahel, and savannah. It's one of the poorest countries in the world, and third from the bottom of the UN's Human Development Index ranking.