After two nights of not sleeping--the first night, the election, and the second night, a 20 hour bus ride back to Bamako, I'll give you a photo update of the past few weeks:

Several weeks ago, a bunch of us went hiking in the Western Kayes region of Mali. Here's the view from the top.

About a week later, I finally met with a friend of mine in the closest city and bought some Bogolan fabric. Bogolan is a traditional West African mud cloth: cotton fabric is painted on with mud, then goes through a washing process to produce the image on the left.

Most makers on the street have cheap knock offs, but my friend still makes authentic Bogolan that has a reputation for authenticity and quality at US University Anthropology Departments.  My friend proudly busted out his portfolio and showed me some shows and lectures he gave in the US.

This is my first tapestry I bought with the design in the center being the Bambara symbol for Alligator. He's currently working on a second tapistry for me with the symbol for lion--noteworthy for me since my Malian last name means 'lion'.

This past week, a group of us hiked up the Rose Dune, just off the Niger River in the eastern-most part of Mali.

Note how the southwest of Mali (first photo above) differs fairly significantly from the eastern-part of Mali, just off the Saharan desert. No more are the vast fields of millet like in the south, but cow-herders and camels gradually become the norm. In the markets I had to hunt for Bambara or French speakers, since the default languages are Sonrai and Tamasheck.

The northern folk found in Gao are strictly herders and/or nomads. The landscape and people change gradually, with some mix of desert/livestock raising and savannah/farming, until you arrive at the southern area of Mali with strictly farmers.

This, of course, is changing. Global warming has caused the rains to come nearly two months later, and dried up watering holes on which the nomads rely. As the Sahara creeps further south, groups will be forced to give up the nomadic life and become farmers. Even my village, smack in the central band of Mali, is beginning to undergo tree-loss due to desertification.

The next night, we watched the election results come in on CNN international--shockingly, in Peace Corps, there are many political junkies like myself.  It felt like we were waiting up for Santa as we napped and anxiously sat around for exit polls and returns to start coming. At 4:02am Obama was declared the winner (Ohio and Virginia just went blue). McCain gave his speech at around 5:30 am, Obama followed around 6 am.

If there is something you want me to talk about or some burning question, don't be shy! Learning about and sharing Malian culture with Americans is part of my job!

Hope everyone is well.

What do you do when you have extra money?

In America, having extra disposable income might mean you buy a better car, a new TV, as a college student, eat out somewhere besides Papa Johns.

In Mali, you get another wife.

It's difficult for me to completely understand the perspective of a Malian woman--after all, how would you feel if any married man could, at any point, simply take another wife? Yet equally shocked are Malians when they learn in America, men can only get married to one woman.

"Why?" They ask me to explain-- "Why can men only take one woman? After all, men are men, and women are women, they are different!"

Such is the bedrock of the difference between me and my Malian counterparts. Aristotle (I believe) stated that one should "treat equals equally, and unequals unequally." This idea, applied to men and women, is quite in line with Malian culture.

Men are farmers, the keepers of money and masters of the house.  Their role is to provide for their family. Men work incredibly hard...about 4 months of the year when they're farming. Then for the other 8 months of the year men are...preparing for farming next year.

Women are mothers, who are responsible for feeding and clothing her family. Her responsibilities involve hauling water, pounding millet into flour, cleaning the house and the concession, and finally, cleaning her family's clothes. If money is short, women additionally sell food at markets for her personal income, or tend vegetable gardens for food. If fieldwork increases, a husband can request his wife help with the farm work (in addition to all her household duties of course).

Men often defend the benefits of multiple wives: multiple women can divide up housework amongst themselves. When one wife is sick, the other wife cooks. One wife will visit her family in another village for a month, while her co-spouse keeps house. Or even more often, a wives and their children will live in two different villages, never really crossing paths at all, but the man will jettison back and forth between villages.

I do find that families with multiple wives are often healthier; admittedly, multiple-spouse familes tend to have more money, and practice many healthy behaviours that single-spouse familes don't practice due to Islam (no alcohol, emphasis on cleanliness). But there is some merit to what men tell me: a sick wife can always pass off housework to a co-spouse and take extra time to recover.  When ill, a single wife can only request the help of her kids or a neighbor.

Because of the role that gender plays, it's a bit different moving through Malian life. First, even as a white westerner, I am still most fundamentally a woman. I'll often walk into a house in my village, any house, greet whoever happens to be present, and sit down next to the kitchen.  I'll ask for some millet to sift of vegetables to cut.  I'm a woman, so I just know how to cook, right? On one instance in a crowded van, a man climbed in with his 3-year-old son. As he got his bags in the van, I simply took his bewildered looking child and sat him on my lap for the duration of the 1 hour trip. Every woman nodded approvingly--after all, a man can't take of his own child! Yes, there is a certain amount of 'female privilege' that comes with my life here.

Yet these strict roles, the very clear existence of "men's work" and "women's work" is an occasionally tough area to manuver. I'll give presentations to women on nutrition, and they begin laughing at me--"Fatim! I would love to buy meat and fish, but my husband would never give me the money or let me go to market to do so." Feeding the family is a 'woman's issue' but it requires money from men! Children's health is also a woman's issue, yet attaining money requires a husband's approval.

The way men relate to men, and women to women, is also quite different. I'll see a friend of mine at market, and she'll exclaim "where have you been!?! It has been too long!" Then we'll walk around the market together, holding hands. Women will also sit, leaning against each other and braid a friend's hair quite affectionately. Similarly, it is perfectly acceptable for two male friends to hug each other, or walk down the street holding hands intertwined. In Mali, spouses live in different worlds and rarely cross paths. There is much less public closeness or intimacy present between couples. Yet the intimate male-female friendships that are permitted in America are balanced in Mali by very intimate homo-social bonds: because of the distance between spouses, men here are permitted to be in much closer friendships with men, women with women, even after marriage. In America, a heterosexual man walking down the street, fingers linked with his other male heterosexual friend? Never. Here, it doesn't get a second glance.

I do not endorse Aristotle's statement regarding gender--treat men as men and women as women. Rather, a slew of individuals (Gloria Steinem, Martin Luther King Jr.) stated that we no longer make distinctions based on gender (sexism) and race (racism), but only consider the talents and skills of each person--humanism. You're a man yet have a talent in cooking? By all means, take over the range and make dinner! The grass needs cutting but your husband is sick? Nonsense, go out and cut it yourself. I explain to Malians that work is work, and what matters is only that it get done, not who does it. Yes, I will admit, there are surface differences to men and women. But I tell the Malians, "you need two teapots to make tea.This one is red, that one blue. They are different (i.e. color), but they are more fundamentally the same. That is how I see myself as I relate to men--different, but still, more fundamentally the same."

To successfully integrate culturally, one must not accept or endorse a culture, merely understand it. Indeed, it is an aspect of the culture I will never endorse or accept, but I do understand the differences and advantages.

Pictures. Courtesy of Sam.

My house!

My neighbor's house. And my clothes on the line.

                                                                                                                                                                               
                                                                                                                                                          
The door and inside of my latrine, nyegan in Bambara.












Also, the crucial salidaga, used to rinse hands and feet.

Sam! Thanks for the pictures.

Walking to the next village.

Come eat!

Before I begin my narrative for today, I want to thank everyone who donated to my village's pump repair project. I walked out to their village just to tell them the good news, that we could proceed with repairing the pump come October. Pierre clapped his hands together, smiled and said, "good news indeed!" I'll do my best to post pictures.

About a week ago, I was in yet another village, presenting an animation on clean water. Afterward, I decided to bike up to the nearest large city--about 20 kilometers. It had just rained the night before, and there was that wonderful cool, fresh feeling in the air.

Since it's rainy season, everyone is in the fields, and around noon, I saw a familiar scene: men were waving out, shouting the often heard phrase at mealtimes to each other, "Na dumunike!" Come eat! Around noon, you'll see five, six, seven men, crouched around one large metal bowl, filled with toh and sauce. They eat, thank everyone else, then leave the bowl to drink some tea under the nearest tree with each other. Sometimes there's conversation afterward. Sometimes just sitting or napping until it cools off enough to work again.

I'll briefly relate this scene to one particular moment in the U.S. About two years ago, just returned from Scotland, I subletted a single-person apartment for the summer. I welcomed this new living arrangement; I had just spent a month staying exclusively in hostels with 10 and 12 beds to one room, with communal showers, communal sinks, you get the idea. After having nothing to call my own, I loved coming home to an empty house, making dinner for one person, sitting squarely in front of my laptop and wathcing movies.

After several weeks of this, I got tired of cooking only for myself, and started inviting friends over for dinners. Then on a weekend when my immediates were all out of town, I asked a co-worker to come over for dinner. I tried to convince her to break her routine and come over, saying "I can never eat the entire box of macaroni and cheese! It always goes bad!" My boss, the practical woman she is, started making 'helpful' suggestions: "well just cook half the box. Or put the cheese sauce in the refrigerator." My boss never understood why I always shot her suggestions down. I invited my co-worker over, not because everything says '2-4 servings' on the box, but to give some acceptable spin to what no American can say: "I'm lonely, and I'd really just like to have someone else."

I remember that incident in particular because there's this weird feeling of being weak or needy in America when you seek out other people. Along the same vein, everyone can relate to the elementary or highschool lunch room: you scan the crowd, finding your people, the group that always saves you a seat. Otherwise, you're forced into some other group that only grudgingly accepts you, making polite small talk, and then just wishing you'd leave.

I tell Malians about American eating habits. I explain single-person apartments, and coffee shops, about how there is a high priority on individual space and time.  We Americans understand this about each other, and will give you your space until you say otherwise.

And and they are not only shocked, but perplexed. "Why would you not invite someone to come eat with you? Why would you every exclude someone? Why would you do anything, especially eat, by yourself?". They ask me these things, and I can't give them an answer they'll understand. Malians are joiners. Everything, everything, is done together. Not only does exclusion seem odd, they consider it downright greedy and mean.

Growing up Malian, you'll probably share not only a room but a bed with two or three other siblings. If you're smart enough to go to high school (lycee) and move to the city.  But rather than live in a dorm, American style, you'll live with a host family, who you pay to cook your meals, clean your clothes, and functions as your family. Even after highschool, if you're an unmarried woman, you'll live with your brothers or your family until you find a husband. As a man, you live with your parents and grandparents, and if they have died, take over as head of the house. It was a startling realization when I put the obvious together: Malians are never alone!

One Malian, a Muslim I believe, explained their collective attitude as such: "Only God is One. Man? Independent? Never. What makes us human is that we are in this together. Whatever 'this' is, we can't know, we are not God. So it is everything that we do--farming, eating, celebrating, mourning- we must do these things together."

I still need to retreat for several hours every day, to have my own space. But now, I will read American publications and novels, nearly gagging at the 'individualism' that has come to define America. So much of American culture is based on exclusion: what you do or don't wear, who you do or don't know. Your affiliations. Your personal politics. Everything is categorized so that every person can sit and consider themselves 'independent' and 'unique.'

Biking up to Kolokani, I pass a third group of farmers. They all simultaneously yell for me to come and eat, twice as is custom. And again, as custom dictates, I decline twice by saying I've already eaten. I think back to the American cafeteria experience, to the shame I felt trying to invite my co-worker over for dinner.

But in Mali? Come! Join!

First, some questions, then second, my work

Part I: my educational post for the day

Since I typically pick a theme that I hope people will find interesting, this time, I thought I'd list questions that I've been getting from Americans.  Since I live here, I forget which things are considered odd or unknown by Americans!

Where (and how) do you eat?

Malians eat outside, sitting in chairs or stools close to the ground.  A single communal bowl is placed in the middle of 4 or 5 people. Houses are generally too small, dark, and hot to even sit in, much more eat a meal in, so nearly everything happens outside in the courtyard. Malians generally don't have tables at which to sit, eat, chat, etc.

What is your bathroom like?

My 'bathroom' is a pit latrine: this means that a very large pit is dug, then a slab of cement or wood is put over it. There is a hole in a cement floor with a mud wall built up around it. Nicer latrines have cement floors, since they can be swept and cleaned, while many of my neighbors have a rocky dirt floor in their latrine. My latrine also has a door, while with others, the wall is built up around it like a maze.

How do you bathe?

There are these 25 liter buckets available all over West Africa.  This is considered the 'standard' bathing bucket. With this large bucket, you take a smaller 1 liter plastic cup to pour water on you to lather and rinse. Parents will bathe kids up to about age 8 or 9 right in the courtyard, while adults bathe in the latrine area. Some people have a shower/urinating area and a seperate area for defacating (obviously, the one with the hole in the ground).

I really don't mind bucket baths at all--in a place where the low temp is somewhere around 80 F every day, outdoor baths with cool water are very refreshing.

How do you wash clothes?

Remember that 25 liter bucket used for bathing?  Two are used to wash clothes: one to wash, one to rinse. Yes, by hand, and with a washboard if you have one.

What is it like living without electricity? Do you miss it?

It's not so much that I miss it, it's more that it's just...not there. You can't miss electricity when there are no electric appliances, no outlets, no physical evidence of there being something to miss.


What kind of wildlife is there?

Honestly, not much--I think the words of the Lonely Planet West Africa guidbook are that West Africa is an "environmental basketcase" which is effectively stripped it of most wildlife. You don't get any of the bigger animals till you get to East and South Africa.

In the southern portion of Malin, there are many snakes (poisonous and not), lizards, spiders, and insects as well as the occasional hippo. My village is right on the transition zone between desert and savannah, so there isn't nearly the variety of reptile wildlife that's found in the south; I get little gecko-type lizards sunning on my window and hiding in my house, but that's it. There ARE many many types of birds in my area: if you go out en brousse, there's blue, red, green, and turquoise birds.  Several times, I've seen a bird like Zazu in "The Lion King." Also, my village tells me there are wild rabbits and wild boars.

Reciprocally, here are the most frequent questions I get from Malians about America:

Why are American families so small?
How do you wash your clothes?
What kind of food do you eat?
Why are American women so small?
Why are men only allowed to take one wife?
What do men do if their wife dies?
What's the inside of an airplane like?
How many bathrooms did your house have? Were they indoors?
Why do Americans like to fight? ("Delta Force One" and Chuck Norris are very popular here)
If Americans aren't farmers, what do they do exactly?
Where do Americans get their food?


Part II: the product of my most recent efforts over the past few months!

I've been working with a village to help them repair a pump which was built (and broken) about ten years ago. I've agreed to help them raise funds to buy replacement parts and fix it. I strongly support their endeavor for several reasons:

First, they spent the time trying to dig more and deeper wells... to find that no more water could be found at an easily reachable level. As a result, they contacted the local pump technician about fixing this pump and figured out where to get parts to fix it. Since they have done the legwork (and are contributing 25% of the cost) I see them committed to making this pump an effective and sustainable solution.

Second, I do feel like there is a real need to have a working pump between these two villages. During hot season, there is a single well to share between two 250 person villages. Half of these women must walk 1 km to get to the well, and further, during hot season, the well is nearly 30 meters deep--my water is about 20 to 25 meters deep during hot season, a markable difference. In over 100 F heat, to haul water from that deep a level to then transport it 1 km is just plain exhausting.

Third, I've been working with these villages on the importance of clean water. With women constantly pulling water and leaving the water sack on the ground, overusing a well makes already dirty water even worse. I'm working with this village to establish a system to continually treat the wells, to at least kill the really bad stuff, but a pump will always be far cleaner than a well.

Through this project, I'm reaquesting 75% of the cost be covered by independent donations. If you would like to contribute, please do the following:

1. Go to http://www.peacecorps.gov/
2. On the left hand column, find and click on the heading 'Donate Now.'
3. Search by any means you desire, I'm in Mali, West Africa, and I'm from Virginia.
4. Find my name, click, and follow instructions.

If there are any other basic questions like in part one, or questions about my project feel free to email me (jilisham@hotmail.com) or post a comment and I'll do my best to answer.

My hearth mothers!

I just completed a nutrition project with five mothers in a neighboring village. My five mothers...











...and the next day, with kids in tow. We met every morning for a week, made porridge to help wean their kids, and talked about a health topic every day. The woman in the green tank top was my lead mother, helping me get everyone organized and set up at her house every morning.















This is Yaya, the dugutigi's spokesperson. The dugutigi, or literally village keeper, is the oldest person in the village who you go to for all important events or decisions. Yaya sells beans, peanuts, and millet from his store, behind him, and is a generally large influence, being quite old.

"Why don't white people like children?"

Initially, I was taken aback by the question the first few times. The conversation nearly always had a similar flow:

Malian: How many older brothers do you have?
Me: Just a sister. And I'm the youngest.
Malian: So only two?
Me: That's right.
Malian: And no boys?
Me: Nope.
Malian: And your parents don't want any boys?
Me: Well, it's not an issue of not wanting boys, it's more that it just...didn't happen.
Malian: And your parents are okay with this?
Me: Well, what's so wrong with two kids, both of them girls?

Usually, the Malian at this point is reeling, and sooner or later comes to the "Why don't white people like children?" question.

But what makes me equally angry is talking to westerners, to non-Africans in Bamako or the States, who might make the opposite statement: "Why do families have so many kids, in fact, more kids than they can possibly afford, given they are so poor?"

As a health volunteer, who has many conversations about family planning, you simply cannot have a conversation about family without coming up against these two attitudes, one the Malian view of family, the other, the American. Neither is entirely true.  Rather, each attitude is coming from entirely different contexts, and given those contexts, the attitudes and resultant actions do make sense.

For Malians, whenever a woman gets married, everyone gives them blessings for lots of kids: "you're going to have kids, lots of kids, even twins!" I was first confused why everyone was telling me I was going to have twins when I got married: the first thing I would think of when having twins is how much harder it would be--two children to breastfeed, two sets of clothes to buy, money being spent at twice what you anticipated. When pressed why Malians told me this, women usually say "well, God has provided...Children are a blessing from God!"  I would look at children and immediately start calculating the expenses associated with raising that kid. If that makes me anti-family or that children are any less than a gift from God, I'm not sure.  But I don't think I'm alone in seeing kids and then seeing money being spent on unnegotiable expenses.

I gradually realized this is the key difference: for people in Mali, and much of the developing world, children are seen as making more money than they cost. David Werner explains the attitude in Helping Health Workers Learn. By age five or six, most boys are responsible for bringing in the animals at the end of the day, and girls, watching the younger children and washing dishes. By ten or eleven, boys are field hands, while girls haul water and help pound millet or cook while mothers are out selling food at markets. Sure, you need to feed and clothe your helpers, but kids do an awful lot of work without being paid.

More importantly in Mali, kids are seen as a form of social securtiy. In the U.S., once you retire, you earn a small pension. Additionally, most people save money every year they work so that once you're too old to work , there's money in the bank. I've explained this foreign concept to many Malians--foreign because there is no formal pension or way to save money if you're the average Malian. Rather, children are required to give their parents money and food once they are too old to farm. The biggest fear of Malians is to be old and have no children to come give them money or food, only relying on the village to take care of them.

Finally, children are seen as continuing the family in an uncertain world. Malians are shocked that I have no brothers, exclaiming, "you must have children, otherwise, your family will be lost!!"  Things happen in the developing world--accidents, malaria, any number of unexpected tragedies. When you are a farmer with little to no education, kids are your greatest form of security, of knowing that even if something happens to you, your own kids are there to take care of your parents or each other.

So how does one talk about family planning in a Malian context? First, we don't call it "birth control." Like I've stated previously, control or agency is not something felt very strongly by Malians.  Things do or don't happen because God has accepted them as such, which includes everything from having a safe trip to having lots of kids. Telling a Malian to control the number of kids they have, especially a white person telling them this, ushers in the "white people don't like kids" statement.

Spacing births is something that makes sense to a Malian woman. I despise the teaching tools that are made for health educators, a picture of a Malian family with two kids, both well dressed and who go to school. Sure, it's a great vision, buy you can tell that it was made by white people trying to have Mali become the nuclear family that is the Western World. Rather, I tell the women in my village, "you want to have four kids? Five kids? Fine, I'm not going to sit here and tell you to only have two kids like some Western family. But I am going to tell you to wait until the first child isn't breastfeeding before you become pregnant again, meaning at least two years between pregnancies, if not three." Having lots of kids in itself isn't a bad thing, but becoming pregnant every year and weaning your first child early is a bad thing. And I can give them plenty of analogies to support that: planting crops too close together yields poorer growth.  Likewise, having children too close together means each child doesn't grow as well. Using the same grain sacks year after year, filling them full with grain wears them out to the point that they rip. Likewise, a woman's body bearing a child every year simply wears out and cannot do as much work.

To truly change the way people think about kids, Mali needs to economically change: people need to have enough faith that they can save money for retirement, and that kids can finish school and later make money through work, not leave school early to provide food for the family. Sure, there's a viable arguement that having only as many kids as you can afford will help.  But there is a case to be made that poverty is the cause of large families, and not the Western attitude that poverty is the effect of large families.  This attitude is hidden in the "don't breed them if you can't feed them" mentality. Distributing condoms, birth control pills, and depo-provera injections will not have nearly as large an impact on family planning as an economic system in which people think they have a chance to make money and have a secure future.

My job I feel, where Mali is right now, is not to sit here and tell women to have two children and to send them all to school since I think education is the only way to break out of subsistence farming. Rather, my role is help women access how they can safely have an many children as they chose.

Several weeks ago, I visited my sitemate, Howa Traore in Nara, just south of the Mauratania border.

Much of the cattle are driven down from Mauritania, stop in Nara, and much later, pass through my village before making it into Bamako. Note how just five hours north, Nara looks like this...

While passing my village, you're more likely to see at least a little green, in the form of mango trees and lowlying shrubs. Note both trees in the bush and among the fields:

My village is right on the edge of the transition between the desert of Nara and Mauritania (no trees, all sand) and the lusher south of Mali, Sikasso, where rains begin a full month before in my village.

...God willing

-"Rainy season is about to start!"
-"In July...God willing."

I asked the woman I buy my breakfast from every morning when the rains will start.  I'm trying to get an idea of the timing in order to know when to distribute some Moringa seeds to the Woman's Associations--the seeds can only be planted during rainy season because they need water every day for the first two months.

Now, being at the peak of hot season, the wells are dry, and planting anything would be impossible until the coming two months.  When the rains come ni Allah sonna. Or literally translated, "if God has accepted it."  Some people prefer the arabic version instead--I'll see you next week, insha'allah.



There's nothing wrong with making a reference to the divine uncertainy in the mundane. In fact, I think it's good to be reminded of our humaness, that, God or no God, we don't have control over everything.

A popular song is on Malian radio constantly, no different from when American stations play a hit snigle at peak listening hours.  I think the title is simply the chorus and background refrain, Geleya be, and now that my language is better, I can actually understand the gist of the lyrics:

There's hardships now
there's poverty everywhere,
but you can't cheat people,
you can't steal from people,
you must wait for God,
and God will make things better.

The song is incredibly popular, as my language teacher commented, "people are angry, people are tired.  We  listen to the song and it soothes our hearts." I, too, can sympathize with the lyric's popularity. But the very solution, the very message, bothered me too--if something is wrong, you don't wait, you do something about it!

Soon, many moments like this dotted my interactions:

-"How did your kid get that huge bloody gash on his head?"
-"Ah...I don't know, God gave it to him."

In another village, a volunteer asked, "do this many kids die every rainy season?" The response? "God provides, and God takes away." Never mind that water treatment and displacement of gray water is also a serious contender for infant mortality during rainy season. Even the large green public transport vans often brandish the slogan, painted in bright red and yellow letters, Dieu Merci, referencing the safe journey of passengers.  A safe journey is not due to a skilled driver, but to the fate of that day.

I recognize as an American, I have a feeling of profound control every day of my life: I study so that I might get good grades.  I drive the speed limit so I don't lose control of the vehicle.  I wash cuts out with soap and water so they don't get infected.

But then again, I take for granted the profound control I have had, and further, my country has had, over it's own destiny. The U.S. was never colonized by the French, to then have another language and system of governance imposed without those peoples' consent. Even after independence, Mali is not economically sustainable as a country, relying on aid to help develop herself. Further, Mali is a nation of farmers; regardless of how hard you might work, crop yields depend on adequate and steady rainfall. Last year, far less rain came. Grain prices are double what they were last year in Mali and Burkina Faso due to absolutely no more or less work on the part of the average farmer. Put into the historical context, I can understand that development, that good health, that the very possibility of controlling what good or bad things are to happen, something that I feel very profoundly, are here accepted as God's good or ill favor.

I came into Bamako to work on the start of a funding proposal for one of the smaller villages I bike out to about once a week.  During hot season, both wells are dry, forcing the entire 200 person village to walk 2 kilometers to haul their water. In 1996, a church group came and installed a pump (not using local materials or consulting the local population), and shortly after, the pump broke. Digging a well or deepening the present well is also not an option since the ground water is too deep for a well to reach.

The village has proposed to me to go up to the next town, buy the locally available pipe, and repair the pump using the one person capable of repairing and maintaining pumps in my village.  In my opinion, this is a great solution, since the village intends to use local resources and a local Malian rather for maintanence rather than resorting to any sort of charity or outside group.

The obstacle, of course, is getting the funding to cover the cost of the pipe. Can this be overcome? Ni Allah sonna.

I should've taken a before picture-

--but I would've lost my gumption.

"Watch the kids, will you?"

"How many brothers and sisters do you have?"

It's a fairly straightforward question, in my opinion.  In fact, I can answer it right here: I have one older sister. She's married, and she doesn't have kids.

Then I'll ask my neighbor. And her answer? She thinks for a minute. "Well, I don't know, lots."

I press her, "you mean you can't give me a number, a rough estimate?"
"No, there's lots of them, I honestly don't know!"

I'm finding that this is, indeed, the case. I'll bike to another village, and I'll start a conversation, telling who my neighbors are.  And the person will usually respond with their relationship--"she's my younger sister, my older brother's wife, etc." In one of the smaller villages, everyone is in some way related to everyone else.  So in fact, it is impossible to actually know how many people are in your family.

But further, "Family" and what constitutes family is a rather involved issue in Mali. In America, you have your parents and grandparents, sisters and brothers, maybe you know your Aunts, Uncles and some cousins. But even in large American families, it's fairly easy to explain these relationships.

In Mali, the rules are different. For example, in my language tutor's house, two of his brother's kids live there to go to school. Another girl appears there every now and again during vacations because her own family's village is much further off the main road, so she just stays in my larger village. And finally, a five year old boy was given to my tutor to raise: if another family can take better care of a child, then it is perfectly acceptable to just make arrangements for that family to take your child and raise it as your own.  The biological father pops in every second or third market day.

So who's your father? Your biological one, or the one that takes care of you? Who's your family? Your host family you live with nine months of the year, or the family you farm with every rainy season? In Mali, they just say "all of the above."

Second, there's a fluidity to Malian life that makes family difficult to define. For about a week, I ate lunch with one of my friends and her family. There was a young boy who I simply assumed was her grandson, since he was always at her house and she always fed him lunch. Then I finally asked her about this boy, and she looked shocked: "What? you didn't know? He lives in that house over there!!" In Mali, it's perfectly acceptable for kids to just wander around with each other, to go anywhere.  It's understood that everyone will watch them and feed them as if someone elses kids are no different from your own. It's not considered being a bad parent if you have no idea where your kid is or what she's doing, because someone will be watching him as you would.

This second reality means "work" and how that work is structured is quite different for women in Mali. It is assumed that a woman has, or wants to have, kids--this is not something that is an 'if' but rather a 'when.' So when I have a discussion that American women have hangups about making a career and a family work, that a job would take away time, energy, and affection otherwise given to a child, they simply don't understand. My language tutor stated (and I am not making this up), "how can only one woman, one parent, care for a child? It takes a village to raise a child!" Other people would just press me, saying that a woman should just take her kid to work and everyone would help watch him. In Mali, that's fine: women teachers strap their kids to their backs everywhere. The matrone regularly has her kids coming in and bugging her about things. Even as the strange white woman on public transit, I'll take some woman's kid on my lap in a second while the mother straightens her bags or leaves to buy water. Now imagine that happening in any office space or public space in America. The Malian and American conception of "work" and "home", of "public" and "private" couldn't be further from each other.

Now that hot season has arrived, I tend to lie outside on a mat with my neighbor and her kids til about midnight.  By then, it has cooled off enough for everyone to go inside. My neighbor gets water from the well and then quickly says, "I'm washing." She plops down her 3 month old kid on my lap next to her two three-year-old twins. "Watch the kids, will you?"

In Mali, it's not too much to ask. After all, I'm more or less her family.

"No one can develop a people-- only a people can develop themselves"

Peace Corps refers to what I do as "the toughest job you'll ever love." So what is my job description exactly? Succinctly, on a daily basis, I do three things:

1. Help the Malian people meet their goals to develop their country.
2. Share my American culture with Malians.
3. Through living and working with Malians, help Americans better understand Malian culture.

So why is this considered so difficult?

As a health volunteer, I specifically address Malian health development goals: Mali has one of the worst infant mortality rates in the world. I go to Women's Association Meetings and speak briefly on a health topic; this past week I did a demonstration of how to make Oral Rehydration Solution or in Bambara, Keneyaji-- mix specific ratios of water, sugar and salt together, give to child so he does not die of dehydration.

For a fairly accurate account of what I do, take a look at David Werner's book Helping Health Workers Learn: Werner was a health worker in rural Mexico, and his experience and advice has since been applied and adapted by health workers in most of the developing world. (His other book, Where there is no Doctor, is also my go-to first aid manuel as a resident of the developing world.)

Why is what I do so difficult? First, most of the women I work with cannot read.  Most left school at second or third grade, if their parents even allowed them to go to school in the first place.

Second, even some women who have learned how to read--one Women's Association studies Bambara together-most of the written world in Mali is written in French. In my village, even the number of people who can read French is fairly small.  Farmers tend to drop out of school at seventh or eighth grade, while those that even make it to high school tend to work in larger cities. French, I imagine, is a bit like triangle math to me: I vaguely remember some math teacher stressing that I would never succeed in life if I didn't know how to determine the length of that third side, but if you pressed me for some actual ratios or formulas, I'm useless. With French, many can say some phrases or a greeting, but when faced with a native French speaker, they're useless.

Finally, at the end of the day, I can't make people do anything I recommend--washing hands with soap and water, sleeping under a mosquito net.  For everything, I need to give Malians a pretty good reason to justify that buying bleach and treating your water really is going to improve your life and that washing your hands really does kill germs so that the women I talk to see a reason to practice healthy behaviors.

The other frustrating element of the first Peace Corps goal is dealing with other development efforts. In three of the villages I go to, I discovered there were pumps which were long ago broken, neglected, and ignored. I asked some villagers about them, and the story is nearly always the same: "Ten years ago or so, some white people came and built them, and then they broke (or they were in a bad location in the first place). And we can't fix them. So we'll just wait for some more white people to come in and drop some money to repair them."

Meanwhile, three villages have attempted to construct small dams with rocks and metal wiring in order to hold water during the rainy season. Every year they attempt to enhance these areas where water collects in order to raise the level of the water table and the amount of water in the wells. This is development--helping people do what they're already trying to do, and given some slightly better materials, succeeding mostly on their own.

The other part of my job is a cross-cultural exchange: I have a University level eductation, and when I was assigned to Mali, I had to look up on a map to be sure where it was. This is sad, but unfortunately true.

Now, six months have passed, and I can have a short conversation in Bambara, know the regions and ethnic groups of Mali, and am intimately acquainted with the specifics of Malian life.

Finally, for many of the smaller villages to which I bike, I am the first white person they've seen, and further, the first American who will ever come into their houses, and speak with them on their own terms. Even in the village I live in, where people are slightly more acquainted with NGOs, I am one of the few white people that is actually a person.  For example, the volunteer before me liked fish, so when she ate with people, they always give her fish. I hate fish. I think my neighbors thought I was kidding, ("Oh sure, the other volunteer liked meat, so you must too!"), until I came back one village over with a huge bag of lettuce and tomatoes strapped to my bike, stating enthusiastically, "No meat.  Tonight, we're having salad, lots of salad!"

Integrating into Malian culture on a 24 hour basis?

Yes, it is a tough job.

"Fatim, sit down, you can't go en brousse tomorrow."

She had a rare, serious look in her eyes, and I sat, waiting to hear what my neighbor, Cha-Cha, had to tell me.

"Alaima came this afternoon, and she said Komo is coming tomorrow. You can't go in the bush tomorrow, you can't!"

I was warned about this by the previous volunteer, and now I knew the extent of how serious everyone was about it: Komo is a Bambara (animist) religious holiday which occurs once during the dry season, and again near the end of rainy season. My village is nearly entirely Muslim, with a handful of Christians. One neighboring village has a fairly large Catholic minority. But as soon as you head even 1 km into the bush, Muslim, Christian, Bambara--everyone practices animism to some degree.

What Komo is exactly is what's more difficult to articulate: as described to me, the Komo comes to a village for two or three days. Women can't see it, otherwise, they'll die. Men can go outside and see it. I'm told there is beer involved, and that some villages eat dog meat, except in some villages where eating dog meat is prohibited and lizard meat is the animal of choice. I get the gist that the Komo is one man who wanders from village to village with a giant mask, and some women have demonstrated the strange noise it makes outside their doors.

What is strange, almost disconcerting, is how seriously this is believed: Alaima walked into my village, 3 km, to tell me to be sure not to come out in the unfortunate instance that I would "see it" and die. The Komo has ceased in my own village since traditional animists were nearly entirely converted to Islam or Christianity, but if you even mention it, there is the same stock warning: "You can't go into the bush! You can't see it or you'll die!"

But a more general animism runs deeper than one or two traditional celebrations. I always wear this hemp necklace that I made: it means nothing, just something that I always wear and as a result, is now one of my distinguishing characteristics by people who know me. The questions started slowly, first the family I ate with, then Ya, the girl who takes money when I call people at the phone cabine--"What is that around your neck? Why do you wear it?" I would look perplexed, saying something to the effect of "no reason, I just like it, the same reason you wear earrings or bracelets."

Finally, I asked someone in the next village over of the significance of the Malians' dry grass necklaces which happened to look quite similar to mine: "If you're hurting in that area, say your wrist or your ankle, you wear this, and the pain is gone." Several more people confirmed it: the Malians thought my necklace had medicine or special powers that gave me good health.

Similarly, Malians wear silver metal rings, not as a sign of marriage, but "as a way to protect themselves against sorcerers, which during the day turn into cats." I have been told other stories of someone who lives in the village, who knows if you steal or trick people, and at night, he changes, and if you're walking alone, he will kill you.

This is my American rationalism, shocked by the absurdity that women must stay inside for two, three days, while men drink beer, and that objects like dried grass and rings have special powers.

But of course Christians and Muslims have their own superstitions too: Friday the 13th always has a drop in airline passengers, and the number '13' is generally thought to be unlucky: there were thirteen people at the Last Supper. I talked with my language tutor, asking why Friday mornings, right before Mosque let out at noon, were particularly quiet: "when unfortunate events happen, they always happen Friday morning (the Islamic Holy Day) right before Mosque. People don't like to travel, to come out of their house until they are sure any danger or possible mishap that is beyond a person's control has past."

Malians wearing metal rings or shirts, thought to protect from harm, have ceased to have any real connection to a specific religion: these practices are now cultural attitudes that respond to the unexplainable like, say, our own irrational fear of going into a graveyard at night (ditto for Malians) or that a black cat is bad luck. I do reflect the American culture's reverence of rationalism, but I am fairly sympathetic to any culture's attempt to deal with the unexplainable and unfortunate--I've studied Jungian symbolism, tarot cards, astrology, and honestly, there are moments in Philosophy, especially metaphysics, which I felt pushed up against the bounds of rationalism.

I have yet to wear a cotton shirt or metal ring to protect myself from misfortune.

But I am certain to stay inside at night, with my window shut, and to never go into the bush without asking first, "The Komo is gone, right?"

A few more pics

The sign when arriving in my village.













Outside of the CSCOM, or community clinic














In the bush or en brousse, as said in French.

"You can't take your home with you"

My two weeks in Bamako has been spent catching up with all the other Americans about our Villages as well as, well, just plain being Americans together and doing something as simple as wearing pants every day. As a result, I've neglected posting due to time and uncertainty about what to talk about. But since I just posted pictures of my mud house, my "home", I talk a little about the Malian conception of home.

I grew up being exposed to this idea known as 'southern hospitatlity': anyone who has lived in the South knows what I'm talking about. Southern hospitality is this general warmth you get talking to people, that you will be invited to someone's home, given dinner, and encouraged to take seconds. You head South, and people don't honk at you in traffic quite as much, the cashier at the supermarket chats with you a bit rather than scanning you through, and people aren't in so much of a hurry, because who can't stop for a minute and talk about your second counsin? Spend a day in Maryland then spend a day in Virginia, or go even further South and you'll know what southern hospitality is.

Now take this "southern hospitality" and multiply it by about 100, and you'll begin to come close to what Malian hospitality is, or in Bambara, jatigiya. In Mali, you can travel anywhere, be stranded without food, shelter, and not be able to speak the local language, walk into a village, somehow communicate these needs, and you will be given a host family, water to drink, food to eat, and a place to sleep. And no one will ever ask you for money. And this is quite something considering these are the third poorest people in the world. I live off the paved road where every year I'm told, Americans bike from Senegal to South Africa. Americans can do this by virtue of stopping in villages along the way to rest, because every single village gives them food to eat and a place to spend the night. The biggest difference in Mali is that the Malians won't ask you for money.

One of my language tutor's friends came over, another teacher, and they explained the root of this hospitality: "In Europe, in America, it is always reason first. In Africa, in Mali specifically, it is always the sentiment first. When you go someplace, you can't take your home, your family, with you--so we must open up ours, we must give you food, drink, a bed, and a family, no less."

I bike to neighboring villages about once a week; the first people I greet, the woman of the house, always goes and gets me a drink of water. Once, when I was returning to my village, it was getting dark very quickly, and I stopped drinking tea and stated I had to be going soon if I didn't want to be biking in darkness. The women then said, "what? you don't want to stay for dinner? to spend the night?" I had only told one person in the village I was coming that day, yet in a whim, she was prepared to give me a room in her house to spend the night and food to eat, having only just met me 3 hours earlier. Even when you leave, someone accompanies you to the road, and some of my better friends I visit often will walk with me for 100 meters or so to 'get me on the road.'

This vague feeling of jatigiya is something that does not exist in the Western World. I've posted some of the pictures of the inside of my home: it has a small front room, and a larger back room, two chairs, a stool, and a table to hold my stove and water filter. But to a Malian, this isn't close to what a home is--home to a Malian not really a physical thing--my home is the people within the four or so villages I eat with, that feeling of arriving in a village, and being met at that first house with a cup full of water.

The very few pictures I have taken...

My front door, shoes, trunk, and map of West Africa.











Water filter, stove.
















Chairs, mat, books.














Door to my back room.















The jakumaden I acquired, in order to take care of the mice.