"Feelin' Alright"

It's mid-service medical exam time! I'm in Bamako fulfilling my obligation to subject myself to being pricked, poked, and prodded in the name of PCV health. On the bright side, I get to stay in the Peace Corps med unit for free (no hotel voucher needed!) and take a break from site. Even though I just did that in Ameriki. Anyway, after an 8 AM appointment with the most decidedly not gentle Lebanese dentist, my PCV pal and I walked to the bloodwork lab across the neighborhood, ate some lunch, and finished the day with full physicals from the Peace Corps Medical Officer. On the bright side, we were later invited to dinner at a new friend's house. A lovely South African gentleman (last name DeBeer - he's in mining) cooked up some pot roast and potatoes which we ate with some awesome spicy peach and apricot chutney. Delish. Now it's time to go back to site for a few days before I leave again for a 4th of July celebration in Siby. Happy birthday, America!

"In the Waiting Line"

Well that was quick. I’m back in Mali after what the calendar says was three weeks home in the States. Thank you to all who made my visit a truly lovely one. Unfortunately, there is a long list of people I wanted to see and didn’t; I guess that’s just another good reason to go back! That and Mexican food.

In lieu of philosophical discussions on reverse culture shock and new perspectives on old familiar things, I have a fun story from my travels back to Africa. After a three hour flight from Nashville to New York and a four hour layover hanging out alone in JFK, I was a little sad to get on my nine hour New York to Casablanca flight, knowing I had another twelve hours to spend alone wandering around the airport. I slept almost the entire nine hours and landed in Casablanca sometime before noon. As I was standing up to deplane, someone tapped me on the shoulder. It turns out another Mali PCV had been in the row directly behind me the entire time, unbeknownst to either of us. Awesome, I thought, now I have a buddy with whom to wander the airport.

We stood in line to have our passports stamped and chatted about how many official vacation days we’d used up. Then a woman behind us in line said, “Excuse me, are you Peace Corps Volunteers?” We were like, “Uh yeah, how’d you know?” She said the vacation allotment discussion was a familiar one to her. She was an RPCV from Morocco on her way to Mali do some research for her graduate program. We were on the same flight to Bamako. Now I had two friends for all day airport wandering!

After a little whining about how long the day was going to be, our new Moroccan RPCV friend said, “Well, I had this idea before but didn’t want to do it alone. But now that I’ve got you guys… You wanna go to Rabat?” I hadn’t realized that the capital of Morocco was just a 45 minute train ride from the Casablanca airport. She assured us that although it had been two years since she’d been back, she knew where to get the train, where to switch lines, where to have some delicious chawarma and coffee, and how to get back to the airport in time to catch our flight to Bamako. That decision wasn’t too tough to make.

I changed some euros for dirham in the airport, explained to the customs official that we were just going to Rabat for the day (yes, I know, my flight is tonight, thank you, sir), bought a train ticket and took off down the coast (which is gorgeous). We got off at the equivalent of Union Station in downtown Rabat and took and informal walking and taxi cab tour of the city. We saw the king’s personal mosque, a union protest on the main square, the old walled city, the old Portuguese ramparts by the ocean, and took a walk through a souk (market) so lovely and colorful I didn’t want to leave. Malian markets do not hold a candle. After fresh squeezed orange juice, mint tea, and fried bread (“fat girl bread”) we got back on the train for Casa feeling like accomplished world travelers.

I was very thankful to have found new friend who, coincidently, is the girlfriend of another Moroccan RPCV whose father is a Malian PCV from my stage. From Cleveland, Tennessee. How’s THAT for a small world! I have the good feeling that this will not be the last time the worldwide Peace Corps network provides me a great opportunity. I was also very thankful to have my French without which I may have been slightly less inclined to embark on such a spontaneous jaunt with someone I’d known about 10 minutes. Schoolhouse Rocky was right: Knowledge is power! And freedom.

Summary: America is great, I was glad to be home, but go to Morocco. It’s pretty fabulous. You can skip Mali.

P.S. You know I wouldn’t leave you without some photographic evidence: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2119216&l=7bc69&id=1404038

"Hot in Herre" *

April is the cruelest month...

...but it doesn't have anything to do with Eliot or Chaucer. It's just flippin' hot outside. Since April is the hottest month of dry season and given that the second most common question I get (behind “How are you? Sick?”) is, “So, is it really hot?”, I will attempt to answer that question.

Umm… yes.

Until about mid-March it hadn’t been too bad - hot, but not REALLY hot. Unfortunately for... everyone in Mali (minus that one guy who sells ice), dry season is in full swing. Hot dry season, I should say. Mali has two seasons: rainy and dry, with dry season being subcategorized into hot and cold. We arrived in country in July - in the middle of the rains, which provide almost daily relief from the heat. Not too bad. But besides some freak sprinkles around the first of December, it hasn’t rained since Halloween. Novemberish through Februaryish is referred to as “cold” dry season. The quotation marks are warranted. There was a list in a recent Mali Rag with the observation, "You know you're a Mali PCV when you reach for your sweatshirt if the temp drops below 80. "Cold" is anywhere between 60 and 80. Anything below that would be better described as "frigid", at least in the southeast. Believe it or not, 80 does seem pretty cool after you've been here a while. There were nights in Bamako in January that must've been in the 50s, and it was FREEZING, even to me. Now we sit around the San stage house pining for those chilly nights.

I don't have an accurate source for temperatures at my site (oddly, The Weather Channel doesn't cover Kimparana and most PCVs' thermometers have gone haywire - mine often reads 118) but I can say with confidence that it is over 100 every single day. The news said yesterday it was 109 in a town near me. Some people back in Ameriki say, "Oh, that's not so bad. I live in Florida and it's been 105." Yeah, but what people in Ameriki forget is that in Ameriki you can escape the heat easily - in your air conditioned home, office, car, restaurant, bank, etc. You can get some ice cream. You can buy a cold beverage. You can plug in a fan. Malila you're lucky to have some big trees in your courtyard. It's not that experiencing 109 is unbearable. It's that experiencing 109 from 9 AM to 5 PM with no reprieve is pretty harsh. And it's hotter INSIDE than it is OUTSIDE. Apparently I'm the only one who's noticed that the houses are made of the same material as the OVENS, for the sake of Pete. It's almost impossible to sleep (who's ever thought I could say something like that?) indoors, so everyone camps outside in the courtyard every night. I'm assuming this will go on until it starts raining again and we're forced back into our mud ovens. You'd think the coming of the rains would be a sorely anticipated event. I'm not so sure. Even if it did start raining now, I’m told that the beginning of rainy season is almost worse than regular hot season. Because it’s hot AND humid. At lest that's something a Southern girl should be used to.

And to conclude, I give you a photo of the lush Malian countryside during dry season:

* For Arielle.

"It Ain't Easy"

It’s video time again! And while this particular episode may not be quite as fun as last time’s, I hope it will give you a better glimpse of what is probably the second most oft-shown West African women’s activity (after carrying water on their heads, of course).



mmm... nyo

This is Aissata, and she is susu-ing. “Ka susu” is the Bambara word for the action of pounding things (mostly millet aka nyo) with the traditional wooden mortar and pestle. And you thought there were only those little stone ones for making guacamole… Actually, susu-ing, depending on the season and family income level, can take up a large portion of a typical Malian woman’s day – sometimes more than 4 hours. You can susu a lot of different things for a lot of different reasons – corn cobs (to remove the kernels), corn kernels (to make flour), millet stalks (to remove the grains), millet grains (to make flour), sorghum, garlic, onions, tomatoes, leaves (to make powders and spices), and even manure (to make fertilizer). The possibilities are endless, really. The mortar (“kolon”, also the word for well) and pestle (“kolon kala”) come in sizes ranging from tiny tourist trinket to a bit larger than the one lying on its side on the ground to the left in the video. Farm families grow and eat A LOT of millet, mostly in a porridge form called “tô”, which is made by adding millet powder to boiling water. Therefore, susu-ing is a daily task for many Malian women. And let me tell you, it ain’t easy. About 30 seconds is enough for me to get tired. It’s not that I’m a wuss – that kolon kala is solid heavy wood. Even Malians susu in short spurts and/or take turns. If you can get a partner (as shown), you’re really in business.

The act of susu-ing is an art form. These women have been at it a while (you know… like, probably a thousand years), so one starts to get creative. There’s the one-handed susu, which leaves the other hand free to tap the edge of the kolon, leg, susu-ing arm, and/or other objects in rhythm with the pounding of the kolon kala. Susu-ing with a partner in the same kolon or in groups with many kolons can be fun for singing songs and creating a polyrhythmic drum circle-like atmosphere. Lots of women, when alone, click their tongues or make some other sort of sound in their throats to complement the pounding of the kolon kala. And then there’s everybody’s favorite: the hand clap. The hand clap is probably the most common susu fun factor, but it takes a while to master. You may have noticed that I was audibly impressed with Aissata’s hand clap. You know a really good susu clap when it is heard and not seen. As you can imagine, the double hand clap is a rarity, and I have never had the good fortune to witness the elusive triple clap myself. If I ever find someone who can do it, I’ll let you know. As with materials, the susu-ing method embellishments are infinite. Just think of it as the Malian version of whistle while you work. (Incidentally, women are not allowed to whistle in Mali. As a woman and avid whistler, this saddens me.)

P.S. The car pictured in the middle of the concession is not operable. In Mali, when your car doesn't work you just leave it in the middle of your yard. Just like Tennessee!

"Tonight I'll Be Staying Here With You"

Courtesy of the February 2008 Mali Rag:

Development Philosophies

A villager falls into a hole he can't climb out of. Later, a missionary walks by. The villager explains his plight and the missionary throws down a Bible. "If you follow Jesus, he will show you the way."

An NGO worker walks by. The villager explains his plight and the NGO worker throws down a wad of money and walks away.

A Peace Corps Volunteer walks by. The villager explains his plight and the Peace Corps Volunteer runs off. After a while, the Volunteer returns with a bag and jumps in the hole. "Did you bring something to climb out with?" asks the villager. "No," says the PCV, "I'm coming to live with you."



For a discussion, see the entry below dated today (22 Feb):

"Optimistic"

This Op-Ed and accompanying responses were published in the New York Times last month. The article itself expresses a common frustration with Peace Corps among friends and family of Volunteers (Q: So what kind of work are you doing in your village? A: Uhhhhh, nothing right now...). I have not yet met a PCV who disagrees, at least in part, with Mr. Strauss, but I found the letters to the editor particularly representative of general PCV opinion. Food for thought.

Too Many Innocents Abroad
(http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/09/opinion/09strauss.html)

By ROBERT L. STRAUSS
January 9, 2008

Antananarivo, Madagascar

THE Peace Corps recently began a laudable initiative to increase the number of volunteers who are 50 and older. As the Peace Corps’ country director in Cameroon from 2002 until last February, I observed how many older volunteers brought something to their service that most young volunteers could not: extensive professional and life experience and the ability to mentor younger volunteers.

However, even if the Peace Corps reaches its goal of having 15 percent of its volunteers over 50, the overwhelming majority will remain recently minted college graduates. And too often these young volunteers lack the maturity and professional experience to be effective development workers in the 21st century.

This wasn’t the case in 1961 when the Peace Corps sent its first volunteers overseas. Back then, enthusiastic young Americans offered something that many newly independent nations counted in double and even single digits: college graduates. But today, those same nations have millions of well-educated citizens of their own desperately in need of work. So it’s much less clear what inexperienced Americans have to offer.

The Peace Corps has long shipped out well-meaning young people possessing little more than good intentions and a college diploma. What the agency should begin doing is recruiting only the best of recent graduates — as the top professional schools do — and only those older people whose skills and personal characteristics are a solid fit for the needs of the host country.

The Peace Corps has resisted doing this for fear that it would cause the number of volunteers to plummet. The name of the game has been getting volunteers into the field, qualified or not. In Cameroon, we had many volunteers sent to serve in the agriculture program whose only experience was puttering around in their mom and dad’s backyard during high school. I wrote to our headquarters in Washington to ask if anyone had considered how an American farmer would feel if a fresh-out-of-college Cameroonian with a liberal arts degree who had occasionally visited Grandma’s cassava plot were sent to Iowa to consult on pig-raising techniques learned in a three-month crash course. I’m pretty sure the American farmer would see it as a publicity stunt and a bunch of hooey, but I never heard back from headquarters.

For the Peace Corps, the number of volunteers has always trumped the quality of their work, perhaps because the agency fears that an objective assessment of its impact would reveal that while volunteers generate good will for the United States, they do little or nothing to actually aid development in poor countries. The agency has no comprehensive system for self-evaluation, but rather relies heavily on personal anecdote to demonstrate its worth.

Every few years, the agency polls its volunteers, but in my experience it does not systematically ask the people it is supposedly helping what they think the volunteers have achieved. This is a clear indication of how the Peace Corps neglects its customers; as long as the volunteers are enjoying themselves, it doesn’t matter whether they improve the quality of life in the host countries. Any well-run organization must know what its customers want and then deliver the goods, but this is something the Peace Corps has never learned.

This lack of organizational introspection allows the agency to continue sending, for example, unqualified volunteers to teach English when nearly every developing country could easily find high-caliber English teachers among its own population. Even after Cameroonian teachers and education officials ranked English instruction as their lowest priority (after help with computer literacy, math and science, for example), headquarters in Washington continued to send trainees with little or no classroom experience to teach English in Cameroonian schools. One volunteer told me that the only possible reason he could think of for having been selected was that he was a native English speaker.

The Peace Corps was born during the glory days of the early Kennedy administration. Since then, its leaders and many of the more than 190,000 volunteers who have served have mythologized the agency into something that can never be questioned or improved. The result is an organization that finds itself less and less able to provide what the people of developing countries need — at a time when the United States has never had a greater need for their good will.

Robert L. Strauss has been a Peace Corps volunteer, recruiter and country director. He now heads a management consulting company.



To the Editor:
In ''Too Many Innocents Abroad'' (Op-Ed, Jan. 9), Robert L. Strauss criticizes the Peace Corps, saying that often its ''young volunteers lack the maturity and professional experience to be effective development workers in the 21st century.'' The agency, he says, ''neglects its customers.'' In fact, volunteers are trained to integrate into their host communities and listen carefully. As a volunteer, I spent more than a year in direct dialogue with my Chinese counterparts before helping to set up a weekend program for children. My ''customers'' -- peasant farmers and their children -- were immensely grateful. Mr. Strauss also suggests that the Peace Corps is satisfied if ''volunteers are enjoying themselves.'' This is, quite frankly, an insult to those who work tirelessly -- at great sacrifice and, at times, with little enjoyment -- to fulfill their missions. In applying the metrics of management consulting to the Peace Corps, Mr. Strauss ignores the essence of this marvelous organization: its humanity. If he wants to deal with ''customers,'' his matrix for analysis makes sense. The Peace Corps, however, deals with people.

Michael Levy Northampton, Mass., Jan. 9, 2008

To the Editor:
I served in Cameroon as just the kind of agricultural volunteer Robert L. Strauss mentions. As a 20-year-old journalism graduate, I'd grown nary a houseplant before trying to teach farmers how to improve their crops. The audacity of my arrogance in assuming that this time abroad would do Cameroon any good was apparent on Day 1. I lasted just five months before returning home, frustrated, confused and annoyed that I had put so much thought into a system that failed both the host country and a volunteer with the best of intentions. The Peace Corps is a great program in true need of reorganization.

Kelli M. Donley Tempe, Ariz., Jan. 9, 2008

To the Editor:
My wife and I were Peace Corps volunteers in India in the 1960s. Since becoming director, I have seen volunteers in action in more than 30 countries, including Cameroon. The quality of the volunteer experience has not changed, nor has the quality of the volunteers who serve. The Peace Corps remains true to President John F. Kennedy's vision articulated in 1961.
The Peace Corps recruits the best and brightest, and only one out of every three applicants becomes a volunteer. Volunteers provide trained skills at the grass-roots level and promote a better understanding of Americans and our culture. Government officials throughout the world praise the work of volunteers, and the list of countries requesting new programs continues to grow. The agency's success is more than anecdotal. Ninety-one percent of volunteers say they feel integrated into their communities, and we have created evaluation plans to better quantify the volunteers' impact. We can all be proud of the volunteers serving today. I encourage Americans of all ages and backgrounds to consider serving.

Ronald A. Tschetter Peace Corps Director Washington, Jan. 9, 2008

To the Editor:
In 2000, when I was a 23-year-old straight out of graduate school, I had very little to offer the Senegalese village I was sent to by the Peace Corps. Sure, I was the only one in my village with a college degree, but I was in no position to tell the villagers how to run their businesses. Sure, I taught them a little about accounting and some basic math, but my real value was being one extra person to hold a shovel. The reality was that I was the one who learned the most and got the most from the experience. The Peace Corps is really more of a cultural-exchange program than an international development organization.

Benjamin Y. Clark Athens, Ga., Jan. 9, 2008

To the Editor:
Today, a friend and fellow returned Peace Corps volunteer is being buried in Orchard Park, N.Y. He was murdered while working to end the violence in Sudan. John Granville was nothing like the ill-prepared young people Robert L. Strauss describes. During his Peace Corps service in Cameroon from 1997 to 1999, he was so successful and well loved by the community that he was given an honorary title by the chief of the village. He returned to Cameroon as a Fulbright scholar to research culturally appropriate approaches to H.I.V. prevention. When I visited him that year, we took many walks through ''his'' village. It could take hours -- every few houses or so, neighbors waved us over to exchange greetings and news. He was welcomed because he understood something about living and working internationally that Mr. Strauss seems not to have grasped -- the value of human relationships and the importance of being willing to learn.
The Peace Corps is not just about what ''fresh out of college'' Americans can teach citizens of other countries. It is an opportunity for Americans to prove to the world that hubris is not the defining characteristic of our country. While Mr. Strauss worries about how America can fix other nations, former Peace Corps volunteers like me will be putting to good use the skills we learned during our service. We will be listening, learning and sharing anywhere in the world we're still welcome.

Karen Greiner Athens, Ohio, Jan. 9, 2008

To the Editor:
Maybe Robert L. Strauss should talk to the average person in the countries the Peace Corps serves. In my work outside the United States, I am always surprised when people ask me questions about things that are taken for granted by Americans. Why, I've been asked, do Americans wear shoes in their houses? What is the Dow Jones (or who is Dow Jones and why is he average)? And is root beer alcoholic? The value of the Peace Corps is that people in other countries who may never have seen a foreigner are happy for the opportunity to ask questions directly to an American.

Robert Wong Khartoum, Sudan, Jan. 9, 2008


You can try the best you can. You can try the best you can. The best you can is good enough.

"Girls Just Wanna Have Fun"

Today I have a video treat for you:

Water Pull Race or Are You Stronger Than a 5th Grader?

Please notice the family donkey in the upper left corner. I like that this video confirms that Malian children (just like American ones) show off sillily in front of the camera. Some things in life are universal.