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!