The Last Few Weeks

This should be short and sweet.  I went on a rock climbing trip to Siby, Mali with some of my friends.  I was there for five days and had a blast.  I camped out most of the nights, and when I stayed in the hills outside the city it was cool enough that there were no mosquitos so I was able to sleep under the stars.  Most of the routes were bolted which made the logistics of climbing with a lot of people easier, and we also were able to rappel down the middle of a huge arch that is up there.  It was beautiful and I really enjoyed myself.

Then I went to a Halloween party in Bougouni.  I had a great time there.  My costume was Osama Bin Laden.  Some people thought that it was a bit riskee but most people really liked it.

Then I went back to Sikasso and went to a friend's village to paint a World Map on the side of a school there.  It turned out really, really well, and on top of that I felt like I accomplished something which is a nice feeling to have every so often.  Also, it was really nice to spend more time among my English-speaking American friends.  I have some pictures, but as usual will have to get them posted another time, or they may end up on Facebook at some point.

Then back to site for a while where I continued to wait for money, and work in my counterpart's adult literacy class.  My big achievement this week was explaining to him what the point of comprehension questions is.  He was confused about the questions at the end of the reading passages without answers.  I explained that the answers were found within the passages, and if students understand the passage then they will be able to answer the questions.

Yesterday, I left site at 6 AM and went to Sikasso from which I hitchhiked to Bamako.  My luck was a bit lacking this time as I hiked for a good 3 and a half hours before I got picked up, and as luck would have it I forgot my trusty hat so my face got a bit cooked in the lovely African sun.  Today, I ran a half marathon for the most recent stage's In Sevice Training like I did for my stage's IST.  I did a bit better this time with a time of 1:41 minutes on the dot.  I was very happy with this time and should be able to break 1:40 next time since I shaved 5 minutes off my last time.  That's it.  I am going to go help with some trainings for the brand new stage that just came in a week ago or so for the next few days and am looking forward to that since I enjoy teaching.

I recently returned from Ghana for vacation and a marathon. Now I'm going to tell you about it. Buckle up (as this is long, and I did not proofread it).

Getting there involved a 36 hour bus ride from Bamako, though I caught the bus in a town called Koutiala so shaved 6 hours off my ride making it an easy 30 hours. (36-6=30). My friends rocked the full 36. Granted we were not on the bus for all that time. We stopped every 5 or 6 hours to eat and do whatever else you needed. Also, the borders close at night, and we were going to hit the border of Burkina Faso and Ghana in the middle of the night, so at 1 AM the bus pulled off and we all got off and slept on the ground until 4 AM when they woke us and we went on our way getting to the border at 6 or 7 AM. One fairly embarrassing story comes to mind from this ride. The bus was playing movies that were of course dubbed in French, and during one such movie (I believe it was Time Cop) there was a love scene. I knew that this would be very...progressive for the mostly Malian audience and I turned to one of friends and was just about to make a sassy comment about the sauciness going on, in fact the words were on the way out of my mouth, when someone hit fast forward. For some reason this combination of events was extremely hilarious and I burst out laughing...very loudly. Essentially the entire bus turned and looked at me and so I promptly pretended there was something very exciting out the window, and felt a bit bad. It was just such a perfect display of Malian morals and the situation, (minus the laughing), went exactly how it would in my head that it was funny.

We landed, (or at least would have if buses could fly and the ride was so fast and so comfortable that I think we must have flown...I mean I just wish the ride were longer. There is nothing I like more than sleeping with my head dangling over a seat at a 90 degree angle...so cozy), in a town called Kumasi. We ate a delicious dinner, slept and the next morning as we were eating some delicious street food we started talking to a woman, and I had my first experience with awesome Ghanian hospitality. It turned out she worked at a radio station, and she asked us if we wanted to see it. Of course we did. We went to the station and she introduced us to everyone and they were all extremely nice. One woman offered to make us dinner if we came back through the city. Then we recorded some marketing "jingles" for them such as: "When we're in America we listen to K-whatever online at www.kwhatever.com (naturally I've forgotten the name of the station, but whatever). They gave us names in their local language, and taught us a few phrases. They were so nice so the trip started off really well.

And before we embark on the 7-hour journey to Takoradi I'd like to give you (for free) my overall thoughts and impressions of Ghana. It is AWESOME. This country is definitely in the next stage of development from Mali. Granted I never went to an extremely remote village, so this is not a complete view of Ghana, but this is what I experienced. Most of the cities are cleaner. There are less motorcycles spewing blue smoke as they putter by, and more, nicer cars. Every other shop is a computer shop or Internet cafe. Also, the south of the country is predominately Christian, and the Christians are way, way more liberal than the Muslims in this part of the world, which manifests itself mainly with the women. Personally, I found this refreshing. The women were allowed to where shorts and skirts cut above the knee. They wore fitted dresses and pants, and they went to bars. If a woman is in a bar in Mali, she is a prostitute, guaranteed. Again, this is city life, and the women in Mali are more progressive in the cities as well, but the sheer numbers of well-dressed women was much different. Also, the food in Ghana is amazing!! There are a huge number of really good restaurants in Ghana, and the street food is great. The street food ingredients are the same that are found in Mali, but the sauces are better and the combinations are better. For instance, rice and beans is a staple for a lot of places because it's delicious, nutritious, easy to come by, and easy to make. Ghana has rice and beans mixed together with awesome pepper sauce. No one has thought of mixing the two in Mali. My favorite dish is called red-red. It is fried red plantains, beans, and a red sauce of some sort. So, so delicious. Also, the bread is AMAZING. The British colonized Ghana and so they have knock-off British bread. Mali has knock-off French bread, and it sounds surprising but knock-off British bread is much tastier and hearty than knock-off French bread. I did not even want copious amounts of mayonnaise on my egg sandwiches because the bread was so good. In fact, most places did not even offer mayonnaise. This is unheard of in Mali where everything has tons of mayo slathered all over it. Also, I got a little bitter for a while about being placed in Mali. I met some of the Ghana volunteers, and talked to them. One kid's secondary project is a surfing school with the kids... WTF??!! Surfing, man that sounds rough. I think I'll stick to soccer with a tree in the middle of the field for entertainment. Surfing would just be too much fun for me to handle. Yes, I am a little jealous of volunteers in Ghana. I know I will have a great overall experience, but still, be able to surf or go to the ocean occasionally would make life a lot, lot easier, as would being able to speak English on a regular basis. Okay, back to the trip.

We took a bus to Takoradi and then on to a little hostel, which is literally right on, the beach called the Green Turtle. It turns out this place is way the hell out in the middle of nowhere, and we took a taxi so had a costly trip. In West Africa you agree on prices before you go anywhere, and everywhere here you ask the taxi driver if they know where it is, and they always say yes. And then most of the time they actually have no idea where it is, and when you get there they try charging you more because it turns out that your destination is way, way further than they thought. This was the case with the Green Turtle. We had a battle over the price when we rolled up at 11PM after traveling for 10 hours. We did end up paying him a little more because it was really far, and the road was really bad, but all I'm saying is don't say you know where something is if you don't. The beach at the Green Turtle was absolutely amazing. It was clean (by West African standards at least), and the waves were very fun to play in, though a bit rough. We had intended to meet up with more friends at the Green Turtle, but they left early and since we didn't have a phone we didn't know. So the next day we left the Green Turtle mid-day and made our way to Cape Coast. Here is where we met up with more of my friends, which I immediately left again to go to Kakum National Park. I left one of my traveling companions with them, and the other person I was traveling with came with me to Kakum.

We took a taxi to the edge of town and from there immediately caught a bush taxi which we had been told would not come by all of the regular taxi drivers who wanted our money. Bush taxis are the shared vans mentioned in a previous post, in Ghana they are called tro-tros, and are nice and cheap. We walked into the Park, and talked to the people there about staying the night. All of the options were too pricey so we walked out of the park then 100m up the road, and then bush wacked through the jungle a ways and camped (technically in the park still, stickin' it to the man)! This was a new experience. As you can imagine rain forests are rather dense, so we did not get too far before deciding that we should quit while ahead and just camp. We had to chop up a bunch of underbrush and rotting logs up to clear a spot big enough to cram a mosquito tent in. The sleeping quarters that night were rather snug, and because it is a rain forest it is very, very humid. So the leaves were transpiring a whole bunch, and we just had water dripping on us the entire night which despite the warm temperatures was cold, and made sleep difficult as did the giant root I was snuggling. The next morning we went back into the park and did the rope bridge canopy tour, as well as the separate nature tour. The canopy tour was neat because we were walking on swaying rope bridges 30m above the forest floor, but we did not see any wildlife or anything. The nature walk was nice as well because my friend and I were the only ones who did the nature walk and our guide pointed out lots of trees, plants, and bugs and what they are used for. For instance the sap from Strangler Figs is extremely deadly, but is used to treat Guinea Worm. You put the sap on your skin, and as the worm eats its way out of your body it eats the sap and dies so you can pull in out. Also he showed us his extremely swollen hand and then pointed out the caterpillar he had accidentally touched that caused all the swelling. Also, he showed us a grass that is razor sharp that the locals use to do their tribal scarring. It was really sharp.

Then we went back to Cape Coast and toured the castle. This was cool, but depressing. The castle itself is magnificent. It is stuck out on this rock promontory that juts into the ocean, and it is this gigantic white building that looks like it is just ripping out of the sea, and waves smash against the rocks it is built on sending spray 30 feet in the air. It is very picturesque. It was also the biggest slave port in the world for a time. Slaves from all over where shipped here before taking the horrible journey to America or elsewhere. We toured the dungeons and the barracks, and the governor's chambers. They were all very different. And the dungeons were, as you might expect, very eerie and sad. And like all West African countries (that I've been to) they love Barack Obama and they had commemorated his visit with a plaque, and were sure to point out the gift he had left amongst the pile of gifts left at castle. By gift I mean the kind of thing that you might leave at a grave or the Vietnam Memorial such as knickknacks and flowers. After the tour we went on to the capital city of Accra where the marathon was to be held.

MARATHON DAY. Brutal. My friend and I eventually made it to the hotel that all of us were staying at. One of my friends had gotten a friend of hers to pay for us to stay in a nice hotel on the beach. This was nice, and we once again were treated to some fine Ghanian hospitality. We only had two rooms, and there were 12 of us. Six people in each room was against the rules, and the manager guy was concerned about this arrangement. We said that was fine, and some of us could go to a hostel if the price was going to jump. This was unacceptable in his eyes so he let us stay in the hotel at no extra cost, and arranged rides for us to the marathon shuttles at four in the morning. I was the only one of my group who ran the whole marathon and my day started off a little rocky when my ride didn't show up on time, and when I got to the shuttle meeting place I ran in to use the bathroom. When I came out a few minutes later the shuttle to the starting line had left. Luckily a Peace Corps volunteer from Togo had a phone, and was able to call someone on the shuttle and they came back and got me. The race was supposed to start at 5:30, and it started at 6:15, which isn't bad for West Africa. It was still really hot. I "hit the wall" about halfway through, and pushed on. Around mile 18 I started feeling really, really bad. So I started walking, and walked for a few miles. This was not my plan, but it was so damn hot. I did eventually finish in 5 hours and 30 minutes. My goal was under 4 hours so that didn't happen, but I am super proud of finishing anyways. I have never been so exhausted in my life. The last few miles sucked. It was on a major road so we had to dodge cars and motorcycles, and I had to deal with people talking to you. "Are you tired?" "Yes, I'm fucking tired. How can you tell?" When I got to the finish I saw some people that I didn't remember passing me. I asked them when they got in, and it turns out they collapsed from heat stroke and were brought to the finish with medics. It was hot. Afterwards, I relaxed for a few days, and just kind of checked out Accra a bit. I went to a supermarket, and got a bit depressed because everything looked so good, and while significantly cheaper than in the states it is still way out of my budget, especially when on vacation. And one of my favorite sites was "The School for Peculiar Children." It made me laugh.

One evening I decided to walk to the beach with one of my friends. I read in my guidebook about something called "the castle" which is an old fort that has been converted into government offices or something. Anyways, all the streets around it are supposedly barracaded, and taking pictures of this structure is illegal due to its "strategic importance." I decided that it would be fun to go to the beach near the castle and take a look at it, so I did. As we got closer to the ocean we encountered a barracade across the road. I walked up to it and a very concerned citizen decided to intervene with whatever I was planning. He saw I had my camera with me, and told me that pictures were not allowed, and I had the following interaction.

"Okay, I won't take pictures. Don't panic."

"I'm not panicking but you will be if they catch you taking pictures and throw you in jail."

"Okay, can I hop over the barrier?"

"No."

So, my friend and I took the street to the left of the barrier, which led to the otherside without crossing any other barriers. Why have a barrier if you can just walk around it? Anyways, my friend and I started walking down the road towards the ocean and we heard a motor behind us, so I turned around and there driving towards us was a tank. And I think, "Well, this might get interesting." The tank pulls up beside us and stops and the top opens, and I had the following interaction.

Me: Hi, how are you?

Soldier in awesome tank: Fine. You?

M: Good, just headed to the beach. Can we ride in your tank?

S: Sure.

M: Really? (approach tank).

S: Um... (clearly thought I was joking and turns to his superior who has popped out of the hatch).

M: Good evening sir, can I ride in your tank?

Superior: No, I'm sorry.

M: Okay, well have a nice evening.

Soldiers: You too.

So my friend and I walk to the beach, which is guarded by soldiers, one of who was pooping next to a wall on which was painted "No defecating here." He was just sticking it to the man, and was rather embarrassed when my friend and I walked around the corner. These soldiers informed us that we had to stay on the otherside of some red flags on the beach, which we did, and when they walked off I trickily took pictures of the castle. HA HA. Sticking it to the man...just like that soldier. Also, the building was looking awfully nice in the sunset, and is really an impressive building with this huge white tower all lit up with floodlights and stuff. I'd post a picture, but then I'd have to kill you. Later that night I dined on real sushi! Delicious. And then most the group I was with went off on their own, and three friends and I continued on to a little town called Ho in which we encountered some more awesome Ghanian hospitality.

Through some random person a friend talked to for five minutes we were put in touch with someone who lives in Ho. He put us up in his friend's hotel for two nights for free, and also showed us around the city and helped us get transport when we needed it. But he was also what you might call a worrier. The first night we were there we were all walking and I decided I wanted to look at something a little longer, and told them to go on ahead. I would catch up. I got to a fork and decided that they would have gone left. I was wrong. They went right, and so I just wandered around for a few hours and checked things out on my own and talked to people and had a nice time. But my friends reported that our guide was worried sick about me. I didn't have a phone with a Ghana SIM card so there was no way to get a hold of me, and he was sure I would be lost or killed or something the way he was carrying on. My friends kept telling him that I would be fine, and I never get lost, and I can look after myself and to not worry about me, but I think it did little to calm him down. I eventually wandered back to the hotel and saw him on the street near the hotel. He told me the others had gone to bed and how worried he was, and so we went out and got a beer since he was nice and I figured it would calm him down some.

The next day we went to a monkey sanctuary and Wli (pronounced vlee) falls. The monkey sanctuary was neat, but was not what I thought it would be. I was expecting to go traipsing into the jungle and maybe see a monkey if we were lucky, but instead we showed up, our guide gave us bananas and we walked into the jungle. The monkeys came up to us, we held out our hand and they jumped onto our arms and ate the banana out of our hands. They were adorable little creatures, and well adjusted to us humans especially if we had a banana. Wli falls are a 45-minute hike up a valley right on the border of Togo and Ghana. They were so freaking cool. In fact, one of the coolest things I've experienced. They are double staged, and we hiked to the bottom of the lower stage. We went into the pool at the bottom but you couldn't get too close because the falling water created a gale force wind that you could feel 200m away and the closer you got the more the blowing water stung. It hurt quite a bit actually, but still felt sort of nice. At least nice enough for us all to stand there for a good 45 minutes in the stinging blowing water. And as the sun started going down thousands of bats took to the sky around the falls. I guess they roost in the rocks around the falls, and they all took off to go hunting. We ended up hiking out after dark and one of my friends stepped in a line of ants crossing the trail. They started biting her so she started brushing them off, but as she was brushing them they were taking big chunks of her skin with them. They were really ferocious. She survived, and we went back to Ho for the night.

The next day we visited our guide's village, which was really nice, and eye opening to see the potential that exists for some of the more remote and less developed villages. The village had electricity, which is a huge help with development, but there was also a lot less trash and animal feces everywhere. We asked our guide and he said there were rules in the village about when you can have animals out, and there seemed to be a lot of social pressure to keep the yards clean because they were super clean. The main thing I noticed was that the village didn't smell horrible. That was new a new experience for a village for me. Also, they had a really nice school, which helps the whole development process.

After that nice visit we got on transport to get to a ferry port to cross Lake Volta. Lake Volta is the largest man-made lake in the world. It takes several days to go across from North to South, but we went from East to West so it only took about an hour or so. Our luck was with us as we ended up catching the last boat for the day just as it was about to leave. The boat was a long wooden canoe with a motor attached. About halfway across the lake a storm blew up and we got really socked in. The visibility went from several miles to about 30 feet in a matter of minutes. The locals had made buoys out of old plastic jugs so we followed those to find our way. The crossing was a fantastic journey as we passed trees sticking up out of the water and islands in the mist. By the time we hit land we had made it through the storm and we could see again, but looking back we could just see a big wall of gray moving across the water. When we landed I figured I would be uber-suave and jump over the side of the boat into the water and walk to shore like all the locals did. It went better in my head... I jumped over the side, landed on a rock, and fell over into the water much to the entertainment of everyone watching. From the shore we hitched a ride for several bumpy hours in the back of a pickup and crossed the peninsula we were on and arrived at the next ferry crossing well after dark. We found a place to stay, and crossed in the morning.

After the twenty-minute ride across the lake we obtained some transport to Kumasi where we arrived in the early evening. We tried to meet up with the friends we had made on our previous stop in Kumasi, but that fell through so we just hung out at a bar for a while and tried to guess which of the young men roller blading by on the street were prostitutes. The next morning we went to a bus station to try to get tickets to Tamale. This was a bit of an experience, and one we got to repeat at several other bus stations. We showed up at 9 or something and were given a number. The bus was supposed to show up at noon or so, and at that time we were to present our number to the ticket window and only those with numbers would get a seat. When the bus showed up there was a mad dash to the ticket window. People were packed in around it, and were shoving their way to the front. There was a sense of great urgency. I had all of our numbers and was not sure if they issued too many numbers for tickets due to the frantic way people were trying to get to the ticket window so I joined in the fray. I started physically moving people out of my way and worming my way to the front. It turned out that they issued the correct amount of numbers so I am still not sure what all the commotion was about. The same thing happened when getting on the bus despite having assigned seats. After that fiasco the 6 or 7 hour trip to Tamale was relatively uneventful. We stayed the night there, and a prostitute who looked to be about 13 or 14 solicited me. The following interaction played out.

Prostitute: Hi, how are you?

Me: Fine, you?

P: Fine, I'll see you in a small time, okay?

M: What?

P: I'll come see you in a small time. Can I have your contact information?

M: uhhh... I'm staying in the hotel right down the street.

P: Okay, see you soon.

M: Okay.

Needless to say she never showed up, but I did chuckle thinking about what my traveling companions would have done if I had brought a hooker back to the room. The next morning two of my companions went to the bus station at 6 AM to secure us some tickets for the 1 O'Clock bus to Mole National Park and got to experience the pushing and shoving technique as well. We all showed up at the bus station at noon for the one o'clock bus. The station was very new and so there were no shade hangers built yet, just some chairs set up in the blistering sun. You might think that sitting in that kind of brutal sun for an hour would be uncomfortable... Well, the bus showed up a little after 4 PM and left a little after 5 PM. We spent the day alternating between putting my sleeping mat over our heads and lying on the ground in whatever shade parked cars could offer. The trip to Mole was also very long. It was about an hour on the paved road and then another 90 kilometers on a dirt road to the park. The drive on the dirt road took about 6 hours. We were going FAST! But West Africa once again amazed me with where it could take buses. Your average American would not even take a car down the road to Mole, much less a bus. When we got to Mole it was about 11PM, and we met two other volunteers from Ghana while on the bus. They were not Peace Corps, but we all decided to travel together for a time. In Mole the night watch was very curt and rude when we were trying to figure out sleeping arrangement. Three of our party rented a hotel room, and we tried to ask if we could pay a small extra fee for the rest of us to sleep on the floor of the room. They took this question rather personally and all of us being absolutely thrashed from the day of traveling got into a bit of an altercation. The other three of us ended up camping for some outrageous price that we didn't end up paying because we were so fed up with all the staff in the park by the time we left.

In the morning we all decided to go on a walking safari with a mandatory-armed ranger. We showed up for the tour a bit late, which was fine because we were the only ones going. It's not like anyone else was waiting on us. Anyway, this made the guy in charge of organizing the tours grumpy, and things got worse from there. The two women from Ghana we had assimilated into our group did not have appropriate walking attire, but boots and socks were available to rent. The man in charge said, "Boots and socks are 1 CD." (Ghanian currency). After the two girls had put on their boots and socks he said they were 1 CD each which was not at all clear the first time he told us the price. We tried explaining that we had a misunderstanding about the price, and he started getting huffy. So we said that we didn't want the socks anymore, and they took them off. Then they informed us that once we had put the socks on they could not re-use them and that the girls "throwing the socks on the ground" was rude... I'd like to point out that the socks were stacked neatly on the bench. Around this point everyone started yelling at one another until at some point I said, "I'm not doing the tour because this is fucking ridiculous," and walked off. Everyone else decided this seemed like a good idea, and we got our money back and walked to the picnic table I had slept on the night before. The man told us as we walked off that if we were caught going off into the bush without a guide he would make it "very serious" for us. So, we ate some breakfast at the picnic table and griped about the idiots in charge of the tours.

At some point I decided I was going to take myself on a walking safari, to hell with the guides. I wasn't going to miss out on seeing elephants and stuff because I couldn't get along with the rangers. After only talking to me for about 30 minutes the two Ghanian volunteers decided that they would come with me, and I would be their guide of sorts. I was flattered I guess, but made it clear that I didn't know the first thing about African wildlife and the whole adventure was really quite foolhardy. Also, I had them bring along as much money as they had in order to bribe rangers if we were caught. Naturally, due to my superb guiding skills (ha ha), we were not caught, but we also did not see any elephants. The first half of our 3-hour loop through the bush was in knee-deep to thigh deep swamp, and the second half was a little tamer. We did see two different types of antelope, warthogs, monkeys, and baboons.

At one point we wandered into a troop of baboons and all started taking lots of pictures. Eventually, an enormous male baboon started walking towards us. 20m off it stopped at started to smell the ground or something. At any rate, as I mentioned I know nothing of African wildlife and decided it was time to move on...quickly. We got back to the hotel area without a hitch, and went and sat by the pool that looks over the savannah. Late in the afternoon a baboon came up and swiped one of our loaves of bread we had sitting out so we started getting all the stuff together in one spot and he came back. My friends tried valiantly to defend our food but he scampered around everyone, leapt onto the table grabbed some more food and took off again. The third time he came back we had armed ourselves with a leaf collector thing from the pool. It had an 8-foot handle or so, and we managed to stave off the baboons repeated assaults on our poolside stronghold. That afternoon we travelled to a town called Larabanga and stayed the night with at a guy’s house that I met on the bus the night before. He was part of an organization that would let you stay the night for free, and you can donate whatever you see fit in the morning to his outfit that was working to get orphans off the streets and into a school. It was started and run by the village, so I thought it was pretty neat because it was not imposed on them by an NGO or something. They also really liked us because they had had a Peace Corps volunteer in the village who helped their outfit set up a funding method or something. Also, the people of Larabanga speak a language that is unique to it and only one other village.

The next day we all made the long journey back to Tamale in which one of the Ghana volunteers, two of my friends, and I decided it would be a wonderful idea to eat a bag full of scalding hot red-red on the bumpy road for lunch. It was a good idea as much hilarity ensued. We stayed the night in Tamale and said good-bye to our new found friends in the morning and we travelled onto Ougadougou (pronounced Wagadoogoo), the capital city of Burkina Faso. We stayed there for two nights and ate a whole lot at this delicious restaurant owned by some Italian guy and his wife. And a guy who kept asking if we wanted to smoke weed with him also followed us around for a night. Then on to Bobo in the west of Burkina where one of my friends and I split from the other two as we were going to Sikasso, and they were going up to more northern parts of Mali. We got to Mali without anymore major adventures/fiascos.

Now I am sitting in Sikasso looking forward to the next time I get to eat red-red.

Darwin and Disease

I'm going to start off with a quick update on what I've been up to as far as work and adventure goes:

Ramadan ended a few weeks ago which was neat to be a part of.  My host family killed a cow, and gave me a large chunk of pretty good quality meat, meaning there were no shards of bones or pieces of guts attached.  I made a really rocking pot roast, and shared it with my host family.  The party itself was much like a sort of family oriented party might be in the states.  People just kind of sat around and relaxed and chatted, divided by different age groups.  Adolescents hung out with adolescents, adults with adults, and kids with kids.  Also, apparently it is a tradition to give small amounts of money to children who walk around and greet you.  I caught on to this eventually but was really annoyed the first few times I was asked for money.  And A LOT of kids asked me for money because I am white, and therefore have tons and tons of money.  All in all, it was pretty fun, and I was glad my village could stop starving itself (more than it already has to), and go back to not being quite so grumpy and tired.

I've been working on getting a project going to build some well tops in my village to try to keep the well water a little cleaner, so I've been making a lot of trips to Sikasso to get prices for various things like metal, and talking to welders to explain what I need and figuring out how much it will cost.  Then I had to okay everything with the village and fill out all the funding paperwork, which I submitted yesterday so hopefully that will all go through and I will have the money by the time I get back from Ghana.

GHANA!!!  Next week I head out on a long (40+ hour) bus ride to Ghana to run my first marathon.  I'm looking forward to the trip, though the race is still sounding very daunting.  My training has been going pretty well though in the last few weeks I've developed some really unfortunate blisters on the bottom of my feet.  My pace is going okay, but the long runs are HARD, which means the race is going to be hard as well.  Ah well, it will be a good experience.

It's still raining quite a bit though the last few weeks have been hot!!! The short way into my site is now completely flooded which actually makes for a pretty entertaining bike ride when I can't see the terrain, but only occasionally as it also makes you and your stuff very wet and muddy.  So, usually I go the long way these days.  I also had an exciting car ride into Sikasso with the mayor one rainy day.  I was coming in with him to do some work, and so he gave me a ride in his old Mercedes.  Someone built those cars well.  It had just rained a whole bunch so even the long way into Sikasso was a river, and we were in the two wheel drive sedan.  The mayor did a good job, and only conked the bottom of the car a few times on the numerous huge rocks in the road.  Then we got out to the "main" road and there was some pretty major flooding across it.  The mayor got out and briefly looked at it, and then decided to go for it.  I was thinking that it is generally not a good idea to cross floods (or so I was taught in silly American Driver's Ed).  Sure enough we get about half way through, and the water is really deep especially for this little car, and the current picks the car up and starts to transport us off the road.  We hit a sand bar and the mayor gunned it and we made it out just before we were deposited in the rice pattis.  It was an exciting moment.

Now onto the title of the piece, and once again these observations may be fairly obvious, but I just think it's interesting and therefore it's going on the blog.  In America, and the western world we have figured out how to live beyond Darwin, (for the most part).  All sorts of useless traits get passed on because we have the technology and medicine to enable such things.  I certainly appreciate this stuff when I get sick, but it definitely isn't here.  If a mentally handicapped kid is born, a lot of times it dies.  I've noticed the physically handicapped do a little better.  A lot of times the Muslim "church?" takes them and they can become Imams or do other sort of work.  Also their social values allow for a slightly more classic form of the idea of "only the strongest survive," at least when it comes to marriage.  In the wild the largest and strongest male will typically have some sort of "brood" or herd of females and have offspring by multiple females.  In much the same way the men here are allowed to take to up to four wives, but not just any man can take more than one wife.  Each successive wife costs more and more than the previous one(s), (by cost I mean you have to show that you have means to support more than one wife).  So you have to be sort of wealthy, and at least in village the only way to get wealthy is through farming, and the only way to get wealthy through farming is by having more fields than the next guy which means you have to be bigger and stronger than the next guy.  And if you are big and strong, then according to Darwin your kids should have a good chance a being big and strong, and your kids help you in the fields.  And the more kids you have the more fields you can take care of, and the more fields you have the more wives you have, and then you can have more kids which pass your big strong traits along more than the next guy's.  Or at least this is my perception of the way things work.  In cities people get money in other ways like by having a business, but at least in the bush people seem to be more in tune with "natural" processes.

Also in the western world we get to have what I've decided to call "luxury diseases."  I'm not denying that these are very real, horrible, and legitimate diseases, but they really don't exist here.  These are diseases like depression and anorexia as well as many others in this vein.  If someone here is too depressed to get out of bed for a week, their field dies, and then they die.  But also, they don't exist here because the community mind-set is not conducive to it.  There is no unhealthy relationship to food in the way that the western world has it at least, and depression isn't really possible because you are never alone here.  Your friends and family are always coming in and out of your house or coming over to drink tea, so you'd probably be snapped out of any funk you get into pretty quick.  But if not, yer dead.  We get to have these diseases because we have so much food that people develop an unhealthy relationship with it, and we have such big houses that we can shut out our friends and family with a nice walled in yard and gated community so no one can barge in and get you out of your depressed funk that you have the money to medicate yourself out of as well as the money to order in some of the copious amounts of food that you are afraid of and so will later throw up using some other medication.  Wow, I guess that sounds a little bitter and anti-western, and I guess it is, but I'm just trying to point out the differences in cultures by using extreme examples.  Despite all these issues I still love my western life-style.  Yes, there are problems with it, and I try to live in what I consider a reasonable way, but I'm not trying to give it up anytime soon.  I guess I'll leave it on that fairly unsummed up and bi-polar note.

Dogon and Djenne

I just had a super great trip to Northern Mali.  I really wish internet was fast enough to do pictures because I got some good ones, and since a picture is worth a thousand words I'm gonna have to do a lot of writing to make up for the lack of pictures. I'm gonna paint YOU'RE MINDS!!!

First though, a brief update on my site.  Things are great!! Before I left (2 weeks ago) I taught my villagers how to make a mosquito repellant and a pesticide using the leaves of a local tree.  They were really into it, especially the repellant.  Also, I started building a little garden in my yard.  I'm making raised beds using rocks and filling it with good dirt, it is very time consuming since I have very few implements, (ie. a short handled hoe and a bowl).  I also designed a thing for drying veggies, fruits, and edible leaves that I can hang from the ceiling of my house since I don't have that much floor space.  Hopefully, tomorrow I can buy the wood...and a hammer.

So, two weeks ago I hitched to Bamako for a meeting and also to see the newest stage get sworn in.  I got a ride with some folks from the local government here in Sikasso.  It took a long time to get to Bamako because we had to stop in Bougouni for many hours to get some paperwork from the President of the Commune of Bougouni.  I told the president about the mosquito repellant and he told me to come back and teach him... That won't happen. We eventually made it Bamako without incident though we did pass an unfortunate car/motorcycle head-on.  Guess which one won?  Also, as a side note, for those of you who may be out of touch with the Muslim world Ramadan started at the beginning of August, so most folks are fasting (no food or water sunrise to sunset), which makes them grumpy and also dangerous drivers.  If you catch a ride early in the morning you're better off as far as having good company for a while.

Bamako was good, I had a beautiful run one of the days.  It was my long run for the week (still training for the marathon in Ghana next month), and I ran out of the city up through the cliffs behind the city and up on top of a nice grassy plateau where amazingly there were really no people and no farm fields and I could see all of Bamako and the Niger River below me.  It was so pretty!!

I left Bamako on a Peace Corps shuttle which was not comfortable.  I got to the departure point a bit late in the morning, so I got stuck in the very back of the land cruiser where there are seats that run parallel to the car so you sit sideways, and they cram 4 people in the backend.  The seats are short so your knees are just always up by your ears, and it's a 9 hour drive so it was not that awesome.  We got into Sevare in the evening, met some friends who live up there, and then caught a Bashi (remember those?) to a city called Bandjiagara.  There is a Peace Corps house there with no admin so they don't charge you to stay.  The purpose of this trip was two fold: It was two of my friends' birthdays in early August AND I wanted to see more of Mali.  There was a fun party and one of the days we took a tour to Dogon Country.  We went into the cliff country and it was so so so beautiful! It reminded me a lot of the desert southwest in the US.  We went to a little village and had lunch at this "encampment" which is a little tourist hotel/hostel thing in the middle of this Dogon village.  (Dogon is an ethnic group in Mali).  Then we hiked up into a cliff village.  It was so much like Mesa Verde, but only abandoned 20 years ago!  It was really cool to see, and while we were there we saw a storm on the horizon, and it looked like we were going to get some rain, 15 minutes later a few miles out there was a wall of sand towering out of the desert blowing our way.  We could see all the farmers running out of their fields for the town at the base of the cliffs, and we started hustling, but it moved fast.  In under 2 minutes it was almost dark and we were in the middle of this huge sandstorm.  Luckily it preceded a big rain storm, so it wasn't too bad, but it was really wild.  The others loaded up the van to get outta dodge before the roads became impassable, but myself and two friends decided to stay behind to do some more exploring.  We sat for a while in the little "encampment' while we waited for the rain to pass and I had the following interesting conversation (Rated PG-13):

Hotel Worker: So you guys are gonna stay here tonight?

Me: Not sure yet. I think we'll sleep out in the bush.

HW: You can't do that.

Me: Why?

HW: There are good people and bad people.

Me: Hm...Okay. (Not a very convincing argument).

HW: So, old man, is one of these women your wife? (People here think I'm old because I have a beard, only old men have beards in this country also the two friends who stayed behind were women).

Me: Nope, I'm not married.

HW: What?!!!  Do you have kids?

Me: Nope.

HW: But you're old.

Me: I'm not old, I'm only 24.

HW: That's pretty old, you have to find a woman soon.  Before you are 28.

Me: Why?

HW: Because now you are strong.

Me: True, but I'll be strong when I'm 28.

HW: Maybe, but your penis won't work anymore.

Me: (Silence, did I just hear that correctly?)

HW: Yeah, you won't be able to get it up when you turn 28. (Complete with gestures near inner thigh so there could be no mistaking what he was talking about).

Me: (Lots of laughter, then): Okay, I doubt it.

HW: It's true.

Me: Oh yeah, how old are you.

HW: 27

Me: (Lots of laughter). You don't have long then.

HW: Where are you going? (We are leaving).

Me: To the bush to stay the night.

HW: This is bad, I'll come with you.  One man cannot go with two women.

Me: That's not true, and you are staying here.  Bye.

HW: Bad!! bye.

So we wandered off and discovered that where a little waterfall was falling off the cliffs before now had a roaring waterfall shooting off the cliffs.  It had created a nice flood across the road, and some good pictures.  We asked some local kids where it was safe to cross and they showed us, and I put my backpack on my head and waded across.  It was just under waist deep and the current wasn't too bad.  We walked for a ways until I saw where the cliffs were a little broken up and we might find a sheltered place to spend the night since I wasn't sure if was going to rain more.  We hiked up and took a break and I went off exploring for a campsite as I had done this sort of thing before so I knew what to look for... or so I convinced my compatriots.  I ended up finding a crack in the rock that was almost a cave, and had a bunch of dry wood scattered around it.  So we made a fire after gathering wood and cooked up some dinner.  The cave had the advantage of being hidden from view of the villages down along the cliff base so we didn't have to worry about the "good people or bad people."  After dinner I tried to gain access to the clip top but the move to get up to the very top seemed a bit sketchy in the dark and I wasn't sure if I could my friends up or down it safely.  So we set up our mosquito nets outside the cave, and in the morning we all made it up to the cliff top for some pictures (I was right, that move would have been bad chi in the dark as it was pretty exposed...meaning lots of air below before you hit the ground should a fall occur).  This day was the actual birthday of one of my companions (though the party had been a few days earlier), so we hiked back to the village of the day before and tried to acquire some camels to go check out the beginning of sand dune country.  They only had one, so we walked out.  It was pretty cool, and I had arranged for a woman in the village to make cake for us which we enjoyed after our lunch upon our return from the pre-dunes.

We hiked out to the main-ish road in the afternoon and were told that there were no more cars going into Bandjiagara for the evening.  We made the decision to camp again, so I sat by the road in the off chance a car came by, and my friends went into the nearby village for some supplies.  Well, I am a lucky traveler, and a car came by that said they could take us in to Bandjiagara.  So my friends came by, and off we went.

The next day we went to Sevare and spent the night, and the next day I went to the site of one of my friends who did the trek with me.  I helped her start her garden (though we'll see because my garden is not doing great so I may not have been the best person to help), and start a Moringa tree nursery.  After a few days we went to Djenne.  Since her site is near a river we tried to hire a boat to take us, but they wanted too much money, so we hitched.  Djenne is a little city on an island, and is the home to the largest and oldest mud structure in the world which is the Djenne mosque.  Along the way we rode with a few people including a dumptruck that had a chinese man in it and in the back of an ambulance.  My friend was stoked about the Chinese man as she can speak Chinese pretty well and so got to chat with him.

We got to Djenne in time to see the sunset on the mosque, and grab some pictures and then found a hotel that was cheap, had great food, and had really nice staff.  The next day we met up with some other Peace Corps Volunteers from our stage who came to see the city as well as the brother of one of our language teachers who lives in Djenne.  We saw the city, some women doing mud-dying of cloth (called Bogolan), and had a good time.  Since it is a pretty touristy city, you get mobbed by beggars if you are white, so that got a little old after a while.  That afternoon my friend and I left Djenne and made it to the ferry, but were unable to get a ride with anyone to the main road, so we scrounged some food out of our packs, made a picknick next to the river and then walked to the nearest hotel/resort where we had earlier haggled a "non-tourist" price with the owner who happened to be at the ferry before dinner.

The next morning we got a ride with an interesting group of individuals.  This land cruiser pulled up and a guy got out and I asked him if we could ride with him.  He said he'd ask. He motioned me over, and I greeted the teens in the back in the local language.  They just sort of looked at me. The man told me they could speak English this usually means halting English, so I said very slowly, "Oh neat, you can speak English?"  The kid said, "Yeah man, we from Houston!"  Double take.  So we got a ride with them, and they informed us they were here to see the "motherland" with their dad who was in the front seat. The teens were interested in what we were doing here, and were very nice, but interesting.  They were covered in tatoos, had very inner city accents, and the kid next to me spent my portion of the ride with them rolling a joint and complaining about how crappy the weed is in Mali, but how it gives you a more spiritual high.  I left the car at the intersection with the main road, and my friends continued back to her site with them since they were going in the same direction.  I caught a bunch of rides and did a lot of walking and eventually made it to a town called Koutiala where I spent the night at a Peace Corps house.     Then this morning I walked out of Koutiala a caught a ride in the back of a pharmaceuticals van to Sikasso.  All in all, a great trip, and I think of anything else I'll add it, but for now this is long enough.  My feet smell, so I'm going to go shower.

Insight...

Hopefully, I can write this before either the power goes out, or we lose the internet, or both.  And I'd like this post to be both insightful and intelligent, but I'm afraid that is easier said than done.  Also, the following epiphany I had may seem completely obvious to everyone reading, but to me it answered some questions and helped my brain click a little more with life here.  Hopefully, for everyone reading, my thoughts are more organized than usual or this is going to be horribly confusing, or worse, just sound stupid.

So a while back I realized that I don't pity Malians in any way with one exception: their lack of excitement about food.  I've made some delicious things that, (in my humble opinion), blow their bland millet paste out of the water, and I've shared these things with some people in my village.  Their reactions are minimal if any.  If I ask, they say it is good, but never without prompting.  And I know they can get excited about desserts (nutella drives them wild), but a well spiced spaghetti or garlic mashed potatoes with gravy just don't get a reaction.  I don't take this as an insult or anything, I just think culturally there is nothing to be excited about involving food.  Food is eaten to survive only, so why enjoy it.  It is like breathing.  I don't take a breath and then exclaim over how amazing that breath was.  They do put out good food at weddings and funerals, but they still don't get really excited about it.  And I think this is a pity.  But again, this is only my perception of what is going on, and I may only find it a pity because I LOVE good food so very, very much.

Now back to the main point of this whole thing: I don't pity Malians because they are so happy.  I realized this long ago, but I really couldn't figure out why they were so happy.  They have so many reasons to be unhappy.  They are hungry, they work really hard for essentially nothing, they're poor and to compound this, they have TV and they see other people (such as me) when they are in country.  They are aware (at least a little) of how other people in the world can live.  And while James Bond dubbed in French which most can't understand doesn't give them an accurate view of America or the western world it does give them a least a window into western life, and I make that window broader.  They see that I've got a nice bicycle though by American standards it is pretty low grade, I've got a camera that is probably worth more than their entire income for a year, and when I get malaria I just jump on a bus and go to Bamako (which costs a fair bit), then when in Bamako I go to a special doctor who gives me extremely expensive medication to get better.  When they get malaria they sit in village in horrible pain until it goes away or it gets the best of them and they die.  Now, these things I've listed are simply that: things, goods and services. And we all know that they can't buy happiness, but they can make life easier, and regardless they are aware of how different their lives are than mine, and they don't seem bitter about it.

And so again, why are they so happy?  The answer, or at least part of it, occurred to me the other night as I was sitting with a group of young men at night playing my guitar while they chatted and some younger kids horsed around: community.  It is as simple as that, but this is going to be the toughest part to explain.  Young boys tend to be in charge of watching over the goats or sometimes cows.  They get together in small groups of friends and herd around the goats all day.  When they turn 14 or 15 they are put to "real" work ie: farming and building houses.  Many times these same groups of friends who herded goats will work on part of a house together, or go to the fields together.  In the evening they sit around and chat together, they go to each others weddings and baby naming ceremonies, and they do this for the next 40 or 50 years until their short lifespan is used up.  I've sat with these groups of friends at various stages.  The youngsters play little games in my hammock, the young men sit and pretend to be grown up (which I guess they are, but they are only 20 and married with a kid on the way so they better be grown up), then when they in their 30's they've got a few kids maybe a few wives, and they sit and talk of serious things like crops and fishing.  And I've also sat with my favorite age bracket: the old men. They sit around and chat a lot while repairing fishing nets or weaving ropes, and they also chat about crops and such, but also of things that only those with the luxury of time chat about such as politics and weddings.  But they, (for the most part), are the same group who have been meeting every evening for the past 40 years and chatting of such things.  The women have different jobs, but still grow up with a group of friends that sticks together for the most part, unless a girl is married off to a different town where she quickly finds another community of friends who take her in and she sticks with for the rest of her life.

I get to see this on a daily basis, and yet I can only imagine what it is like.  Yes, I have wonderful friends, and a wonderful family all of whom I love very much, but this is something else.  Supposedly, in American society at least, your spouse knows you better than anyone else especially after living with this person for many, many years.  And Malian community is like having a group of spouses, if you will, that know you better than anyone else. Even when you are only 20 years old, these "spouses" have known you for 20 years.  I know a few people beyond my family who have known me for 20 years, but it is more of a known of me.  I was friends with them when I was a toddler, and our families have kept in touch.  It's an extension of family, but a family that you choose, and it's one that you WANT to see everyday.  There is no obligation.  Simply put, it doesn't exist in America, and this is why it is so hard to explain, but I think I've explained it well enough for folks to get the idea.  And I think this a big part of the secret to the unwavering happiness that pervades all of Mali.

I could see myself being happy existing as they do with this sort of community all around me.  Given the chance to get out, I think some would, but since most don't have the chance this community provides all the comforts you could want, and it relieves the stress of a long day of work, and it is in essence the definition of community.  It goes well beyond even the strongest and most tight knit communities that I have experienced.  Now, this all makes perfect sense to me, and though I am not part and can never truly be part of this community, I have seen it.  That said, I hope this makes sense to the people reading it, and doesn't give too much of a false impression of people and life in Mali.  Though to be fair this blog is kind of like Malians understanding America by watching James Bond in a language they can't understand, though in reverse.

Hitchhiking and Hippos

Except no hippos. Damn!

So I finished my training, and then went through training about starting a tree nursery.  This was interesting for me, but not really for blog readers.  So on to more interesting things.

After training I made my way to Manantali.  I was fairly sick of paying for crappy Malian transport, and dealing with their sheisty employees... So a friend and I decided to hitchhike.  Brilliant! Everything fell into place just about perfectly, though the adventure did involve LOTS of walking in the heat and humidity.

We left Bamako in the afternoon and took sotrama to a little town called Kati. A sotrama is an old van that has been gutted and fitted with some wooden benches.  The sides have been creatively cut up to provide windows, the tops properly reinforced to so all manner of shit can be strapped to the top, and usually the back doors are tied shut.  The advantage of these is they are cheap! Usually 100 to 500 cfa (20 cents to a dollar) to go a pretty good distances, and you don't have to haggle like with a taxi, and there are generally enough people on that the operators don't try to rip you off.  The bummer is that they are crowded and hot.  Usually they fit 20 to 25 people in the back depending how many kids there are.  They go on a fixed line like a bus, so you just ask people where the line is in order to go to, say Kati for example, you go there and yell "Kati!!" at every passing sotroma until one going to Kati stops.    We were told by another volunteer to go under a bridge at what turned out to be a very busy and harrowing intersection, and eventually flagged one down.  I've taken them many times, but I still think they operate in a very strange way at least seen through the eyes of me, an outsider.  There is a driver...who drives, and a guy that 'sits' in the back with the passengers and collects fares and makes sure the number of people in the back does not exceed the capacity which is painted in a creative manner on the side of the van.  By sits I mean this guy dangles out of the open side door and yells the destination to any unlucky pedestrian who happens to be in earshot.  If they show a sign that they want to go this guy slams on the top or side of the van until the driver notices and pulls over or until everyone has a bigger headache than the one they started with from all the exhaust.  As you can imagine, they generally overshoot most of their clients by a fair amount so they have to hustle to get in.  Oh, and the guy who hangs out the side always jumps off before the van stops, and waits for the van to start up so they have to run and jump on while the van is moving.  This is for fun...obviously.  We made it to the big traffic jam that is always around the toll booth at Kati.  We pulled off towards the end of the line, with plans of continuing until the end.  They were sitting waiting to fill the rest of the van, and I decided to get out and wander...and buy bread.  I randomly decided to flag down the first car  I spotted.  Brilliant! I asked where he was going he said Kita, and that's where I was headed, and he said I could go with him.  So I ran and grabbed my friend and our bags and jumped into his Land Cruiser.  He is a veterinarian who apparently also dabbles tree planting and hotel management.  The best part is that he and his associate were stoked to have us aboard, were very nice, and had AIR CONDITIONING!!! We followed a big truck he had hired with a bunch of trees in it so it wasn't as fast as it could have been, but still faster than a bus.  It was evening when we got to Kita and he said the road to Manantali would be pretty empty so he put us up in his hotel for the night... FOR FREE! It was awesome, and super nice of him.  There is a peace corps house in Kita, but unless Kita is your "regional capital" you have to pay 5,000 cfa a night to stay.
The next morning (July 3rd) we walked out of Kita...and walked, and walked.  Maybe for two or three hours before a guy picked us up.  There were very few cars along the way, and the ones that pulled off before that either were turning off soon, or wanted money.  This guy took us to the turn off to Manantali.
Now for the long part of the day.  The road to Manantali is 104 kilometers of really, really not maintained dirt road, and there are very, very few cars on the road. We filled our water bottles at the pump at the intersection and started walking.  It was now approaching noon-ish.  We walked for about an hour or so when some construction workers picked us up in their beat up pickup that was somehow still running, and took us about 15 km.  Then more walking. I don't know how long, but it was long.  Eventually a bush taxi (another converted van) came by that was filled with bags of rice and other goods instead of people.  We haggled a ride to a town 40 km from Manantali for 1000 cfa each.  After I finally fell asleep on a bag of rice we got a flat.  The passenger rear wheel blew, so they took the driver front wheel off and put it on the back, and put the mostly destroyed spare on the front as there was less weight in the front.  I started drifting off again, and they broke the rear axle or at least the seal blew.  They took out their bag of spare parts complete with bearings covered in sand and other equally useful things, and went to work.  My friend and I decided it was time for lunch.  Part way through lunch another bush taxi came by that just happened to have been chartered by the other Peace Corps volunteers from Bamako.  They had left Bamako at 6 am.  Two of the volunteers...volunteered to ride on the roof (a place coveted by me, but beggars can't be choosers) and we crammed in the back.  A few hours later we made it to Manantali.

Manantali is a peculiar area.  There is a huge dam that you see as you start down the treacherous road to the town.  This dam provides the power for much of Mali as well as Senegal and Mauritania? maybe.   At the base of the dam is a sort of traditional village thing, and a few km down the road is the "city" where all the dam workers live.  This little city has paved roads, flushing toilets, and has none of the usual heaps of burning trash everywhere.  The Peace Corps house is in the city right on the banks of the river there.  This is an "unofficial" peace corps house which means that it doesn't get the same funding, and cleaning crew, but also no administration keeping track of those who stay there and what goes on which bodes well for those people who are looking to celebrate with the things that are not entirely Peace Corps "approved" if you will.  There were a lot of people there, so they also rented another house that you could stay in for a small fee.  I chose to do this one night as the couch in that house was much cozier than sleeping outside in my little bug hut.  I was able to swim in the river, float down in tubes, and I even saw some monkeys including one with a baby clinging to the under belly! though unfortunately no hippos.  We had hamburgers and fireworks on the Fourth of July which was awesome!! And the river is so, so beautiful there, and the feel of the little "city" is very un-Malian, so it felt like a real vacation, like I was at a campground in Florida or something.

I left on the 6th after spending one last day relaxing next to the river.  My friend and I picked up another friend for the hitch to Kita.  We started walking early, and walked once again for a few hours.  Eventually a truck stopped and only wanted a little money so we hopped aboard.  This was a large U-Haul sized truck, that had "Poisson" written on the side, which for those of you who don't know is the French word for fish.  We climbed into the back, and were immediately blasted by the smell of old fish.  Luckily, they were hauling all sorts of other things at this point such as peanuts, motorcycles and furniture, but oh man, that smell was gnarly!!  Thankfully, they left one of the doors open so we didn't suffocate, and we were rewarded a 3 hour dust shower (from all the dust blowing in off the truck).  Luckily, after 3 hours it started raining which made the road even sweeter, but less dusty.  By the time we rolled into Kita after 6 hours in the back of the fish truck, we looked like hell.  The driver decided he would not take our money after all.  Oh yes, and starting that morning I was struck with a nice case of diarrhea which I gulped drugs to counterattack, and was able to stave off any major disasters while in the back of the truck.  I managed to procure a free night at the house in Kita by using some vague wording with a higher up.  It was actually all legitimate, but sometimes finer details are best left out of some conversations.
The next morning I gulped some more anti-diarrhea drugs and hit the road again.  More walking with one of the friends, the other stayed in Kita.  Eventually we were picked up by an accountant with a nice car with A/C and made it Bamako in the late afternoon.  We grabbed some dinner, I arranged to have some of my stuff sent to Sikasso on a the full Peace Corps transport (it can only seat 8, but you can put all sorts of baggage on top in classic Malian style).  Then we hit the road again.  It took us 3 sotramas to get out of Bamako on the road to Sikasso, and by this time it was rather dark.  Eventually, a car full of young guys picked us up and took us to the nearest toll booth where they told the workers there where we were trying to go, and we had to clarify and say for free... Just to be a little more ridiculous.  After half an hour or so a bus came by and the workers convinced them to let us ride in the aisle for free to Bougouni (which was the final destination for my friend, and as it turned out for me).  The bus's brakes were not good, every time the driver used them, the entire bus smelled like burning brakes...not a good sign.  We got into Bougouni a little after 11pm and my friend went towards the unofficial Bougouni PC house.  I tried convincing the bus to let me ride on to Sikasso for free...on the roof.  They declined.  So the bus left and I started walking.  Around midnight I reached the edge of Bougouni, and stood at the edge of the end of the street lights and peered into the darkness.  I sat there for 20 minutes or so debating what to do: I could either keep walking and probably not get picked up and sleep in the bush in my fairly uncomfortable mosquito net or call my friend and sleep in the Bougouni house in a bed. Exactly 0 cars passed me so I called my friend, and got directions to the Bougouni house.  The next morning (today the 8th) I caught a quick ride to the edge of Bougouni, then another to the next toll station, then quickly caught another in an air conditioned Land Cruiser all the way to Sikasso.  We had a lengthly conversation about religion, and by that I mean he told me about Islam and tried to convert me.  Since my language isn't great I understood about a 20th of it, but I got the main points: Allah loves me, and Jesus was a nice guy, but not the son of god.  We listened to people chanting the Koran the whole way, but the guy gave me some delicious pain au chocolat (a chocolat croissant), some sesame crackers, a coke, and a ride so no complaints.  He was very happy that allah put me in his car and was stoked about what a good muslim I was going to be.  He also told me that my beard is handsome, so he goes into my good book for sure.

I was going to head to site today, but ended up helping another volunteer work on her bike (by that I mean diagnose the problem and then break it a little more in an attempt to fix something that just needed a new part in the first place).  So here I am, writing an extremely lengthly blog post that will surely get me flogged if anyone in PC admin reads it.  So, if you are in PC admin then this entire thing is fictional.  I'll post again another day.  I'll for sure head back to site tomorrow, though I wish my tummy would calm down some.

Buses and Running

I had a fight with Malian transportation yesterday.  I tried to catch the good bus line to Bamako, but missed the bus so I went to a different company where they over-charged me for my ticket.  I had a sneaking suspicion I was over charged, so I asked a Malian how much he paid for his ticket, and found he had paid 1,000 cfa (about $2) less.  So, I talked to the people who seemed to be in charge of the bus, and asked why I was charged more.  They said because I am white.  This made me pretty mad, and so I argued with one of the guys until he ignored me, making it very clear I would not get my money back.  So, I decided to take two seats.  I recognized then and do now that this was not the high road, and sucking up the blatant racism would have been the high road, but I was frustrated so decided to be a stubborn American.  People were sitting in the aisle, and the bus operators, (there are many: a driver, and several helpers who collect tickets, strap luggage to the roof, and yell out stop names), to move.  I said, "Give me my money and I will, but right now I can't." Of course, these people didn't take my money, the guy at the ticket counter did.  And the people in the aisle didn't take my money either, but I was not going to give in.  And I didn't, I had two seats the whole way, and really enjoyed the lounging and ability to spread out.  When we got to Bamako I got a taxi, and loaded my stuff into the trunk.  Then some fellow volunteers in a different cab spotted me, and I said I wanted to go with them (in order to split cab fair).  And the driver closed the trunk, and held it down and said, "Nope, you're my friend." Which was weird, but I was tired and didn't want to argue...Until he took another passanger and we had to drive all the way to the other side of town to drop her off. So when we got to my destination I said I wasn't going to pay him the price we agreed on because he didn't listen to me when I said I wanted to go with my friends, and then we went to the other side of town.  I knew that this was causing more trouble for me, but by now I was SO frustrated, and I wanted to cause him some frustration.  So we got in a shouting match, which involved him saying stuff I didn't understand and me shouting random Bambara words over him, and gesturing wildly, and making faces.  The guard in the Peace Corps house came out, and the driver told some version of the story which I couldn't understand, so I decided to give him the rest of the money as I was now confident I had caused him ample strife for my frustration.  But, now we had to revert to the Malian "3rd Party System" because we had a conflict.  This just means I had to give the guard the money first, and the guard would give it to the driver.  Was I immature? Yes. I don't care.  I was too annoyed to be reasonable.

Then I had a lovely spaghetti dinner, and got up really early to run our half-marathon.

I didn't win.  I got second, and a respectable one.  The kid who won was running under seven minute miles, as he was a good runner and ran cross country for Johns Hopkins.  He lost me around mile 3.  I ran it in an hour and 45 minutes, and felt pretty good about that.  I had taken a break from training due to the malaria, and still did great!  So, I'm proud of myself.  Now, I'm sore and thinking that the marathon I'm signed up for in September is gonna give me a whoopin'.

My Thistle Skills

The title is a little joke for my family, and those who knew me as a youngster.

I got back to site last Sunday and discovered that my poor garden had been completely overgrown with weeds.  The next morning I pulled weeds for three hours and cleared them all out.  Thus, the skills I learned when I was younger were put to good use.  I have some before and after pics, but I need a faster internet/a good batch process program.  I think I'll probably send some pictures to the states at some point.  I've started sorting them into folders that someone with a faster internet will be able to easily use and post online.

Other than that this past week passed sort of slowly; that is to say that the week went pretty quick, but the individual days were extremely slow.  I've been very anxious to get to In Service Training and see my friends and eat delicious food that doesn't have to be prepared or bought by me.  I've noticed that time is a strange thing here.  Days can be so, so slow, and then a week will be gone before I even realized the day is done.  The last two months have gone by really quick looking back, but there were times during that I couldn't believe that it was still Tuesday for seemed like the fifth day in a row.

One of my friends in Colorado (Karen) sent me a guitar book with bunches of songs, and I got that last week so that helped pass the time this past week.  Thanks Karen!!  I'm excited to get to Bamako tomorrow, and I am running a half marathon Monday morning with only Peace Corps volunteers.  That should be fun!

Malades in Mali

Check that title out!! Dang.  It involves alliteration AND it lets you know a little taste of what is to come in this post.  The ideal title.

Okay, so the last week has been rough.  I managed to catch malaria.  This was not fun.  Last Sunday I started feeling kind of yucky, and then I got a really persistent and terrible headache.  That lasted till Wednesday at which point I decided the pain was too much to handle in the heat and went to Bamako.  The doctor tested my blood and discovered that the prophylaxes I am taking apparently didn't work completely, and I had malaria parasites in my blood.  I got a pretty mild case.  My fever wasn't too high, but I did feel yucky.  I've been staying at the peace corps house in Bamako since late Wednesday night.  I've taken the required meds, and the blood test I took today came back negative so I will be heading back to site sometime in the near future.  I learned the following: Don't get malaria.

Other than that, things are relatively peachy.  I've enjoyed being able to stay in the air conditioning, but it comes at the price of being ill.  Site is the same, I'm starting to sort of make friends.  Though I still can't speak to them really.  Our conversations are usually roughly the following:

Friend: Do you have beans in America.
Me: Yes
Friend: Do you have motorcycles in America
Me: Yes, we have lots of big motorcycles.
Friend: Do you have corn in America.
Me: Yes, lots of corn.
Friend: Do you have onions in America.
Me: Yes.
Friend: Can we go to America together?
Me: Sure, in two years.  Do you have a lot of money?
Friend: How much is it to go?
Me: A lot.
Friend: Oh.
(Silence while we drink some tea followed by a few more questions followed by silence).

I think that's all I've got for now.  I'll be sure to write again soon.  I'll be coming back to Bamako around June 11th or so for In Service Training.  I'll be at the training center.

Waterfalls!!!

So, I just got back from a little place called Woroni where there are some gorgeous and wonderful waterfalls.  I had my first real ride in a long distance taxi, and it was splendid.  They are called Bashees, and on the way there we had 11 people in a station wagon designed to sit 7.  They had at some point removed the roof, and welded their own on so it could hold more weight on top.  On top the pile of gear was taller than the car itself.  It included, 2 chairs, 2 decent sized tables, and one motorcycle along with all our backpacks for the trip.  Four Malians sat across the front where there were only two bucket seats, so that was probably really uncomfortable.  We had 4 Americans across the first bench seat, and three in the back.  The seats were designed for two in front, 3 in middle, and 2 in back.  Luckily it was an ancient Peugot and had a "3 on the tree" set-up for shifting so the two men sitting in the middle up front did not get in the way of the driver...too much.  We had to stop a few times and put water into the radiator, I don't know how the water did not burst out when he opened the radiator cap...maybe there was just no water in it?  Anyways, it was a little over and hour drive, and then a splendid hike through some fields up to the falls.  There were three sets.  The first set is maybe 40 feet, and kind of spread out, the second is also maybe 40 feet but is one big stream, and the third is small, but really secluded and beautiful.  The second set has a nice pool for swimming in, and a ledge that is maybe 10 feet up to jump off of into the water.  We spent the night at the base of the first falls, and hiked out in the morning.  We had paid the driver to stay the night at the nearest village and pick us up at the trailhead in the morning, and he was right on time.  Coming back, we had less people in the car, but I got stuck in the very back and so was pretty cramped, and the smell of gasoline and exhaust got trapped back there a little worse.  And I believe the car was actually gasoline as opposed to diesel which is really uncommon here.  Also, the driver would turn the car off on any downhill to conserve gasoline which is a good idea, but I just thought worth mentioning.  I'll try to put pictures up... but no guarantees.  Okay, well I had a great weekend, and I'll try posting soon!

Another Report

My creativity with titles of blogs is really slipping... I'll have to work on that.  Today, I got a lovely set of letters from the second grade class I volunteered in, and it really made my day!! Life at site is going well, and very warm.  I feel like the heat is a fairly recurring theme in these posts, but it is hot! Yesterday, my thermometer read 110, and it was so humid that there was a high fog that prevented me from seeing across the little valley that I can normally easily see across.  My teaching continues to go well.  I should be getting the the textbooks I asked for tomorrow sometime, and am very excited about that.  I tend to try to spend time with the students who are further behind.  There is one older woman who I have been working with a lot.  At certain points the class has to copy words down onto their little chalkboards, and she tries but her heart really isn't in it.  She told me that all she really wants to be able to do is write her name.  So, I wrote her name out, and I make her copy it over and over again.  She throws all her effort into this, and it is actually sort of touching how badly she wants to be able do this.  She's getting it down pretty well, and I am really proud of her.  I also work with other students by writing letters or numbers on their boards and asking them what they are.  And then I'll do simple combinations like "f" and "a" and I try to get them to understand that the name of the letter and the sound that it makes are different, (at least with consonants).  The village really enjoys when I play guitar, and I am asked on a daily basis if I am going to play for them that day.  I don't everyday because some days I am too tired, and also I only know a limited number of songs, and I think they're going to catch on that I am only playing the same songs, and I don't want them getting bored with it.... Though I honestly doubt that's possible.  They love it too much.

My garden is coming along nicely.  I have three tiered beds dug, and am in the process of digging out the large rocks of the lowest bed.  I hoping we get a good rain before I plant because I want to see how well things drain so I can make adjustments to the design as needed.  Also, I still need a gate, but that shouldn't take too long to make.  I'll be venturing down to a little town called Woroni tomorrow to check out their waterfalls.  Apparently, they are splendid.

I had a pretty large ant colony living under the clay pot I keep my veggies in, and I went to war with them a few days ago.  I got bitten a lot, but I won in the end.  I had to break out "Rambo" which is probably the gnarliest insecticide ever made.  It makes RAID look like water.  It comes from Nigeria, and works really, really well.  I discovered I can make gravy (sort of) using flavored MSG, onions, and flour.  It is delicious, and goes very well with the endless supply of potatoes I have.  I think that's about all for now.  I'll probably have another update in a few weeks.

Copy and paste this link if you can't click on Peace Corps Article link

http://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.media.press.view&news_id=1762

Peace Corps Article

Link

So that link didn't really work I don't think. I'll try again. Here:

My First Week at Site

4-23

So I just spent a week at my new site. Things are great!! Also, you can find an article about our swear in here:

My Malian counterpart teaches basic literacy classes in my village so I have been attending those and helping out when I can. This is very interesting as he just very recently learned to write. The whole thing is very inspirational, a little heartbreaking, and very funny. Funny because I can help the people sound words out because I can recognize letters and the sounds they should make, but I have no idea what some of the words mean. For instance, I can sound the word “jala” out, but I could definitely not use it in a sentence. I am slowly picking up on meanings, but it is very funny. I think where I am most helpful is with math. They are working on very simple addition and subtraction, which I can explain with my limited vocabulary and fingers, sticks, rocks, or lines drawn on paper. Mainly, I try to work with the people who can’t read or write at all. They get left behind quickly in class, and it is fairly painful to watch them try to force their hands to write their names or 1-10. Sometimes I make them repeat writing letters or their names, and other times I write something down and make them tell me what letter or number it is.

I also will be distributing mosquito nets from a US AID project. Yesterday I had to go around and figure out how many people are in each family and write them a receipt so when the nets arrive they receive the proper number, which is one net for every 2 people. It was also a good way for me to meet more people in my village, and get a count. There are 574 people. I know I am just lucky to have so much to do already, I know that the first three months are generally filled with a distinct lack of things to do, but I have plenty on my plate already. I mean, I only got one nap in yesterday!!! That means I had lots to do. Between drinking tea, counting people, reading, playing mini guitar concerts, and working on my garden I have tons of stuff to do.

Speaking of garden, I have built a fence just outside my house. It will be a bit of a walk from the nearest water, but I think I can handle it. The fence design is fairly brilliant in its African simplicity. I did not think of it. I’ll have pictures at some point I hope. The chief and I built it. I don’t really know how to describe it, but I’ll put up a picture sometime soon. It is basically a very thick bush that we built out of branches from various bushes, and then lashed between posts. Horrible description, but it’s the best I’ve got for now. I also dug one bed so far and will be hunting for seeds today in Sikasso.

I am lacking tables. I was told I could get a table in village, so no reason to buy one in Sikasso and then have to put it on a car to get to site. But this is not the case. I asked the chair builder if he could build me a table. He said no. I showed him that a table is just a chair with no back essentially, but he said he could not do it… Silly. I’ll have to figure that out at some point.

I’ve also started playing my guitar for an insanely, insanely skinny woman. She is not that old, but she can’t really take care of herself so either her brother or husband takes care of her. I think she enjoys it, but I can’t really tell. She just sort of looks like she has given up and is waiting to die, which from the looks of her will not be very long. Though she does have the occasional brilliant smile when I say hi. I hate to end on a depressing note, but I think that’s all the news I have for now. Things in general are really, really good and life is really relaxing in village. I am busy, but I still have plenty of time to read in my hammock that is made of what appears to be shoelaces. That was a brilliant purchase I must say!

Becoming official

So, later today we are all going to the Presdential Palace and becoming sworn in as official volunteers, and the next day I am leaving for my site!!  Last night we had a huge party.  We went the "American Club" during the day which has a pool!  And pretty good burgers, then to a hotel in the evening then there were shuttles arranged for several bars/nightclubs.  The whole night was incredibly entertaining, and there was much ridiculousness.  However, everyone here has become really close in the last two months, and I am definitely going to miss most of the people...a lot.  I'll see them again in two months for In Service Training, but not really until then because we aren't supposed to leave our site for the first two months. (Normally it is three months, but there is another training group coming in June or July so they scheduled our IST earlier than normal), which personally I am glad about because the volunteers all celebrate holidays together, and Fourth of July is usually a pretty big event in one of the cities, and now I should be able to attend.  If the other groups was not coming in, our IST would have fallen during the Fourth, so we would have been at the training center unable to travel far.  I'm defintitely going to try to get some pictures at swear in, and hopefully will be able to post them in a semi-timely manner. 

I am very excited to start service, and to start cooking for myself! The food at the training center is pretty good, and well balanced, but I was not a huge fan of the cooking when I went to my site to visit a few weeks ago.  It didn't necessarily taste too bad, it wasn't great, but every meal I got some sort of fish sauce, and it generally sat out a bit too long in the sun, and it just turned my stomach.  I bought a stove, and will be buying a table to put it on when I get to Sikasso so I should be able to start cooking right away.  Now, I just need to figure out how to build a solar oven and I'll be in good shape...MMMMMMMMM.... Pie.

Rain!!!

We had our first rain yesterday.  It was an awesome thunderstorm for about an hour.  I, of course, stood in the rain for some time then ran through the puddles as it was my first rain in Mali, and I wanted it to be a memorable one.

Today, we went to a women's cooperative that makes Shea butter, lotion, and soap.  It was really, really cool, and will someday soon be very profitable I think.  And shea is really good for skin, so if you are someone who is inclined to sport lotions, or if you like to bath using soap try ordering some!! They only ship large quantities due to infrastructure logistics, but at least look at their website:  http://www.maisondukarite.org/pages/sibysheabutter.html or google it.  It's even in English (mostly).  I got to mix some of the shea stuff by hand with them today to extract the oil.  They create elaborate beats and rythyms while they beat the shea paste by hand, and it is just a really cool set-up. I bought some soap that they added cucumber to, it smells delicious.  I'll try not to eat it before I bathe with it.  The co-op is located in Siby which has a lot or rock climbing near it with bolted routes and guides.  It is a neat area for sure that will definitely need to be explored further.

Death

Hippos spotted: 0 People bitten in half: 0 Pairs of pants soiled: 1

Okay, so.  My pre-service training is rapidly drawing to a close.  My last few weeks in my training village were great, and I had few interesting experiences.  The first beeing that I pooped my pants.  This was a major stepping stone in my Peace Corps service, and I feel very accomplished now.  No, actually, I was really quite sick, and it wasn't too fun for a day or two.  I had a really bad cold, and then pretty excessive diarrhea on top of it, plus that week was really hot.  The average temperature in my nice, shady room at midday while I napped was just over 100F, so the days I was sick were kinda rough.  But, on the flip side, I personally think I am adjusting well to the heat.  I discovered that putting a plastic "prayer" mat on my bed, and sleeping directly on that is far superior than any sheet.  I think because the prayer mat allows the sweat to drain through it, or it will evaporate so when you roll around in bed it is less likely that you will roll over into a swamp.  The pillow is a tricky endevour though.  I currently wrap it in a sheet, so there are four or five layers of cloth between me and the pillow.  It helps, but still my pillow can literally be wrung out when I wake up in the morning.

I've also spearheaded a moustache movement in our stage.  We are getting shirts made that say "Moustage" on them with a nice moustache decal on the front.  This is because, at my and my friend Regis' prompting, all of the men in our stage (minus a 2 or 3 weenies) will be sporting their finest moustaches at the swear-in ceremony at the presidential palace.  It will probably be mankinds' finest hour, so far.  It will be a fine time for us, and it won't be too ridiculous as moustaches are completely normal and accepted in Mali, instead of being the sign of a child molester as they are in America.  Also, the swear-in clothing I had made is wonderful.  In true Ethan style, it is fairly ridiculous, but my language teachers thought it will be great for "swear-in."

This next bit it farily depressing, but still a wonderful cultural experience.  One of the last days in my training village, I attended the funeral of an infant.  Our language teacher informed us a child had died, and he said it would mean a lot if we went to the funeral... So we did.  We showed up at the family's housing compound and the women and men split up.  We offered some blessings, and then sat while the older men said some prayers.  After a little while, the men brought the body out wrapped in a mat with some Islamic symblos on it.  The laid it on the ground and then the Muslim men in the group (most of them) prayed over it for a bit.  Then the men went to the cemetary and buried the body.  Being a man, I went along.  They placed the body in a narrow grave and then stacked some mud bricks on top.  Then Imam said some stuff in Arabic, and then they shoveled dirt over it.  They placed a mud brick at the head, as a head stone, and then cut a bough off a bush, and laid it on top of the grave lengthwise.  Then we went back to the compound for some more praying, and then it was over.  Apparently, the women's side of the service was a bit more wild for the following reasons.  Number 1, the father was sick in Bamako.  The father is supposed to be the person who lets people know that the child died.  Since he was not there, no one took it upon themselves to do this, and so no body let the mother know that her child had died as the mother was out in the fields working.  While the men were busy burying the baby the mother returned.  She poked her head in the door, and they told her what had happened.  She collapsed in a heap and started weeping and yelling.  The family quickly ran out and reprimanded her, picked her up, and ushered her out of public view.  It is okay for the mother to cry silently at a child's death, but anything beyond that is culturally unacceptable.  A child's death is sad, but not seen as a big deal in Mali.  If an older person dies, then funeral happens usually within 24 hours, but the festivities will last for many days.  I was thoroughly shocked at this funeral, but I have accepted it for what it is.  Also, I got preturbed at the child who started beating the crap out of a dog during the funeral.  Usually, when I see excessive animal abuse going on I'll yell at the kid, and chase him down, or throw a rock at him/her, but seeing as I was in the middle of a service I didn't think this would be acceptable.  So, I just watched as this dog kept trying to crawl into the kids lap, and roll over on its back, completlely submitting, and the kid just kept smacking with an underripe mango, which are quite firm.  Anyways, the day ended well when we made egg sandwiches and mango salsa. Delicious!!!

The next day we had a going away party, and the chief of the village had a grandchild.  So, the census almost worked out, except late in the day a kid drowned in the canal, but we didn't attend this funeral, if it even happened.  Anyways, we got back to the training compound a few days ago, and as I was writing this I got my birthday package from my parents!!!  Yay!  That's it for now. 

 This picture is one of million Barack Obama merchandise examples.

 My two awesome language teachers: Labassy on the right, and Claudine on the left.

 My host sister, Kadiatou, on the left, and host mom, Awa, on the right.

 My training village group: Claudine, Mario, Thera, Laura, Labassy, Me, Matt, Judy, Rob (L to R)

 Rob and Thera making some choice Mango salsa.

My host family (and a few random people who happened to be nearby when I got out the camera). My host dad, Dramane, is the guy on the right with the blue shirt.  The guy I talked to the most is in the white jersey holding the kid in the green shirt.  The kid is not his, but is terrified of me.  The kid's name is Amadou, and the guy is Douda.  Douda is a rad, smart guy.  He wants to be a lawyer, but is trying to save up as school is pricey.  The older woman on the left is Mase, Dramane's mother.  His wife is Awa in the middle.  The only kid that is his in this picture is the girl in the red shirt, Kadiatou.  Kadiatou is a pistol.  She is a piece of work, but is probably one of the happiest people I have ever met.