I hope everyone back at home is going well as the days get warmer and the flowers start popping up everywhere. It's also getting warmer here, and by that I mean hot. Each day is reaching at least 105 degrees, and even hotter on most days. There was a big rainstorm in Bamako on Friday night - the "Mango Rains." These rains arrive about this time of year, and help make the mango harvest especially delicious. I was told that after a week of rains, it will get really hot. At some point I wonder how much difference a few degrees will make - we are already sitting in our own sweat all day every day at this point. I'll let you all know when those extra few degrees arrive.
Life is going well in Mali. The moon is still here and still beautiful. March was a very busy month full of shea butter trainings in Bamako with my work partners, and planning the Kita Regional Training for all of the PCVs in the Kita area. Because of all that, I have hardly spent any time at site - which is very unfortunate at a time when I am trying to get projects started up. I will head to site this evening once the sun goes down a little, and I look forward to a long stay in my home.
I just returned from a 3 day training in Bamako about establishing a shea network between all of the small villages that PCVs work in, such that women will be able to sell their butter to a wider market. Most buyers want to buy large quantities, and it is difficult for small villages to produce such large amounts by themselves. We also discussed the importance of producing high quality shea butter. There are many steps along the shea butter production process that can intoduce contaminants, which can lead to a 250-500 CFA difference in price per kilo ($0.50 - 1.00, which is quite a huge difference when the price per kilo is generally between 500-1000 CFA depending on quality). The whole training was conducted in Bambara, and two women from my village attended it with me. They are so excited to get going on shea work now - it will be important to get together with the other members of the shea association to share what we have learned! To continue with the excitement, I am hoping to hold a training on how to produce high quality shea butter at my site in the next month. Ni Ala sonna, it will all come together, but I find that planning things in Mali is far more difficult than planning at home...things are often pushed off to the last minute, including informing people of WHEN the formation will be occurring! Hard to plan for that. Alas, dooni dooni (slowly, slowly).
Village life has been going well, despite not being around as much as I would like. My friend Oumou just had her baby (see a picture of her peeling woso in a previous post). His name is Madi Keita, and he was whiter than me for the first two weeks of his life! The wedding season has commenced in my village, and every weekend there is either an engagement party or wedding to attend. My work counterpart's two eldest sons are getting married this year, I am very excited for their weddings. Also, a member of my host family will be marrying his second wife in the next few weeks. All very exciting, and lots of celebration to lead up to the next rainy season and the start of the planting season.
My garden is doing okay, though suffering for my lack of attendance. I have hired a girl to water it for me when I am gone, which leads to more reliable watering than what I had before. The tomato harvest ended up going very well, and is slowing down quite a bit now. I ate the first green pepper from the garden just the other night, which was very exciting - this is a vegetable that I can rarely get in village. The most exciting bit about my garden is that I have started to use a new type of compost (I wish I could see your faces as you read this)...my pee! My plants have doubled in size in just a short amount of time after first adding the urine fertilizer, it seems to work VERY well! The Peace Corps held multiple trainings on using urine fertilizer during our trainings, and it took me until now to start using it. It's very easy, you fill a water jug with 5 L of water, then add 5 L of pee over the next few days. The jug must sit (tightly sealed) for at least 2 days to kill any schistosomiasis or other bad bugs in the pee (though it has been found there there isn't too much bad stuff going on in pee, just schisto if you are unlucky enough to have it). After two days, I take the jug to my garden and add another 10 L of water, and apply to the garden. Voila! A ma gelen (It's not hard). I am going to see how well it works on my garden, then do a short animation for the women in the garden talking about it. Urine fertilizer is a hard thing to accept, because it is, well, urine. From what I've read though, it has an even higher nutrient content than using straight cow manure...
See the entry just before this for a bunch of pictures from the last month, from village and around town. I celebrated Passover in Manantali with many volunteers, which was a lot of fun. I never expected to learn so much about Judaism in Mali! My PCV friends who are Jewish held a whole Sadyr dinner for all of us, and explained the significance of the holiday and the foods that we were eating, it was really great.
Take it easy until next time, go see some music and dance your butt off.
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
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!
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!
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