Travel: Food Security in Benin

While most Americans spent the 1^st week of December picking out a Christmas tree, James spent his at a conference in Benin, kicking-off West African Food Security Partnership. Long story short: Peace Corps is partnering with USAID (the US development agency) to bring together food security programs in the ten West African countries where Peace Corps is active. Since Peace Corps staff was brought in from all of these countries, it was a great opportunity to collaborate on strategies and resources-used to improve food security in our respective countries.     

But since hearing about Benin itself is probably more interesting to our blog readers, I’ll start there. Though they kept us busy, I found some time to explore Benin with the help of some volunteers from Peace Corps Benin. While our countries are in the same region, we were surprised to learn that our experiences are very different. First of all, southern Benin is tropical, more developed, and has greater access to diverse foods (including cheese!). Also, volunteers ride motorcycles, must live in concrete houses, and dance to salsa at night clubs. Yet ironically, they complain about these things while Mali volunteers – including myself – complain about dryness, bus transport, mudbrick houses, and Malian music! Oh humanity, thou art always discontented. But on the downside, volunteers said that city folk are more aggressive, and proximity to Nigeria means some sketchy neighborhoods. I also saw first-hand why Benin is known for Voodoo, which is not hidden like in other African countries; in a house we visited, a Voodoo fetish hangs next to a picture of Jesus. But of course, in my short time I only saw a fraction of the country.

But I did not feel jipped – far from it. This was because I was very happy staying within the conference venue, the Songhaï Center and NOT just because I had a hotel room 3x the size of my mud-hut! This inspiring center (run by Father Godfrey, pictured below) is essentially a sustainable and organic farming community that strives to be a model for rural development in Africa. Just a walk through their garden gave me so many ideas for my work in Mali! And since we were staying on this working farm, we ate extremely well with meat, vegetables, and fruit juices that came directly from the grounds. We had quail eggs, turkey, and freshly squeezed pineapple juice – such a treat!

 

But fun aside, I honestly spent about twelve hours a day working on the Food Security conference. Being from Mali, I helped present (along with Mali’s food security program director Karim Sissoko, pictured with me below) some of our best practices and lessons learned from our current food security program. As one of two volunteers attending, I presented on strategies to get volunteers involved. Lastly, as an aspiring agricultural economist, I collaborated with a team to develop a plan for the program’s monitoring and evaluation. At the conference closing, we all received a certificate for our hard work from the  PC Benin Country Director and US Ambassador to Benin, which I thought was a nice touch. 

Along the way, I was also privileged to able to meet Peace Corps country directors and programming staff from Senegal, Burkina Faso, Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Cape Verde (to name a few), all of whom had a wealth of knowledge and experience, but very different backgrounds and stories. My conversations with them were thought-provoking and inspirational, particularly as I consider my own future, and I hope to continue working with the Partnership from my post here in Mali. As I do, I will be sure to keep you updated with our activities, many of which are already underway.

Thanks for reading! -James

Travel: Festival of Masks

Recently, we heard there was going to be  a “Festival of Masks and Marionettes” in a village about 50 km from our home. So naturally, Jim and I decided to bike there and check it out.  Though it was an exhausting bike ride, we really enjoyed seeing people from 20 surrounding villages gather, don traditional costumes, and dance to music from traditional flutes, guitars, and drums. This was the first annual festival in the region as Mali begins to try to organize cultural events which can attract tourists.

 

The best part about our trip  was we were able to visit some close Malian friends who used to live in Kongodugu but moved to to the village where the festival took place last March. They were amazing hosts, giving us one of their 3 bedrooms,  cooking amazing food for us (including chicken sandwiches for breakfast! Jackpot!). We had so much fun catching up with them and it was wonderful to have a relaxing home to come to after watching the festivities. However, as the festival drew to a close, it was a little bittersweet as it also was one of the first experiences we have had saying ‘goodbye’ possibly for good to a group of Malian friends. We were happy to document the memory with a picture! 

Some miscellaneous travel pictures: (Below Left) Classic malian overloading of wheelbarrows (Below Right) Jim on his bike in a nearby village.

 

Hope you enjoy the pictures!

 

~Joye and James

Culture: Milk

“You’ll really learn to appreciate the simple things in life'” were words we heard over and over as we packed our things to move to Mali.  We have certainly learned to appreciate so much during our past 17 months, but one of those ‘simple things’ we’ve particularly come to appreciate is the luxury of cold milk –readily available and disease free. Ah, America.

In Mali on the other hand, any time you want to buy milk, you need to go on a mini-adventure. Milk is sold almost exclusively by the Fula or Fulani people, nomadic cow herders who live with their lives’ possessions on their backs and move along hundreds of miles of grazing paths from Northern to Southern Mali.  They never stay in one place for long since their cows constantly require new sources of food from the dry, dusty land. The fulane are truly an interesting people. With distinct traditional makeup, jewelry, and style of dress, it is easy to identify individuals who below to their ethnic group. However, the big ‘give-away’ is that the women usually have two calabashes balanced on their heads, one of fresh milk, one of soured milk –all for sale.

Therfore, buying milk offers the following challenges:

1. You often must seek out these nomadic milk merchants yourself if you want to purchase milk. Its only in regional capitals that you can find stores that sell milk.

2. Fresh milk (literally straight from the cow) is only available from 8:30-10am in the morning, if 10 am passes and you havn’t boiled it yet, it turns sour. Malians still cook with sour milk (somewhat like yogurt), but we’re not big fans.

3. All milk must be boiled before consuming to kill any tuberculosis that could be living inside.

4. Even after boiling, we have no refrigerator to put the milk in, so it must be consumed warm and within 3 hours of boiling or it will spoil.

5. You can only buy milk 5 months of the year. Since rainy season only supplies cows with ample feed for 4-5 months, they only produce large amounts of milk for 4-5 months. Once cows get a few months into dry season, they start losing weight due to the scarcity of food and often have to be herded for miles before they can even find a watering hole. Therefore, since the cows barely have enough milk for their young, it is practically impossible to find milk from Dec – May.

Since obtaining fresh milk in Mali is such hard work, we often don't bother. Even when we do want it for dinner, we often forget about it until 11am when its no longer available! However, luckily, powdered milk is readily available so we can use that for a lot of recipes.  Anyways, the moral of the story is, when you savor your next glass of cold pasteurized 2% milk, remember how blessed you are to have something so seemingly simple constantly available to you :)

Thanks for reading,

~Joye (and James)