Return from Blendio

So Michele and I have been MIA for the past week at our site (the place we will spend the next 2 years). It is going to take some getting used to for me after having lived in Atlanta and Paris the past several years. Blendio is only 25km off the main highway to Sikasso, but it takes roughly an hour to tranverse those 25km via van. The van only comes into Blendio 3-4 times a week, so if we want to leave Blendio on one of the non-van days we have to get creative. On our first trip to Blendio we had to get creative. Michele's APCD was able to charm our sous-prefect into finding a van to come into town on Friday so we could leave for Sikasso - the van came and left as to the fact that it was jam packed with people and goats. We ended up stopping a pickup truck for a local NGO (actually the village chief stopped the truck for us) and hitched a ride into Niena. From Niena we hitched a ride by bus to Sikasso in the traditional Malian way (stand in the middle of the road until a bus with an opening stops). It is really strange just how nice many of the people are here. When the chief in Blendio found out we needed to get out on a non-van day, he had a sizeable chunk of the village population out in the street to flag down a car for us. The pickup truck driver -when he dropped us off in Niena- told some local children we wanted to get to Sikasso and they helped flag down a bus for us. Even though things are extremely rustic and rural out in our part of the bush, I think we are going to get by. The only real concern I have is over the food - we are spoiled in Sanankoroba with street vendors - Blendio has no such thing. The only food you can get in on market days (Tuesday in Blendio, Sunday in Niena). Michele and I will actually have to start planning ahead and stocking up on the stuff we want to eat (I have a feeling I will get extremely sick of white rice very soon).

Anyways, I can't talk long, there is a line for the computer and I am pretty tired from traveling the past 2 days. I will try to jump on tomorrow to give more details of our site and add some photos. Til then, peace out. I love everyone and hope you all are having a good time in America. Michele and I still love it here in Mali.

Back from the middle of nowhere

(this post is originally from Sept 2)

wow---- what a week. I feel like I have been through so much already, but the challenges just keep coming. So Tim and i are stationed near the 'city' of niena and by near i mean 25 km out. there is a car that leaves our site only 3 or 4 times per week.... it kinda sucks. our house is very modest... two rooms, two windows, a door, a courtyard, and a nyegen. Tim has to bike up freaking hill at least 7 km everyday to get to where he works, so life kinda sucks for him. The boutikis there suck and only sell tomato paste and mayo--- i am pretty sure i have lost another 5-10 lbs. (maybe i should have asked you guys to send me pants that were smaller sizes?) It's cool though....


BRITNE: We love you and are really sad to see you go, but we understand and we want you to know that there is absolutely no shame in leaving. I must say though... i was/am really sad. I cried when Claudine told tim and i that you left. Just know that we are sad to see you go----- eats lots of food for me!


Ok back to whatever i was saying... some people here got places near other volunteers... not tim and i. i am assuming they figure that we are married and we dont need anyone else, but that sucks. i have made friends here and it would have been nice had the people deciding placement at least think about our mental health. we volunnteers make up a very unique family, and a lot of problems, complaints, whatever can only be understood by other volunteers.... we need each other to survive here. But no... no other volunteers. The closest people are about 95+ km away. suckage.


our house: the guy who lived there before ET-ed ( early termination). He left about a year into his stay there because he was sick and was not learning the language. His crap was everywhere in our house. it was full of pictures, clothes, bowls, gross shit that should have been cleaned or something, but tim and i did it. The volunteer before him was super volunteer and did everything. I feel somewhat lost in the virtual lack of accomplishment of sick guy and the complete opposite of super girl volunteer. I have no idea what to expect ir how to survive. The PC is hardcore. I feel like i should be able to get into whatever fing grad school i want to go to after this.... i cannot tell you how difficult it has been thus far. I mean, I am still enjoying myself despite my new maladies of a toothache/cavity and some weird fungus looking shit on my foot. HA! This is hilarious! Can you believe i am doing this to myself? Sometimes i think to myself: Michele you are a big f-ing bowl of crazy.... and then i laugh to myself and put more hydrocortozone (sp?) cream on my foot fungus (currently growing)...

In our town they apparently practice female genital mutilation... which i think is just awesome.... there are just so many things that need fixing and not enough me's. The maternity ward looks like a 3rd world prison, with a metal table complete with stirrups... i am pretty sure thats where i will be spending most of my time too.... michele.... dr. michele/ dr. aichata samake... i saw an IV on a couple of kids and felt myself getting queasy... maybe me and health education werent meant to be together.

there is a bambara tutpr in our village... he treats me like a malian women, and by god i will not stand for it. When we were being taught shit we already know... his example sentences were always: michele cooks for tim. tim does not cook because he is a man... and i would say that i cant cook and that tim wants to cook and take care of the children. bla bla....

ok, family---- i am going to call sometime next weekend. saturday or sunday.

love everyone!

this one is for the boys at the UGA helpdesk

Ok, so I thought I wouuld get on here and talk some more about the stuff that is going on. OKAY. So I have recently and not so recently decided that God hates me. Do not fret I shall digress...

So when I first came here I got an ear infection (withing the first 3 days).... it's fine. There is no pain; it is just disgusting and annoying. They gave me antibiotics... and i have been on two different kinds since then bcause it will not go away. Then I got my friend giardia. His name is Teddy and he has made himself quite at home... the little bastard parasite. He gives me Mr. D (code here for diarhea), nausea, makes me not hungry, and pretty much just pisses me off all day. Then I got a cold sore in my mouth, which i have never had in my life. Then my big toes decided to get pussy... one last week (the right left) and now the big toe on the left... (please excuse my candid approach, here we talk about diarhea like news or the weather.) And then last night a bug got stuck in my underwear and got really upset while because he was trapped and decided to take it out on my poor defenseless crotch. So now I have about ten bumps on my underwear line that hurt, along with the ear infection, the toe puss, the mouth sore, the giardia.... and my general pissed offness. It wouuld e fabulous to have one week where my immune system decided to suck it up and take care of everything instead of picking and choosing. Oh and i canot believe this bug bit me so many fing times without my noticing! I maintain: God hates me. It has actually become a joke here because i have no problem telling anyone... and everyone has stories like mine, so it's kind of nice.... in a sick f-ed up kind of way.

here s another story: my town of sanankoroba got stuck in bamako a night or two ago.... it was awesome. no one told us anything, and everyone told us something and tim, trinh, me and britne were stuck in bamako for like 5 hours. Nothing like being stuck in a relatively forein african city where you dont speak the language....
ok, ok... i jest, but only a little.... it was not a HUGE deal... we were eventually saved by the PC. And suprisingly I was not freaking out... i was fine. I actually got to eat a cheeseburger and a chocolate milkshake..... my stomahc has shrunk though.... i couldnt finish anything. i was worthless, but i did finally eat something. I cannot wait until we are able to cook.

Thanks jessica for telling jason stephens nothing but good things.... please write me stuff.... (to everyone, not just jessica)....

glenda: you will pay for leaving me hanging in your letter. i know where you live. it may take me a while to et back ad slap your stank butt, but by god i will.

i think when i make i bac to the us i will get really fat really fast. i am stavng here. tim is adjusting well to the food, but michele sucks at it.

laury: dont send me any books yet. wait until i get out to site. (in about a month) but still send me food. i am always hungry.


love everyone!

alah ka here caya!

Pictures!!

Hello Aunt Laury! Thank you for the lucky Gnome!

Michele and our baby (we're renting, not buying) along with a few of the neighborhood children. Michele is sure to remind our family everyday that she won't have kids for ten years. They respond by asking what is wrong with Tim.


This was a festival to celebrate Canadian development organizations. The xylophones are a wonderful traditional Malian musical instrument.

The backyard/countryside of our country.

This is the toilet/bathroom people! Aren't you jealous? It is called a nyegen. The toilet paper is the luxury - most of the Malian people use something else. I'll leave it to your imagination.


This is our host father Chef Mamadou Traore and his 9 year old son Isu (one of most likely 12 children and Michele's favorite). Our family is absolutely wonderful to us and the Chef is a big shot in the community.



This picture is of Michele and some of the rest of the Sanankoroba bunch on one of the Soutrama green vans - our mode of public transportation in and out of the village. They don't quite work the way public transit does in America - you jump on one heading your direction and go along for the ride. They will stop anywhere along the way to pick up as many people as they can possibly fit to join. Taxis are the same way - don't expect to be the only fare along the way, especially in the cities.

1 Month in Mali....

So to start, I cannot believe I have been in Mali for about a month now - only 26 more to go! Michele and I are back in Bamako for a few hours on our way to Tubani So (PC HQ) from Sanankoroba (our training/homestay area). We get 2 days in Tubani before we head out to the Sikasso region for our very first site visit (the place where Michele and I will be for the next 2 years). We still believe we will be heading to Kasimbougou a small village outside of Blenjou in eastern Sikasso (the southern most region in Mali). No one else in the Peace Corp here has any word as to where they are going, I guess I was just able to coax it out of my Water San APCD with my charm. Thankfully, everyone should find out this trip to Tubani since we are going to site in 2 days.
So far, our stay with our host family has been wonderful. We find out more and more about them every day. Just this past Tuesday our father revealed to us that he has another child that we completely didn't know about! Monday night he announced to us that there will be a traditional Malian baby-naming ceremony the following morning. It is customary in Mali for the women to hide their pregnancies and to not allow anyone to know or see the baby until it is named 7 to 40 days after it has been born. We haven't been able to find out if this is for reasons of superstition or because the infant mortality rate in Mali is so high. Anyways, we were woken up early the next morning and many of the important men in the village met to discuss the baby. They returned and afterwards Michele and I were escorted to our neighbor's (or so we thought) house to see the baby. We were taken into a small dark room and were sat down next to the topless mother and 2 older women and I had the chance to hold the baby. His name is Tnenen which means Monday in Bambaran (apparently Monday doesn't have the same negative conotation as it does in America). After offering the mother a gift of money and saying blessings to the baby, we began to ask questions about who the mother was, who the father was, etc etc... and to our surprise we found out that our father, Chef Mamadou Traore was the father and that this was his other wife that we thought we hadn't met yet! Small world, eh?

The very next day (to complete the whole 'circle of life' theme, one of the town Imam's brothers died and their was a large funeral in the village. Funerals, especially for someone important in the Muslim faith are extremely traditional. The men and the women are separated and must say their blessings to members of the family who are the same sex. We really didn't get to see much of what was going on because as we got to the house where everyone was congregating it began to downpour and we ran off with everyone else.

In other good news, Michele and I and the rest of our group in Sanankoroba had our mid-term language tests. Michele was a bit upset that I found out my score about 24 hours before she found out hers, but in the end, everything worked out. We both have already reached out target level of 'Intermiedate Mid' for Bambaran proficiency and we have only been taking the classes for about 3 weeks. We still have another month to reach the target level so the rest of our classes will just be to better ourselves.

So, on a more personal note: I thought the one month mark was going to be a make-it-or-break it point for Mali but it is here and I don't feel the depression that I thought I would. Mali really doesn't feel that different from the US other than specifics. Everyone doesn't have a car, but transportation is easy to get, there are no fast-food restaurants or washing machines, but people still eat and clean their clothes. Cell phones are everywhere, TV is fairly commonplace, dogs, goats, and donkeys wander the roads, but other than that the people are the same. Family is still important, people rely on their friends, etc. etc. I don't know if I'm explaining it in any way that those back home can understand, but things aren't that different here. I think somewhere in the back of my mind I had a certain concept of a 3rd world country. I thought people all over this country would be homeless and starving. To put it simply, they aren't. I mean, poverty is rampant, but devastation is not. These people are survivors. They don't sit in the street begging for food or money - the men go to work in the fields all day and the women stay at home cooking, cleaning and watching the kids.

I love you all at home, I miss you a lot. I promise I will try to get pictures up ASAP!

hello everyone from Bamako

Just to let everyone know, i am on a french keyboard again...ok now i am not. Anyway, so I still really like it here and everything is great except for food. we were recently tested on our bambara skills and i passed the level you have to have by the end of training now, so no worries there. I was kind of pissed off though because tim did better than i did, but he should not have bc in the real world, practical use... michele is better, tim is good but michele is better.... he knows it and will admit to it. I am already reallly feeling the whole man-rule here in mali... the men joke around about how i am tims wife, and i say no---- he is my husband. He gets to wash first. if men are present, they talk to him and ask him shit first... even our educated professors seem to prefer the manliness that is tim over michele the alpha female. I must admit I thought backseat michele would be an easier adjustment than it really is, but i am reallly hating that aspect of this country. I have decided that i am going to pay particular attention to young girls in whatever site i am sent to to see if they need some kind of self-esteem counseling. I think women here are ridiculously underrated. It feels like the girls are born with a no-power complex.... so they give up. Well, if i can get one girl to think that she is better than that, then i think my work here will be worth it. I also want to teach family planning and safe sex.

So our host father totally had another kid. He had two wives.... and tim and i had no idea this other woman was his other wife! He has like a bazillion children and he's 65. It's crazy. I wish i coul say more and write more eloquently like i know tim has, but i simply refuse to be polite, politically correct, or gramatically correct when on a french keyboard, when i am being timed, and when i have to crap because my parasitic friend giardia wants to have some fun with my stomach.

Oh hey! i totally held a baby on my back like they do here it was crazy! i swear that i know that was a runon sentence, but i cannot care. please pardon the terrible grammar. I am my own worst enemy here i swear.


Laury, I will totally bring mason something back and it will be cool. Mom, I would have died without the food you sent me and everything in it is fantastic. Please send pnut butter. Everything was in the package. Tim really needs a rain jacket, as it is raining season here and he just gets soaked everytime. And here the rain is compleztelmy insane.


I love my new friends Trinh and michele lehman----


I have got to go now... I think of your guys all the time....

ok, adam, greggy, glenda, chadrick.... where the hell are you? i know you should be posting stuff on here about whats goin on in your lives.... but no marriages.

First real post from Mali

Aw ni ce! Hello everyone! Michele and I just made it to Bamako after two weeks in Sanankoroba with our host family. I'm really sorry that I'm not going to be able to post pictures yet as the connection in this internet cafe is really slow. Here is the run down on what has been going on so far:

The Peace Corps split up the big group of 70 something volunteers so that we can better learn the language here. Michele, I and 7 other volunteers were sent to the large village of Sanankoroba about 35 km south of the capital of Bamako. We live with a Malian family in this town of about 7000 people. It is actually one of the larger towns that PC people have been sent to. No running water, no electricity (other than what you can make yourself - people have solar panels charging car batteries that they use to power phones and televisions). We actually live with the chief of the village! Chef Mamadou Traore. Being the chief isn't much of a real job, he still wakes up at 6am to go work in the fields with all the other men (baarake foro la). Being the chief is more of a figurehead role - I've seen other people come into our household the tell their troubles to the chef.(in Mali you are not going to be invited into someone's house because it is expected that you are always welcome. - in fact, if you don't invite yourself over often enough, you are considered rude). Michele and I were given Malian names, and our host father and mother actually gave us their very names - I introduce myself as Chef Mamadou Traore and Michele is now Ashiata Samanke (the women keep their last names here because often the men have more than one wife - but never more than 4). Our father is Muslim and excuses himself to pray 5 times a day (one of these prayer calls is at 5am every morning). Being the chef, he has a nice house directly next to the mosque - we have a beautiful view of the minaret tower from our courtyard and we get front row seats for the prayer calls every few hours. They used to wake us up at 5am but I think we are beginning to adapt to the whole situation.

Before I have to go I have much more to say: this city boy from Atlanta has plucked his first chicken! To make dinner with our teachers (they are Malian) the other night we had to buy 3 chickens - Musa, my Bambaran instructor is a very traditional Muslim and had to say certain prayers before he killed the chickens (yes they were alive when we bought them and actually one wasn't tied up very well and we had to give chase for a few minutes. A small Malian boy showed us up and caught the thing himself while I and two other PC guys looked like a bunch of Tubab fools chasing a chicken. So far, this whole thing has been one crazy experience. Michele and I absolutely love our host family, they are the nicest people we have met so far (we haven't met any non-nice people). The food takes a lot of getting used to as I'm sure michele will explain in a few minutes--

Thru this whole thing so far I can't help but wonder why I am even here. These people are not suffering. There is no widespread disease and pain. These people do not have the same basic technological goods that we have in the US, but they do not suffer at all. They manage. It has been completely inspiring that I have seen people live with all the luxuries I'm used to. Our host brother rides a donkey and cart into the market everyday to get bananas. Our host father's bicycle wheel was bent, so he rode it into town and hammered it straight again. These people get by just fine and I am impressed moreso than I am shocked by this culture. I really do like it here. There hasn't been any need for a big adjustment - thing seem to be progressing naturally.



OK, now its time for michele-tqlk. p.s. this is a french keyboard qnd none of the letters qre zorking right. so i am going to lose a million pounds while being here because the food is crap: they mean well; but it is still crap. I need pnut butter; and those shirts aunt diane got me from the limited; or something similar. I love it here so far and my bambara is really progressing: my professor told me i was the best in his class: yay: ok; so i need a box with nothing but jiff creamy pnut butter: i am starving: everything here is madewith dried fish: or sketch meat: the host family is awesome and they ask us questions and help us practice language: basically everything tim said i agree with: even the whole they arentsuffering bit:::: its weird: word oyut to jessica)))) iùll bring you back some african clothing: i went to the tailor yesterday and got some new african shite)))) its awesome: p:s: we plan on coming home: i will need to load the hump you know what i mean: ok; i miss you guys: i wish i could talk more often; but other than the food i am doing very well: the malians love the scrapbook and my professors think breyers quote is amazing: i sweat a lot: i never have enough water i am always thirsty: its been great: heres hoping the future holds good things for tim and i:

i love you)) grandma; laury; greg; greggy; adam; glenda the glendanator::::: jessica; mom; gary gene; dad)))

gary gene: tell dad: dad be boji min: it means that dad drinks diarhea: ha ha ha ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha