The Work Begins...

It has been a productive couple of weeks at site since I finally returned on Wednesday, January 13th after two weeks of training outside of Bamako, three weeks of traveling with my sister across the country, and five additional days in Ségou to prepare my Pump Replacement project proposal, with the transport troubles that followed. I just arrived back in Ségou today to attend the 'Festival sur le Niger,' which takes place from February 1st through the 6th.

Below is a brief synopsis of the projects that I currently am working on at site:

Village Water and Sanitation Committee

The 10 members of the village Water and Sanitation Committee and I following our first meeting on Wednesday, January 26th.

The day after I returned to my site, on Thursday, January 13th, Lassana, my homologue, and I met with the 'dugutigi' (chief of the village) and his son in regards to setting up a Water and Sanitation Committee. I told them my intention to select 5 men and 5 women, varying in age, representing all 4 cartés (regions), each with a genuine interest and enthusiasm for improving the lives of the villagers. The men agreed, and decided that the 'dugutigi' would select the 5 men, while the 'musokɔrɔba' (elder woman) would select the 5 women.

On Friday, January 14th, Lassana and I met with the village men's committee, and subsequently on Monday, January 17th with the village women's committee to discuss the formation of a village Water and Sanitation Committee. With the community informed, the selection of the members was completed, and we scheduled our first meeting for Wednesday, January 26th.

The first meeting went on without a hitch. On the agenda was to elect officers, determine rules for the committee, and discuss future meetings. The officers included president, vice president, secretary, treasurer, organizer/community 'crier,' 'secretary of logistics' (meeting place preperation), and, my personal favorite, 'keledabilala,' which in Bambara literally means 'the fight stopper.' Gotta love this language.

The members decided amongst themselves who would take each position, then determined the rules they would abide by as well. I only asked them to make one change... they decided that if a person does not show up to a meeting without informing the president in advance with a valid excuse, they would have to pay a fine. After three occurences, that person would have to pay a bigger fine and buy the committee a bag of candy. I told them that if a person missed three in a row, they probably are not interested in the committee and are adversely impacting the rest of the group. In that case, they should probably be kicked off the committee and replaced by another member of the community to be determined by a vote. They agreed to that change, as appealing as the candy may have been.

When I return to site after the festival, I plan on beginning PHAST with the committee. PHAST stands for Participatory Hygiene and Sanitation Transformation Series. It is a series of activities and discussions which a group of villagers, in this case the Water and Sanitation Committee plus 10 other villagers (each villager will bring one other person of the same gender to each of the PHAST meetings), work through in order to determine for themselves the water and sanitation needs in their community, and later, select strategies and projects in order to address these needs.

At the conclusion of the PHAST activities, my hope is that the committee will then be informed enough to select for themselves the projects they would like to tackle. It will then be my job to simply facilitate the implementation of these projects and assist the committee as required. By allowing the community to take the foremost role, I hope that the projects we tackle together will be sustainable long after I return to the states.

Pump Replacement Project

An ye yala yala Mali kono kosobɛ...

My sister's visit to Mali has just come to an end. We had a very eventful and enjoyable 'yala yala' across the country. Below is a brief summary of our excursion:

On Sunday, December 19th, Kim flew into Bamako. We immediately took a bus to travel up to Carrefour, then rode the rest of the way to Djenné on a bashɛ. The bashɛ to Djenné has to cross over the river Niger on a ferry to get into the city, and the bashɛ in front of us actually got stuck on the beach while driving onto it. I had to help the other men pull the bashɛ onto the ferry with a rope - just one of the many nuances with our transportation.

We spent Sunday evening and Monday in Djenné. Djenné is a very scenic and distinctive city full of large mud brick buildings, including the largest of the sort in the world, the famous Grand Mosque of Djenné. It was very cool to see the sights, but the Monday market was a bit overwhelming, as the local traders hassle tourists to no end to buy their goods.

The Great Mosque of Djenné is the largest mud brick building in the world, and is the focal point of the city. The weekly market every Monday is situated in front of the mosque.

The City of Djenné is a network of narrow alleys winding between multi-story mud-brick buildings.

On Tuesday, we took another bashɛ out of Djenné; this time a smoother operation, however uncomfortable it may have been. We arrived in the city of Sevaré, where we waited for another bashɛ to leave for the city of Bandiagara. There, we stayed overnight and began our Dogon hike the following morning bright and early.

Our Dogon hike was 6 days/5 nights, and involved us traveling from village to village along the southern portion of the 'falais,' beginning at Djiguibombo at the South end of the escarpment up to the village of Dourou, veering off the last day to visit the beautiful village of Nombori. I must give a shout-out to our guide, Ibrahim, who is Dogon himself and was incredibly accomodating and informative throughout the trip. If anyone is planning a trip out to Dogon Country, I highly recommend hiring Ibrahim as your guide. Just drop me an email and I will give you his contact information.

I cannot say enough about how incredible this experience was. The natural scenery, with the mountains, plains, and encroaching desert lands, was stunning. When you take into account the villages situated upon these lands, and often carved into the sides of the rock cliffs, the result is nothing less than breathtaking. And beyond that, the culture of the Dogon people is just as unique as their architecture, and it was incredibly interesting to hear about their history and take in their customs.

A definitive highlight for me was roaming the villages alone, unguided, where I found that although the Dogon people speak their own language, the majority of them also speak some Bambara. So I was able to effectively communicate with the villagers along the way, learning even more about their culture and their way of life. It was fascinating to me to see the subtle differences between life in a Dogon village and life in a Bambaran village (my village). I plan on returning to Dogon country before my time in Mali is up to hike the Northern section of the falaise we unfortunately did not have time for.

I took many pictures of the sights along our travels, and I feel that this is the best way to share our experiences:

Wood carvings supporting a meeting place 'gwa' in the Dogon village of Kani Kombole.