Mali-Senegal Bike Ride

For my latest trip out of site, I decided to bike to the Peace Corps house in Kedougou, Senegal. It's 135 kilometers (85 miles) from Kenieba to Kedougou. It's actually the closest Peace Corps house to Kenieba, as Kayes (the house I usually go to) is 250 km and Kita is 210 km on a road under construction. There is public transport on most of the route, but I decided to ride my bike on the 85 mile route from Mali to Senegal.

It is not as crazy as it sounds; Senegal PCVs have ridden the route and stayed with me in Kenieba, including my friend from high school last January. The road is in perfect condition, recently paved and little to no traffic on the whole route. I counted a total of 20 cars or trucks that passed me the entire day. I had plenty of fallbacks in case I ran into bike trouble or was too tired to keep going; there are Peace Corps volunteers working in Saraya, a town two-thirds of the way to Kedougou. I also brought a ton of Power Bars and granola bars that my parents and grandparents sent over in care packages, and I took two Nalgene bottles and a couple half liter bottles with me, and had Gatorade drink packets to mix in with the water. So I was well prepared for the ride!

I got up before sunrise, strapped my backpack on the back of my bike, locked up the house and and began my ride to the border at 6:45 AM. The road is not paved yet on the Mali side but it's graded and well-maintained, and easy to bike on. The toughest part was shielding my face from the dust cloud that would appear after pickup trucks carrying construction workers would pass. The bridge workers head out to the construction site each morning. The bridge is not finished and the water level is too high right now to wade across (since rainy season just ended), so I had pay $3 to cross the river in a dugout canoe. I held on tight to my bike to make sure it wouldn't fall into the river!

The road on the Mali side

The bridge under construction at the border

Once I reached Senegal, it was easy riding. The road is in perfect shape, a two lane road with packed gravel shoulders all the way from the border to Kedougou. There are milestones at every kilometer for the 112 km from the border to Kedougou, so I knew how much farther I had to go every kilometer of the trip.

It was fun to greet people in Malinké as I rode by. Some were harvesting their peanut crops, others were walking to or from school, and others just relaxing under a tree. There were a few Senegalese on their bikes who rode alongside me for a few minutes and we chatted a bit as we went along. I arrived at Saraya at 10:45 AM, way before I thought I would. I refilled my water bottles, had bananas and Biskrem cookies for brunch, and decided to continue riding while the air was still cool. Well, it was only like that for a little while longer, and it started to get really hot in the middle of the day. I took lots of breaks to escape the sun (and give my butt a break!) whenever I saw a big shady tree to stop under. I put 60+ sunscreen on before I left Kenieba and reapplied at my lunch stop, but I still got pretty burned under the African sun!

Crossing the Gambia river right before I arrived in Kedougou

After a few big hills right at the end, I arrived in Kedougou just before 3 PM. It has been fun to hang out with the Peace Corps volunteers here for the past few days and compare stories about life in Mali vs. Senegal. The house is not actually a house but a cluster of huts: two sleeping huts, a kitchen hut, library hut, and a big hangar to relax under. They also just got a really cute puppy who's been fun to play with.

The new house puppy in Kedougou

I'm headed back to Kenieba at sunrise tomorrow morning, and will be there for a few weeks. I'll be leaving next for the Peace Corps Thanksgiving party (including a full Thanksgiving dinner... turkey, pies and all) which should be a lot of fun!

October Musings

Rainy season was still going strong through mid-October this year. It rained at least once a day in August and September and the rain continued to fall a few times a week in October. It’s nice because even though there are some hot days, a rain storm will come through and cool things off for a few hours, or overnight if it hits at the right time. Some of the rains are really intense monsoon-like storms that flood the roads and make it hard to get anywhere. And Malians traditionally don't do anything inside their houses other than to sleep and make babies, so they are anxious for the storm to pass so they can continue their daily activities.

School started back up the first week of October. I think both kids and parents were more than ready for school to begin. Especially by the end of summer vacation, the kids are just bored with nothing to do. There are few toys to play with, and like any group of kids, they find mischief really easily.

My host family came back at the beginning of October in time for school. It was great to see them again and great to eat lunch with them every day! Though it was fun to cook lunches for myself during the summer, it was a lot of work. I definitely have more respect for Malian cooking now! My host mom didn’t come back with the kids though, and a friend’s wife is watching the kids cooking for us. I found out indirectly that my host mom is pregnant. Pregnancy is a hush-hush subject here. On November 3, the day before I left for my Senegal trip, my host dad announced that his wife had a baby; it’s a girl! I almost asked what her name was, but remembered that the baby isn’t named until the baptism, held about a week after birth. There’s a chance that mom and the new baby girl will be back in time for Tabaski, the big Muslim holiday that will take place the week before Thanksgiving.

Work is really picking up now, with projects starting up all over town. I’m going to be working on projects with the food security committee, artisans’ union and associations, high school, and one of the primary schools, as well as teaching some English vocabulary classes to interested Malians. I’ll write more about all of these topics in future blog posts.

Cinquantenaire

Mali celebrated its 50th anniversary of independence, the “cinquantenaire”, on the 22nd of September. There was a big military parade (like the Bastille Day parade down the Champs Elysees in France) and huge choreographed show in Bamako which was broadcast on the national TV station. Out in Kenieba, there was also a celebration but it was poorly planned and not nearly as exciting. The women in the shea butter association invited me to walk with them in the Independence Day “parade”. They had been talking about the parade since July, and how we would give the mayor, prefet and other town leaders some of their shea butter as a gift.

Me with some of the shea butter association members

One of the members holding some of the shea butter they made

When I hear that there’s going to be a parade, especially one on Independence Day, I think of groups of people walking down the main road wearing the national colors and spectators watching and cheering. The parade in Kenieba was more like a rally, and could be best described as chaotic. It took place in the big square in the center of town, where I at least a thousand people were crowded around the perimeter to watch some dignitaries speak. You couldn’t hear them over all the noise of the crowd, and definitely not over the extremely loud rifle shots that would randomly go off every few minutes. When it came time to line up for the “parade”, we walked outside the square and crammed together like sardines even though there was nobody behind us. When it finally became our turn to walk in the square, we walked at a brisk pace to the VIPs and then walked right past them. We only realized after we passed the VIP tent that we didn’t give them their gift! So some of us walked against the parade to deliver the shea butter to the VIPs.

Independence Day ceremony in Kenieba

The VIP tent

After the parade I had a delicious feast with one of my neighbors (fried rice with meat, sweet potatoes and other vegetables, and fried plantains), and then went up to watch a soccer game that was apparently the championship game of a tournament that had been going on between different teams in Kenieba. It was surprisingly well organized with each team sporting matching uniforms, and there were referees and linesmen officiating. The field is another story it’s all dirt, with some dried up drainage streams that make it uneven on one entire side of the field. So the game was mostly played on one side of the field. After 90 minutes the game was 0-0, but there were some good shots and it was pretty entertaining. The game took place at the end of the day and the sun was going down so they couldn't play overtime. They finished the game two days later.

These photos of the soccer game were taken with my cell phone camera, so they're not the best quality:

In the end, it was nice to be a part of the 50^th anniversary celebration, which was certainly a moment of national pride. After all, celebrations like this only happen once every 50 years!

September Musings

After the trainees officially became Peace Corps volunteers at the beginning of September, I helped the new Kayes region volunteers buy stuff for their houses. I helped them navigate the labyrinth of the Kayes market and bargained for mattresses, kitchen supplies and other big items. It really put things into perspective realizing that I was in the new volunteers’ shoes this time last year, with everything being so new and foreign. Now that I’m so used to bargaining for just about everything I buy, it’ll be hard to transition back to shopping in stores when I get back to the states!

The new Kenieba volunteer and I headed down with Peace Corps transport for installation. It was a relatively quick trip down the long dirt road in the Peace Corps car, but the road was basically all mud since it was the middle of rainy season. The new PCV has been off to a great start, bonding with her host family and meeting her neighbors and potential work partners. She’s also working really hard to learn the language spoken in Kenieba, a mix of Bambara and Malinké. Both she and I learned Bambara during pre-service training, but it’s hard to keep using Bambara since it’s not the language spoken here. The structure is the same as Malinké but most words are pronounced differently. People can understand us when we speak Bambara, but they will respond to us in Malinké or the hybrid Kenieba language. It’s definitely not the easiest way to learn a new language! I’ve picked up key phrases in the time I’ve lived in Kenieba and can have basic conversations, but usually I resort to communicating with the men and some literate women using French.

There have been some issues with the new volunteer’s house, mainly the bats who moved in and don’t want to leave. Nobody lived in the house since June, so the bats made themselves at home. And they really are a nuisance, flying around inside and making noise in the middle of the night. A carpenter spent all day on the roof, closing up all the holes and making lots of noise which we thought would get the bats out. After the carpenter’s attempts were unsuccessful, a boy came in and killed some of the remaining bats. But there were still a few stubborn bats that just wouldn’t leave. Though it’s taken a while to persuade him, the landlord agreed to install wooden paneling to create a lowered ceiling. Right now, there is no ceiling, just the metal roof. Once the paneling is installed the bats may still get in, but they won’t be nearly as annoying if there’s a wooden barrier between them and the PCV!

The end of Ramadan was in the middle of September, and there was a big feast and sense of relief after having fasted during every day for 28 days in a row. I noticed this year that people who had fasted, the healthy adults, were noticeably thinner and weaker by the end of Ramadan. I can’t imagine that it can be healthy to fast every day for a month, but it is an important part of the Muslim religion.

Not much happened workwise in September outside of the usual chatting with artisans and other entrepreneurs in town. When I was in Bamako I bought plastic containers for the women to sell their shea butter in. We worked together on pricing and selling strategies for the 45 containers of butter. We decided that I had been keeping track of how much the women were spending each time they made shea butter, things like soap to wash the basins, the fee to use the grinder that turns the nuts into a paste, and firewood to heat the shea butter. We came to a consensus on how much to charge, which gave them a good profit on each container sold. It is more than traditional shea butter is sold for in Kenieba, but we all agreed that since this butter is high-quality, the higher price would be justified.

I Wish I Had a Duck Boat...

At the beginning of October I traveled down to Bamako to meet with staff at the Peace Corps office and do my mid-service medical exam. I travelled from Kenieba to Kayes on public transport, which wasn't too bad; it took all day but that’s par for the course. A few days later I traveled with Vieux in the Peace Corps car from Kayes to Bamako on the “southern route”. It was a long but uneventful trip, parts on paths that I never would have guessed a car could drive through. Vieux has been working for Peace Corps for many years and drives this route every month, so I had no worries on the trip down to Bamako. And having air conditioning and room to stretch my legs was so much nicer than taking public transport. The trip back on the same “southern route” from Bamako to Kayes is where the adventure really begins.

On the second day of the three day trip back to Kenieba, we arrived at a big swamp. The water level was pretty high the week before, but we crossed it then without a problem. Since the village is on the other side of the swamp, we couldn't ask anyone about the crossing, and we figured it would be as easy to cross as it was the week before. Well, Vieux drove into the swamp, but this time the water level kept getting higher and higher, above the wheels, above the engine vents, up the sides of the car! Now this is no average car; it’s a year-old Toyota Land Cruiser with a high clearance, made to get through the toughest of roads. But I can tell you that four feet of water will stop a Land Cruiser in its tracks. Vieux was smart enough to turn the engine off to keep it from flooding! So we were stuck, in the middle of the swamp, and we weren't going anywhere anytime soon.

Not long after Vieux turned the engine off, water began to seep through the floor of the car and a few minutes later, the inside of the car was flooded. We saved as much as we could including Vieux’s cassette tapes that were in the door pockets (yep, they still have tape players in these cars). I quickly remembered that my backpack was sitting on the seat behind me, which contained my laptop and iPod! Luckily I saved it before the water reached the seats, so the electronics were spared. My big backpack wasn’t as fortunate, and I ended up with a lot of wet clothes. Vieux left to get help from the village nearby, and I stayed in the car and rescued as much as I could from the incoming water.

After negotiating a fair price to help us get the car out of the swamp, (they wanted to charge $100 because they saw a white person in the car, but Vieux talked them down to $60), about 12-15 men came to help us get the car out. I got to steer while the men slowly pushed the car to the edge of the swamp. They couldn’t get it up the bank and completely out of the water. There was nothing close by for the winch to attach to either, so the car stayed in place until the mechanic arrived from the town a few miles away. Since the car was at the edge of the pond the water level was only a few inches high, so the water could slowly drain out of both the seats and the engine.

I got out of the car and waited in a family’s concession. By this point it was lunch time and they invited me to eat with them. It was not one of my favorite Malian meals: they call it nyé nyé kini, cornmeal with a gelatin-like consistency, and okra sauce with a snot-like consistency. Not particularly appetizing, but since we were going to be there for a while and didn’t want to offend the people who had just helped us save the car, I ate some of their lunch. I found out that only 200 people from 10 families live here, and the kids have to walk more than three miles and take a ferry across the Senegal River to go to school.

While we were waiting for the mechanic to come, we found out that the villagers had dammed the river! Since rainy season is coming to an end, they put up a dam to raise the water level in the swamp and create a pond. You can’t blame the villagers for doing this, as they can use the water for months to come. It only rains from June to October, so water becomes a scarce resource towards the end of dry season. It would have been nice to know this before entering the swamp!

All in all, we were in that village for about four hours before the mechanic showed up. He replaced the oil and did his magic, and soon after we were on our way. Obviously the car wasn't in perfect condition, and we even got a Little Miss Sunshine random beep going every once in a while. But miraculously we drove the car without any major problems the remaining six hours to Kayes, and continued the next day on the seven hour trip down to Kenieba.

After a nightmarish 24 hour bus ride from Kayes to Kenieba last October (the bus broke down and got stuck in the mud at least 5 times), and the deep swamp crossing this year, I've come to the conclusion that October is a tough month for travel in western Mali!

Catching up...

To all my loyal followers out there- I'm sorry for taking so long to update the blog! It's been a two months since my last post, and I have written bits and pieces of posts, but haven't put them all together yet. And the last time I was away from Kenieba and had Internet access, I wasn't feeling great. Luckily it was nothing serious but I got checked out just to be sure. There have been tons of cases of malaria here, like there are during every rainy season, and when I started to get fevers I wanted to make sure I didn't have malaria either! It turned out to be a viral infection and eventually went away.

Anyway, I have LOTS to write about and will hopefully be posting a lot in the next few days!