Site Visit

Last week, I had a chance to visit the village that I will be living and working in for the next two years. The village is near Kita, Mali, which is a small city about 3-4 hours west of the capitol (if you take a bus that stops every five minutes to let vendors on board, you can buy things like fried dough balls, milk, apples, hard-boiled eggs, etc. etc.). I am not going to write too much about site visit, but I did take lots of pictures with my borrowed camera, so I will share some of those. But, first things first: please take note that my mailing address has changed! I can still get mail at the old address if you have already sent something, but this address will be best for future letters/packages:

Ali Paulson
Corps de la Paix
BP 25
Kita, Mali
West Africa

Be sure to add the West Africa bit so that the letters don't get sent to Malawi or Bali...I'm not kidding, that happened to a current volunteer, it took a year for a letter to get to her! Also, I've been told that if you send a package to be sure to put the package value as $0, which will decrease the chances of the box being explored somewhere along the shipping line.

Also, I have been checking out a few of my friend's blogs from out here in Mali, and I thought some of you might be interested in reading some other (and perhaps more frequent) perspectives on our service in Mali. I will post them in this blog entry, and will also start a side bar with links to the blogs:

http://thehottamali.blogspot.com/ This is my friend Billy's blog, he will also be out in the Kayes region of Mali, but it will take two days to get from my site to his. He has a great blog with much more informative posts. Enjoy!

http://kristinrichards.blogspot.com/ This is my friend Kristin's blog. Kristin and I live in the same homestay village, are in the same Bambara language class, and will both be living near Kita for the next couple of years.

http://thekohbearreport.wordpress.com/ This is my friend Dave's blog, he will also be living in the Kita area.

Okay, now for pictures! Here is a picture from the outskirts of my village, heading out to the fields. It's really green right now because it is the rainy season. That's also a "mountain" in the distance. It's more of a big rock, but I'll call it a mountain.


This is a picture of my homologue's (the woman who I will be working most closely with over the next two years is called my "homologue" by the Peace Corps) daugther. I can tell we are going to be good friends. She always seems to be causing trouble, and in this picture is wearing her Grandpa's hat and carrying his cane. You should have seen her take off running when her Grandpa came out of his room!


In case you were wondering what my living arrangements are like, here is a picture of my new house! It is an awesome mud hut with a straw roof, which has been heavily populated by termites. The termites create a constant sawdust snow, which will give me plenty of opportunity to sweep my room five times a day. I will have to figure out a way to keep the dust out of my bed, I am thinking a plastic sheet might work best.


And, here's my kitchen! It's a smaller version of the other hut. Both huts are brand new, and are really great. My home needs a lot of work as far as privacy and shade go, but I am very happy with the huts.


And, here's my nyegen! I haven't written anything yet about the bathrooms in Mali, but people use a nyegen to do their business. See that hole on the ground? Yup. My nyegen would be okay, except the walls don't quite reach my chest (I am guessing they were expecting a shorter volunteer?), the doorway looks straight in on the nyegen hole (that won't be good when the amoebas strike again), and one of the walls fell down in a rain storm shortly before I arrived. So, it could use some work, but a lot can be done in the month before I head back out to site again.


The Dugutigi (Chief) of the village is my Jatigi (Host Father), and he told me that he is 102 years old. I haven't decided whether or not I believe him yet. But, here are some of the kids from his family, I am guessing either grandkids or great-grands. It will take me another month to figure out how the family fits together, it seems like there are over 50 people hanging around the compound!


Here I am with one of my host sisters, unfortunately I can't remember her name.



Here is a picture of some of my other host sisters, I am pretty sure each of them is named Mama Suko. My first two days in the village, both of these girls would run away screaming when they saw me (yes, my white skin has that amazing effect on kids of a certain age). By my third day in the village we were able to play with each other, and I think they are starting to trust me. We'll see how it goes in September.


I was given the opportunity to borrow a bike to ride out to my village from Kita, instead of taking bus transport. I couldn't give up the opportunity to ride! While it meant getting lost on my way out to the village with my site buddy, Ryan, it was SO nice to ride a bike for a decent distance, even on a rough dirt road. Here's my bike all loaded up and ready to go for the ride back to Kita. It takes me a little over an hour to do the ride right now.


Today, the environmental and small enterprise development volunteers had a chance to visit a Shea butter processing place in Siby, which is about 45 minutes outside of Bamako. We learned a lot about Shea butter production and it's importance as a means for women to earn money to support their families. I will probably be working a TON with shea production over the next two years. At the end of the day, we were able to go on a short hike to a really cool rock arch. Here is the group at the top of the hike. A lot of other people hiked to a waterfall to go swimming, which also sounded fun, but I opted for what was described to me as a "really cool hike." And it was.

Okay, that's all for now. I head back to homestay tomorrow morning, where I will be trying my hardest to learn a lot of Bambara over the next week. We swear-in as official Peace Corps Volunteers in about two weeks!

Fotota

There's nothing like friends with pictures, and extra cameras for that matter! My roommate here at the training center brought her old camera with her, and is letting me borrow it for the next few weeks! Awesome. Also, thanks to Mom who has sent me my old camera. Hopefully my picture taking will be back in action soon!

In the meantime, I have some pictures to share from Kristin and Matt, who I live with at our homestay site. Enjoy! I should clarify: most of my two months of training has been spent at "homestay" where I live with a Malian family and have daily language lessons. It is basically total immersion into Malian culture and language, and has been a very good and difficult way to adapt to living in Mali.

About a week ago, my homestay buddies and teachers got together to make a "normal" dinner. We bought three chickens at the market, here is a picture of Kristin, myself and Diatrou (my language instructor) with our dinner:


Here is my host sister, Kiatou, helping to prepare the chicken. She helped us do a lot of the cooking, since we aren't really used to cooking with coals, and didn't have most of the "normal" kitchen utensils:

In addition to chicken, we made tortillas, an enormous salad, guacamole, beans and ate cheese and crackers. It was kind of like home. Here is a picture of Jeremy and I preparing the dough for the tortillas (pay no attention to my sunburn...I can't go 5 minutes without sunblock in Mali!):


Here is part of the group hanging out before dinner (left to right: Diatrou, Souleymane, Ali, Jeremy, Matthew, Nick). We also invited our friends from down the road to come over, so we had quite the party.


Here is a picture of Kristin and I at the National Museum in Bamako. We went there about a week ago before heading back to our training center from our homestay villages.


Here's another picture from the bar down the road. There are a lot of people in the picture, but the ones actually looking at the camera are from left to right: Justin, myself, John and Tyler:
Last but not least, here is the President of Mali, ATT, about to lay the first brick for construction across the street from my village:


Glad I could get some pictures up here, even if none of them are mine! I am off early tomorrow morning to visit the village that I will be living in for the next two years. Should be a good week!

The President, a wedding and the next two years of my life

The last several weeks have been quite eventful, and I am not sure which highlights to share! First of all, I would like to give a shout out to my beautiful Aunt Paula, who is an incredibly brave woman. I wish you all the best in your treatments this week and over the next month, and I hope that everything goes smoothly. Please know that I love you and am thinking of you often.

Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures to share with you all, as my camera is as good as gone. I will try to get some pictures from the other people in my homestay to share sometime soon!

The most exciting news from the last few weeks is that we got our site announcements. I will be spending the next two years in a village outside of Kita, Mali! Kita is West of the capitol, Bamako, and is supposed to be a very beautiful area. I have even been told there are mountains, sweet! I met the woman who I will be working most closely with over the next two years, and I think we will get along well. We can only say a few words to each other right now, but my Bambara is coming along day by day.

Now back in time: Shortly after leaving the Peace Corps training center 3 weeks ago, the President of Mali, Amadou Toumani Toure (ATT) came to my homestay village. There was a huge ceremony to celebrate the start of construction of factories and a small "strip mall" across the street from my village. People from all of the surrounding villages came by to see ATT, which led to plenty of dancing and celebration. There were several people dressed up in masks and elaborate costumes, and a man running around the crowd with a megaphone encouraging people to cheer for ATT. Many speeches were made that I didn't understand, ATT laid the first brick for the new factories, and then it was over. That may be the only opportunity in two years that I will have to see the President of Mali, so it was pretty cool.

The day after ATT visited, my next door neighboor got married! I think my homestay family is related to our next door neighbors, but I can't quite figure out the connection. At any rate, the wedding was a big deal. My whole family dressed in their finest clothes, and my Moms took me over the the wedding. At first there were two celebrations going on, one at the groom's home (where we were), and another at the bride's home. At the groom's home, three women were playing traditional music on kalabashes while the rest of the women danced. I have learned several new dances between this wedding and the baptism last month, and I love the opportunity to dance with my family. One of the elders of the village even gave me her scarf so that I could have something to wave around while we were all dancing. After a short while, my sister Alima (who I think is 10 years old) took me over to the bride's party. They had a full on DJ over there, with lots of not-so-good music to go along with great dancing. In my experiences thus far, Malians seem to enjoy having just a couple people dance in the middle of a huge circle of people, and they especially like to shove the Americans into the middle of that circle. When my turn came, I dragged Alima into the middle with me. I still can't quite get used to one hundred people watching me dance!

At sunset that night, there was a huge commotion with motorcycles and vans bringing the bride to the groom's home. My Dad, Secouba, took me over to the groom's house to watch as five men went crazy with their motorcycles: driving around in circles, revving their engines, popping wheelies, and generally destroying their motos. Every once in a while a van would drive into the compound with 30 people inside and on the roof screaming and pounding the sides of the van. It was one of the craziest spectacles I have ever seen.

I went home for dinner (which was to, okra sauce, and fish - the meal I eat every night at homestay). Following dinner, the DJ from earlier in the day had set up shop next to my friend Matthew's house. The next several hours were full of dancing (again, they love getting the 6 Americans in the village to dance in the middle of the circle!), and watching some amazing dancers. Ever since the night of this wedding, random people in our village have come up to me and said "I be se ka donke!" (You know how to dance!). Yup, that's right.

We will be leaving Sunday to visit the villages that we will be living and working in for the next two years, which I am sure will be an exciting and slightly awkward experience. Hopefully my Bambara will improve enough so that I can do more than just greet people. I will try to post some pictures soon to add some excitement to the blog! Hope all is well on the other side of the world, peace!