Shea Butter Field Trip

We went on a field trip today to a women's cooperative that makes shea butter. I uploaded some photos to Picasa, the link is: http://picasaweb.google.com/wbudd3/SheaButterFieldTrip#

There is a big effort in Peace Corps Mali to help women improve the quality of the shea butter they produce so that they can earn more money from their labor, and so that more Malian shea butter can be exported.

If you're interested, here are two more links about shea butter in Mali.

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7ktkxQuCjI - a Peace Corps Volunteer produced this video
• http://www.maisondukarite.org/eindex.html - the web site of the women's association we visited. The English translation is pretty bad, but you can get the gist of what they're saying.

Our last stint at homestay starts tomorrow. It is hard to believe that pre-service training is almost over... only three weeks left until swear-in!

Site Visit Photos

I was pretty tired all day today, still recovering from the long trip to and from Kenieba. I tallied up all the travel... the round trip took more than 32 hours. Too much travel in one week! Tonight's dinner made up for a tiring day... the kitchen staff at Tubaniso cooked up some tacos with cheese, guacamole, beans, ground beef, lettuce and tomatoes. It was awesome.

Photos are up from site visit...
picasaweb.google.com/wbudd3/SiteVisit and picasaweb.google.com/wbudd3/Kayes

My new address in Kenieba is listed in the right column. Any mail that is sent from now on should be sent to Kenieba. I will still get mail at Bamako, but not for a few months.

Thanks for all your comments and e-mails, it's great to hear that you enjoy reading the blog and hearing news from home.

Women's Rights in the Developing World

I haven't thrown many opinions into the blog yet, but I think this issue needs a lot more attention. It is incredible to think that millions of women are still treated so poorly in the developing world. On the bus ride to Bamako yesterday, I read a fascinating article by Nick Kristof called The Women's Crusade. It's a lengthy article, but I encourage you to read it.

The Women's Crusade - http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/23/magazine/23Women-t.html?pagewanted=all

In Mali, women are second-class citizens, working hard to support their families with little to no recognition for their work. I found out from a BBC article today that the Malian government recently passed a law that gives women equal rights in marriage. Unfortunately though, the BBC reported that tens of thousands of Malians are protesting the new law in Bamako. Considering that the majority of Malian women are illiterate, most will never know about their new rights.

Mali protest against women's law - http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8216568.stm

That is one advantage of the Peace Corps' development approach; since we are speaking the local language and working in the same village for two years, we become respected members of the community. We can cross the social divide and talk directly with women to understand their concerns. I'm not sure what my role will be here yet, but I would like to help wherever possible in community development, and the key to success lies in helping women.

Site Visit, Part 2 - Kenieba

Kenieba is a town of about 20,000 people in far western Mali, close to the borders of Senegal and Guinea. It is difficult to travel there overland, as the main road from Kayes is all dirt. The trip from Kayes to Kenieba, about 250 km/150 miles, took us almost 7 hours in a Land Cruiser. The road is even worse in rainy season; we had to drive through huge puddles and cross some streams. The drive down is really pretty though... rolling hills, lush vegetation, and escarpments that rise hundreds of feet up and continue all the way to Kenieba. I'm excited to explore the surrounding area on my mountain bike and hike to the top of the escarpments.

The major commercial activity in Kenieba is gold mining, and the biggest mine is owned by a South African company. A large part of the labor force in Kenieba is employed by the gold mine. There is also traditional mining done on the hillsides, and there is a gold rush mentality in town. People are less focused on the subsistence agriculture that dominates the economy in other parts of Mali, because they can earn a lot of money from the gold they find.

So this presents a unique situation for development work in Kenieba, as people can earn money and support their families just from the income from gold. But there is always room for community development, especially in capacity building. A Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV) who has been working in Kenieba for two years, Vanessa, hosted us for the few days we were there. She has worked on many projects in Kenieba, including HIV/AIDS education, a tree nursery, chicken raising, and a community garden. I will be moving into her house in September.

Because it takes two full days to travel to Kenieba, we only had a few days at site before we had to turn around and head back to Bamako. I did not have time to meet with the artisans, but I did meet my Malian counterpart and had dinner with his family. He works with metal to make things like tin roofs and doors. We didn't have much time to talk business, but I told him I want to meet with each of the artisan associations in Kenieba when I return in September.

Even though Kenieba is so difficult to get to, there are lots of amenities here. There are 15 hours of electricity each day, strong cell phone service, a big market, a post office, a bank, and lots of shops and street food. There are no Internet cafes in town, but you can get a USB key that gives basic Internet access through the cell phone system here.

Overall, I really like Kenieba and see myself working on many different projects. It is a beautiful region of Mali, and it will be fun to explore the surrounding area. The bad condition of the road and distance from Bamako worries me, but having these amenities and three PCVs close by will make it a lot easier.

Site Visit, Part 1 - Kayes

I'm blogging from the Peace Corps house in Kayes, the regional capital in western Mali. Kayes was the French colonial capital in the late 19th Century, and it remains an important commercial center. It is on the main route from Bamako to Dakar, the capitals of Mali and Senegal. The bridge is out across the Senegal River, so there are trucks on both sides of the main road for miles waiting for a ferry to cross the river. Kayes is also the halfway point from Bamako to Kenieba, as it takes a full day to travel from Bamako to Kayes and from Kayes to Kenieba. So Kayes will be my closest major city, and the Peace Corps house will be a place to come to meet other volunteers from the region and take a break from work.

The road from Bamako to Kayes is in great shape, paved and pothole-free almost the entire way. Eight of us made the trip here in a Peace Corps car last Sunday... it was a little cramped but the smooth road made for a comfortable trip. After driving ten hours to get to Kayes, we had to wait another two hours for a ferry to take us across the river. A Peace Corps volunteer, Andrew, welcomed us to the Peace Corps house. He cooked up a great Mexican meal, complete with steak, veggies, rice, beans, and soft tacos. The perfect ending to a long travel day!

The Peace Corps house in Kayes is really nice... it has a full kitchen, a few bedrooms, a TV and DVD player with a ton of movies, a library, and a computer with high-speed internet. The bathrooms have flush toilets and showers! It will be nice to come up here every few months for a mini-vacation.

We are back in Kayes now after four days in Kenieba. We will be venturing out soon to explore the city and get our bus tickets for the trip back to Bamako tomorrow morning. More on Kenieba in the next blog post!

Site Assignment!

It has been a very busy week here at Tubaniso, as we have been preparing for our site visit next week. The site announcements were really fun. They called out our assignments by region and put a post-it note with our name on the big map of Mali. It was cool to see where we will all be, spread out across Mali from Kayes to Mopti!

I will be working in Kenieba (pronounced kenya-bah), a circle capital (the equivalent of the biggest town in a county in the US) in the Kayes region of Mali (Wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kéniéba). It is one of the furthest Peace Corps sites from Bamako, the capital. It will take us two days to get there! We will have to stay overnight at the Peace Corps transit house in Kayes. I was worried at first about how remote Kenieba is, but two trainees in the environment and education sectors are moving up there with me, and an environment volunteer has lived there for two years and will be there for a third year. I'm looking forward to working with them on secondary projects.

My primary project will be to work with an artisan's union to build their business capacities. The union is composed of different trade associations, including tailors, carpenters, auto and bike mechanics, radio technicians, welders, and blacksmiths. The union requested a SED Peace Corps volunteer to work with them for the past three years, but it has been difficult to get to Kenieba until recently. Apparently the road has been reconstructed and the road is now passable in the rainy season.

My job description is pretty vague, and it sounds like I will have a lot of work ahead of me to figure out what skills they currently have, what they want to learn, and what I can offer them. During the first three months, I will be conducting a need assessment and developing strategies to help the artisans build their business capacities. The ideas they came up with for me to work with them include: identifying the right training to improve their managerial and operational capacities; introduce illiterate accounting; conduct adult literacy and numeracy training; teach literate artisans how to use the computer and Word/Excel; train them in product development and differentiation. It will be interesting to see how motivated they are to learn all of these new skills. Also, it will be a long time before we get any formal training done; the first three months at site are focused on building relationships with community members and conducting the need assessment. But overall, it sounds like a good assignment for me and something I can certainly keep working on for 24 months.

Our homologues (Malian counterparts who we will be working with, especially in the first few months at site) arrived at Tubaniso a few days ago. My homologue is a woodworker and seems very nice. I have not been able to understand his French very well so conversations have been difficult thus far, but I hope that this improves as I learn more Bambara.

We leave for Kenieba on Sunday morning and will hopefully arrive sometime on Monday. We will be back in Tubaniso at the end of next week, so I will post my first impressions (and some photos!) of Kenieba then.

PS I added a little box on the right side of the blog that lists things I would love to receive in a care package. You don't have to send a package, letters/postcards are great too! Hopefully I will get a PO box in Kenieba since they have a post office there, but for now use the Bamako address. I can still get mail there even after I move out to Kenieba.

My address is:
William Budd, PCT

Corps de la Paix

BP 85

Bamako, Mali

If you're just sending little things, write zero value on the customs form (you can still put a description). It helps avoid hassle on this end when receiving the package. Thanks!

Second Stint at Homestay

It has been a good two weeks at my homestay site, especially since I am amoeba-free! I am making pretty good progress at learning Bambara... I have the greetings down, and can have a basic conversation with someone. The language class continues to be taught at a really fast pace, and it has been a lot of work to keep up. But with more practice and forcing myself to use Bambara (and not French) whenever possible, I think that I will have a good knowledge of the language by the end of training.

There was a wedding in my family last weekend, which made for an eventful week. My host sister came from Bamako to stay with us and brought her little kids, who were a lot of fun to have around. They were really entertaining and a good distraction for everyone (away from staring at me all the time!).

My cousin married a woman in the same village, and each family had a big ceremony, so it was a big day in my village. A Malian wedding is a lengthy occasion, with multiple ceremonies and celebrations. The ceremony that I attended started at 9 AM, when the bride and groom left for the mayor's office to sign the legal papers and officially become married. I stayed under the tent and waited with Baba and others for them to come back. The kids were really entertaining and I took a ton of photos of them while we waited for the bride and groom to return. They got back at around 10, with a huge parade of motorcycles and cars escorting them. Then the couple went to greet the elders and get their picture taken, which was a chaotic scene. Not long after that, the couple went into the house and then left. My host brother told me they went to the bride's family's ceremony. It's interesting how impersonal the ceremony was, with the couple nowhere in sight, but it was a fun time. The music was great and fun to listen to. We ate some delicious fried rice, meat and goyo (a bitter vegetable) for lunch. After some more dancing and great music, I went back to my house at around 2 PM. The ceremony continued through the evening and into the early morning. My host brother told me that the women have their celebration during the day, and the men celebrate at night. Overall it was really fun to attend the ceremony, and I'm glad I could be a part of the family's big day!

My host family had a shirt made for me to wear, which fit pretty well considering they didn't take any measurements! I really like it and have worn it numerous times since. I haven't had time to have clothes made, but look forward to doing that when I get settled in at site. On the clothing note... at the wedding, I noticed that the women kept changing their outfits. I found out later that they wear a lot of outfits to show that they are wealthy and can afford all these clothes.

In other news... I taught Go Fish (Taa Jégéminé) to my host siblings and their friends, and they loved it! They would ask to play after dinner almost every night. It was also great practice for me to ask questions in Bambara, as well as listen to their conversations and pick up on the numbers.

I can't believe we are halfway through Pre-Service Training already! It's incredible to think that I have only been in Mali for a month. The training has certainly been hectic and stressing at times, but I know that this pace will really slow down when training ends in September.

That's it for now... all the trainees are back at Tubaniso for the week as we prepare for our site visits. I will post in a few days about my site assignment, where I will be working for the next two years.

Photos are up at http://picasaweb.google.com/wbudd3/Homestay2