Edit: I stole all these pictures from my friend Mary, whose sweet house I am in right now waiting to depart for my site.
Brooke, my fellow Baguineda Camp-er and me at a dance party under the straw roof (gwa)
wiping the sweat off my face after a three- legged race I forced everyone to participate in for my birthday.
The three legged race!
Sean and me in the garden the Baguineda Camp-ers created in Brooke's family's concession
Greetings friends!
I am writing from a very lonely Tubaniso training complex, as the majoirty of our stagemates left this morning to their various villages around Mali.
Normally the internet here is pretty slow, but with most everyone gone it is faster and I can take some time to write and update you on things going on here. This is a long post, so hang in there! There will be refreshments afterwards.
I am officially a Peace Corps volunteer now. Before we were trainees, but we swore in two days ago and took the oath to become volunteers. It feels good to be official! We swore in at the American Embassy (which is amazing) and spent the rest of the day at an American club in Bamako. I feel really spoiled whenever we go there. We sat by the pool, drank celebratory beers, and ate burgers, fries, and pizza. After the American club we were transported to our air conditioned hotel (with toilets and a shower!!!) in Bamako where we got ready, had a delicious dinner, and eventually went to a big outdoor bar where a bunch of excited current Peace Corps Volunteer were waiting for us. They gave us a round of applause upon entering and we all danced the night away and had a great time.
Our trainers also revealed to us our stage name (which is a really big deal and they had been keeping it a secret for a few weeks now). Our stage will be referred to as "Good fellas" after the gangster movie from the 90's. Our trainers decided on this name because they think we are all a close family and care for each other and others, and also because we like to have massive games of mafia where we fake kill each other off murder mystery style. I think we all are really happy with the stage name. It is going to stick with us for the next two years.
It was a truly surreal day in Mali. My life will be absolutely nothing like this in village where there is no electricity, so I was soaking it all in and enjoying every moment of air conditioning and real toilets.
There are 4 of us here now who belong in the Koulikoro region, the region our training complex and Bamako are in. We have some protocol meetings during the next two days in the town of Koulikoro and in Kati, the big city 27 k from my village, and soon I will be installed in my permanent town.
I was going to have to take public transport and then ride my bike 7k on some pretty muddy roads with some of my stuff to my village from the main road, but luckily since I was picked up last time I left my village I had left my bike in my room and now Peace Corps has to take me directly to my site by car. I am pretty excited about this as it is rainy season now and the dirt road is impassable by bike in some parts (you have to get off and walk through the mud)
Today the 4 of us went shopping in Bamako for items like buckets, brooms, mirrors, kitchen supplies, rice, shelving units, and some other things that will make our little mud huts a bit more homey. I have my camera and will try to take some shots of my village and house once I am all settled in. I am excited to go to village and see all of the people I had met a few weeks ago for site visit. I am worried that I will forget everyones names though. It is hard enough to remember 40 new people, but when their names are all Bambara names it makes it even more difficult. I will learn them dooni dooni (little by little) though. My family and friends at village like to quiz me a lot on people's names, so it will help to be forced to remember because I don't want to insult anyone by forgetting theirs.
I was able to talk to my parents on skype for a little bit tonight and it was nice to see their faces for a brief bit before the internet was too bad to have video. My mom is freaked out about me getting worms after she saw a scary tv show, but I think worms are pretty rare in volunteers here. I've remained pretty healthy, am maintaining my weight, and staying happy. These next three months are supposed to be the hardest part of the volunteer experience, so if I can make it through this next period, I will be golden.
If you are interested in helping me keep some of my sanity, feel free to send an email my way updating me on your life so I can check it during the two times I will have internet in the next 3 months on my trips to Bamako. Even better, send me a letter or pictures in the mail! I will respond to any and all letters and keep them close to my heart. If you are super interested in helping a sister out, you can send me a package, but they are pretty expensive to send (usually more than $20). You can pretty much just fill it with candy, dry black beans, and goldfish and I would probably cry from happiness :)
These next three months will partly be spent trying to figure out some of my community's needs and wants through assessment tools that the Peace Corps provides. We have an education assessment tool and a food security assessment tool. The food securty one will be interesting since it is hungry season right now (the time of year where new crops are planted but not ready for harvest and when the crops from the season before are running out). I think my village is pretty good at having gardens and crops that they can use and sell, most of the land around our houses is full of crops or gardens. I am hoping to have a vegetable garden if I can procure a little plot of land. Peace Corps gives us some cool resources for veggie gardening and the food secirty program will even give us some seeds for a personal garden and a community garden. One thing we learned about which is pretty cool and kind of gross is urine fertilizer. Basically you collect your pee in a jibidon (big water jug) and mix it with water in a certain ratio, let it sit for a bit, and use it on your vegetable garden to enrich the nutrients available to the plants. Apparently it works wonders! I'll let you know how it goes :) One of our volunteer trainers said that her villagers are super impressed by how well it works in her garden but are too apprehensive about collecting their own urine to do it themsleves. We all find this funny because people pretty much just pee anywhere so you wouldn't think they would have a problem with it. We will see what my village thinks!
Here are some other small projects that I might be able to work on:
The "tippy tap" - which is a handwashing station created from big sticks, a small jibidon (water jug), and a string system that creates a floor pedal. This is a great and inexpensive project that in some villages catches on like wildfire, which is good because it could mean more people washing their hands and dishes.
Murals - I can create various murals around about hand washing, breast feeding, the importance of trees, proper nutrition, a world map, etc.
Girls club - I would like to start a girl's soccer club or some sort of weekly girls meeting. I know the volunteer before me was starting life skills classes with some of the girls, and that would be a really neat project to continue.
Some bigger projects that I have been thinking about planning if community members are interested:
Getting women together to have a workshop on proper shea butter production.
Neem cream production - a natural bug repellant made from the leaves of a certain tree (malaria is a big problem in Mali).
Moringa tree planting - hold a workshop on the moringa tree, its nutritional benefits, and other benefits of planting (google "moringa tree" to learn about it, I guess it is a wonder tree!).
Bambara literacy classes - I would like to work with one of my volunteer friends who works with an awesome literacy program to get some people in my village trained on their literacy program and get some books for the kids and adults to use
- Also, a nonformal education program has some Bambara literacy materials for that may be helpful to procure for these kind of classes.
Take our daughters to work day - Maybe once a year, volunteers from around the different regions meet in a central area in their region with chosen girls from their village to have a girls empowerment weekend where girls can see other women that are educated and have good jobs.
Career fair - one of the volunteers on an education volunteer panel organized a career day where professional people came in and talked about the importance of education in how they got to where they are. This was a big hit and it showed the kids some options that they may have never known about before.
English language classes - I think the volunteer before me tought English once a week. This would be nice to continue if the want is still there in the community.
Once I do a community analysis of what the community perceives to be their needs, I can figure out what other big projects I can do. Some projects that I may think the commuity could benefit from may not be the same as what they think they can benefit from, and if they aren't on board, I won't get much support or have any sustainability in those projects that they are uninterested in.
One of the nice things about being a volunteer in the Koulikoro region is that we have easier access to the resources at the Peace Corps bureau in Bamako. There we can get things like books on how to teach life skills classes, tips on teaching English as a foreign language, we can learn about different trees, income generating activities, and other resources that will be helpful at site.
I am excited to begin this journey, and I appreciate all of your support and love! I'll post pictures the next time I go into Bamako in around a month so you can better understand my little place in Africa.
Until next time!
Jamie (Assetou) Casterton (Diarra) ;)
I am writing from a very lonely Tubaniso training complex, as the majoirty of our stagemates left this morning to their various villages around Mali.
Normally the internet here is pretty slow, but with most everyone gone it is faster and I can take some time to write and update you on things going on here. This is a long post, so hang in there! There will be refreshments afterwards.
I am officially a Peace Corps volunteer now. Before we were trainees, but we swore in two days ago and took the oath to become volunteers. It feels good to be official! We swore in at the American Embassy (which is amazing) and spent the rest of the day at an American club in Bamako. I feel really spoiled whenever we go there. We sat by the pool, drank celebratory beers, and ate burgers, fries, and pizza. After the American club we were transported to our air conditioned hotel (with toilets and a shower!!!) in Bamako where we got ready, had a delicious dinner, and eventually went to a big outdoor bar where a bunch of excited current Peace Corps Volunteer were waiting for us. They gave us a round of applause upon entering and we all danced the night away and had a great time.
Our trainers also revealed to us our stage name (which is a really big deal and they had been keeping it a secret for a few weeks now). Our stage will be referred to as "Good fellas" after the gangster movie from the 90's. Our trainers decided on this name because they think we are all a close family and care for each other and others, and also because we like to have massive games of mafia where we fake kill each other off murder mystery style. I think we all are really happy with the stage name. It is going to stick with us for the next two years.
It was a truly surreal day in Mali. My life will be absolutely nothing like this in village where there is no electricity, so I was soaking it all in and enjoying every moment of air conditioning and real toilets.
There are 4 of us here now who belong in the Koulikoro region, the region our training complex and Bamako are in. We have some protocol meetings during the next two days in the town of Koulikoro and in Kati, the big city 27 k from my village, and soon I will be installed in my permanent town.
I was going to have to take public transport and then ride my bike 7k on some pretty muddy roads with some of my stuff to my village from the main road, but luckily since I was picked up last time I left my village I had left my bike in my room and now Peace Corps has to take me directly to my site by car. I am pretty excited about this as it is rainy season now and the dirt road is impassable by bike in some parts (you have to get off and walk through the mud)
Today the 4 of us went shopping in Bamako for items like buckets, brooms, mirrors, kitchen supplies, rice, shelving units, and some other things that will make our little mud huts a bit more homey. I have my camera and will try to take some shots of my village and house once I am all settled in. I am excited to go to village and see all of the people I had met a few weeks ago for site visit. I am worried that I will forget everyones names though. It is hard enough to remember 40 new people, but when their names are all Bambara names it makes it even more difficult. I will learn them dooni dooni (little by little) though. My family and friends at village like to quiz me a lot on people's names, so it will help to be forced to remember because I don't want to insult anyone by forgetting theirs.
I was able to talk to my parents on skype for a little bit tonight and it was nice to see their faces for a brief bit before the internet was too bad to have video. My mom is freaked out about me getting worms after she saw a scary tv show, but I think worms are pretty rare in volunteers here. I've remained pretty healthy, am maintaining my weight, and staying happy. These next three months are supposed to be the hardest part of the volunteer experience, so if I can make it through this next period, I will be golden.
If you are interested in helping me keep some of my sanity, feel free to send an email my way updating me on your life so I can check it during the two times I will have internet in the next 3 months on my trips to Bamako. Even better, send me a letter or pictures in the mail! I will respond to any and all letters and keep them close to my heart. If you are super interested in helping a sister out, you can send me a package, but they are pretty expensive to send (usually more than $20). You can pretty much just fill it with candy, dry black beans, and goldfish and I would probably cry from happiness :)
These next three months will partly be spent trying to figure out some of my community's needs and wants through assessment tools that the Peace Corps provides. We have an education assessment tool and a food security assessment tool. The food securty one will be interesting since it is hungry season right now (the time of year where new crops are planted but not ready for harvest and when the crops from the season before are running out). I think my village is pretty good at having gardens and crops that they can use and sell, most of the land around our houses is full of crops or gardens. I am hoping to have a vegetable garden if I can procure a little plot of land. Peace Corps gives us some cool resources for veggie gardening and the food secirty program will even give us some seeds for a personal garden and a community garden. One thing we learned about which is pretty cool and kind of gross is urine fertilizer. Basically you collect your pee in a jibidon (big water jug) and mix it with water in a certain ratio, let it sit for a bit, and use it on your vegetable garden to enrich the nutrients available to the plants. Apparently it works wonders! I'll let you know how it goes :) One of our volunteer trainers said that her villagers are super impressed by how well it works in her garden but are too apprehensive about collecting their own urine to do it themsleves. We all find this funny because people pretty much just pee anywhere so you wouldn't think they would have a problem with it. We will see what my village thinks!
Here are some other small projects that I might be able to work on:
The "tippy tap" - which is a handwashing station created from big sticks, a small jibidon (water jug), and a string system that creates a floor pedal. This is a great and inexpensive project that in some villages catches on like wildfire, which is good because it could mean more people washing their hands and dishes.
Murals - I can create various murals around about hand washing, breast feeding, the importance of trees, proper nutrition, a world map, etc.
Girls club - I would like to start a girl's soccer club or some sort of weekly girls meeting. I know the volunteer before me was starting life skills classes with some of the girls, and that would be a really neat project to continue.
Some bigger projects that I have been thinking about planning if community members are interested:
Getting women together to have a workshop on proper shea butter production.
Neem cream production - a natural bug repellant made from the leaves of a certain tree (malaria is a big problem in Mali).
Moringa tree planting - hold a workshop on the moringa tree, its nutritional benefits, and other benefits of planting (google "moringa tree" to learn about it, I guess it is a wonder tree!).
Bambara literacy classes - I would like to work with one of my volunteer friends who works with an awesome literacy program to get some people in my village trained on their literacy program and get some books for the kids and adults to use
- Also, a nonformal education program has some Bambara literacy materials for that may be helpful to procure for these kind of classes.
Take our daughters to work day - Maybe once a year, volunteers from around the different regions meet in a central area in their region with chosen girls from their village to have a girls empowerment weekend where girls can see other women that are educated and have good jobs.
Career fair - one of the volunteers on an education volunteer panel organized a career day where professional people came in and talked about the importance of education in how they got to where they are. This was a big hit and it showed the kids some options that they may have never known about before.
English language classes - I think the volunteer before me tought English once a week. This would be nice to continue if the want is still there in the community.
Once I do a community analysis of what the community perceives to be their needs, I can figure out what other big projects I can do. Some projects that I may think the commuity could benefit from may not be the same as what they think they can benefit from, and if they aren't on board, I won't get much support or have any sustainability in those projects that they are uninterested in.
One of the nice things about being a volunteer in the Koulikoro region is that we have easier access to the resources at the Peace Corps bureau in Bamako. There we can get things like books on how to teach life skills classes, tips on teaching English as a foreign language, we can learn about different trees, income generating activities, and other resources that will be helpful at site.
I am excited to begin this journey, and I appreciate all of your support and love! I'll post pictures the next time I go into Bamako in around a month so you can better understand my little place in Africa.
Until next time!
Jamie (Assetou) Casterton (Diarra) ;)
