My Site Visit to the Ségou Region as 'Maliki Jarra'

Scattered trees within the agricultural fields just outside of the village.

We have just returned from our initial visit to our respective sites for the next two years. I have been placed in a small village of around 1,400 people in the Region of Ségou, approximately 100 kilometers east of the city of Ségou, the regional capital. Due to my very persistent homologue, just after I finally got used to my Malian name in Homestay, I now have a new name… Maliki Jarra. This week certainly had it’s ups and downs, but I am excited about my new village.

The following is a brief rundown of the happenings at site…

The small mud-mosque located near the center of the village.

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

Myself, my fellow PCTs, and our homologues woke up at Tubaniso, ready to split off to our respective regions and sites. Hannah and I lucked out and got Peace Corps transport into Ségou, instead of having to negotiate Mali’s public transportation system the entire way. After a three-hour ride from Bamako, we arrived at the Peace Corps bureau in Ségou around 12:30pm, where I met Therese, the volunteer whom I am replacing. We then went to a local transportation stop, at which time my homologue, Lassana, left separately on his motorbike to spend a night with his third wife, who lives in a village approximately 30 kilometers from my site/his home.

A bush taxi headed for my market town 4 kilometers south of my village was waiting at the transportation stop when we arrived there around 1:00pm. A throng of people were already there ready to go, but the bush taxi waited for two more people to completely fill out the vehicle, and we left around 4:00pm after Therese pulled off some bargaining/haggling in Bambara.

The trip on the bush taxi was very, well, ‘cozy.’ There were five of us crammed into the last row of the taxi, and half-way through, one of them actually stood up, yelled at the driver to stop, and he went and sat on the roof instead. The bush taxi negotiated some very rough dirt roads, with large sporadic pools of water.

We finally arrived in my market town at around 7:00pm, just as it got dark. Both Therese and I had our bikes, but the road and the surrounding millet fields were incredibly flooded, with up to a couple feet of water in spots. So we had to walk the 4 kilometers to my village, trudging through muddied, standing water in the darkness.

Thursday, August 12, 2010

This day was my first experience of what life was like in the village. I was a little overwhelmed the night before by the shear remoteness of the village, but as seems to be the case in all of Mali, the spirits of the people carry you through the day. Much of the day was spent greeting and introducing myself to my new neighbors in the village. Everyone in the village is incredibly welcoming and they seem genuinely appreciative that I am there.

The village itself is rather picturesque. The buildings and walls in village are primarily of mud-brick construction, and provide the village with a very earthy and elemental feel. Miles and miles of agricultural fields surround the village with the tangled limbs of old, large trees sprawling across the vast African sky.

A view along an old mud wall on the edge of the village.

Today, I also had my first taste of food in my village. In talking with Therese and the other Peace Corps Volunteers in Mali, my village is among the poorest of the Peace Corps sites, and it shows in their food. Most families in my village eat millet for all three meals during the day, regardless of season. My village hardly grows rice, so the food I usually enjoy from homestay is a rare delicacy here.

Every morning, I am served ‘moni’ for breakfast, a kind of brown porridge with small balls of millet. It is very bland and the hardest thing for me to put down in-country so far. For lunch, I will usually receive ‘to,’ which is the traditional Malian dish of millet, green with a spongy consistency served with an okra sauce. I am not a fan, but I don’t mind it, and it is actually a fairly nutritious dish for African standards. For dinner, it is normally either ‘to’ again or a dish of millet with another type of sauce.

As someone who likes to eat, and eat a lot, this is going to be a tough transition for me. I never realized how good I had it at homestay. So in the future, I am planning to eat only one meal a day with my host family, and I will try to cook for myself the rest of the time.

The Malian dish of 'To' (Pounded millet with okra dipping sauce), served Malian 'Family Style.'

I learned that a governmental agency from Saudi Arabia had previously installed the two pumps currently found in the village, but both are now broken. Therefore, the people of the village once again get their water from one of five open, untreated, community wells in the village. So during the visit, I had the experience of fetching water for drinking and bathing with a bucket from a well. But this is definitely a big opportunity for me to assist the village in the next two years: pump maintenance, well construction, and water treatment.

Village children playing in front of one of the broken foot-pumps, previously installed by Saudi Arabia.

Friday, August 13, 2010

This morning, myself, Therese, and Lassana met with the ‘men’s group’ in the village, consisting of about 20 elders. I greeted the men one-by-one as we arrived, and then took a seat beside Lassana as he introduced me to the men and explained why I am here. We then presented the ‘dugutigi’ (chief of the village) with kola nuts.

Once my business was attended to, the men began to talk about other issues in the community, including their pleasure with the commune’s decision to allocate funds to construct an additional building for the primary school in the village. This is exciting to me, and brings me to another project I would like to initiate.

Currently, the school does not have any ɳagans (latrines). I would like to assist the community in constructing separate ɳagan facilities for boys and girls. Additionally, I would like to construct handwashing stations there as well. As handwashing with soap is not a common practice in my village, either after using the restroom or before eating, I would like to educate the villagers on the importance of doing so.

An alley within the village, surrounded by mud walls and buildings.

Friday night was my first taste of the beating which mud huts take during the Malian rainy season. I awoke around 4:00am to the sounds of mud and concrete slamming and splattering onto the floor of my house, and the feeling of mud and moisture on my skin. I looked around, and in places along all four exterior walls of my house, the mud bricks had fallen out, even dropping a support beam for the roof by a couple of feet.

This would occur during substantial rain storms each of the next three nights. Therese told me that just a month ago, the house was in great condition. It appears that the problem is the house does not have gutters, and the roof does not extend far enough past the edge of the wall, so when rainwater hits the roof, the water just flows through the walls, eroding them away.

This is not a concern whatsoever, as the village will have this repaired before I move in early September. But it did emphasize to me the importance of maintenance in mud-wall construction, and how impressive the largest mud-mosque in the world, found in Djenné, Mali truly is. No wonder it is a major community event, basically a celebrated holiday, to re-mud it's walls every year.

The Great Mosque of Djenné.

Saturday, August 14, 2010

Today, Claudine, a Peace Corps APCD came by to perform the ‘procedurals’ as we met with the dugutigi in my village, the mayor of the commune, and the head of the CSCM (the health center in the nearest market town). Therese departed for good with the Peace Corps vehicle, leaving me with the immediate yet invigorating feeling that this was now my site and my home for the next two years. It was a good feeling to walk around the village and connect with people on my own, but Therese was incredibly helpful to me while she was there.

A view from within my concession. At left, my 'ɲɛgɛn.' At rear, my house.

Sunday, August 15, 2010

Today was market day in the nearest market town, 4 kilometers south. Lassana and I boarded our bikes and rode down the same water-logged road I had travelled down on Wednesday. The market was bustling with activity, and was fairly impressive in size and number of people. We spent about 5 hours in the market, and Lassana and I spent most of the time greeting and socializing with the people of the commune. I did not see any vegetables available, but there was some quality fruit and meat for sale. This town also has a busy market for animal livestock, such as goats, sheep, and bulls. I bought some delicious ‘kini ni tiga dɛgɛ na’ for lunch, some dates, bananas, and, as gifts for my host family, tea and bread.

A view of the agricultural fields surrounding the village.

Monday, August 16, 2010

Tonight around 7:00pm, 6 students from Pitt and their chaperone, Kyle, the first volunteer in my village, arrived for a two-week stay for their work with Engineers Without Borders. They are working on the fish pond in the village and will be performing tests on the pond and some engineering work to improve it. I will be working with them closely over the next two years on this project. Right now, there are drainage concerns with standing water on three sides of the pond.

The fish pond previously expanded by Engineers Without Borders.

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Today I got Peace Corps transport out of my village and into the city of Ségou, where I met the other Peace Corps trainees in my region, as well as several current Peace Corps volunteers, at a downtown restaurant called ‘The Shack.’ It didn’t look like much from the outside, but I had the best meal I have had yet in country, and one that would rival many upscale restaurants in America. It was the ‘plate du jour,’ and had two beef kabobs, medium-rare (very key, most Malians cook meet very well done!) with tomatoes, and sides of rice with onion sauce and green beans, perfectly seasoned.

We then went on to a nearby hotel to sit by the pool and socialize, before moving on to an Italian restaurant called ‘L'Esplanade’ adjacent to the Niger River, where I got some good lasagna and bruschetta. After a week of millet, this was incredible. Ségou seems like a happening city, but cleaner and less overwhelming than Bamako, and it supposedly has a great music scene. It will be a good escape for me whenever I feel the need to take a break from site.

We then stayed overnight at a hotel, and got Peace Corps transport back to Bamako the next day.

Overall, I am excited about getting started in my new village, and I am anxious to get to know the villagers better through conversation. The people in the village are incredibly warm and welcoming, and the conversations I have had thus far, albeit limited, have been comfortable and engaging.

In terms of work, since the village has had two previous volunteers, they seem to understand that I will not be funding or building projects for them. The onus will be on them to fund projects and put forth the effort to learn and construct. I have already thought through several projects that I would like to tackle during my time there that can be of great value to the community.

A farmer riding back to the village after a day out in the fields.

I was hoping to be in a village that had a strong musical presence. Although the village apparently does not play traditional music during ceremonies, as my homestay village did during weddings, there are a couple djembe players in town, as well as a man who plays some sort of a traditional Malian guitar. The guitarist has said that he is willing to teach me how to play it, which would be a fun and engaging way for me to spend my free time, and a great skill to bring back home.

The food will be a challenge, but I intend to cook for myself two meals out of the day, which will allow me to both gain some culinary skills and add variety to my diet. I will spend the first several weeks at site scouting out the local markets I can bike to, and the 'butigiw' (small shops) in Ségou, for meat and vegetables.

Today, we spent the day at Tubaniso with ‘debriefing’ classes, and we will head back to our homestay sites tomorrow afternoon for the last time, before we come back to Tubaniso on Sunday, August 29th to prepare for swear-in and installation. It went by incredibly fast, and it is sad to be leaving my homestay family so soon, especially before I have the language skills to have in-depth conversations with them. I definitely intend on visiting them at some point when my language skills are improved. I will post again when I come back, and I should have more pictures for you all of my homestay village and family.