The first day are the hardest days

I just returned to Kita from a short, surprise trip to Bamako to go to an initial meeting on food security. One of the Malian government's top priorities is ensuring food security for their population, and USAID and Peace Corps Mali have recently signed an agreement to work together on the issue. I am excited about this agreement, as working on food security was one of the reasons I wanted to join the Peace Corps, specifically in West Africa. This meeting in Bamako was with the Peace Corps and 10-15 NGOs, government organizations, and private sector organization partners, in an effort to share ideas on combating food insecurity and to teach our partners more about what the Peace Corps does. While the meeting was in French (which I don't speak), I still found it very interesting to (partly) understand what some of the Peace Corps partners' approaches to food security are. Straight from the PowerPoint presentation that was given, here are the objectives of the “USAID and Peace Corps/Mali Global Food Security Response Partnership:”

-Increase Community capacity to respond to food insecurity

-Improve organization, planning and coordination

-Improve natural resource management

-Enhance accessibility of local resources

-Improve agricultural techniques

-Improve health and hygiene through better nutrition and education

-Increase incomes

Peace Corps/Mali already works towards these objectives, but hopefully the partnership with USAID and other organizations will increase our capacity to achieve these goals.

The best part of my trip to Bamako was being able to stay with Jean, a member of our close Thanksgiving family. It was great to spend some time with her, especially since I hadn't seen her for more than half an hour since arriving in Mali! Thanks Jean.

Okay, now onto the juicy stuff. This last week was my first week at site, and it was full of entertaining stories, most of which I don't have the room to share here. Here are a few anecdotes:

-My first day at site was Seli, or the celebration of the end of Ramadan. For those of you who don't know, Ramadan is the month of fasting from food, drink, sex, etc. during the daytime hours for Muslim people. I was told by one person that even your eyes have to fast during the month of Ramadan. It is a also a time to develop an "increased compassion for those in need of the necessities of life, a sense of self-purification and reflection and a renewed focus on spirituality" (More on Ramadan and Islam here). Ramadan is also the month that the Prophet Mohammed first received revelations of the Qur'an.

Each night during my homestay, my family would break their fast at sunset after the call from the Mosque. Usually they broke their fast with moni, which is a delicious porridge made of tiny balls of millet flour, loads of sugar, and usually some lemon flavoring.

On the day of Seli in my new village, we got dressed up and spent the day greeting everyone, giving millions of blessings. I san be san be (Have a good feast), sitigiyala (May you have a long life), fatigiyala (May your father have a long life), batigiyala (May your mother have a long life), cetigiyala (May your husband have a long life), dentigiyala (May your children have a long life), and on and on, beyond the limit of my undertanding. Seli was a lot of fun, especially since it was my first full day in village, and I got to meet a lot of people.

-On the day of Seli, the commandant in my village gave me a chicken to welcome me to the village. I had quite an adventure figuring out how to get help gutting it, then cooking it on my new gas stove. I won't go into it here, but it took me all morning to cook the chicken, with a lot of questions from the women: “Are you sure you know how to cook?”

-When I visited my village in August, my site buddy told me that soon there would be more corn available than I would know what to do with. He was right. During the last week, I have eaten more corn than the past two years combined. It's not like the sweet corn from home: it's tougher, and we eat it after it has been burned to a crisp over coals. It's delicious. And, everyone kept handing me cobs of corn, so I ate a lot of them. Yum.

-Just so you know I have people looking out for me here: One day last week, I was spending time with my homologue's family grilling and eating corn on the cob. I had already eaten 1 ear of corn, and they were trying to give me a 2^nd ear, even though not everyone had eaten their first. I protested, saying everyone should get one before I receive my 2^nd. My homologue's daughter (my lifesaver last week, who I hung out with quite a bit, and seems to be the best at understanding my limited Bambara/Malinke. Unfortunately (for me only), she will be heading to Kita this coming week to start school, so I will not see her very often anymore. She is 17 now, and hopes to go to University, I hope she does.) turned to me and said “Your father is not here. Your mother is not here. Your brother and his wife are not here. Your friends are not here. We must give you what we can, and make sure that you have what you need.” I was quite touched, and am happy that my homologue's family is amazing.

-My homologue has been sick most of this week, saying she had malaria. People generally assume that any ailment is malaria, but she had some pretty serious fevers going on and I wouldn't be surprised if that's what she had. She seemed to be back on her feet when I left on Saturday, so hopefully she will be back to herself when I return in the next few days. Ala ka nogoyake (May you return to yourself).

-My most frequent conversation over the last week concerned my lack of a ce (husband). “You're 24 and you DON'T have a ce? No kids? What is wrong with you?” I spent a lot of time explaining the fact that some women in America get married around 18-20, but most wait a little longer, many don't get married until 26 or 30, and some never get married. Also, a man can only marry one woman in America. To ease the confusion I assured the women in my village that I would find a ce when I got back to America... : )

-Most of what was wrong with my house when I came to visit has been fixed, I have a brand new cement nyegen, some shade, and a small wall around my compound to provide a little privacy. I'll try to post pictures of my area next time.

-I had quite an adventure when I tried to do my laundry the other day. I've been doing my laundry for the last two months by hand, but suddenly I had an audience of 10 women laughing and yelling at me when I tried to do laundry the other day. They kept saying I was doing it wrong and that I should just give my clothes to them to wash. I became very frustrated, as they were just taking clothes from my hands as I tried to wash them. Hopefully my next laundry day won't bring quite the same level of interest for anyone within a 50 m radius from the well.

-One problem: I woke up on my second night at site soaking wet. As I came out of my dreams, all I could think was: Why am I wet? That's when I realized that my thatch roof had not quite held up to the rainstorm raging outside. My new mattress, tent, floor, clothes, etc. were quite wet, and I spent some time setting out buckets to try to catch the biggest drips, until I realized that there were huge drips everywhere. Sweet. I dried everything out the next day, and moved most of my things to the smaller hut. The mayor brought plastic by a few days later to put on my roof, and then another couple days later I was walking home with the mayor, and saw a lot of lightning in the distance. “So, do you think it will rain tonight?” I asked. The Mayor replied something along the lines of “Yes probably, I'll bring dinner over to your house and then we can hang the plastic up.” After I had unwittingly eaten a chicken's head and liver for dinner with the mayor, we were discussing how to put the plastic up on my roof in the dark. Just then, an old man walked by and said the rain was not going to come. So, the mayor and my host dad decided we would put the plastic up in the morning. About an hour later it started to rain, and I evacuated to my cooking hut, which had just a few small drips. I no longer place any weight in anyone's predictions of the weather.

-Between Seli and all the weddings that took place this week in my village, there was plenty of partying. I spent 3 of my nights during the first week dancing until late into the night, to pretty terrible Malian club music and American songs like “California” (you know...California, knows how to party...in the city, the city of Compton...etc.), and “We're gonna party like it's your birthday...”

-The other morning, I was studying in my compound, and my next door neighbor came over and told me I needed to come for a picture. It turns out she had brought the photographer to take a picture of me and her daughter, here's the result (sorry, no names available):

-The other day, the mayor came up to me and asked if I had done any work that day. I really hadn't done anything besides sitting and eating corn on the cob and trying to understand what people were talking about, so I said no. He told me to meet him at his office. When I arrived, there were tons of people standing outside, amid hundreds of new backpacks, notebooks, pens, pencils, chalkboards, etc. that had been given to my commune from Spain. How cool! I spent the evening and all of the next morning sorting through all of the new things, working with some of the students from my town. We had a lot of fun, as they know a tiny bit of English (they are pretty clever with what they put together). Here are the guys I worked with, surrounded by all of the packaging that the bags came in:

Here is a stack of completed backpacks, ready to go to the students:

And, even though it's not a great picture, here is the view from my hut. Why am I posting it? Well, because it's the Moon over Mali, obviously.

That's all for now, plenty more to come after another couple weeks at site. Hope you are all doing well and finding some relaxation at the beginning of fall.

PS: I apologize for linking to wikipedia, I know some people will be disappointed that I would use such a source...but my internet time is limited and I didn't have much time to find a better reference. Sorry. I also apologize for the black font, I can't figure out why it won't let me change the font color back to normal, and I've got a 1.5 hour bike ride to go do before it gets too hot!