First off, yay! We have finally figured out how to post video onto the blog. I hope everyone at home can enjoy watching these as much as we enjoyed filming them! Michele and I left Tubani So last night to stay in Bamako until Monday because the rooms at Tubani So have filled up quickly with the 110 Peace Corps Guinea volunteers consolidating in Mali because of violence in Conakry, Guinea. These are some of our adventures today...
First off, Welcome to the PCVs from Guinea!
For those not in the know, Guinea, the West African nation to our immediate southwest, just recently had elections and they didn't go over so well. People are rioting in the capital and many protesters have been shot and killed already. As a precaution, Peace Corps Guinea will be sending its 106 volunteers to Tubani So for the next week, possibly longer. We have been told they will be arriving tomorrow morning - they are on the road as I type. Because Michele and I will be in Tubani So today and tomorrow helping train new language testers, we should be here when the Guinea-kaw arrive. It will be pretty interesting to meet a bunch of PCVs from another West African nation. Workers have been all over Tubani So today trying to find any spare room they can get to fit the new 106 residents, as there is no way of telling for the moment how long they will be here. This is the address of one of the PCVs in Guinea that I have followed on and off the past 6 months. Read it to find out more about the PC in Guinea.
Secondly, it is now 6 months since we have joined the Peace Corps. 6 months ago today (give or take a day, my memory isn't that great) we were on a plane coming to Africa. Congrats to our stage.
Lots of things have been going on behind the scenes here in Mali and in West Africa in general. First off, Michele and I have known about this for nearly two weeks but did not want to post anything about it on the blog while things were still being discussed: we will be changing sites. Blendio will not be our village anymore and the people of Blendio will not be the ones we work with. The most straightforward way of explaining why are due to security issues from our being robbed twice and tensions between our homologues that would have made continuing in Blendio and Kassambougou difficult. But all is not sad.
We will be moving (at the earliest) Monday to pick up our stuff via PC vehicle in Blendio, spend a night or two in Sikasso-ville, then head up to the PC stage house in San in the region of Segou. Our new site will be the town of Diaramana (pronounced Jar-a-mana). It is a new PC site - as in we will be the first 2 PCVs in this town. They have been waiting for a volunteer since 2002, and seem extremely excited that Michele and I will be there soon. I guess every time a door shuts another one opens.
I really can't say much about the town yet as I have not been there before. But this is what our paperwork has said: it is the commune capital (largest town in its county) and has 4000 people. It is roughly 20km off the main road between the cities of Bla and San in the Segou region. It is about 50km from Bla, which will most likely be our banking town. We will be living in a 6 room concrete house originally built by the NGO World Vision but recently vacated when the NGO left the town. They have a broken solar pump and 3 of their 6 hand pumps are broken. I'm told the people are very excited about designing and building advanced latrine systems in the area - I won't find out exactly what that means until I get there.
Michele will be working at a maternity in the town. They do not have a full fledged CS-COM (mini, rural hospital), just the maternity, so Michele has the potential of working with a lot of baby weighing and vaccinations. She is not excited about that. But, we are both looking forward to working with the local school to teach sex ed and health classes. Michele is also very gung-ho about starting her girls soccer team. I won't be able to write more about our projects until we get there and actually have a chance to analyze the situation in Diaramana.
The plans at the moment are basically to play by ear whatever needs to be done to accommodate the new arrivals from Guinea - there is a fairly good chance that will may not have a car ready by Monday to even take us to our old site. We basically have a little less than a week of downtime (which is kind of nice since we've done so much training the past month).
Mud-wrestling at TubaniSo - they don't call us the Belushi stage for nothing! Shown here: Greg throwing Aaron to the ground (made of high quality Africa mud, complete with the potential for hookworm meant to add a sense of 'extreme').
...as Gretchen and Kathy grapple for victory... 
The Michele L. vs. Jacq fight, Sikasso-kaw vs. Sikasso-kaw, the fight of the century begins...
...and ends rather abruptly with Lehman down for the count. The crowd goes wild!
Remember one of our posts a few months back where we refered to a man, Kyle, as a serial killer? This is photo proof that he is still living up to the role (at least appearance-wise) here in Mali.
Gretchen gloating after pinning Kathy deep in the mud. 
All the participants pause for a quick group photo...
...then drive right back into the mud hungry for more. Here Yuri (in the white) and Kathy (the girl) of Segou take on Cody (down and out in the red) of Kayes and Evan (being tackled) of Bougouni
Cody still down and out in the mud. Don't judge him too harshly, you'd be down and out too after being hit with the full force of Yuri, the ex-KGB agent. 
Michele wasn't able to escape scot-free. Here she shows off the muddy wounds of being caught in the crossfire of a mud flinging tournament.
And the very next day, at the end of training and with our homologues yet to show up for homologue day, the crew decides to wind down and relax for once. Rumors of a single Mexican restaurant owned by an Englishman on the far bank of the Niger River (and even better rumors of margaritas!) were the driving force behind our next great adventure... crossing the nation's primary river as the sun sets, with a planned return trip afterwards. We trekked out the back door of the Tubani So campgrounds hiking towards the river because we've heard other PCVs have taken a boat across for a fairly low keme price (500 CFA, $1).
Yours truly, the cameraman, is first on the canoe. Chris Krey warns me to stop rocking the boat since he tends to get sea-sick on rivers quite often. Ironically enough, he was given the dustpan in order to scoop water out of the bottom of the canoe to put it back into the river.
Chris and I all buddy-buddy, feigning bravado with our smiles - yet behind those pearly whites is the barely floating feeling of terror and a sinking feeling of dread (forgive me for my puns, I do not know when to quit).
The crazy tree. Don't let it know that the ground beneath it dropped away - it can just go right on ahead being a floating tree.
Make sure you zoom in and get the full effect of this photo. On the left side of the image is a boat completely surrounded by water and filled with PCVs. On the right side of this image (marked by the yellow shirt) is Louis, left alone on an island completely surrounded by water because the boat-tigi didn't realize that the human cargo was too heavy until he actually got out to deep water. Welcome to Africa, Louis!! You've been voted onto the island! (all was not lost, however. some men in more boats came to retrieve him and because he was stranded on an island they figured it was fair game to drastically inflate the price of crossing. he returned to Tubani So without Mexican food)
Our boat-tigi, paddling off into the sunset.
This was the boat that abandonned Louis to scavenge for food on his very own island. Notice how low they sit in the water without him. Their boat has the same number of passengers as our boat did. This was a scary trip.
Michele freaking out, because freaking out was the only appropriate reaction. Little did she know that later this very night was when she would come down with a case of MALARIA! (dun dun dun) Fucking African mosquitoes.
The sunset on the river. This is how the Mali skyline has looked at sunset for the past month with all the dust in the atmosphere.
A man packing up his boat for the evening.
Even after dark the shoreline was still crowded with people. A great deal of those who work on boats along the river also live on those boats with their families. Getting a group of Tubabs who pay 500 CFA a head to cross and 500 to get back is somewhat akin to the waiter who is left a 100% tip.
The evening in Tubani So and the Muslim cresent moon rising in the sky.
This is the Phase IV update: Michele and I are back in Tubani So, our training center just outside the capital city, Bamako, to go through our next step of training, or IST (In Service Training). We will be here for the next two weeks- we have cell phone coverage here so feel free to call us if anyone out there wants to. Because Michele and I are in different sectors (Water Sanitation and Health Ed) we only get to see one another during meals and in the evening down time. This training has been exciting so far, at least for me: I am finally getting to do some hands-on activities.
Today's classes were all about well construction - the W/S people split up into teams, the round brick team got to build using round brick, and the Dutch brick team got to build using Dutch brick. (The differences between the two aren't very many and actually get fairly technical so I'll spare you all and not go into it). We were basically building the exact same things but with different shaped lego pieces. We had to cut the sheet metal (toli) using metal wire (negejurulan) and bend rebar, align bricks, dig a lot, and hit bits of rock in the soil with a tool we dubbed the 'kiwi' (it is really just a stick that bulges at the end where a sharpened piece of rebar has been wedged).
Yesterday we got to inspect actual wells in various stages of disrepair all around the Peace Corps grounds. The day before that (how exciting this is!) we got to dig a compost pit and fill it with all the layers recommended for the best compost - mainly garbage and shit (feces). Tomorrow we have a field trip into Bamako to visit a pump installation and repair shop.
Our days are basically packed, sunrise to sunset, with training and classes with a few short breaks for coffee and meals. Probably unknown to most of you back in the states (I would not have believed this either unless I had seen and felt it myself), but it really is the cold season here. Now, it's not anything close to snow weather, but it is still downright chilly in the mornings and evenings. We actually have to turn off the fan and sleep under a blanket. Michele walks around in a sweatshirt in the mornings and evenings (I don't because I left mine in Blendio because we were unable to return there in order to pack before we came to Tubani So).
The reason this is the cold season despite our being so close to the equator has nothing to do with the tilt of the earth or the sun's position but rather it is the winds coming from the ocean this time of year. The winds blow up a lot of dust (as this is a very very dusty country) and block out the sun most of the day therefore cooling this place down in the mornings and evenings. The days are fairly comfortable around 75 degrees. PCVs who have been here for a while tell us to not expect to see the sun for the month of February and part of March because of the dust in the atmosphere. We've had a few mild days like this so far, dark clouds building up all day long; in the states one would think it is about to rain any second, but we here know better. It has not rained since the end of October and will not rain again until the end of July.
The scenery of this entire country has changed drastically since we first got here. When we first arrived in the beginning of the rainy season everything was lush and green and this country (though still dusty) looked like a jungle. Now, everything that was once green is yellow and brown, and the roads that were once strewn with puddles and mud are now rocky and dry. The plants that line the roads here are a dark brown, covered in all the dust kicked up from cars that pass by. People who ride motorcycles (75% of vehicles on the road are motorcycles or scooters) wear surgical masks. The entire nation seems to be living off of food they farmed and dried out months ago and saved specifically for this time of year. Corn toh has been replaced with millet toh (the lesser of the two). I need to remember to take a picture of toh next time I have some. It is the jelly/grain that is the staple food of most in Mali - they eat it religiously, even some of the better-off-financially sorts of people just because it is so ingrained in the culture. It is not tasty, but they love it anyways.
I sit here at the internet in Sikasso trying to kill some time before I head out to Niena in an hour. I will walk along the side of the road for about an hour waiting for a bus to pass me. I have a day full of hitch-hiking to look forward to; there is nothing odd or sad about it, this is just how one travels when in Mali. Depending on the type of transport that stops to give you a ride, the trip to Niena from Sikasso-ville can take anywhere from one to two hours. These times aren't so bad anymore, especially considering the condition of the road. Just a few weeks ago, the trip could take much longer because the road was streamed with potholes. Cars don't have to worry so much about the zigging and zagging now that most of potholes have been filled. Once I get to Niena, I will head to the post office to pick up our packages. This is a bit of a leap of faith. We know that our families have sent packages, we know that if things went correctly along the way the packages should be there by now. We have a phone number for the Niena post office that doesn't work, and we have information that the sole employee at the post office went on vacation for Tabaski. We actually found this out the hard way - I travelled to Niena on Monday only to find the post office closed and then had to travel back to Sikasso empty handed. Such is life everywhere, but sometimes it seems disproportionately so here in Africa. Yet, in some odd way, I kind of like it this way.
I have been thinking a lot recently about the differences between my world and the world I live in now. Between America and Mali; between the 1st World and the 3rd; between luxury and need; what really matters and what doesn't.
Some things America clearly has better: clean, cheap water for everyone - internet everywhere - a sense that if something is wrong, you can change it, make things right, whether you really can or not. Some things I feel Mali has the upper hand: everyone, and I do mean everyone, greets you on the street as you walk by. This isn't just because I'm white and I stand out in a crowd here; Malians greet other Malians this way as well.
There are plenty of things that bother me about both worlds as well. And I am finding out here that many of the things that bother me about America also bother me about Africa. Recently, Jay-Z, the rapper mogul, came to Africa supposedly out of the goodness of his heart to donate water pumps to some of the people here and then perform concerts. While I do not question why he came (the UN has been saying for a while that one of the most crucial problems facing 60 percent of Africa is access to clean drinking water), I have to question his idiocity and his overwhelmingly arrogant ignorance.
In Blendio, there are two water pumps within a quick bike ride from our house. Both are on the verge of being useless. Why? Because they were gifts to the community. An NGO came in and installed both pumps just a few years ago. These pumps have the capacity to last 20 something years - if they are taken care of. But NGOs don't maintain pumps; they install them and head on to the next town to install more. Now don't get me wrong, these people need water and they need it badly, but the thing is, they need it everyday, not just some days. It is a quote I am going to hate to say when I leave here because we in the Peace Corps say it so damn much: Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he'll eat for a lifetime. You waltz into these villages to give them a pump and they will break it in 2 years. These pumps are extremely delicate and have a lot of fragile and fancy parts - children play on top of them or bang the lever up and down to hear the echo, the townfolk allow the pump to fall into disrepair because they don't know that moss growing out of it is bad for the pump. They don't know that tightening the screws too much actually wears down the joints and moving parts. It gets to a point where the costly repairs that a community must shell out far too often become too much for these tiny communities to bare on there own. They stop repairing the pump and it rusts over, or rots away. Why does all this happen over and over again in so many African villages here in Mali and in other West African countries? Because the people are not being taught to fish. They are not taught how to take care of their pumps. These people are given these pumps so they do not understand how much the pump costs or how much time and care is invested into the mechanics and installation of such pumps. They don't know to treat them delicately or to keep children away from them.
If I were to try to get a pump installed in my community, the best way to go about it is to make the people here earn it. Yes, the people here are extremely poor and could never afford to completely pay for a pump on their own; so you must seek help from and outside NGO or development program. Get each person in the village to put in some of their meager earnings (many make only a few cents a day) - it isn't the amount that is important, it is the sense of investment that is. When the community strives to raise 1000 dollars, even when some NGO adds the remaining 17,000 dollars required for a pump, the community feels that the pump is something they accomplished. If they feel that it is the product of their own savings and hard work they will take care of it. When you sit them down and take the time to explain to them the small everyday things they can do to prolong its life, they will listen if they know they are helping themselves. These are the pumps that continue working after 2 years.
Jay-Z, like I said, I don't question you're heart. But you are the typical rich ignorant man. People are praising you back home because you are doing something with your riches to help save Africa. But then again, people are pretty ignorant too. You are a fairly successful businessman so I have to assume you've got some brains in you. Next time you come to help Africa, please, I really think you should actually do something helpful.
this is the long ass walk we made to the cliffs for pictures
The bride, Julia, in her purple wedding dress.
Me in my new, cute skirt I got made for the occasion. I look weird because Tim is a freak and thinks that he is my personal paparazzi.
More cave pictures...there were a lot of friends and volunteers there to support her and her new man, Yaya.
Above: Tim hates me, so he took this picture and put it on here for me to comment on... :)
It is picture time! Happy New Year and Happy Tabaski to everyone back home.
Our front yard in Blendio with our recently completed gwa (grass hangar) and children at the gate staring at us.
And our backyard with a view out to the soccer/balontan field in the distance.
Living in Africa is all about improvising: Michele missed putting a star on the top of a tall tree, so here is the other Michele giving her the opportunity to put a star on a tall tree.
A view of one of the tall mosque towers at dusk in Sikasso.
Malian pants are the best. Here is how we have clothes made in Mali: we go fabric shopping and then hand the fabric over to a tailor to make whatever we want. The pants here are so damn comfortable - everytime I go I get several pairs made. This is an example of some of the fabrics that I have recently made into pants (I freakin love my fish pants!)
Yes, kids, Santa does visit Africa.
A day before Tabaski, the last holiday of the year in Islam. People have been hoarding the nicest looking rams for the festivities that start soon. I don't think the rams know what's coming.
We spent Tabaski with a Peace Corps friend, another Michele in the town of Kouro. It is only about 700 people large, so we definitely stuck out(http://www.michelelehman.blogspot.com)
Group prayer on the first morning of the 2 day holiday.
Michele and Michele in their conservative prayer clothing.
The first sacrifice of the day. Several men hold the ram down so it doesn't thrash too much. Hundreds of rams were sacrificed across the village over the next few hours and after that the BBQ began. As the guests of honor everyone kept giving us more meat than we knew what to do with - we ended up giving about 10 kilos away to other people.
The thrashing....
And the skinning....
The Tabaski balontan match, green shirts (single men) versus non-green shirts (married men); I didn't play so I don't know which shirt I would wear.
