Mid-April Update!

I just returned from a little vacation in Northern Mali. I decided I needed a break plus I wanted to go see one of my friend's sites. Ryan used live near me in a train town about 3 hours (by train) south of Kayes. He extended for a third year to live in a village, because his first two years were not in a village and he wanted that experience, and he ended up moving across the country. His site is right in the middle of Dogon country, as it happens, so on my vacation in Mali I was also a tourist.

We spent an extra day in Bandiagara, which I like to call the "gateway" to Dogon country. Bandiagara is a medium sized town that happens to be where all the roads to the Dogon villages come from. In most cases you can get to the villages from other routes but it's the most common starting point for Dogon trips. When my parents and sisters came we went through Bandiagara. The roads then branch out like a spider web from there. This map shows it all pretty well (Pays = Country in French):The most touristy villages are below the cliffs. If you take the road that goes towards Bankass you can hit these villages. These villages have lots of campements (hostels) that allow the traveler a very authentic, yet comfortable stay in the villages. In these areas the villages are relatively new because many of them used to live IN the cliffs. There are old mud ruins still in the cliffs.(Abigail and Me in January in Teli, an old cliff village in the touristy part of Dogon country)

Apparently the Dogon people were trying to flee from Western Mali and found refuge in the cliffs. Now there are only a couple of villages where the people still live in the cliffs. The other popular tourist villages are on the top of the cliffs looking out over them.

Ryan's village, however, is nowhere near these places and after two trips to the touristy areas it was a refreshing experience to be in the untouched part of Dogon country. Ryan's village is north of Bandiagara on the road to Kendie where we later went for market day. We got up early and piled into a horribly overstuffed van that was bright orange. Malians prefer the clown-car method when packing transport. First put in the rice sacs then proceed to board in no particular order or plan. Usually the people who have to get out first logically places themselves at the bottom of the pile. Always fun telling the sardines to unpack the car. We walked into Ryan's tiny little village and were met by greetings that I am not familiar with. One of the coolest and also frustrating things about Dogon country is that there are so many languages. We passed through several villages over the 35 km ride from Bandiagara and, while these villages are no more than 4 or 5 km apart, they speak completely different dialects of Dogon. In some cases the different villagers cannot even understand each other's dialects. My Bambara was not really useful here (except among some of the more educated villagers). I did learn to greet...well to greet in the morning, I never quite got the rest of it.

We got to Ryan's house which I will describe later and dropped off our bags, filled up water bottles, plugged the ipod into the portable speakers and headed off to market. We listened to "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me" and Eddie Izzard stand-up while we trudged through the bush. We climbed up a short cliff to get cell phone service and check messages then headed back down into a cute little village that will forever remain my favorite of all Malian villages.

(Climbing down from the cliffs where we found cell phone service.)

The village we reached supposedly had a pump but when we got to it, the pump was locked so we decided to go ask the village chief or someone who spoke Bambara if anyone had the key. Pump water comes from such a deep water source that it's potable right when it flows out of the pump, so we were going to fill up our water bottles then head on to the next village, but this didn't work out like we planned.

(These are kids walking with us from the pump up to find someone with the key.)

This village was so great because when you were walking into it you could hardly see it. We had come in from below between some cliffs in a little gorge where the villagers keep their gardens. I didn't see the houses until Ryan pointed them out to me. We hiked up into the village and found the chief but apparently the man with the pump key had gone to market. We rebuked them for not allowing their village unlimited access to clean drinking water then begged for them to give us any that they had already pulled and stored. They gave us water, but the origins were curious, so we thanked them then considered how we were to make home with out dying of thirst. (The village from above)

We decided to hike out a few minutes, eat some of the pb&j we had brought with us, and filter the water through Ryan's shirt (his wasn't necessarily the cleanest but I couldn't take mine off because a troop of children had followed us out of the village) and then bleach the water and let it sit for 30 minutes. We just assumed we'd be fine now and deal with the ramifications of drinking dirty water in a week or so after the parasites has successfully moved in. We walked on listening to Eddie Izzard and occasionally running across people from Ryan's village leaving the market town we were heading to. When we arrived in Kendie it was about 4 pm and it was similar to the last village, surrounded by fields and places safely atop a little butte like it was a fortress. We went to the pump in this village and found that it was actually and Artesian well (An aquafer that has a natural pressure to it so the water doesn't have to be pumped out. The water continually runs until there is not more pressure, which is a very long time).

We filled our bottles and bleached them to be safe (Ryan wasn't sure if it was an Artesian well) and then climbed up into the fortress. We walked through some narrow streets then exited to see this:Market day! We took stairs down into the market, the coolest market I've seen in Mali and bought some food for dinner and breakfast the next morning. Where I live there aren't any small village markets. In the Northern part of Kayes the villagers come from a lot more money and therefore have better transport and access to better food. In Kayes, there is a big market everyday, whereas in other big cities in Mali there is a small market everyday except for one day a week. In the surrounding villages there are also weekly markets to supplement the villagers' needs. I always get really excited when I see markets because I'm so deprived of these small village activities. We took transport back to Ryan's village, ate dinner and talked until we fell asleep.

The next morning we got up with the sun, we were sleeping outside. It's hot season now so it's really awful to sleep inside, especially in villages where there's no electricity for fans or AC. We made eggs for breakfast with Moringa leaves and then get ready for a short little trip to the onion gardens and the dam. Walking out there was nothing more than a stroll, so it was easy and the temperature was pleasant (it was probably in the high 90s but we're so used the heat that even the high 90s can feel cool to us).

(Looking upriver, there are cows getting a little drink as they roam across Mali)

(Downriver you can see the lush green onion fields climbing up the banks.)

(Ryan on the dam with some children trying to greet.)

Even in this village that was only about 3 or 4 km away and they had different greetings that Ryan didn't know. We sat on the top of the dam and watched the villagers walk down to the river and fill up gourds with water then walk back up and water the onions. Why do the Dogon people grow onions if there is so little water and onions use a lot of water? I think it's because onions keep so well. All other vegetables (besides garlic maybe) go bad very quick after they ripen so all the work watering them is fruitless, as it were, if they can't keep the veggies without refrigeration until they need them later on in the year. There is also a special thing Ryan's village women do with the onions. Everyday, after they've harvested all the onions they could that day from their personal onion beds, most of the women go down to where the river is dry during hot season. There are fabulous black sandstone rocks that look like giant stairs. On the biggest areas the women lay out the onions (after their green stalks have been cut off) and let them dry all through the next day. The following afternoon as the sun is going down they push all the onions together with their feet and make a huge pile (not unlike the piles of leaves we make with rakes in the fall). Then 10 or 15 of them get in a circle and with special mallets that look like pestels but have only one blunt end they pound the onions. Ryan and I got to help them do this, it was one of the coolest things I've done in Mali. As we pounded the onions we shifted in a circle. Beating the mallets on the hard rock and mushy onions the women sang songs in their dialect of Dogon. They even sang songs about Ryan and me, but we didn't know what they were saying. They would stop periodically to look at my hands to make sure I didn't have blisters, I said I didn't even though I did because I wanted to keep helping. After the onions were all mashed they pile them into buckets and take them home where they roll them into baseball sized balls and then let them dry and sell them in the market. That night we ate chicken, listened to more NPR (including an interview with our beloved Obama) and then did some yoga. I stopped the yoga before Ryan and took a shower. As I was getting ready for my shower I spotted something evil and crawly and instead of being calm and mature I screamed "SCORPION!" even though it wasn't a scorpion. Ryan jumped off his yoga mat and helped me search for the not-scorpion. Actually I think it was one of the super fast moving tarantulas that eat scorpions. Malians say that if you see a spider then you'll probably see a scorpion. And then we DID! The little tiny white scorpions are actually the most dangerous ones here, but none of them will kill you, unless you were really sick and somehow it stung you on your spinal cord or right inside your heart, which I'm sure is impossible. The spiders are also harmless, but beyond frightening, especially for how fast they move. This is a gigantic version of what I saw: http://www.awfulgames.com/fun/camelspider/

I'm still getting the heebie-jeebies. Okay, so after the next day Ryan and I headed back to Bandiagara for the night then into Bamako, the rest of the trip was less exciting and not worth reporting on my blog.

These are pictures of Ryan's house and latrine. In Dogon there is rock everywhere. The reason why there is so little water in Dogon country is because in most places it's impossible to dig wells. They need high tech drilling machines or dynamite which aren't easy to come by or affordable. Most villages have wells or pumps that were donated by NGOs or something. Since they have so much rock they put it to good use. The make bricks! All the buildings are made of mud and stone bricks. The roofs are made of mud and wood posts.

The latrines, however, are made of cement and rocks. When I say latrines I mean two latrines. In Ryan's village there are two. He has one and so does the teachers. Because there is rock everywhere, and, as I said, it's difficult to dig holes in rocks, the Malians just walk out into the bush and do their business. No need for a latrine. Ryan's latrine is actually only for defacation, you're supposed to urinate on the floor of the shower which is next to the latrine (down an itty bitty staircase). In the best built latrines there is a drawer for the underpart of the latrine that can be opened when the latrine is full and removed and used as fertilizer. (Uncle Art was telling me that at George Washington's house in Virginia they have latrines like this, they used the waste to fertilize the garden!)

Okay, so now I'm back in Kayes. I've been here for about a week and I'm pretty busy these days. On April 20th and 21st we're having our First Annual April Regional Meeting. Normally we have an In-Service Training in Bamako that lasts a week, but this year they decided to start a new thing. The great part about this is that it caters to smaller groups of volunteers and the technical training can be relevant to the region they are in instead of broadly talking about all of Mali. After reading this post you can see how diverse Mali is both culturally and geographically so these regional meetings are a great way to improve our training. Anyway, Peace Corps asked me to plan it because I'm the most available second year volunteer in the region. It's been fun and difficult and I'm getting nervous for the actual meeting, but I think it will go well. I've learned a lot and have been able to help Peace Corps out.

I'm also still working with Moussa Kone, my tailor. He and I decided that it was better to not go forward with the school right now because his business needs some work. He is very competent but he doesn't have any staff who he can rely on when he is not there and he's still doing some tailoring which takes away from his time running the business. We've talked about getting him a new shop so that he can sell clothes from a front boutique and have tailors in the back and he needs more money to do this. I suggested we start making bags to sell to tourists so this is our current project. Hopefully Susie will be coming to Kayes in May to do a quick formation for Moussa's tailors on some basic business skills so they might be able to help out with accounting stuff. All in all, it's going really well and I'm getting some awesome clothes made.