A life in pictures

I've got a lot of pictures from the last month and a half...enjoy!

Working with shea butter is going to be one of my main projects here in Mali. Here is a photo with my counterpart, Bintou, myself, and the President of the Women's Association, Djeneba. Bintou and Djeneba had just received their certificates for completing a 3-day shea butter training:


Last week, the Women's Shea Association made a whole bunch of shea butter. Here is a picture of 3 of the women "beating" the shea butter:



I've had trouble posting videos in the past, so we'll see if this works. Here are all of the women beating shea butter.




And, me, pretending I know what I'm doing for 10 minutes. Beating shea butter is a good arm workout:

After you first grind the shea nuts, the shea butter is a dark brown paste. You have to beat it with your hands for 1-2 hours to draw out the actual shea butter. After this time, it becomes a white color. So, here's the shea butter, almost done with the beating process.

Next, the white shea butter is boiled for quite a long time to draw out the actual shea butter:

And, then you get shea butter!


I visited a man in my village named Buwa the other day, who has a very large and successful garden. He has hundreds of banana trees. In this picture, the kids who work for him had cut down some of the bananas to sell to women in my village. The women then sell the bananas in the market, where I buy them and am very thankful that I can get fresh fruit in my village!

My friend Oumou gave birth a couple of weeks ago. The baptism was held one week after the birth of her son, his name is Madi Keita. I spent the morning of the baptism playing cards and games with the men. This game is called Lido, and reminds me a lot of Trouble. I did alright, I am pretty sure Adama, Damisi and Mogoba were making up some of the rules as we went...:


In late March, all of the volunteers in the Kita and Manantali areas got together with their counterparts for a regional training. It was a relatively successful training, I was happy just to get some one on one time with my work counterpart, without the distractions of her other work in village. Here's the group photo:

Here's the ladies from Kita region, we all got outfits made of the same fabric for the training.


Eating out of the communal bowl at lunchtime during training. Yum, tigadegena (rice with peanut butter sauce). This is Karmen, Lindsey, me and Ryan:


Another group at the communal bowl, Jess, Jackie, Joelle and John:

About a month ago we celebrated my 25th birthday in Kita with a delicious burrito dinner, tye dye shirt requirement, and a yummy birthday cake (frosting creatively colored by Jess using powdered juice packets):


We had a big party at my site with a married men vs. single men soccer match followed by a dance that night. Here's Oumou and I, resting for a few minutes before going back on the dance floor:


This is Damisi, my next door neighbor. He's just figuring out how to talk, and comes to greet me every morning and evening. Definitely one of my favorite kids in town.

We celebrated a Kuranajigi (spelling totally wrong I'm sure) in a nearby village. This was the celebration of a student of the Koran finishing reading the Koran. There was a big feast with lots of praying, chanting, and chatting. In this picture I am sitting with many of the women inside, preparing dege (kind of millet with sugar mushed into a ball, it tastes okay). The women were surprised to see that the Tubab could roll dough into a ball, I had to explain that we do it all of the time to make cookies...


As the dry season moves forward, I begin to understand more and more why Malians are scared of frogs. This is the drainage hole from my concession onto the street, where I dump my dish and cooking water. I went to do my dishes one night and found tons of frogs congregated in the pool of water! Add this to the many times I have dug up frogs (more like goo balls) 6 inches under the ground in my garden or in my compost pit...I assume they put themselves down there to save moisture during the hot season?

Again, I don't know if this video will come through, but we have some pretty amazing dancers in my village. Just watch those hips and feet move!