On the Home Stretch

Well it looks like I'm really leaving this time. I've made it to London, and any thoughts of running back to Mali are no match for my depleted finances, so I should be back on American soil sometime this evening.

Leaving the village was traumatic; we spent hours waiting for the Peace Corps vehicle to come and pick me and my scant belongings up, and then all of the sudden it was there, and the next thing I know my homologue is trying to force me in the truck so that I don't see him crying. Crying is not something you do here, so Malians do all sorts of funny things to prevent it. Like getting really angry and yelling at you when you start, or running into the house and hiding, or just not showing up at all when someone departs. Of course I was crying, so Binta was scolding me, while the chief, Hassimi, ran into his house, and most of my neighbors were nowhere to be found. I insisted on saying goodbye to Hassimi, so it was a small production extracting him and trying to say something meaningful while I'm overwhelmed with emotion and people are trying to drag him away. I don't think I got much more than "thank you" out to anyone during that whole ordeal. Christopher said that the goodbye was sweet - but already I am not remembering it clearly, and I know that I did not get to thank the village like I wanted.

One of the most ridiculous parts of the whole thing was that everyone gave me money - and there was no way I could refuse it. They also gave me a couple of bushels of peanuts, which I explained to Sumba were not going to pass airport security, so we pondered what to do with them. I suggested donating them to the women's association, but everyone felt that was a horrible idea (because the entire village gave them to me, so it wouldn't be fair if I then turned around and gave them to a select few), so Sumba said that he would buy them off of me. So all told, the village gave me about $12. Those sweet, silly Dogons. I felt that I should do something meaningful with it, seeing as how that sum of money in millet would feed a family for at least a month. It is a significant amount of cash in Mandoli. So upon arrival in Sevare that night, I took Christopher and two other volunteers out to dinner and then got us all good and drunk. If they weren't practicing Muslims, I think that the villagers would have thought that it was money well spent. I like to think that my habitually inebriated chief would have given us the thumbs up, at least. So I spent my ride down to Bamako sad, exhausted, confused, and very hung over. But after leaving all of this behind, not sure if I will ever come back here again, I think that I would have felt hung over regardless.

Check, Check

These bonus couple of months in village have afforded me some time to reflect on what I will really miss when I leave here, and what things I’d put off my entire service, thinking I’d have more time, until I realized that there was no time left. So I’ve been spending these past two months running around, checking off boxes on my “Must Do in Mali Before I Leave” list. It has been great, and my site mate has been a good inspiration for me, because as I am preparing to leave and getting nostalgic, Christopher is just arriving and wanting to see as much as he can – so he is always willing to tag along.

We biked the cliff road that snakes through Dogon country – an amazingly scenic drive that I have somehow not biked these past two years, even though it is only 40km from my site. I’ve taken the road in a car, but it does not compare – being able to stop at precipitous hairpin turns to soak in the view is much easier on a bicycle. In fact a dump truck hit a bus full of tourists right in front of us, and we stopped long enough to see that no one was hurt, and then cruised off, leaving the quickly growing traffic jam behind us. We even found a waterfall in the cliff face, and waded in the water just long enough to ensure that I will most likely be contracting another case of schistosomiasis before I leave (That was not on my list of things to do before I leave – I think I’ve gotten the disease list pretty much checked off. The only sickness that is included on my list is to NOT get malaria before I go; miraculously I have escaped that one).

After the Dogon road trip, we went to a nearby village for their local church service. It was all in Dogon, and even though I barely caught the sermon (I’ve come to realize that my language skills are not good, and I think Christopher is quickly coming to the same realization), it was really moving and beautiful. Housed in a tiny mud chapel, the congregation sat on mud “pews” with a dirt floor, a pulpit and a plastic, somewhat tacky (and therefore fantastic) wallcovering of the last supper nailed to the wall behind the minister. But man, could they sing. With just a drum and a percussive instrument made from a halved gourd covered in cauris shells, they filled that place with sound. I was getting a bit choked up at times, it was so beautiful. And even though there is some debate between us as to whether it was Amazing Grace or Auld Lang Syne (I think it was a medley of the two), the congregation finished the service singing that song in Dogon while we hummed along. And then Chris fell over on top of me when we went to leave because both of his legs had fallen asleep during the service. It was a smooth exit.

Most of my other boxes involve just spending time with the villagers, not getting anxious about my last few weeks, and looking at the stars as long as my weary body will let me every night. I am grateful to have this time here, happy to spend another Thanksgiving with my teammates, and looking forward to coming home. I think that biggest box that I need to check off is realizing that I will never feel like I have done everything that I needed to do here, but that that is a good thing – it means that the village will still benefit from a volunteer, and that there is a capable person who is ready and willing to pick up where I left off. I’m stubborn to check that one off, but everyday it is getting a little bit easier.

I Guess It Was a Little Too Quick

So, let's rip this band-aid off fast and make it quick and painless: I am staying in Mali for another two months. As I was saying my goodbyes in Bandiagara, and panicking about all the loose ends that I felt were left hanging with my departure, I came to the realization that I could actually stay. There were logistics to figure out - where I would live when my replacement arrived in village, if I could change my flight information at the last minute, if administration actually wanted me to stay... But all in all, it was a relatively easy process, and now it looks like I am here until December 8th.

But more immediately, my father has arrived, and my post-service trip to Ghana and London is continuing as planned, and is now a during-service trip instead. At the moment my dad and I have just returned to Accra from three days in Cape Coast of doing nothing more than staring at the ocean and watching the coconuts drop from the trees. It was just what we needed after a whirlwind trip through Mali and Burkina Faso during a very sudden, very hot heat wave. As soon as he goes to the airport today, I am catching my first bus back to the beach. And I'm certain that my week stay in England will ensure that I will have no more money to travel after I complete my service - so no worries, I will be coming right home. I promise.

That was a Quick 33 Months

It seems that I have had a case of blogger’s block. There has been so much going on, and I haven’t been able to, or maybe haven’t wanted to, write about it. Greg has been visiting for several weeks, and he will be here for a couple more. Having a visitor from home so close to the end of my service has really helped me to start looking a little closer at my departure. It is just now hitting me, and I don’t think I really thought about how emotional this time would be for me. So it has been an interesting two weeks in village, and poor Greg has borne the brunt of it. But it is really good; it is giving me a chance to process a lot of this before I return to the States, where I think that it will be harder to deal with.

But it hasn’t been all drama and angst – it has been great having someone to share this time with. I also just hosted my replacement in village for five days. I was really looking forward to this, because I wanted to have a chance to get a feel for the person that would be taking over my life. I’m embarrassed to say that I even went to our training center near Bamako a few weeks ago to spy on him (none of the trainees knew their assignments at that point, so I felt like I’d have the perfect opportunity to casually roll up and see if he was worthy). I saw my chance to investigate one day at breakfast; he was sitting at a table alone. I pulled up a chair, shot the breeze about life in homestay, and played it cool. Others joined the table, and the conversation naturally turned towards my site and what my service had been like. So I started to describe my village glowingly (but not too eagerly – I didn’t want it to sound like a hard sell), and talk about how rewarding it has been. I was very proud of my performance. That was when Future Mandoli Volunteer says “Yeah, I think I am replacing you.” So much for me being sneaky. Now it is two weeks later, and Future Mandoli Volunteer – his name is Christopher - has had the chance to check out village for a few days. And I think everyone is happy. I feel like I am leaving village in the hands of someone capable, and he feels like he is coming to a site that is not a complete disaster – so everyone wins. And it is so incredibly beautiful right now, you would be crazy not to want to live here (it is picturesque enough to even make up for the other 9 months of dry, dusty hell). I couldn’t be happier.

Now Greg and I are going to run up to Gao for a couple of days and squeeze in a visit with a Carter Center guinea worm eradication project (rumor is we might get to pull a guinea worm out of someone’s elbow – I’m sure Greg is really appreciative of this vacation development), before he flies to Thailand and I cry myself to sleep every night for my last weeks in village. Oh yeah, I almost forgot – the last day that I am in village, the head of the Peace Corps funding agency in Washington is coming to my site to look at my projects. Nothing like a little pressure and intense, administrative scrutiny to send me on my way. Can’t wait.

And for those of you that have been asking, my return home looks like this: I leave my site on September 15th with the visitor from Peace Corps Washington, spend the night in Sevare, and then head down to Bamako the next morning. I spend the week in Bamako getting a medical exam, meeting with my supervisor and country director, and taking my final language test. My father will be flying in that week. On Friday we will cheer on the new volunteers as they get officially sworn in, and then my dad and I will race back up to village for a few days to celebrate Malian Independence Day (Septmeber 22nd), have a going away party, get lots of benedictions, and say our goodbyes. Then it is off to Burkina Faso for a night before flying off to Ghana for a few days of ocean, rainforest, yummy food and cheap beer. I will see my dad off to his return flight home, and then spend a few more days on the beach seeing if I can even out this ridiculous tan that I have acquired over the last few years. On October 4th I fly to London and spend the night in Canterbury so that I can be there for an open house at University of Kent on Saturday. I hopefully will have a chance to meet with some professors and check out their ethnobotany graduate program and life on campus. Then it is back to London for a couple of nights (I don't think I can afford much more), to eat more yummy food and drink a few pints before flying home on the 11th. And there you have it. Before you know it, I'll be home, and you'll have the pleasure of seeing me freak out as I realize that I am back home (because that realization has not started dawning yet), and really don't know what the heck I'm doing.


A few of the things that I will certainly miss:


Aggressively friendly children



The view from my toilet



The sky

Is There a Crate & Barrel in Mali?

Despite my good intentions to stay in village for a solid three weeks, I just got back from the wedding of one of my teammates. I have been feeling a little guilty because I have been running around a lot lately (for mostly work reasons though), and have not been in village for an extended period of time for the last couple of months. And as my time slowly trickles away, I want to make sure I am giving Mandoli enough attention before my departure. So even though I have known for quite some time about this wedding, I had no plans to go until the night before when I realized that I would be missing a really great opportunity. My friend, Amelia, married a Malian man, and they had a traditional Songhai wedding ceremony. I knew that I would never have the chance to see something like this again, let alone from within the family of the bride. So I hopped on a bus Monday night and at 4 am found myself under a blanket of stars in Hombori, a town on the road North to Gao.

The ceremony consisted of a four day confinement period for my friend, where she wore a simple white robe and head scarf, and was not allowed to leave the house or see her husband until the afternoon of the forth day. The first day (Monday) she was draped in scarves and secretly carried off to her waiting house by the women of the village. Some neighboring villages grab the bride, blindfold the woman and make her walk for hours to get to the house, and all the while she is wailing and sobbing as people dance and sing around her. Luckily that is not the custom in Hombori, and Amelia was quietly escorted to the house by a few women while the rest of the village participated in a mock ceremony with a stand-in bride.

After that Amelia was kept under lock and key, and I think that having her mother, sister, and several other volunteers around really meant a lot to her during this time. Not only could we run around and make sure that she had everything she needed, we could also help to alleviate a bit of the tedium of sitting in the same room for four days in a row. Meanwhile, outside her compound, the groom was getting to have all of the fun, and we would abandon Amelia every once in a while to participate in those activities. Mostly they involved lots of dancing and throwing of money by the most well-dressed Malians I have ever seen. I needed to leave before the festivities were over, but Amelia said that the wedding would end on Thursday when Salaam (the groom), would arrive at her house with his entire family; they would receive benedictions, take lots of pictures and socialize until one by one, everyone would depart, and it was just the two of them together as husband and wife. Of course there was the awkward question of where Amelia’s mother and sister would sleep, since they had been staying in the house with her, but hopefully they got that resolved before last night.

And that is pretty much it. It was fascinating, and the locale was breathtaking. I suspect that my villagers will be very pleased that I went when I tell them all of the stories (and very disappointed that the bride was not me – they think I’m defective because I’m not married yet). Now the newlyweds are en route to Bamako to fly back to the states Saturday so that Amelia can start med school Monday morning! So much for a honeymoon.

Some Garden Shots

I didn't have the opportunity to include these with my last update, so I thought that I would throw them in now. Just got word that the road between Bandiagara and Sevare was washed away in a recent storm, so I am curous to see what has happened in my village during the week that I have been away. Hopefully the garden plants have not floated off too.


Baobob seedlings in the garden



A recently planted jujube tree in the garden



View of the garden with the well on the left and the hanger for the tree nursery in the distance








Moringa trees sprouting



More Moringa



Moments after our first rainstorm - this 'river' lasts for a few hours after the storm




Looking down from the waterfall to the natural spring in the valley






View of the valley and the hamlets in the distance



The women's first official visit as an association to the garden

On to Greener Pastures

We just got our first substantial rain two days ago - and the villagers are breathing a collective sigh of relief. June was a tough month; normally the rains start early in the month, and our area didn't see a drop until mid-month, and even that wasn't enough to allow for planting. But the storm yesterday sent everyone out to the fields, and I expect that when I return to village at the end of the week (I just came down to Bamako yesterday), everything will be greening up, and the village will feel like a ghost town with everyone busy in the fields.

But I will have my own fields to go back to as well. Now that the well is finished, I can begin to plant the trees that will be used for live fencing in the garden, mark the plots for the women, and begin planting my demonstration garden. I couldn't be happier. I love going out to the garden everyday to check on the progress of the seedlings, watch the water creep up the well (the water is at least two meters deep - and that was before the big storm the other day), and just enjoy the quiet that has replaced the chaos of the past few months.

I don't want to go into too much detail because it is upsetting, and I just want to move on to the work that lies ahead for the garden, but I will quickly touch on how the well work ended. No surprise, considering how the entire job went, the project ended poorly. The masons denied ever speaking to me about a salary issue (where they wanted more money and I showed them the budget to let them know that it was not a possibility), and because in my stupidity I spoke to them without a third party present, they just said that the conversation never happened, put words in my mouth, and left me with few options. The real kicker was that my former homologue took their side and said that all of the problems with the project were my fault. He also said that the only reason that I was in village or was integrated was thanks to him, and that he is the sole reason that the garden project even got completed. When I asked him to leave my house, he refused, saying that it was more his house than mine. This is coming from a man who chooses to speak in Bamabara in village because he doesn't know the Dogon dialect well enough to converse comfortably, and has spent approxiamately 85% of my service living in another county. What an asswipe. And the cherry on top was that the masons, after all of this, stole $100 worth of tools and explosives from the worksite. Tools that the village still needs to use for the unfinished valley well.

So this, along with unforseen project expenses, left me financially drained, but surprisingly okay otherwise - I think that it was just such a relief to be rid of the masons and all of the accompanying stress that they brought with them. The rains helped to wash all of that away too. It is a start of a new season, and there is still work to be done, so I feel really positive about my last few months. I am eager to see the garden full of healthy green things that will grow if I feed them and won't cheat me out of money or call me a liar.

There is Water at the End of the Tunnel

The garden well is finished! It took over two months to dig 11 meters, but there is water in the well, and the village is happy. While we could have continued to dig further to garuantee that the well will not run dry, rainy season is just days away, and I felt that it was better to get all of the work done before the work force was lost to the fields. Ideally the village said another 3-4 meters would seal the deal, but they were willing to apply for funding to finish the job themselves at a later date. But to put it all in perspective, if the well gets low on water, it would be during this time of year (May, June), and the village will not be gardening during the hottest months of the year anyway. So I'm finishing the job feeling confident that the well will meet the needs of the garden association. I am in the process of contacting projects in the area to apply for a pump as a further water source in the garden. Things look promising, so that means that the village will most likely have two water sources in the garden (as initially planned), one of which is sure not to run dry.

As far as the valley well goes, things are in the works, and I will say no more as not to jinx it - but it looks good.

I have a collection of vegetable and grain seeds that I am planning to plant in the garden during rainy season as an idea garden/test plot. I am looking forward to this - now that the stressful work is finished I am eager to spend the remaing few months farming like a good Dogon. I'll let you know how it grows. In the meantime, please save any seed packets that you don't plan on using - they will be a huge help in getting the garden rolling in September.

Don't Cry Over Spilt Milk

I’ve returned to Sevare on well-related business, but this time with a much better outlook and a fuller arsenal of options at my disposal. My meetings that I spoke about in my last post have provided me with some promising leads for finishing the valley well. It would not be possible to implement them until after my departure, but I could at least get all of the paperwork taken care so that everything is in place to get the job done in a few months time. My country director has also provided me with a contact that may be a more immediate solution to the problem – I’m keeping my fingers crossed – and I owe her an apology. I thought that she was underestimating the situation and not doing what she could to help remedy the problem, but I was quite wrong, and I am grateful to know that she supports me and values the work that I am doing.

And the most exciting tidbit…the garden well is almost done! I know, I’m sure it seems hard to believe after the last post that things could turn around so quickly – I’m a little baffled myself. But Mandoli has been given a little gift in all of this nonsense. The estimates that the three well contractors provided were for a depth of between 15 and 25 meters. So after the last well, I anticipated 30 at best. But apparently I just needed to get my miserable butt out of village, because as soon as I did, they hit water at only 7 meters! The work has still been a mess. (Case in point: yesterday before leaving village, the masons said that they were not going to go to work because the village hasn’t been giving them enough milk powder [the village is responsible for room and board]. I asked my homologue if this was true and he said that they haven’t been able to find any milk in days. I thought this seemed a little far-fetched, but when I arrived in Sevare and went to the store to by my own milk powder [to replace the bag that I gave to the masons to pacify them], I found out that there is a critical milk shortage in Mali right now! I can’t wait to go back to village and tell the masons. These are not life-threatening setbacks, but they are annoying, and they happen everyday. More serious problems include the fact that the drilling machine we rented didn’t work for 15 of the 33 days we had it.) The well has taken far more time than it should have, but there is an end in site, and I see it every morning when I arrive at the worksite to watch the men shovel an increasing number of buckets of water out of the well so that they can dig. Everyone is ready for this to be done, and they are understandably exhausted, but the energy of the workers increased 30 fold once they started getting their feet wet.

This good fortune all coincided nicely with the Deputy Director’s visit, as she had the opportunity to see the work going on, and share in the excitement that the village felt over this part of the project’s near completion. While we didn’t hike down into the valley, we did have a chance to look out over the worksite, and she got a perspective for the importance of the valley well by looking at the location of the spring in relation to the village. She could appreciate the urgency of the village to see this job finished, and she assured me that this was something that would indeed get done. To round out her visit, she watched the women’s association make an ameliorated porridge, and they presented her with a package to take home (which she said she would prepare for the senior Peace Corps staff upon her return – I hope they like it ). I really enjoyed her visit, and it went a long way in reminding me why I signed up for Peace Corps in the first place. Of course it was inevitably going to be a feel-good PR visit, but I was so impressed by the reception that the village gave (everyone came out to welcome her and chant “peace corps, peace corps [which sounded more like “peeds cop, peeds cop”, but once I translated the DD was quite pleased]), including representation by the mayor, the police commissioner and a traditional hunter shooting off guns, that I realized that Mandoli does see the benefit of working with Peace Corps. So I let go of a little of the anxiety that I had been gripping onto so tightly for the past few months. I’ll release the rest of it once I know that we have this horrible milk problem under control.


Attacking the rock with a sledgehammer


Inserting dynamite into the bore holes dug by the drilling machine


Deputy Director's visit: (l to r, top row): Sumba Arama (my current homologue); me; Country Director Kateri Clement; Deputy Director Jody Olsen; Mayor Dibo; Hassimi Arama (village chief); Police Chief Coulibaly (bottom row): Hamadoun Arama (my former homologue); Police Commissioner with a bag of porridge and my baby neighbor Salifu

Well, well, well...

So I’m back in Sevare. I didn’t last very long in Mandoli before I lost my mind and realized that I was going to be no help in getting the well work finished in the state I was in. Work has been abysmal. I am so frustrated with the entire project and feel like I am going to leave this village no better off then when I arrived. It is one hiccup after another that keeps us from getting to where we should have easily been by now with the project. The first major disappointment was that the valley well, which was projected at 35 meters, is now at 58, and the village has still not hit water. Rainy season will be starting in a few weeks, and I’m not sure what options we have left to see that they have water for the next dry season. Because the work was going slowly without any sign of imminent completion, we have left that site to concentrate on the garden wells. At this point the villagers are working on their own in the valley to hopefully finish the work before we get too much rain and the work becomes impossible. As far as the garden wells go, my objective is to complete just one of the two wells before my departure, because the unexpected depth of the valley well has exhausted our funding, and it is not feasible to expect two wells to come from the money that remains. Work on the garden well began at the start of this month, which is adequate time to complete the well before the rains begin. But because we have hit obstacles at every turn, it is doubtful whether we are even going to have this done before I leave. So, as you can see, I’m having a difficult time of it. I have called on my administration for support with limited success, so I am now in Sevare to seek out the local well community and plead for their help. I have stumbled upon a really nice man in the business who has many contacts and is setting up a meeting for me today with someone in the area who might be able to help. His encouragement has done wonders, and I hope that this will help to resolve, in part, a very difficult situation. To top it all off, I just found out the deputy director of Peace Corps in Washington D.C. is planning to visit my site next week. I don’t know if I have the strength to put on a brave face and act like this is all going to work itself out, because at this point I don’t know if it will.