Merry Christmas, everyone: here are some pictures!

Merry Christmas from Mali!!!!!

Our house, photo one - trying to look as comfy as possible. This room serves as the kitchen, living room, and garage while we are away.
Our house, photo two.
These are the new bars that the Peace Corps placed on all our windows yesterday. Our house looks slightly more like a prison than usual, but it should be ok.
This is the Blendio dugutigi's grandson, Jaktay. He does ever say anything when around us, but he's crafty enough to try to grab the camera and give high-fives.
This is a wedding that passed through our backyard yesterday while men were fixing our house. They pulled Michele into the circle of women to dance.
Michele and her mosquito net from our stay in Sikasso.

A labor of love.

three days until Christmas----- hello from Mali!

So after some much-needed Mali-hating, I have regained perspective.


I got to see my first woman in labor. Woo--- oh Africa with such craziness in it! So every Tuesday is V-day (vagina day) at the CSCOM... and this week a girl (about 17) came in already having contractions. It was the scariest thing I have ever witnessed. Scarier than half my face not working, scarier than a thief running off with our oreos and underwear.... scarier than the LSAT. First off, the girl was exhausted and nothing had actually happened yet. A tiny portion of the babys head was out, but that was it. So there I am... in this tiny room with the two midwives and this poor girl on the hard, tile floor with nothing to push against; the irony of which being that they actually have one of those pregnancy-helper tables with the stirrups, but they dont really know how to use them. So yeah... i find that I am silently praying for this girl to find the strength to get the baby out.... and then the head pops out just far enough so that we all can see the umbilical cord is wrapped around the babys neck. This is where Michele goes into panic-mode. I step up the praying a bit.... you can see that the baby is not breathing, not moving, and is a freakishly ghostly shade of blue. Then Minata, the head midwife, grabs the baby by the head and neck and pulls him out. (horrifying) Then she unwraps the cord and starts pounding on the babys chest.... and I am freaking out... is this okay? Will it not hurt the baby worse than he is clearly already hurting? Then she grabs a bottle of bleach and starts rubbing it on the baby... why? I have no idea. Then she sucks out all the stuff in the babys mouth and nose and still----- no breathing. Inside I am panicing. What if the baby doesnt live? The young mother is way too exhausted to move... then minata grabs the baby by the arm and pulls him up onto the table she should have given birth on. (horrifying) Then, thank GOD, the baby starts making some faint sounds.... and minata starts pounding on his chest again.... he cries and breathes.
The mother eventually gets up, washes off, and walks to a room where she will be for another hour or so, and then she will walk home. Oh---- in Mali.... they also keep their placenta and bury it so that nothing bad will happen to the baby.

OK---- I love you guys. Merry Christmas!

An Example of the Best and Worst in Mankind...

So to begin with, these past two weeks in Blendio have been rough. After a trip to the Bamako med office for Michele's Bells palsy, we return to our home to realize that someone broke in and ran off with some of our items. Nothing taken was of any great value, but it is more the thought of someone forcing their way into our home that is the trouble. A small hole was punched into the metal shutter of the smallest window so whomever made it into our house could pull off the inside latch. We had returned on a Sunday, a market day in Niena, when we found the house like this. It was the same day we picked up a package sent to us because someone we do not know admires what we are doing here. I want to send a thankyou to Leslie and your family for your thoughts; I am saddened that other unfortunate events have tried to overshadow your kindness.
The worst part of this whole situation was not directly because of our invasion of privacy; Amadou Diallo, the kindest person in our village to us and our jatigi and caretaker, when he heard of the robbery, came to our house alone and was obviously in so much emotional pain he couldn't stand. I brought him a chair and sat next to him in our enclosed front yard and watched him cry - a Malian man and village elder in a country where even mothers are not supposed to show too much emotion in public when a child dies, crying before me, blaming himself for the robbery because he was supposed to be our care-taker, the one watching over us and making us as comfortable as possible in his village... he has been, time and time again, the single kindest person to us this whole stay in Mali, and it seriously pained Michele and I to watch him blame himself over this. And there wasn't much Michele nor I could say to console him. The Peace Corps during Homestay warned us to keep careful watch over our possessions because if anything happened to them, our host family would blame themselves. Anything major or minor that happens to a guest in this country becomes the blame of the host regardless if the host has done everything right.
Amadou has come by our house sparingly since. He seems to be doing better but has been occupied with his family. Several times the past 2 weeks he has travelled to a neighboring village with two of his children for foot problems. With a medical facility just half a kilometer from his house, Michele and I suspect him of travelling 15km to the next village for traditional superstitious medicine and sorcery as cures.
Michele and I came to Africa because we know people here are in need of help. When I first got here and saw how people did not immediately need my help to go about their daily lives, I didn't know what to make of it. Why was I here if people get by just fine on their own? But now that I have lived here a little longer, some of the more subtle things are beginning to pop up at me. I can't do much to tell people to only go to a doctor rather than sorcerer, but it is so ingrained in their culture that they would never heed what I say. What I can do, is influence them through trust. I can live here and become as much a member of the community as I can, do small projects like creating trash pickup and building soak pits to help make them healthier in small increments. This may or may not inspire them that some change is good and to at least keep an open mind about other things that can benefit them in the end...

As for now, Michele's and my pride is still recovering from the robbery. We live just one day at a time, not knowing whether tomorrow will be a lower point or not. At the moment we have decided to stay in Africa because it seems the right thing to do. I want to thank everyone who reads this for all of the kind support you have given. All the little things you have done have made it somewhat easier for Michele and I. Thank you.

We were robbed.

hello from the wonderful world of mali. I am here to report that we were robbed while we were being held in the Peace Corps med office, when i had/still have bells palsy. They took a whole hell of a lot too. Here is a brief list:

1. my tennis shoes
2. my digital camera
3. my columbia rain jacket
4. Tims older digital camera
5. tims spare pair of glasses (the good ones with the transition lenses)
6. tims binoculars
7. all of our food after receiving both of the packages sent by my grandmother and aunt, and tims moms package.... needless to say they took all of the american food along with all of the food we had at home... thank you so much leslie and pam. your package could not have come at a better time.
8. a single pair of my underwear (they were lacey... so yeah it is disgusting)
9. half of a bag of pens i brought from the US
10. half of the pencils grandma and laury sent me


I think there are more things that were taken, but I cannot remember them right now. Anyway... after our long journey and my fun bout with bells palsy, I could not believe that this had happened. We are here to help these people and this is what we get for our efforts? I felt betrayed and disgusted, and honestly wanted to be anywhere but here. The worst part for me was when I realized that whomever broke into our house had been through my underwear. The whole white women-black man thing here is like the sexual holy grail. White women are considered to be more sexual, and easier than the local women so most of the time you are looked at as a primarily sexual object. This fact making my missing underwear more unsettling. In addition to the underwear issue, whomever broke in had to have sat down in our house and ate some things before leaving. My Mom sent me a can of corn and a can of mandarin oranges and they were opened and then throzn back in the food trunk... probably because they had never seen either in that form before. The same was true of a can of tuna, open and wasted along with a couple cans of corned mutton. I have never been so insanely pissed off. In addition to my anger, I have been going through what I believe to be panic attacks due to my fear that the theif might try to come in while we are home. There are many strange noises outside... and there is always something near our house; whether it is an animal or a person... i hear it, procede to freak out, my heart rate jumps through the roof and then i have problems calming back down. It has not been easy staying here. Tim and I, over the past few weeks, have fantasized about returning home... desk jobs not sounding as bad as once initially thought. We are staying here to see if things get better and if we can really make a difference here. Right now it is pretty difficult working up any kind of motivation when half the time I am wondering who amongst these people robbed tim and I. So theres that happy news. yay.

In more recent news, I have started my health survey. I created a health survey in bambara to ask the local women what their concerns are and to figure out what they know about. For example, if they have ever heard of AIDS or not. SAdly, after interviewing about 12 women, most have had a child die, 1 went to school, and 1 knew about aids. Those are just a few of the statistics. What I happen to think is worse however, was the behavior of my homologue during the interview. He was actually scoffing at the women who do not know the answers... he was making fun of them! It was infuriating! What made me even more frustrated is that he is educated; he has information he can share, but he doesnt. How in the hell are these women supposed to know about these things when they were forced into marriages when they were fifteen and have been having children ever since? I also had a couple of other questions with Bakary, my homologue/counterpart, that were equally irritating. I asked him if he liked to read... he said yes, but only named text books. I then asked him if he read to his child. He said no, that he was too young and has not been to school yet. They send their kids to school here when they are 7! 7! I also asked him if he spoke french at home. He said no, his child would learn that at school also. I told him that professors and academics have done studies that show that reading to your child makes them smarter and helps them enjoy reading when the are older. I also told him that tim and i were read to when we were children. He listened, and after my explanations and pleas he simply brushed it all off and said: well, we dont do it like that here. He said the same thing in reference to my asking if he spoke french at home to his child. I told him that he needed to speak to him in french because then it would be easier for him to understand the grammar in school and he would actually be able to speak it before being able to write it, which is more important here anyway. HE smiled, and that was the end of it. How in the hell am I supposed to convince the uneducated with my crazy theories if I cannot even persuade bakary to entertain the thought of change?

On another note,the school system here is ridiculous. They try to learn french for the first '-( years and then if they pass a national exam they can move on to learn science, math, history all taught in french... a language they barely understand. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!


Ok, I believe that is all I have to say right now. I love all of you. Thanks for everything in advance. Miss all of you. Everyone eat some turkey, ham, mash tatoes, etc for me.