Update: The Most Wonderful Time of the Year…

One challenge for all Peace Corps Volunteers is how to best spend the holiday season. It is easy to get nostalgic and homesick when Thanksgiving and Christmas come and go like any other day. Some volunteers travel home, but the rest of us make do and celebrate in other ways. While we can not substitute spending time with family and friends, we have had a surprisingly great time here in Mali, and we’d like to share a little of that with you.

 

First was Thanksgiving, which we spent with 80 other volunteers in the Malian city of Sikasso. The region is known for its agricultural diversity, so some volunteers organized a massive Turkey-day feast that included everything you could expect from the meal, including pumpkin and apple pie! With the exception of the turkey head I tried to eat, all of the food was delicious and spending the weekend with other volunteers made it very fun and memorable.

Of course, something we do not get in Mali is snow, which is really hard when you come from Michigan. However, our village did recently collect and sell this year’s harvest of cotton, which was almost the same thing. :)  Also, since Mali is in the northern hemisphere, the weather has gotten noticeably cooler, meaning that Malians wear cotton hats and puffy jacket while Joye and I can finally get some sleep at night. So far, the “cold” has been the equivalent of Michigan weather in August and September, which in our eyes is ideal. It has helped us work harder, and would be perfect for friends and family who wanted to travel to Mali but avoid some of the intense heat (wink wink nudge nudge).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Being in a different climate also means that sometimes we get stuff that Americans don’t, including this year’s harvest of watermelon… in December! Not only is good watermelon almost non-existent in Michigan this time of year, but Malian watermelon is seriously the sweetest and freshest watermelon we have ever tasted. The day that these succulent fruits appeared in our market was the highlight of our month; we downed two full watermelons and have had plenty more since.

Another advantage to being somewhere else for the holidays is getting a unique perspective on Christmas. In Mali, there is no Black Friday, Santa Claus, or non-stop Xmas radio stations. Instead, in village, you are faced with surroundings much more similar to that in the Christmas story. People often travel by donkey. There is no room at the village inn since it’s only a one room mud hut. 10-year-old shepherd boys run their flock through your yard without cleaning up the droppings. In short, elements of story jump out at you in ways they never could because you can see (and smell) them right outside your house.

So this year we celebrate Christmas in the following ways. At Tubaniso (Peace Corps summer camp) we held a candle-light pre-emptive Christmas Eve service with 12 other volunteers. I even bought a $1 coniferous tree for the occasion at an agricultural research center. Then, just last night we opened our wonderful Christmas packages, baked a pizza, and watched a movie. And for Christmas Day, we will be at our village, celebrating with our local church and taking time for silent reflection. Certainly it is different than Christmases past, and we don’t deny that it will be difficult, but it has the potential to be a very lovely day indeed.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Years!

-Jim (and Joye) Allen

Reflection: Packing List for Mali

Since another group of new volunteers will be coming in at the end of January, we thought it would be helpful to post a packing list for incoming volunteers.

Packing List: Its so hard to provide a general list because as you’ll find out, the things you have access to will greatly vary based on your placement. The other reason its difficult is that for the 1st 9 weeks, you live and eat all your meals with a host family, so you might not use a lot of your supplies until after swearing-in. However, when you get to that point, you’ll be SO happy you brought them.

Cooking Supplies: This is only if you plan to cook for yourself after swearing-in. Many volunteers eat all their meals with their host families. Can opener, cutting board, vegetable peeler, spatula, nicer medium sized knife, good saute pan. Everything else you can get here.

Clothes: You’ll get a lot of clothes made here so don’t bring too many. Girls-everything must go below the knee. 2-3 pants, 2-3 skirts, 5 solid color cotton Target t-shirts, 2 dressier tops,  lots of underwear and bras, shower flip-flops, nicer sandals, a pair of hiking boots, raincoat for rainy season, 1 light jacket/sweatshirt for cold season, pajamas appropriate for sleeping in more public places, bathing suit, towel. Shirts, pants, and skirts should not be super tight-fitting. Guys – 2-3 pants, 2-3 collared shirts, and a week’s worth of t-shirts and boxers. This is mainly to get you through training. Afterward, you can get soccer jerseys and fabric pants for dirt cheap. As for shorts, men only wear them when playing sports, so go easy.

Food: Granola bars, dried fruit, instant oatmeal, fruit snacks, and beef jerky will get you through the 9 weeks of training when you are adjusting to the food. We stuffed our bags with this stuff and it was SO worth it!

Toiletries: A 3 month supply of toothpaste, shampoo, soap, deodorant, sunscreen,etc. These are NOT supplied by Peace Corps, but are somewhat obtainable in Bamako and other larger cities after the 9 weeks of training.

Medicines: Peace Corps will give you a medical kit with tylenol, ibprofen, antacid, cough suppressant, antihistamine, bug repellant, mosquito net etc. on about day 2-3 after arriving in country. So bring enough for the first few days when things are still a bit overwhelming.

Camping Supplies: headlamp, REI bughut, Stainless steel water bottle, pocketknife (leatherman), light sheet, padlock for trunk

Electronics: Computer/Netbook, iPod, Portable &Rechargeable iPod Speakers, rechargeable batteries  (used batteries here end up on the ground), headphones, USB drive or external harddrive (for shared media), European plug adapter.

Books: Every regional house has a decent library, but all titles can’t be guaranteed. If you really want to read it, bring it. Otherwise, just bring enough for the first 9-weeks and then borrow for the regional houses afterward.

Note: Keep in mind that Amazon delivers to Mali (shipping for my last package was $15) and you can always request your family send you things later. Mail takes between 2-4 weeks. So if you get here and really regret not bringing something you can always have it sent. Peace Corps also provided things like buckets, brooms, lanterns, mat, mattress, bed, sheet,  and wool blanket for the first 9 weeks of training, so I would assume they are going to do this again for the next stage but things are constantly changing so I can’t guarantee it will be there.

Foods Available in Mali:  This was one topic I couldn’t find ANY info on before I came. However, after being here for 5 months, its still hard to put together a list because things change so quickly and are so dependent on region. One week, your market may be full of guava and orange vendors and the next week you cant find anything but sweet potatoes. Nevertheless, I’ve put these into rough categories to help you get an idea.

Very available: Onions, garlic, powdered milk, tomato paste, pasta, rice,  sugar, tea, instant coffee, dried fish, sweet potatoes, beans, okra/okra powder, millet, peanuts, corn, local leaves for sauces, hot pepper

Somewhat available: Eggs, bread, tomatoes, flour, Coca-Cola, peanut butter, fresh milk, bananas, oil for frying

Only in bigger cities:  butter, pasteurized milk, cans of tuna (all expensive), olive oil,basil, Nutella, popcorn, hot sauce, canned veggies,  potatoes, Pringles, Snickers, cold sodas, mayonnaise, Dijon mustard, vache-qui-rit “cheese” which requires no refrigeration

Not available/Things we miss: Real cheese, Strawberries, Raspberries, Blueberries, Good apples, Chocolate chips, American bacon (though there are Christians that eat pork here and there), some spices (Oregano, Curry, Cinnamon, Paprika), Tortilla chips/most chips, American Junk food, granola bars, sliced bread, American condiments (Ranch, honey mustard, etc), Cereal & cold milk, a personal refrigerator

Seasonal Fruits and Veggies are available depending on region (in Sikasso we get a lot more than other regions) : Lettuce, green peppers, squash, oranges, guava, watermelon, green beans, zucchini, eggplant, mangos, papaya, carrots, hibiscus, avocado.

We hope this is helpful, let us know if you have any questions!

~Joye and James

Culture: Market Day

Going to a village market in Mali is always an experience.  One of the first and biggest hurdles to overcome is bargaining (but there’s a whole other post on that if you’re interested).  In a large city, market can be quite overwhelming, but because our village is so small, we get to see it as a fun social activity. Aside from shopping for food, fabric, and other odds and ends, we make the rounds and greet our favorite vendors, like Amadou, Awa, or Jenaba. And if we miss a week, everybody knows and makes sure to ask us where we were – just like any small town anywhere in the world. :) See more description and pictures below:

As you can see, a market consists of a series of thatched stands where sellers come in from surrounding villages and set up their merchandise 1 day per week, similar to a flee market or farmers market in the US.  (Above) We often start off our shopping with fruits and vegetables for the week since this is the 1 day that we have access to all these things. And yes, that’s a watermelon that Joye is holding. Gotta love Cold Season!

Another fun part of Malian markets is shopping for fabric, which you will later take to the tailor to be made into an outfit. Aside from all the beautiful colors, fabrics also differ in quality and therefore price. So you always need to know what you are bargaining for in order not to get ripped off. One advantage to living in a small village is that at this point, we’re on a first name basis with most vendors so they always offer us good prices :)

Buying Meat: Recently, after discovering that our villagers thought we were vegetarians because we didn't buy goat meat at the market, we decided we should make a more active effort to promote protein consumption in Kongodugu. It really is funny how much people are paying attention even when we think we’re doing simple everyday things. However, last week, the butcher  killed a cow, so we decided to go ahead and make a beef stew for dinner.  Now Malians eat almost every part of the animal, so (above left) Jim first examined the intestines, liver, heart, etc before asking for a 1/2 kilo of more…eh… normal meat—oh and no bones please! “What? No bones?” said the butcher. He then proceeded to grab his machete, cut a leg from the hanging carcass (shown right). Placing the leg on the table, he hacked off the leg muscle with a machete. Bone and muscle pieces flying everywhere. Jim and I had both wiped pieces of cow off our faces and clothes by the time our meat was ready. Of course, the Malians standing around were not phased in anyway other than simple confusion as to what we found so funny. Fun Fact: If you look to Jim’s left, on the ground lays the head of the cow, brains and nerves all exposed. Yum. I think it must be an advertising technique.

So at the end of the day, they tied our meat to a small string, did not place it in any kind of bag, and handed it over. So walked home holding this raw cow meat in front of us, trying not to drip any more on our clothes. Above middle, Jim holds up our dinner for photo documentation. Finally, since there is no meat grinder in village, Joye cut up the fresh, somewhat bloody, meat into bite size pieces for a beef, onion, and tomato stew (which, though the meat is pretty tough here, was still delicious).  So sure, if we had grown up on a farm in the United States, some of this would not be so foreign to us, but we thought most Americans would find this interesting, especially since shopping is such a huge part of the Christmas season. Hope you enjoyed reading!

 

~Joye

Update: Technical In-Service Training

So our 1st 3 months at site are complete! This means the period of time where our travel is restricted and we are told not to do projects  is over! However, as we have explained, we have been busy greeting, integrating, and working on mini-projects (world map mural & garden). In fact, you can see the progress made on our mini-projects below:

 

   

(Joye is basically finished painting the World Map, with the exception of the Malian flag in the corner and will label the countries in French when she returns to village)

Additionally, we have been busy pushing paper for Peace Corps. Before coming to our December Technical In-Service Training (IST), we were required to conduct sector-appropriate needs assessments and complete 10 household food security surveys.  While challenging, this paperwork helped us to gain a comprehensive understanding of our villages needs, wants, and capabilities. For example, in Joye’s needs assessment, she learned that Kongodugu (the pseudonym for our village) wants to build a middle school, but needs an additional teacher, increased enrollment, and a well-functioning school board first. Similarly, James came to know many organizations in Suguba (the pseudonym for where he works) while interviewing people for the food security surveys, including a trash-pickup enterprise, a chicken-raising association, an NGO that works with biofuels, and a widow’s association that give out microloans to its members. So now we can say with confidence that we have a baseline understanding of our villages, which is critical to implementing sustainable work.

 

So now we’re back at Peace Corps summer camp for 2 weeks of technical sector specific training: so that’s Education for Joye and Environment for James. We’ll be learning things like how to train a village school board, how to start and/or manage a literacy center, school health activities and learning games, how to raise chickens, farm fish, graft trees, project planning, proposal writing, and how to get funding. So we’ll be busy! Hopefully, it’s not difficult to see how these trainings will enable us to address some of issues in our villages; this makes the sessions more interesting than they should be. Its also really nice to get back together with other volunteers to see how they creatively handled similar challenges at site.

 

Once we return to site, our next step will be meeting with community leaders to share the results of our baseline surveys, formally identify community development priorities, and start planning projects. These things inevitably will take much longer than they would in the States, but we’re already excited and anxious about commencing our work.

 

~James and Joye

Pictures: Our Malian Home

Hello All, We’ve received a couple requests for pictures of the inside of our house since a big part of Peace Corps is the living conditions. We’ll continue making improvements throughout our service (i.e. Joye has plans to paint soon) but for now, the basics are pretty much in place. Firstly, we live in a 2 room mudbrick house with cemented inner walls and floors and a tin roof. Though we don’t have electricity or running water, I think many of you would be surprised at how quickly you adapt to a new routine and standard of living.

 

 

Our Kitchen : Complete with a propane stove and lots of plastic Tupperware/buckets to keep the bugs away from our food. Note our card and picture wall where we hang all our notes from home :) The kitchen and “living room” together make up 1 of the 2 rooms in our house.

 

 

 

 

Our “Living Room”: Though we cleaned it up a bit and moved some chairs outside for the picture, its currently a bit crowded with painting and gardening supplies. We’re hoping to have a 3rd small storage room built soon to free up some space.  All of our furniture was built by our village carpenter. Oh, and we’ve written a few encouraging Bible verses on the walls in chalk to help us through some of our more challenging days.

 

Our Bedroom: Mosquito net covered bed and our PC issued bikes. On the right, Jim models a shirt that just got finished at our local village tailor. One really nice thing about our house is the big screened windows Peace Corps had put in. These mudbrick houses heat up in the Malian sun and its nice to get a breeze going through every once in a while.

 

Our Bathroom: The picture to the right is actually not our personal bathroom but a picture of a nicer than average nyegen (Malian latrine). A picture of our personal nyegen is coming soon.  Ours is very similar to the picture, four 7 ft tall cement walls with a cemented floor and covered hole for going to the bathroom, no roof. We bathe off to the side using a large bucket filled with water and a small cup to pour water over our heads.

 

 

So that pretty much covers it! Hope you enjoy and let us know if you have any questions!

~Joye