Training...

I’ve started homestay for training.  So far, so good.  I must say, for the most part, this set up is much, much nicer than what I had in Mali.  First, the food is good.  It is basically the same every day, but it has flavor… mainly curry, but it is tasty.  Dinner usually consists of rice with lentil sauce, and some sort of curried veggie like spinach and carrots.  Sometimes they throw in these piping hot peppers that really give me a run for my money.  Occasionally we get chicken, and also sometimes dessert.  My favorite so far is rice pudding, but I get banana mushed up in rice that is topped with fresh water buffalo milk.  It is so good.  Fresh milk is super rich and yummy though drinking it is probably a bit of a gamble.  So far no major problems.

My house is a three story house with very low ceilings, but we have pretty constant electricity and a squat toilet inside the house!  Food is eaten with my hands, but not out of the same bowl which is quite a bit more hygienic that Mali.  Obviously it is best not to compare experiences, but that is impossible.  That said I am having a much different experience here.  I am much closer to my host family this time, but that is because I am making an effort to do so.  My host family in my house consists of a mom, dad, younger brother, his wife, the wife of another brother who lives in Kathmandu, that brothers daughter, a great uncle, and a great grandmother.  The little daughter is adorable.  I don’t usually find kids that cute, but this kid is adorable.  She is a happy, happy kid and clearly well loved.

The area is beautiful.  My house is on a ridge, and going down the mountain side on each side are tons of super green terraced rice fields.  I’ll try to post some pictures now.

And of course, that didn't work so I'll try again later today hopefully.

Neato Nepal

Alright, well I guess it is time to start the ol’ blog up again (Notice the change in Title).  For anyone who doesn’t know, which is probably no one, this time I am in Nepal for my new Peace Corps experience.  This is going to be a quick post with a few stories, and some first impressions.

We flew out of DC, early on Friday and spent about 25 hours traveling to Bangkok with a few layovers on the way.  We spent the night in Bangkok last night which was a pretty good time.  We showed up late, and pretty much all of went out for some street food.  So far, no diarrhea from that.  After eating another guy and I went wandering down the street and everyone else went back to the hotel which was a very nice Best Western.  Thank you again taxpayers!!  We eventually found this streetside bar sort of thing with a pickup parked out front pumping some fine jams for the bar.  We sat down and some guys there immediately gave us some what I think was Anise Moonshine.  It had no label but actually tasted pretty good.  Then some hookers sat down next to us, and were sort of touchy which was funny for us.  They asked us if we had wives, we said no.  One of them had a fairly husky voice, and said that she was my friend that she was his wife for the night.  Then after informing us her name was Pat said, “Me boy-girl.”  Then the guy I was hanging out with pointed at me and said, “This guy loves boy-girls!”  Pat was sitting with him, and this explanation brought another hooker over to sit with me who informed me that she was also a boy-girl, though she did not have the voice to match it.  The cops came to the bar a few times; the second time was to move everyone who was outside, inside because I guess that was the rule at 2AM in that district.  Anyways, we just sort of joked around about transvestites among ourselves, and had a few beers and left, but it was a good time.  Stereotypical Bangkok I suppose.

Today we flew to Kathmandu without any hitches, and had some introductory crap sessions.  The city attitude of the city itself is much like Bamako and many other developing cities.  The traffic is crazy, it is dirty, it smells, and there are a lot of random/stray animals.  There are a lot more cows than Bamako, and no one herds them.  They just wander free and people go through great lengths to give them a wide berth.  I definitely did not have the same surreal feelings this time, and a very different sort of excitement.  It was fun to watch the other volunteers’ faces and hear their exclamations as we drove through.  I am looking forward to doing this, but I have a lot insight into this so I am ready to do things a bit different.  I wasn’t quite as excited for the whole experience until I landed in Kathmandu at which point I got really, really excited.  But again, it is a different excitement.

I can’t see the big mountains from Kathmandu, but there are some pretty big, green hills.  The country looks beautiful and I can’t wait to get out and see it. 

Coup and Cabin Feva. The only prescription is more cowbell.

Last week the lovely country of Mali experienced a coup d'etat.  The military decided it wanted to take over the government because they were annoyed that they were not receiving proper money or weapons to fight the Tuareg rebels in the north.  So they did.  What this means for me is that all of the volunteers in the immediate Sikasso regions were called into the stage house until further notice.  All of the volunteers in Mali were called into there respective regional capital stage houses with the exception of the volunteers in and around Bamako because Bamako has the potential to become dangerous quickly so the having volunteers holed there up would make little sense.  From Thursday to Tuesday (27th) the airport and borders were closed.  They are now open though there were protests at the airport today which caused a plane carrying many heads of state from surrounding countries to turn around.  The heads of state were coming in to talk with the new, illegal government of Mali about their options.

The coup seems rather poorly thought through.  It is almost as if they just wanted to make the point that they could take the government, but now that they have they seem unsure of what to do with it.  This coup really has little to no effect on my village because the government essentially does nothing for my village.  There are no roads, taxes, or other public services so who controls the country is of little consequence to my village.  As long as they can farm, they are fine, but we have been restricted to Sikasso in case they need to get us out of the country in a hurry I guess.  There is a lot of more in depth information online regarding this whole situation so I won't go into details, but instead will tell you what this means for me.

I have been in Sikasso since last Saturday couped (ha ha get it) up in the house with 25 other volunteers. Of course, I am doing well, but there is a decent amount tension floating about because this is a fairly stressful situation.  Right now, Peace Corps is taking a wait and see approach if things clear up quickly then we will be allowed to go back to our sites.  If things deteriorate we will be evacuated unlikely to return.  If things stay the same there is a good chance that we will evacuated as well no because of the danger necessarily but because our working relationship with the new government is uncertain and unknown.  Also, most aid organizations are pulling their funding in an effort to strong-arm the new government into restoring the constitution.  This means that the funding we have available for projects will be essentially depleted leaving us with doing only unfunded projects.  While this isn't the end of the world (I have done a few unfunded projects), it does definitely change my service.  My village and I were recently making good progress with USAID to fund a very large fishery project in my village, and I believe USAID has pulled almost all of its funding at this point.  Raising the money for this without USAID or other NGO support is fairly unrealistic so I'll be put back to square one if we stay with current situation.  Anyways, I'll try to people updated as best I can.

The most recent protests in Bamako were pro-coup protests with signs saying things like "Down with ATT" (the overthrown president), and "Down with the international community!"  I don't know how many of those people were under order from the current gov't but there were several thousand of them protesting.  That doesn't seem like a good sign, but my fingers are crossed.

Why I am Thankful for my Education...

Over the past year in Mali I have come to appreciate many, many things about my home, America, and American society.  My education is riding very close to the top of that list.  I readily admit that there are many problems with the American education system and many other American policies as there is a lot of hypocrisies built in, but as a whole, the system works really, really well compared to Mali and I imagine many other countries similar to Mali.  After being here, I've found a new pride in our system even though I had nothing to do with its inception, but I can admire things I didn't make, and I do.

Anyways, I've been attending the first level French class in my village's Madras which is an Islamic Koranic school, and it has been a pretty good experience for me.  Koranic schools are one of a few options in Mali.  There is a public system, a Koranic system, and a private school system.  I'm not sure why my village has opted to build a Madras as opposed to a school that would be part of the public system, but I would guess that is cheaper (funded by Islam), and therefore cheaper to send your kids to.  The public school system is not free, and, like many things in Mali, extremely ineffective and inefficient.  Students come from several villages to attend the Madras in my village, and once they reach a certain point in schooling they go to Sikasso through the 12th grade if they are so inclined.  Very few students do this, I only know of one from my village who is currently in Madras in Sikasso.

The school has three rooms probably about half the size of your average school room in the States.  The French class I attend has 45 students in it.  Most classes (not the French class) are taught in Arabic which  means that students have to learn Arabic just to attend the school.  I think Arabic is a very interesting and beautiful language, but a largely useless one in a country where the official language is French.  The university in Bamako is taught in French so in order to go to college the students graduating from a Koranic school, (unless they've mastered French which is rare), have to go to an Arabic country.  The closest and therefore most reasonable option would be Libya or Egypt and given the current state of affairs in those countries going to either is probably not a viable option.

The French class I have been attending is the first level.  The students range in age from I'd say 8 to maybe 16 or 17.  Boys and girls attend in roughly equal numbers, but the girls must have some sort of head covering.  I have a hard time judging age in this country as everyone is mal-nourished and therefore much, much small than their American same-age peers.  The teacher is a graduate of the the 12th grade in the public school system.  She has an extremely imperfect command of the French language.  When I first met her, I thought it would be interesting to have a French-English teaching exchange in our spare time until I realized just how incomplete her knowledge of French is.  I brought a book of French-English verbs over to her house to facilitate some learning on both sides.  She started flipping through it, and stumbled across a list of French Past Participles.  Granted the title of the section was in English, but the words in French are only used for one thing-conjugating in the past.  Anyways, she goes on to tell me that they are synonyms (which is kind-of true), and then points to the verb "to drink" and then the past participle- "boire" and "bu" respectively.  She said if you are drinking a big glass of something you use the word "boire" but if you are drinking a small glass, such as a little glass of tea you use the word "bu."  Oh boy... That is not quite what a past participle is.

Alright.  I now understand just how little the teacher knows French and it is a big bummer that she is the best the school has for a French teacher.  Obviously, she has little to no teacher training, much less any sort of formal degree in teaching which is not surprising in any way.  The teacher is the only one with a textbook and the textbook is not even a French language textbook.  It is a 5th grade level Ethics and Behavior textbook which is at least written in French but certainly not designed to teach French.  So each day she copies a paragraph out of it onto the board and the students copy it down.  These usually have a theme like "work hard" or "clean your house and yard" or "wash your hands" which I think are great for Malian society where things like washing hands with soap is not commonly practiced or understood.  The students then copy the paragraph into notebooks.  Most are just copying the shapes of whatever is on the board, they can't read the letters.  But it is very obvious when the students do understand what they are writing because their writing is so much clearer.  It's not just a penmanship thing, anyone could tell the difference between the two camps.  Lessons vary slightly, but one of her go to lessons is the "simple" (one verb) vs "complex" (more than one verb) sentence.  She asks who can give her an example of each, and some students understand and answer though I'm not sure they know what a verb is since the sentences they give are always examples that the teacher has given previously.  If they come up with a different one the teacher often gets confused and tells them it is incorrect when it is correct or vice versa.

The teacher walks around with a rubber belt off of an old car or machine and if a student acts up or has answer the teacher deems just too stupid then she hits them with the rubber belt.  It doesn't do any damage, but I'm sure it stings a bit.  Or if the teacher is not feeling like worming her way through the packed desks then she nods to the kid next to the kid who is acting up.  The acting up kid leans forward in the desk, and the kid next to him or her punches him or her in the back.  The teacher says "Voila" and continues.  I can understand why the teachers have to control by fear.  For one thing, they have no training to help them come up with another way, and they can't bribe the kids into good behavior as they have no incentives.  I volunteered in a 2nd grade class in America just before coming here, and if the students were good they got to get a treasure from the "treasure box" at the end of the week.  The treasure box was mostly silly decorated pencils and cheap plastic ring things, but to a second grader those are pretty cool.  And what was easily found, usually for free, at various events and things by the teacher in America would be found here only at the sacrifice of giving up a meal or something like that.  And though decorated pencils are pretty cool, not being hungry is even cooler.

The teacher had bigger ambitions, but those were dashed when she was married off to some guy.  Her husband does not want her to go to University so she can't even try.  Also, now she has a few kids.  Her youngest, being a little over a year old, goes to class with her everyday.  This is obviously necessary but it often takes the attention of teacher off of her job.  The kid frequently will start whining, so the teacher has to pull her shirt down and start breast feeding while teaching.  Definitely multitasking.

Now I know I've painted a fairly bleak picture, but accurately describing a living and rich experience is a tough task so I've had to pick and choose what to share and how to share it.  There is definitely hope in the system, but it is still a tough set up.  A few kids will go on to finish high school through the Madras in Sikasso.  One of my best friends from village is about to finish the 12th grade.  He understands that scholarships exist, but he says he has to do really well on his exams to get one.  I hope he can get to college.  I wish I could pay for it actually because I think investing in education is the smartest investment anyone can make, but I don't have that capacity right now.

I hope I've painted a fair and informative picture of education if Mali, but I probably haven't so keep that in mind as you read this and form your own opinions.  But regardless, what I've described above is why I am so, so thankful for the education and opportunities that being an American has given me.  And again, our system is also flawed, and I think always moving to improve is an awesome and valid goal.  However, I see online and hear/heard from various people so many complaints and criticisms about how stupid, horrible, corrupt, and unfair our system is without so much as a nod towards some of the good aspects of what we enjoy as Americans and it annoys me sometimes.  Right now is one of those times.  I know this will sound elitist and self-righteous, and I think that all opinions are valid and help society evolve as a whole, but I really think all the damn whiners should really shut the fuck up because the fact that they have the ability to write their stupid, uninformed opinions all over the internet is a blessing that literally 74%  of this country does not have.  I am extremely fortunate and nothing has made me understand that better than being here.

Segou Music Festival

I'm still trying to catch up on my blog posts... Sheesh.

From Feb 15th to the 20th I rallied on up to Segou to catch the Festival sur le Niger.  It was a really good time, and I was completely impressed with how set up it was...since it was in Mali.  It was almost like a US concert!!  Just not as loud perhaps, and definitely not on schedule.  The music was from all over the world, but concentrated on artists from Mali and it went all day and all night.  There were two main stages and numerous little venues.  The smaller of the main stages had music during the day, and the bigger of the main stages at night.  The big stage was really, really cool as it was on a barge out in the Niger river (it was only about 5 or 10 feet off shore for obvious reasons).  This made for an amazing backdrop for the music.

During the day admission was free, and I spent the days strolling around catching random shows or parts of shows, sitting by one of the hotel pools, and enjoying the awesome street vendors who came out in force for the festival.  The days tended to be pretty laid-back but super fun, and the street food was way better than it usually is.  At nights everything sort of cranked up a notch.  At around 5 security would come into the area which was barricaded off on one side by the river, on one side by some buildings, and by some built barricades on two other sides.  They'd then proceed to kick everyone out who did not have a wrist band which meant all the poor people because you had to pay for a wrist band.  It was sort of horrible... my friends and I were standing in the big square and after security had kicked everybody out the only people remaining were basically all white.  The wealthier Malians didn't bother to go to the day time shows it would seem and would just show up to the night time shows for the big names.  They'd show up a little later.  The big stage was scheduled to start each night at 7 or 8, but usually was an hour or so behind.  For some reason, they were not good at getting the sound checks done ahead of time or in a timely manner, so the headliners usually didn't hit the stage until 11pm or so.  The shows usually went until about 2 in the morning and were followed by a DJ for an after party each night at a different locale.  I only managed to get to the after party two nights just because I was so tired, and the after party would usually go until 5 or 6 am.  I was just not up for staying up that late too much especially since sleeping much past 8 was very difficult due to the heat.  I was camped out at the designated "camping area" which was just a dirt parking lot inside one of the hotel compounds and once the sun hit me, it was just too hot to consider sleeping any more.

The main acts were generally pretty good.  Again they could have been louder, but I really like loud music so I'm not sure if I'm a good judge of the volume.  Also, the organizers did not do a great job with the flow of the shows.  For example, the big night (Sat) had a bunch of big names, and the place was packed and buzzing with energy.  They started out with a Malian blues guitarist, followed by a Kenyan rock and roll group that got everybody really pumped and excited.  At 11pm they brought out a very famous Malian singer, who had a nice voice, but was kind of like a Malian version of Enya.  Nice to listen to, but basically put everybody to sleep right before the main act which made the main act's job a lot harder because he had to get everybody going again.  The main act was Salif Keita who is an albino Malian, and one of the most famous Malian musicians.  He tours internationally, and puts on a pretty good show.  All the shows had good lighting by Malian standards, and the big names even had one little flame thrower in the back for some pyrotechnics.  The lighting and fire was sort of funny though because it all seemed very random.  In the states, I am used to well rehearsed shows with the lighting and all the other elements coordinated with the music.  Here, it seemed like the light board operator just sort of randomly decided when to feature certain lights and effects.  Like..."Hmmm... let's see, I haven't pushed the flame thrower button in a while.  I'll do it...NOW!"  And up would go the flames during one of the calmest part of a song instead of hitting the big breaks for emphasis.

One of my favorite acts was on Sunday (the last day), and it was a Venezuelan drum groups with an electronic "fusion."  So, it was a couple of guys playing "African" style drums and a DJ who would put some fun electronic music behind the extremely talented drums.  I thought these guys should have taken the place of the Enya-like lady instead of playing Sunday when the crowd was tired and laid-back and just looking for some light music to sit back and groove to.  If they had played Saturday night instead they would have had a super-high energy and fun crowd.  The crowd was probably my favorite part of the whole festival.  It was fun to experience Malian music in a Malian crowd as they got really into the music.  I usually pushed my way through the crowd to the front where people were going nuts!  They were really dancing and singing along to all the tunes they knew.  One night I ended up by some really drunk Malians which was really fun because most Malians don't drink so it was a new experience for me.  Because I look homeless, the asked if I was Jesus, so of course I said, "yes."  Then they got really stoked and started chanting "Jesus! Jesus!" and lifting me up in the air (I think they were some of the few Christians in Mali).  Man, what a good time!!

Happy Birthday Muhammad

So as I'm sure everybody knows the 4th of February is Muhammad's birthday.  In village this resulted in some interesting experiences.  The night before we had goat with our rice and sauce, and on the morning of the fourth I went to wander around village.  I ended up at the mosque where things were getting serious.  Everyone had gathered around the mosque and were just kind of staring off into space (perhaps it was a look of religious fervor)... Some people were dozing, and there was some sort of sermon on the radio that they had hooked up to the mosque's "call-to-prayer" loudspeaker.  This sermon thing was being broadcast in Arabic which might account for the dozing and staring as very, very few people in my village actually understand any Arabic.  Almost everyone can say the Arabic prayers, but they are just repeating sounds.  Most don't actually understand what they are saying.

Occasionally, there would be a break in the prayer and a gruff voice would bark something like "hit the dirt it's prayer time!!!"  The people in the mosque itself would quickly put their heads on the ground in "prayer position," and the people outside the mosque in the chairs (it was full) would cover their face with their hands and some also put their heads between their legs.  Others (like my host dad) were slightly less involved.  He kind of covered his eyes with one hand and continued to pick at the dirt under his toenails with the other.  The radio would give a few "allahu ackbars" and then some other prayers then the sermon would continue.

During the prayer break many of the kids would throw themselves onto the dirt and press their foreheads to the ground to, I guess, show their devotion to Allah, but the funny part is that many of the kids did face the correct direction (being East in this part of the world).  Of course they are just kids, but I have asked some of my friends in village why they pray towards the east and they don't know.  Religion can be a powerful thing I guess.  Imagine the potential power the imams have in a country whose people can't read the religious text, and have little contact to the rest of the religious world (for comparison).

"Uh.. So it says right here that you have to give the Imam 70% of your wealth or uh... you'll burn eternally."
"Really? That seems like a lot."
"Uh, yeah.  It says so right here."
"Well okay, here ya go."

After a little while I left, one because it was fairly dull as I couldn't understand anything. It was sort of like listening to static.  And two because it just felt strange to sit with a bunch of people in the heat who were listening to something they couldn't understand...and why?  Well, they were just told to.  The perfect soldiers.  Following directions without question is not an activity that I can be part of comfortably.

Later I came back for lunch, and I had a sort of refugee camp experience.  Many cows were killed in honor of Muhammad.  All the adults got to eat first, and so there was only one bowl for all the kids.  The bowl was put down and a fight broke out over the food.  Watching that felt like I was watching a movie or a news broadcast about a refugee camp.  But it was a good experience with some tasty food.

Well...Repairing wells.

Oh dear... I've got some catching up to do. Time to stop panicking...okay. Go time.

I've finally completed my first project which I had projected to finish in October, but after many delays getting funding and then a delay due to villager work overload during potato planting time, work has finished.  When we started doing the work I decided I wanted to take pictures of the process because a picture is worth a thousand words, but my lovely camera has decided it no longer likes turning on so now I am left with writing many, many thousands of words, or just doing a mediocre job of explaining the project.  (I've decided on the latter).

First, I went to a welder in Sikasso and gave him the dimensions of the doors I wanted built along with a pulley "system" design I came up with that the villagers will make more use of than the designs I've seen around Mali so far which very quickly stop being used (Explanation later).  Then we had to dig up all the old "structure" from the tops of the two small wells that we fixed.  The structure on one consisted of an older tire and some rotting logs, and on the other some rotting logs, old poorly mixed cement, and rocks.

After that we built the metal framework that was to go inside the cement.  The mason we hired knew how to do this, and it is made of rebar that he bent in whatever shape he needed then secured with pieces of bailing wire.  Probably not the strongest system, but I guess you make do with what you have here.  However, it makes me a little nervous about some of the major infrastructure here...

"Say Bob, looks like our welder broke.  How are we going we going to finish this bridge?"
"Uh...I've got some shoe string.  What do you think?"
"Yeah... that aughta work."

After the metal framing was built we constructed two wooden frameworks: one to go inside and one to go outside of the metal, and to the wood we strapped aluminum plating.  This was our cement casing.  In places where the frame did not meet the contour of the well making an open gap between the frame and the well (which would mean the cement would just fall into the well) we jammed some rocks.  Then we mixed cement and filled the casing, and built a cement pad around the wells.  This happened over several days as we had to let certain parts dry before building the rest.  Also, for parts I'm not entirely sure about the sand to cement to gravel ratio that we were using.  The mason seemed to know what he was doing (more so than me at least), but based on the brownish tint to some of the cement, I feel like they might have been putting more than the recommended sand quantity to stretch the cement.  They haven't broken yet though so I guess that's good.

After everything was dry we attached the door to the tops using what else?  Bailing wire and cement.  Then we filled the area around the cement pads with gravel so all the spilled water running off the cement wouldn't become a mud pit.

Finally we attached the door to the big, round, professionally done, NGO provided well.  This well previously had a door, but it has since rusted to nothing so I had a new one built.  This is the well I designed the pulley system for.  The others are too small so the pulleys wouldn't work well due to spacial constraints.  I've seen pulley systems where there is a framework above the well and a pulley or two hanging off it with a fixed line and bucket thingy.  But when the rope breaks it seems that it is not replaced because in Mali everyone has their own rope and bucket thing since most wells don't have fixed lines.  So why replace a community rope when everyone has their own anyways?  Also, those systems only are able to use one or two buckets at a time when its time to get wash water after dinner, for example, there would be a huge line if only one or two people could get water.

The reason I wanted pulleys is because the young girls who frequently get water don't have the strength or height to pull the water without rubbing the rope along the edge of the well and consequently the rope wears through the metal frame of the door after many years of doing this.  So I decided to have pulleys attached to the door framework sticking out into the well so instead of having the rope rub against the door frame they can put the rope in the groove of the pulley wheel and use that and since it rolls it won't get cut up.  Of course having a pulley just kind of sticking out into empty space isn't all that strong, but for what they use them for they should be fine, and as long as they paint the door and frame and pulley housing every so often it shouldn't rust apart...though I don't have very high expectations for the painting schedule.

So far, everything works well my villagers seem very happy with them.  I've had a number of people come up to me and tell me and say that they hold me in a good light because I've helped them, and that it means a lot to them.  That makes me feel really, really good and I'm very proud of getting that project done because it wasn't easy and it gives me a tangible impact that I can see everyday which isn't necessary for this kind of work, but it really helps boost morale.