Greetings,
I got back to Tubani So today, after 5 days in M'piedougou and it's been an interesting week to say the least. We left Tubani So at 7:00 am last Sunday for the bus station in Bamako, quite a seedy place, and boarded the most pathetic vehicle I've ever seen. This bus, if you can call it that, looked as if it had been constructed from parts of 50 year old buses, 25 years ago. Not only did it get me to my destination without breaking down, it was able to traverse the many miles of dried up river beds, which Malians call roads. The bus took me as far as the town Kolondieba, my banking/market town. I had to bike the final 23 k's (14 miles) to M'piedougou. I knew I'd be biking the last leg of the journey, but I wasn't aware it was 23 k's. That wasn't the bad part though. No, what sucked was biking 23 k's at 1:00 in the afternoon, in Africa, during hot season, with no water. By time I made it to my village, I was seeing spots of light in my peripheral vision. Then to my great pleasure, I realized they don't sell bottled water in my town. Since I didn't have room to bring my water filtration system, I had to use the iodine tablets the Peace Corps provided me. And those take 1/2 hour to treat the water. Good times. While I was counting down the 1800 seconds until I could drink water, I checked out my house. It's a 2 room, mud-brick house. I wont have to worry about being alone though, because I have plenty of roommates... spiders, scorpions, cockroaches, various other insects, bats and rats.
All of the insects, I expected, because well, it's Africa. The bats and the rats are a bit of an issue though. My counterpart, Sitafa told me he'd "take care" of it, so we'll see what comes of that. In case you're not aware of the counterpart concept, every volunteer serving in every country gets assigned a counterpart from his/her village. That person is supposed to serve as your partner in all endeavors over the 2 years of service. So my counterpart is Sitafa Sangere. He is 46, married to one (he's aiming to pick up a 2nd wife) and has 8 kids. He's a farmer and an adult literacy agent. One of the first thing I noticed in my house was the gigantic spiders on the walls. I swatted one with my shoe and hit it directly. There was a big glob of spider guts on the wall, but I couldn't see what happened to the carcass. Finally, I realized it was still on the wall but about 4 feet to the right. I wasn't sure how it got there, but at that point my water was ready so i lost interest in the spider. I drank my water, came back to my room, and much to my chagrin, realized the spider had moved up the wall again. Yeah, the bastard was still alive after enduring a direct blow from my shoe. Impressive to say the least.
Not long after that battle, my counterpart served me dinner which was overcooked spaghetti with plenty of msg and vegetable oil. Let me tell you, nothing's more appetizing after partial dehydration than overcooked, msg-laden noodles, drenched in oil. As I said, my banking/market town, Kolondieba, is 23 k's away. Every Monday there's a bus to K-dieba. Any other time I have to bike 46 k's round trip if I want to buy anything. So I planned on going the next morning and buying myself some food for the week. Well, nobody told me the bus leaves at 7:30 am, so there was no market for me. There are a couple little stores in M'piedougou but they sell cigarettes, matches, tea, sugar, salt, and sometimes stale bread. Aside from that, there's nothing. And since we're approaching the height of hot season, there's not much growing in the fields/gardens right now and the water table looks like it's about 30 meters below.
Another issue was that they hadn't quite finished my outhouse yet. They'd put a whole in the ground, so it was "functional" but only 3 of 4 walls were put up. Eh, what can you do? They did end up finishing the last wall by Thursday. There's definitely some issues and aggravations I'll be dealing with over the next 2 years, but that's probably why I'm here. My village is beautiful. It's like stepping 200 years into the past and there are a lot of areas in which I can work. Childhood malnutrition is a big problem throughout Mali and it's particularly bad in my region. I'm going to try to focus a lot of my projects on food security and food education as well as environmental work. Some projects I hope to get started are working with the women's association to improve the community garden and to make sure that the village is actually getting some of the produce and they're not just selling it all. I also want to work on storage methods because a stupid amount of food just spoils on the ground. There's a tree called Moringa which grows very well in the Saheil and it's incredibly nutritious. The leaves have something like 3Xs the vitamin C of oranges, twice the iron of spinach, and 4Xs the calcium of milk. The seeds are also edible and you can use them to filter water. The root is edible as well. So, I want to start educating my village on the use of that tree. I told my boss, Yacouba Kone, I was interested in raising goats for milk, cheese, and meat. He was happy to hear that b/c he's wanted an environment volunteer to start a goat's milk project in my region for awhile. Northern Malians use goat milk all the time, but the concept is pretty much unheard of down south. Once again focusing on food security, goats milk is another continuous and sustainable source of nutrition year round. I also plan on raising chickens, ducks, turkey, and guineafowl for my own personal use. I never heard of guineafowl before coming here, but they're delicious. Well, the internet que is building up so I'll leave it there for now. Hope everything is going well back home.
Peace and Love friends,
Rege
