Looks Like I'll Be Carving Watermelons This Halloween

I’m so happy to see all the pics made it up to the site. I have just recently received a jump drive (thanks mom!), so I’m hoping that they will be a more frequent occurrence at heatherleach.com. Thanks Duane for all of the technical support stateside.

I feel like it is time for me to explain a little bit about what I do in village. Some Malians don’t have a really clear idea of the role of a Peace Corps volunteer, so I would expect that some of you out there don’t either. The Peace Corps does not directly fund any of the projects that we, as volunteers, work on. Our job is to live and work in a community to try to determine the areas that are in need of greatest assistance and then look for outside funding sources if it is something that the village cannot afford to pay for on its own. Some things don’t really cost much of anything, and those are the small projects that the volunteer can be working on throughout his or her service. Other things are big-ticket items that require a written request from the volunteer and the village. The request can be made to a myriad of funding sources that are willing to financially support development work. Some organizations are better suited than others depending on the type of work the village is interested in doing. Ideally PC work in village should be a mix of small and large scale projects. Many advances can’t be made in villages here without the initial contribution of an outside donor, but once that is made then the hope is that the contribution will provide the foundation from which the community can then start to support itself. Peace Corps volunteers function as the intermediary that connects the village with the resources they need. The interesting thing about the Peace Corps experience, as opposed to other similar NGO work, is that more often than not, the volunteer is living as part of the community, and therefore has a more realistic idea of the priority needs of the community. Because of the length of the service, Peace Corps volunteers tend to remain in the community after the completion of a project to help with implementation and sustainability of the work too, which is really key. The reason that I tell you all of this, is to give you an idea of the process that went into determining the direction that I am interested in going with in my village. After conducting a survey in my village and spending most of my time hanging out with my neighbors, I’ve noticed areas where the village is struggling or interested in assistance. What I have been doing over the last 5 or 6 months is determining which areas of concern, of the many that the village members have voiced or that I have noticed, are the ones that are most in need of outside assistance and funding. Then I tried to figure out if I could help with any of it.

What I have come up with is a general plan to improve the nutrition and health of the village while working with them to develop some income generating strategies. I have just submitted a proposal for a well and garden project for the village. It would involve the construction of three wells, one just for water usage, and two to be part of a large-scale garden, which the women of village would cultivate to supplement the diets of their families as well as to earn money. There is a weekly market in my village where they could easily sell fresh produce. So I discussed this project idea with my village to make sure that this was something that they were interested in investing their time and money into, and when they agreed whole-heartedly, I wrote a project proposal and submitted it to the Peace Corps administration. And that brings me up to the present; at the moment my project is in the hands of the country director, and within the week should hopefully be sent off to Washington for final approval. I have applied for funding through a program where American citizens can give money directly to my project. That is highly unusual, most funding sources are international embassies or non-profits. This will be kind of cool if it all works out because then you will be able to look online and check the status of my proposal. So that is what I have been working on. It is really exciting and a bit nerve-wracking. But good. I've included a shot of a woman coming up from the natural spring in the village, so you can get an idea of what the current water fetching routine involves.

Photos... Finally

Hello everyone. This is Duane, one of Heather's pals in Brooklyn. I wanted to let you know that I've created a photo gallery with about 70 pictures that Heather sent of her first seven or eight months with the Peace Corps. Unfortunately, they're not in chronological order, but they are very enjoyable all the same. And besides, they offer even more proof that Heather is, in fact, in Mali!

Honestly I am in Africa

I realize that this site has been a bit lean - infrequent posts coupled with a complete lack of pictures probably has many of you wondering if I'm really in the Peace Corps at all. Maybe I'm just keeping a very low profile in West Chester. Well eight months later, I've finally found an opportunity to provide a little visual proof of my life here in Mali. I hope it helps. It will be a short walk down memory lane, since these pictures track my time from airport onward. But perhaps it will fill out some of the images that you might have formed about homestay, tubaniso, and my beautiful village and current abode. This first photo is us waiting in Paris for our connection to Bamako. 9 hours I think. It was a slimy shithole. I have five words for anyone venturing to see me: New York Times Crossword Puzzles.

These are what our huts looked like at the Peace Corps training center. Tubaniso is the Walt DisneyWorld of Mali – it is a cute clean version of the outside world, but with trashcans and toilet paper. We arrived in Mali under the cover of darkness and went immediately to the training center, so Tubaniso was my only image of Mali until a couple weeks later when we went to stay in our homestay villages. It was an awakening, to say the least.

I apologize, this is going to be the first of many boring sunset pictures, but the sun is really beautiful here – it is huge and soft-looking due to all of the dust in the air. This was the view from behind my hut at Tubaniso.



Part of the EPCOT experience was that that Peace Corps staff brought in local artisans to Tubaniso to play music, apply henna, sell food, and display their crafts. If they just had someone pissing in the corner and everyone was yelling "toubab" (local dialect for foreigner or white person), it would have been just like the real market. These are traditional Bogolan mud cloths from the Sahel region of Mali.



Again, the Peace Corps found gentle ways to slowly indoctrinate us into Malian life. At the time, I thought that the Peace Corps bus that we took everywhere was cramped, but now that I have traveled in many a mobili, I realize that we were riding in style. I mean, come on, there is clearly room for two more people in that space up front.



This is a shot of me with my homestay family in their concession (a large walled-in compound/yard). You can see the door to my room in the back left corner. The writing around the entrance says, “Welcome to our home with satisfaction. Thank you! No woman, no live.” They were great.



While in homestay village, we would have a weekly dinner with the language facilitators, so that we could try our hand at cooking Malian dishes ourselves. This is our first creation. It was so good. French fries in salad is the best thing ever.



There was only one other student in my French class with me, Lee-Ann, and here she is sitting in class under the mango tree as a Peul herder and his cows stopped by to say hello.



I will post more of my adventures soon - I don't want you to be overloaded with all of this visual stimulation.