Michael and Jennifer in Mali

Difficult decision

Mon, 11 Sep 2006 19:08:33 GMT

Hello readers-

After 6 good weeks in Mali, and much thought and consideration about what we want to be doing for the next two years of our lives, we have decided to come back to the States.
It was a very difficult decision, especially because it was mostly Michael who did not want to stay in Mali.
When we were applying for the Peace Corps we could not really know what it would be like. It was impossible to talk to anyone, read anything, or get a true feeling for how life would be here until we came and saw for ourselves. We went most of the way through training, and lived like Malians for the better part of the last month and a half. We learned the local language, ate the food, and most importantly lived the culture. However, after experiencing Mali so far, and visiting our future site, Michael was having doubts about spending the next two years here. The way Peace Corps works is that once you are trained, you swear-in to become an official volunteer then move to your site and start your project. It doesn't make any sense to move to site, build new relationships, move into a new community, and set up a residence if your heart is not in it. Sure, Michael would be fine here for another couple months or so but doesn't feel excited enough to commit to the next two years. It is sort of frowned upon to terminate service once you are an official volunteer and the two year commitment is pretty strongly expected. We did not want to move to a new community and then leave them in 6 months or a year. It is not uncommon for a volunteer to commit to two years then be unhappy later but feel too guilty to leave the commitment that they just stay and be miserable. Michael felt like this would probably have been the case with him but since we are a packaged deal, Jennifer is coming home too.
We know this is probably surprising to many of you but just know that nothing bad happened to make us want to leave.
We do not regret coming and had many eye-opening experiences while we were here. We have enjoyed the experience and it has changed our way of seeing the world. We met some awesome people (both Malians and Americans) that have made a memorable impact on us.
We can go into more details later. It is very complicated to try to explain it in a blog.

Talk to you soon!
Mike and Jen

Future Site

Tue, 05 Sep 2006 15:17:40 GMT

Greetings from Mali!

It has been a busy week and we have a lot of information to share with all of you! We left last Sunday to visit our future sites but for Michael and I we were only able to stay at our site for 2 days. We did a lot in those two days and it was pretty overwhelming. On Sunday night we got the best surprise yet since we have been in Mali: a sweet hotel room with a toilet and shower. It was so nice to take a hot shower and have an air conditioner! I know we were so spoiled.... We arrived in our village, Diaramana, on Monday night and were introduced to the chief and the mayor. It was funny because we had a driver and a Peace Corps director to help settle us in. The chief spoke to the driver in Bambara and then the driver spoke to our director in French and then the director spoke to us in English!!! Lots of translation and it took awhile to introduce everyone. They took us to our house and we got to look around and spend the night in it. Some volunteers are taking over for ones that will be leaving in a month so they just inherit all their stuff but our site is a new site which means we don't have anything in our house. We get to do a lot of shopping later for furniture, kitchen supplies, etc.... The Peace Corps provides us with a moving in allowance so it will permit us to get everything we need to make it a nice place to live.

Our house is a former site of World Vision, an NGO (non-governmental organization). World Vision is a Christian based organization that does a lot of work on AIDS, female circumcision, and infant nutrition. They closed their office in Diaramana last year but are still around in neighboring communities. We have a large concrete house with 6 rooms. It has a tin roof and there are many windows so good ventilation! We have a large courtyard with lots of trees and vegetation which is fenced in and we have a gate that locks. We also have our own latrine so we are glad to not have to share one anymore. There is a faucet nearby our house that was broken but the mayor assured us that it would be fixed by the time we got back. It is dug deep like a pump so the water is drinkable and there is a well nearby to get bathing water. The only problem with our house is that no one has been in it for awhile and it has a termite problem. They are going to paint the window frames and the wooden dropdown ceiling so hopefully that should make the little pests go away. The house is completely wired for electricity and so has lights in every room and plug-ins but when World Vision left, they gave the generator to town hall so no electricity for us! What a bummer but we are hoping to get a solar panel so we can power at least a light and a fan! We will feel so content if we could have a little air flow at night!!!!!!!!!!! Also, Mike is planning on building a hanger over the patio so we can have some shade and maybe sleep outside during the hot season. He is going to build a garden in the courtyard too.

The first two days in our village were busy. We were taken to the mayor which is our host family and were introduced to the elders of the village. They presented us with a chicken and several guinea fowl eggs. We traveled with a language tutor so we had to do language classes for 4-5 hours each day too.
It is a village of 4, 600 people and it is large enough to have schools, two shops, two phone cabines, a market once a week, a youth center, a church, a mosque, and CSCOM (health center). Diaramana is considered the chef of the commune (county seat) consisting of 17, 000 people which means that there are lots of smaller villages nearby where we can do extension work. We got to experience a market day which happens about once a week and so many people from neighboring villages came with trucks packed to the brim. We will have the opporunity to buy vegetables, pastas, bike parts, cloth, clothes, toiletries, batteries and pretty much anything we are looking for is there. We did not see any fruits though so we were a little bummed...but one current volunteer said it was a difficult season for them.

Our working counterparts are very friendly and talked a little about what we would be doing during our two years. Jennifer will be working in the maternity ward of the CSCOM helping with pre-natal consultation, vaccinations, infant nutrition, and doing animations in other villages about the importance of getting children vaccinated. Don't worry though she will not be delivering babies or giving shots to children just doing paperwork and talking with the women about infant development and the steps they can take to increase the health of their children.
Mike's counterpart is nice and is the head of a local conservation organization. He was handing out trees the first morning we met him so that sounds promising. In the dry season they go around to neighboring villages and educate people on how and when to cut trees for fuelwood. Mike is still a little unclear about this because most of rural Mali's fuel needs comes from wood so he may look into alternate fuel sources. Also, since we can pretty much make any project that we want, Mike might spill over into agriculture a little. There are tons of fields surrounding our village with corn, millet, cotton, etc...so he wants to look into how farmers are selecting and saving seed for next season. He is hoping that he will have the language skills to try a sort of selective breeding program with the farmers.

The biggest city close to our site is Segou and it is located on the Niger River. It is less busy than Bamako and there are good restuarants that serve pizza, pasta, and sandwiches. This is good because we are always wanting to escape the rice and sauce that we have for nearly EVERY meal. Part of the reason we were only at site for 2 days is because we had to do protocols in Segou the city in addition to the local ones that each of us did in our village. On Friday we went around town and meet the Governor of the Segou region, the police chief, and both gendarme (french for national guard) divisions. The Governor asked a volunteer stationed in Segou city to develop an english club where people can get together and practice english and encouraged those of us in villages to do the same. We also saw that there was a possiblity to paint some murals on the walls of the schools...maybe a world map or something.

We are at Tubaniso again for "Counterpart Day" where we hang out with our counterparts and talk about future work plans. We have some more language lessons and the usual training until Thursday morning when we return to Moribabougou. We stay there for 3 weeks before getting finally "sworn in" as volunteers. We will have some technical training (health training for health volunteers, ag for aggies, etc) during those 3 weeks. We'll keep you posted! :)

Pictures:
--a white-box-of-death (bush taxi) with goats strapped to the top and chickens bungeed to a cardboard box in the back
--donkey cart: the only method of transportation to the main road for many volunteers (us 5 days of the week- the other two we can take a bush taxi)
--the courtyard with a eucalyptus tree, a mango tree, several orange trees, hybiscus plants (the leaves are dried to make a drink), okra plants, and a millet stalk
--the rest of the yard
--the side of the house with Jen on the patio (where we are going to build a hanger)
--front of the house
--back of the house
--the chain-link fence around the courtyard and the gate
--a huge truck packed with stuff for market came from nearby Koutiala (the bottom half is hidden behind that wall)
--a giant baobab tree (like the big fake one at Disneyworld's Animal Kingdom, except this one is real....also, Rafiki the baboon from Lion King lived in one!)
--Us on our patio at sunset

CLICK ON THEM TO MAKE THEM LARGER

Let us know what's new!
Michael and Jennifer

Future site update

Fri, 25 Aug 2006 10:49:55 GMT

We returned to our homestay village for a week and now are at Tubaniso getting ready to visit our future site for the first time.

This past week we went over more language and we are slowly getting there....We took a language test on Thursday morning and Michael and I both did pretty well. We scored at a Mid-Intermediate level and that is where the Peace Corps is hoping all volunteers will be at by the end of training. We were relieved because many people had told us that married couple's scores were lower because they often reverted to English and did not practice as often. So the next remaining weeks we will continue to learn language and should only get better we hope!!!!!!!

Life in our homestay family has been lots of fun. We have warmed up to the kids as they have with us as well. We play jump rope, frisbee, soccer, and cards. Mike is still working on it but there is a similar "crazy eights" in Mali but the rules are all twisted! He keeps playing just to try to figure out all the rules. The kids always want to play and as you can tell from the pictures like to pose for the camera! One afternoon the three wives, us, and some of the adolescent children played cards, which was so much fun!

We had a salad night at a volunteer's house and it was a party! Aside from many rounds of spearmint tea and peanuts, we fixed salad, roasted corn, and grilled kabobs. The salad had leaf lettuce (actually more common here than iceburg!), cucumbers, onions, and tomatoes. The kabobs were marinated in dijon mustard, garlic, parsely, and peppercorns. Tasty!
It was a little weird though. It was at the house of a very modernized Malian. There was a TV, DVD player, and she had a fridge with ice! We listened to old American highlights...Celine Dion, Rod Stewart, Sean Paul, R Kelly...good times.

This past week, our family gave us Malian names. Michael's is Moussa Keita and Jennifer's is Fatoumata Keita. Jen's nickname is Fatty which is pretty funny. The Malians don't understand that this is an insult in the United States. They keep telling Jen that she needs to bulk up and you can imagine Jen's response!!!! We are waiting for all the kids in the neighborhood to learn our names so that when Jen is riding by on her bike, they can chase her yelling "Fatty! Fatty! Fatty!" hahahahhaha... Jen says this will only fly in Africa!
Mike had a similar case. A brother of one of the other volunteers was talking to us all one day. After she returned home that day, her brother kept talking about Michael. He was amazed that Mike and him were the same age but looked so different...Mike is so tall, and big, and hairy...He kept sighing and saying that he was really jealous...Also, he couldn't believe that someone of Mike's physical stature would have such a thin wife...especially one older than him!!! In Mali, thin=weak, big/fat=strong/powerful, and hairy=enjoying life. The next day he introduced his girlfriend to the volunteer. His girlfriend is only 17 but is so tall/huge/fat and he was bragging about how awesome it was that she already so big at 17!

Ok now on to the big news! All of us found out our sites last night and that was an exciting time. We have been placed in Diaramana (the D is pronounced like a J sound here, kinda sounds like the name Jeremiah). It sounds like a pretty neat site and we are looking forward to checking it out! The location of the village is Southeast of the city of Segou and it is fairly close to the city of Bla. We are leaving for the site on Sunday and a Language Facilitator is coming with us to show us around and to continue working on language. The village has wanted a volunteer since 2002 so they are very anxious to meet us. We don't know a lot about the village but plan to give you a full report when we return in one week. As far as we know, our host family in the village will be the mayor and we will be living in an old World Vision (non-governmental organization) house that was closed down a few years ago. We don't know about electricity or what our house looks like so everyone will have to check back next week. We know we have our own well and there is a market at least once a week to buy fruits and vegetables.

Jennifer will be working in a CSCOM (french accronymn for community clinic/heath center) with a local Malian. She will be doing infant nutrition, baby weighing, malaria prevention, and family planning. Also, her working counterpart is married to the school director so she will be able to do lots of work inside the school doing hygiene promotions with the school children. Michael doesn't have an exact project yet. He is supposed to assess the village's needs as far as reforestation, tree nurserys, erosion control, erosion reduction in gardens, and reduction of destructive harvesting of firewood during the dry season. It could really be anything that needs to be done. We'll see.

CLick on pictures to view them larger...

Pictures:
--a cool hornbill-looking bird (you know, like the one from "The Lion King")
--Mike and some of the host family kids (front row from left= Sebu/Sago [the youngest have nicknames], a cousin who's name we dont know, Nounhoun/Babu, Adama ; second row from left= Jonta, Fatoumata/Mami, Batoma [in pink], Jenebu [not pictured is her twin Aminatu])
--Jen and most of the host family kids (same as the last picture but with Draman (older guy) and Jita (older girl)
--Donkeys outside the school buildings
--Jen with Nounhoun
--Our host parents- Sama and his latest wife Hawa- drinking tea in the school courtyard
--Mike shucking corn with the kids
--The Bambara students with our teacher Diatrou Dembele (who speaks Bambara, Malinke, French, and English) at Beth's (the one with the braided hair) house...yes, that is a pomegranate bush behind us...(notice Mike's M.C. Hammer pants
--Palm tree against the sunset (I admit, I tweeked the colors a little)
--Yellow headed lizard
--Jen with 10 month-old Aissha (Sama's granddaughter)

We plan to post pictures of our whole host family as soon as we can get everyone together. Also we plan on taking a few pics in our Malian outfits....

Talk to you soon,
Michael and Jennifer

Life in the village

Tue, 15 Aug 2006 21:26:52 GMT

Hey Everyone!

This post is huge! A lot has happened since the last time we were able to communicate with you!

We arrived in Moribabougou on August 2nd and were greeted by representatives of our families, many children, members of the "press", and the village chief. He was given Cola nuts on our arrival (a special gift given to someone important. It tastes like dirt, turns teeth orange but supposedly chalked full of caffeine). We were essentially forced to dance in a circle of community members to the drummers welcoming us. Everyone just pointed and laughed because white people can't carry a beat! Indeed, the first day in the village was difficult. Imagine meeting a chief with which you must respect in ways you are unfamiliar with, dancing to African drums to the satisfaction of those playing them, being taken through a town of wide-eyed Malians by a teenager carrying Jen's suitcase on her head (Sandy, I bet she was glad it didnt weigh more than 50 lbs), then arriving to a family that you can say, "hello, how are you?" to but nothing else. We stared and smiled at each other a lot and also used a lot of hand gestures.

The first night our "father"-Sama Keita put up our mosquito net then to our surprise he wheeled out a television and the entire family watched Africable until nearly one in the morning. We've never watched this much french television in our lives. There is a reoccuring Argentinean soap opera that is dubbed in french, followed by the Mali national news (Hugo Chavez just happened to be in Bamako the same day we were passing through!) followed by movies. Respecting our American sense of privacy, they closed the window and door to our concrete room. The first night was rough, we desperately tried to fall asleep over the blarring tv while swimming in our sweat. After hours of being more physically uncomfortable than we ever remember being, Jen got stung in the face by an ant and our first thoughts of going home were introduced. Since that night, things have improved, we leave the door and window open, Jen checks the bed for bugs and the tv has been turned off earlier so things are looking up!!!!!!!

Each volunteer is staying with a host family during the remainder of training. Mike and I were put with the Keita family and this has been quite an experience. Sama is the father and has three wives and we THINK about 17 children! I know, we had a hard time covering up our surprise! Sama is 56 and his wives range in age from 50-30. His newest wife is the most friendly and she has 6 children with him. Sama's oldest child is 24 and his youngest 3. The family dymanics are incredible and it is an African Brady Bunch! Sama makes tamarind syrup at a shop connected to the home and his newest wife sells shoes at the market. We don't see the 1st or 2nd wife much so we don't talk to them often. Sama's oldest son is married and his wife is around 20. She does most of the cooking for the family and has a cute 10 month old named Aissha. The Keita family thinks it is odd that Mike and I don't have any children and hilarious that Jen is older! From what we have seen, the Keita family is fairly well off and we have electricity in our room and bathroom area. They are taking good care of us and go out of their way to accomodate the Americans.

We go to language classes every day Monday - Sunday until around 4 or so each day. We are quickly picking up Bambara and it is very intense! It's amazing that we can tell you so much about the family when we have only been learning the language for a week or so now.

Our days pretty much follow the same schedule. Get up early because chickens, donkeys, radios, passing trucks, dogs, and goats will barely let you sleep until dawn. Bucket bath then breakfast (Jennifer and I eat together on the porch). Language class until noon. At lunch, Mike eats with the teenaged guys (not the kids and not the adults) and Jen with the teenaged girls out of a communal bowl (the Malians with their hands but the Americans get spoons). We try to sneak a nap in if its not too hot (which isn't very often) then go back to language class until dinner which usually is not until 7 or 8. For dinner, Jennifer and I eat together from the same bowl. After dinner, we all sit out in their courtyard and try to practice the little Bambara that we know. We go to bed around 9 or so but don't always fall asleep right away...

Since you all know food is an important part of Mike's mental state, we have decided to devote a whole section to it!
For breakfast we usually have instant Nescafe, french bread and some sketchy fried eggs. We found some local honey so we consider ourselves spoiled with this treat! Lunch is consistantly rice and a gritty sauce which Mike is struggling with. The food at dinner has been both really good and some of the grossest stuff we have ever eaten. Our experience with "toh" was a memorable one. Toh is an extremely dense grayish mush made from ground millet (which in the US serves only as bird food - it's the tiny beads in a bird food mix). Women grind all afternoon with a huge wooden mortar and pestle to get the millet to a very fine texture. Supposedly, most Malians eat millet three meals a day. Since this is about the 3rd poorest country in the world, I guess they have no choice. It has the cooked texture of a handful of wet sand and is dipped into a sauce made from the leaves of the baobab tree which is green and slimy (snot sauce). (It is times like these that made Mike glad he gained some weight before he left.) We choked down a couple bites of toh then were given some french bread to eat with some chunks of meat and liquidy sauce. As if they were anticipating our mental state, we were presented with a bottle of "American cola." Never did a tiny bottle of cold generic cola taste soooo good.
One night we had a cucumber and fried plantain sandwich - which was actually pretty good. Then the next night we were served a big plate of french fries...and our host mom poured a dark chunky sauce over it and I almost said out loud in English just as a joke to Jen- "oh, don't ruin the fries!" It turns out that it was probably the best meal we've had here. The sauce was much like a brown gravy with meat and onions that you'd get in the South. Then they roasted a whole ear of corn - without the husk- for each of us. The corn-on-the-cob here is not the sweet mushy corn where you only eat the top half of the kernal like in the US, it is a meal in and of itself. Each kernal is charred and has a sweet taste like popcorn but is dense and filling, plus the entire kernal comes off the cob - nothing is wasted.
Last night we had chicken for the first time and spaghetti (Malians call all pasta "macaroni") which was quite tasty. We just had to be careful what we were eating because pretty much the whole chicken went in...bones, liver, intestine...pretty much all organs... One day we noticed an interesting piece of "meat" in our dark green sauce with lunch...the texture of the "meat" gave it away - tongue.
We have been given cola consistantly with dinner and often with lunch too, and we have bought some bananas, oranges, and mangoes from the market. On the whole, we probably can't complain because we hear stories from some of the other volunteers: One girl made it obvious that she enjoyed the fish for dinner one night and received fish stew for breakfast, lunch, and dinner the next few days!

Each family receives the equivalent to $6 a day per volunteer (so our family receives $12 a day) in addition to a 50 kilo bag of rice. This is actually quite a bit of money in a country where the per capita income is around $270.

We feel like we are at a certain elevated status in the family and it is both welcoming and uncomfortable. For instance, we are served a huge plate of food until we eat our fill then the rest is given to the children. We have this rock star status just about everywhere we go. As soon as we step out into the streets there is a huge posse of kids that follows us around and more and more join with each neighborhood we pass through. Children dont have school during the rainy season so aside from playing soccer all they have to do is follow around the "toubabu"s (actually from the Arabic word for "doctor" but pretty much means "white person"). The kids have no perceived ideas of personal space- no boundaries at all. They are constantly swarming us, touching us, taking our hands, carrying our stuff, messing with our bikes, and telling us all the english words they know... it's not necessarily bad attention it just takes some getting used to...
In our family, we are not treated equally as one of the same gender or age, which are the predominant means of having a certain place in this society. It's kinda weird because they don't really know where to put us in the family. We are not just 20 year olds because we are guests from America and so are given extra attention. At lunch, at the communal bowl we sit in chair and eat with spoons while the members of the family sit on the floor and eat with their hands. It has worked out okay; it is just hard to assimilate our cultures.

We bought some fabric at the market and had some clothes made (we'll post pictures of them next time). Michael will be looking good in his new puffy pants and long shirts!

We got to stop for lunch in the hip area of the capitol, Bamako, on the way to the training site. We rode the public transportation / little-green-box-of-death (joking) which was an experience. It is essentially a hollowed out van that can cram 23 people not counting the guy who holds the door closed and bargains with people for rides. There are so many little things to learn still, for instance: Jennifer was closer to the guy taking the money so I handed her the coin and he asked why my wife was paying for us and not me... and one of the other volunteers reached out for her change with her left hand and he wouldn't give it to her until she reached out with her right hand. We got some pizza and Malian beer- definitely a treat. We caught word of a toubabou mart where we could buy American products. It ended up being a Shell station that had some snacks and toothbrushes and stuff...we got some Nutella though so it was well worth it.

Pictures: --Mike with the other volunteers and the posse of kids that follows us around
--Moribabougou (all the people in the middle are watching a soccer game - the brown building to the right of them is the school where we have language class everyday)
--Donkeys passing through the school courtyard
--Rainclouds moving in
--Mike and some kids who covered their faces with chalk dust so they could look like the toubabu
--some examples of how women carry their children (tied on their backs) and carry stuff on their heads
--our host family's house
--Jen sitting out on the patio outside our room (with the pink curtain)
--Us and some other volunteers from Moribabougou and some who rode in from Droit (a nearby village) after climbing a mini-mountain overlooking the village
--the expanse of Moribabougou
--some cool weaving birds at Tubaniso (the training site)

As always, CLICK TO VIEW THEM LARGER

We don't have pictures of the market or our family yet because we are still trying to assimilate into the community. We are hesistant to break out our fancy Amercian electronics in public or to our family but will have more pictures for you next time.

Keep up with those comments!! It's great to hear from you all!! Keep us up to date on things in America and if you asked questions, check back for our response...!!

Thinking of you,
Michael and Jennifer

Wed, 02 Aug 2006 07:07:38 GMT

Hey Everyone!

It has been a rough two days. Monday we got more vaccinations and are done for awhile with those. Also the Peace Corps had us put together our own mountain bikes so when I told you that Michael and I were excited about bike training we lied! It was really hard and they picked the hottest part of the day for 75 volunteers to piece together their bikes without any demonstrations. Talk about people getting cranky!!!! However, after this experience I feel more accomplished but can only blame myself if the bike falls apart while riding it in the village. So needless to say we were hot, tired, and just needed to rest because they have activities for us planned from 8 am until 10 pm. This morning it has just poured and the streets are muddy and when it rains in Mali it POURS! Our hut leaks a little but nothing too bad. We just have to get used to walking carefully between the puddles that turn reddish orange from the dusty clay soil. It has cooled down though so that is a plus.

We are very isolated from nearby communitites while we have been in Tubani So and some joke that we are not really in Africa. Tomorrow though is supposed to be the shock of our lives since we will actually be going into a real African village. Some previous volunteers have been offered interesting things like goat heads or cow legs. Can't wait to see what we get!.......

One of the trainers put together a list of people wanting cell phones so we are on that list. Hopefully he will hook us up and we will see how it works. It sounds like for the next two weeks we will not have internet but if we buy a phone card, we can use our language teacher's cell phone. If anyone needs to call us you can buy an "Africa" phone card at an asian or middle-eastern market...the best I've seen is something like 200 min for $10. It costs much more for us to call home so we would call and give a number that we can be called back at (either our lang teachers cell or a "phone booth"-which is really more of a store that sells phone time).

Tomorrow morning we leave for our "homestay village", which is a host family that we'll be living with until the end of September. There will be five other volunteers in the same village as us that we will have language training with everyday. The village is called Moribabougou and is 15 km from Bamako. The population is 6,000 and it big enough to have schools, health centers, etc. It is almost considered a town because of its population, proximity to the capitol, and it has cell phone service and "phone booths." Some volunteers got put in a village of 500 that has almost nothing so I think we faired pretty well.

We had the opportunity to talk on the phone with a married couple serving in Gao. They talked to us about the role men and woman carried in Mali. As far as normal Malian standards go - men and women do nothing together...they don't eat, work, sleep, or walk/converse in public. The boys and men have a bowl to eat together and so do the girls and women. As Americans, we'll have different standards but any sort of public display of affection-even so little as holding hands or touching each others' backs- makes Malians very uncomfortable. We can divide chores in the semi-American way but Mike will be laughed at for doing laundry, getting water, cooking, or even going to the market with Jen. The biggest taboo is for a man to be seen with a broom so I guess Jen will be doing all the sweeping!! We are free to pick and chose what is most important to us. In some ways we will "conform" to Malian society and in others ways we will "enlighten" Malians about American culture. We are expected to integrate into the community but also have the opportunity to share our culture with them. It sounds like a lot of joking goes around in both directions so as soon as we can joke in Bambara we should be okay!

The country director interviewed most of us and in Mike's interview she told him that if someone came to visit us and we were sitting next to each other in our hut, they would run away! She also told him that the Segou region (where we will be placed from October on) is "famous" for millet beer! Alright! SHe told of a time that she was in the region and was told to try a paticular beer because it had and "extra zip". It turns out that the "extra zip" came from throwing an entire live chicken into the mix!!!! She also offered to send my saxophone (too bad I sold the only one that I'd be willing to bring to Africa) from D.C. for free! Mom, we'll talk about this later but if you could "acquire" a crummy sax and ship it to D.C. that would be awesome....she said as long as we write it into a secondary project (American music) she could ship it in her "diplomatic pouch"!!!

The next two weeks are some intense language training in our village. We are scheduled to come back to Tubani So from August 14-16 so we'll make another post then.

If any of you have general questions about life in Mali or the Malian climate/people/language/culture...feel free to post as a comment - that way everyone can see the question and the answer. We have tons to say but what do YOU want to know???

Pictures: my sweet bike, jen sweeping out the hut, the huge puddles, some African drumers and dancers, a cool bird, and us (sorry if some are a little grainy, I have to reduce the quality so they all can fit) - CLICK ON THEM TO VIEW THEM LARGER

Love
Michael and Jennifer

Sun, 30 Jul 2006 20:49:13 GMT

Hello!

Well it is still going good here at training. Today we got more in depth concerning culture, customs, and language. Lunch took place on the floor on mats with each one of us grabbing into a communal bowl eating their share. I can say that most of the rice ended up in our laps so we need some practice! We also only used our right hands because left hands are used for other business! :)

We had a bambara lesson and now know how to greet and wish Malians a good day. With Malians it is not just a hi how are you type of thing. You have to greet and ask how each family member is which could take forever!

Oh we got our medical kits today and boy is there lots of stuff in them. We have enough meds to last a family ten years at least. There are some interesting things in there and we are definitely a pharmacy. I am afraid we will become hypochondriacs! We also had a competency French test and I would say I am definitely in beginners French and Michael at the end told the guy gracias! Oh no....they are probably wondering where we came from!!!!!

Malians are very cool people and we have learned so much already. It is very much a Muslim country and gender roles are very defined here. Not to worry though, the Malians will just laugh when they see Michael fetching water from the well...

We had interviews with our work sectors and they told us we will be in the Segou region which is fairly close to Bamako. We don't know the specific village but the lady hinted that we had a sweet hut! I can't wait to see it but we have to wait one more month until we are trained more. She also told us that the Peace Corps momma cat just had kittens and said that we could get one from the litter! The next Orc! Oh and all the current Peace Corps volunteers that we have met have cell phones so that is a good sign...

This Wednesday we are moving in with a host family and completely speaking Bambara!!! Aaahhh there will be a lot of pointing and hand gestures I am sure. We will get lessons on how to do laundry and bargaining at the market.

We have only been here for a few days but I feel like we have meshed fairly well with Malian culture. Don't get me wrong, the bathroom is something I am still having challenges with but all in all I am getting it. Bucket baths are surprisingly easy and refreshing. The Peace Corps is nice enough though to warm the water in kettles in the morning so we do have luxury treatment.

The internet works very well here and whenever we are in Tubani so we will shoot an e-mail. We love you very much and hope that all is well.

CLICK ON THE PICTURES TO VIEW THEM LARGER!!

Love you lots and lots!
Jennifer and Michael

We're here!!

Sat, 29 Jul 2006 18:56:37 GMT

Hello everyone!

We have been in country for two nights and two days now and are adjusting pretty well so far. THe AIR FRANCE flights were sweet rides - free wine, cognac, french cheese, etc...but finding booked day rooms at 'de Gaulle' meant sleeping for 8 hours in Paris' airport.
THe flight to Bamako was fun - you could definitely tell the Americans from the Malians. By the time we arrived we were jet lagged, had too much wine/cognac, and the "vivid dreams" from the malaria meds didn't help. We got in on Thursday night and it was definitely Africa at the airport...lots of surprised faces to see 75 Americans step off the plane.
We are now at Zoubomago/Tubani So which is the training site and are excited about the posh treatment - electricity (lights and ceiling fan in huts), clean drinking water, and Americanized food. It's amazing that we were all worried about Jen's eating..but it turns out that her main staples are right under our noses - local peanut butter and local bananas every morning with breakfast. The mangoes uphold their reputation as being the best in the world- or at least what we've had for lunch the past two days. Training is going well so far. We had the "Mr. D" (diarrhea) talk today and made everyone really paranoid. Current Peace Corps volunteers that have been here awhile tell horror stories that are pretty funny. It comes with the territory I suppose.
On Aug. 2nd, we and 5 others will be put into a nearby village to live with a host family. We will be speaking Bambara (the main local dialect) and are picking up on it so far. We had a cultural festival this afternoon with local food, music, dance, clothing, hair braiding (yes, Jen gots hers done), henna tatooing, etc...
We have been trained in the local ways - bucket bath, using "the hole" (latrine=nyegan in Bambara) and constantly wiping sweat off your forehead.
We are having a good time so far, Mike got a couple mosquito bites last night but oh well we are making lots of friends and learning lots about Mali. We met a guy from Brentwood, MO and one from St. Genevieve. Also, Sandy, we met a girl from Pella, IA that went to high school with Eric/Isaac. Small world...but as we've been told a lot, Mali is a big place with lots of different terrains, cultures, dialects and problems...so we've got some work cut out for us.
Our email/posting ability is still somewhat unclear so we'll get back to you next time we stop by the training site (maybe in a week or two) or actually we'll try Tuesday night before we leave!

K'an ben, Here doron
(Good bye, Peace only)

Mike and Jen

P.S. The internet works well here (because there are so many cell phones compared to land lines, any internet we find will probably be broadband instead of dial-up, Sweet! Go Africa!

Notes about posting to our journal

Thu, 20 Jul 2006 16:26:17 GMT

If you'd like to drop us a note right here on livejournal, simply click "leave a comment" under the journal entry you'd like to reply to. Because you probably don't have an account with livejournal, it will make you post as "Anonymous" so make sure to say who you are in the body of your comment. Also, all comments can be viewed by anyone who visits this site so if you have a private comment or personal story, just email it to us. Otherwise, ask your questions right here so our response can be seen by all!

Address

Mon, 17 Jul 2006 15:48:58 GMT

You can reach us at this address during our 2 months of training.

Michael and Jennifer Schulte, PCT
Corps de la Paix
B.P. 85
Bamako, Mali

Write Us!

A few notes about sending us mail:
-Date your letters and packages so we start to get an idea of transit time (approx 2 weeks).
-If you send a package, make a list of sent items so we know if everything made it.

Once we get situated, we'll update a list of items we need or would like...

We now have an internet journal!

Thu, 13 Jul 2006 20:06:02 GMT

Hello Everyone!

We now have a journal for your viewing pleasure on the internet. I think this will be an easy way to let everyone know how we are doing. Also, when we get a chance, I will post recent pictures. Check back here for the lastest stories and updates!