Women's Garden Committee and Pépinières

Mama, my 'jatigi muso' (host-mother) and now the 'muso nakɔ ɲɛmɔgɔ' (women's garden committee president), handing out tomato seedlings to village women in the garden.

When I first decided to assist the women in obtaining a selection of garden seeds from the Peace Corps Mali Food Security program to try for the year, I did not foresee it becoming a major, long-range project. But since that time, the need to teach the women how to manage an effective pépinière (nursery) to grow most of the types of seeds obtained and the need to better organize the women to allow them to develop projects for themselves into the future the became apparent.

On March 9th, we held a meeting with the village women's committee (which consists of all of the women) about setting up a 'muso nakɔ jɛkulu' (Women's Garden Committee) and about pépinière preperation using seeds I had procured. During this time, the ten women were selected for the committee, which provided representation from all of the regions of the village. Women from each village also volunteered to people the pépinières to grow the seedlings to later be distributed amongst all of the women. They also decided during this meeting to collect monthly dues from each of the 150 women with a plot in the garden, which will be used to establish a ‘kesu,’ or savings fund, for use in garden maintenance/ improvement/ seed procurement in the future.

Mama instructing women on how to prepare the planting bed and broadcast the seeds.

On March 12th, I spent the day in the garden with the newly formed committee assisting and educating the women on how to prepare a pépinière, and I assisted Mama, my host-mother and the president of the Women's Garden Committee, in seed distribution to the volunteers. The seeds distributed were tomato, lettuce, carrot, cabbage, eggplant, hot pepper, and papaya.

Village women building the 'gwa' (shelter) over their pépinière. The 'gwa' is meant to shield the soil from the sun, retaining moisture in the soil prior to seed germination. Once the seeds germinate, the 'gwa' is removed to allow the plants to receive sunlight.

A Bamanan Wedding...

Village women performing a traditional dance around three traditional drummers during the ‘kɔnyɔn.’ Note the brown/red/yellow fabric many of the villagers are wearing. This was the fabric chosen for the ‘kɔnyɔn' and many villagers got clothing made out of this fabric for just this occasion. 

This past week, a young tailor, Omaru, in my village married his first wife. The actual wedding itself, the ‘furusiri,’ took place Sunday afternoon within the village mosque. As per tradition, the bride and groom did not attend. Only men were present, and the groom was represented by his best friend.

The marriage ceremony began shortly thereafter, and is called a ‘kɔnyɔn.’ In preperation, a cow was slaughtered by the groom’s family early Sunday afternoon, and meat was handed out to other men in the village as a gift. I was given the meat from the cow’s head, which my host-mother cooked for me.

People gathered that afternoon to chat, and a dinner of rice, peanut sauce, and beef was served communally.

That night, the real festivities began. The village ‘dɛnmisɛnw jɛkulu’ (children’s committee, which includes ‘children’ of approximate ages 5 to 30) had recently raised money to purchase a stereo system. For the occasion, they brought out this equipment in the open area near one of the pumps and arranged chairs in a circle, forming a dance area in the middle.

Beginning around 9PM, the villagers began blasting African dance hall-style music, which for the most part was similar to reggaeton with its repetitive beat and yeling, but with Malian style synth instrumentation thrown in. They only had one disc of music, through which they manually skipped between about five three-minute songs, each being played more than ten times, until they mercifully stopped around 2AM.

I was rather disappointed when I first arrived in my village to find that after their traditional drums broke several years ago, they have ceased to have traditional music at any of their ceremonies. For this wedding, however, a ‘jɛli’ (griot/singer) and a band of traditional drummers, consisting of a large circular drum called a ‘dunun’ played bare-handed, and two smaller djembés played with a stick in one hand and the bare palm of the other, were hired from another village.

The three traditional drummers: the 'dunun' is in the center, flanked by the two smaller drums.

Pump Replacement Project

The village Pump Team and I standing behind one of the newly installed India-Mali pumps. (From left to right: Aliwata, Lassana, Dramani, Daouda, and myself)

As I had previously mentioned, at the beginning of last month I travelled to Bamako to hand deliver money to S.E.TRA., the pump manufacturer/installer. We had scheduled a March 20th start to the pump installation and training formation, during which three of our villagers, Lassana, Dramani, and Daouda, would be trained on pump maintenance, installation, and repair.

I called their office the Friday before to confirm what time they would be coming, but was told that the pump crew was still working on a project in Gao, so they would not be coming on time.

Delays continued, not only due to the work in Gao, but also due to their vehicle breaking down twice. Never once did I receive notification from S.E.TRA. on a change of plans, so I got into the habit of calling every morning to check the status. Unfortunately, this is just par for the course in this country, where people never want to tell you anything you don’t want to hear.

On Thursday, April 7th, the pump crew finally arrived, and finished their installation of the two pumps and the training formation the following evening. After giving the crew a bit of a tounge-lashing, my frustrations were quickly forgotten as I watched Omaru and his team do an incredible job of educating our pump team.

Daouda, Dramani, and Lassana assembling the Katilɛla pump cylinder.

Daouda and Dramani installing the Katilɛla pump as Omaru of S.E.TRA. looks on.

The first task completed was installation of the Katilɛla pump. Omaru put our team to work right away to perform the entire operation as Omaru briefly explained the parts and procedures. 

Omaru teaching Daouda, Dramani, and Lassana about the different parts of the pump.

On the role of a development aid worker…

The people of Africa face enormous challenges in their daily lives, and the roots of their problems are certainly complicated. Now living in Mali, it is amazing for me to realize that this country has only had it’s independence from France for 50 years, as the days of empirical conquest had seemed to be ancient history.

The causes of Africa’s lack of development have frequently been debated, but there is little doubt that the period of invasion and exploitation from the west was the most damning. And unfortunately, this exploitation continues today, with foreign companies gobbling up the continent’s vast natural resources whilst its’ people see not a dime of it. The widespread political upheaval we continue to see in the region today is also of grave concern and many of the region’s leaders are corrupted by the money from foreign entities, as their people, seemingly centuries apart, continue to suffer.

So where does this all leave us today, as development workers in Africa? It is well regarded that most of the development work taking place today is heavily flawed and counter-productive. The emphasis continues to be on providing for the people of Africa, as opposed to helping the people of Africa learn the skills to provide for themselves.

Many of the NGOs of today spend all kinds of money to build schools, pumps, health care facilities – but where will the education on how to utilize these facilities come from? Who will train the future generations of educators and doctors? When a pump breaks, will it simply sit unused, as a play-thing for the local children? When the funding runs out, who will feed the hungry or build the new wells required for a growing population?

I subscribe wholeheartedly to the theory that only through educating the African population to provide these facilities and services for themselves can we ever manage to reverse the continued trend of dependency.

I bring all of this up because of my recent experiences in village. During the fourteen Water and Sanitation Committee meetings we’ve held the past couple of months, I have found myself facing the decision of what direction my two years of service will go.

The month to come...

I just returned to Ségou after my quick jaunt into Bamako. I had a brief, yet productive trip, accomplishing what I had hoped to. I will be heading back to site this afternoon (Wednesday).

On Monday, I made a trip to the local bank in Bamako and picked up my SPA funds for the 'Pump Replacement' project. I then delivered that money to SETRA, the pump manufacturer/installer, and scheduled the work to begin on March 20th. On that date, the SETRA crew will arrive in my village, and they will begin their work, which includes both the installation of the two pumps, as well as the training of three members of the Water and Sanitation Committee on the proper operation, maintenance, and repair of these pumps. These two tasks will be performed together and should last approximately one week.

I also had discussions with the Environment sector head, Yacouba, while I was in Bamako. We discussed which vegetables should be planted in a pepiniere, and how to properly construct the planting beds for both vegetables that require pepinieres and those which do not. Over the next month, I plan on holding a meeting with the women's committee to distribute seeds, and will try my hand at providing instruction to them regarding planting technique.

Lassana, my homologue, also mentioned that he would like for us to establish a Women's Garden Committee. This committee would be responsible for collecting regular dues that women would be required to pay in order for the right to use the women's garden. This money would then be saved to be used for maintenance, repair, and/or supply purchases in the future. I was thrilled with the idea, which should develop a sense of responsibility and independence within the community for the women's garden, promoting sustainability throughout the future. We hope to begin this process in the coming month as well.

In addition to the pump and garden projects, I will continue to facilitate PHAST activities with the Water and Sanitation Committee, as we continue to move closer to selecting future projects which the committee would like to tackle within the village. As always, the testing and coordination of the fish pond will also proceed.

February in village...

I left my village today to return to Ségou. Tomorrow, I will be taking transport down to Bamako, where early next week I will kick-start the Pump Replacement project.

Below is a brief rundown of the projects that I have been working on over the past three weeks at site:

Village Water and Sanitation Committee

The Water and Sanitation Committee working on preparing a community map during one of our meetings this month.

Since I returned from the festival, we have been holding regular committee meetings twice a week; Monday and Friday mornings. We have held five such meetings this month, making steady progress on PHAST (Participatory Hygiene and Sanitation Transformation Series).

The intent of the PHAST activities are to facilitate discussion amongst the villagers themselves, which allow them to learn on their own about proper water and sanitation practices and analyze their own community’s practices, thus empowering them to later select the projects they would like to work on to improve their community.

Included in the activities we’ve completed thus far are discussions on good and bad hygiene behaviors, investigations of illnesses and diseases found within the community, the development of a community map with current water and sanitation facilities, and the development of charts showing how ‘feces gets to your face’ (This is actually the way you phrase it. The purpose is to force the members to think about their village and how diseases are spread.).

Shortly, the group will be determining what are the ‘barriers’ they can use to prevent disease transmission. They will then rank these barriers in terms of effectiveness and ease of implementation. This analysis will then be used as a tool for selecting their future projects.

Anyone that has been to Mali will tell you that punctuality and reliability are not in the vocabulary. So imagine my surprise when on Friday, February 18th, eight out of ten members were on-time for our 9:30 am community mapping meeting. One woman, who is pregnant, had not been coming due to sickness, and one man has been in Côte d'Ivoire. I was impressed.

Unfortunately, the following Monday, we held another meeting on 'good and bad hygiene behaviors.' Only four out of ten people were on-time at 9:30am. I then found out that the pregnant woman was still sick, the one man was still in Côte d'Ivoire, and a young man had gone to the fields, skipping the meeting. That made three definite no-shows!

At 10am, the remaining man showed up, and the two remaining women came at 10:30am; two claiming to have overslept, and one woman apparently came early, then left for the garden after hearing that some goats had invaded it and began eating the women's vegetables. The committee President and Vice President, to my delight, decided to replace the pregnant woman and the man who left for Côte d'Ivoire without notifying them of his trip in advance (a rule that was set during our first meeting). The two people selected maintained our balance of gender and village regions, and both had actually participated voluntarily in previous meetings on their own accord, simply because they were interested. So we then had our meeting, an hour late, but with nine out of ten members.

At the meeting's close, I took the opportunity for a brief lecture on the importance of attending all meetings, on-time. All of the activities build upon each other, and in order to work effectively and make good decisions, the knowledge base obtained by the group now is vital. Not only that, they've made a commitment to serve their community.

For our meeting the following Friday on 'how diseases spread,' I arrived at the meeting place a half-hour early. Already, six people had arrived, and by our 9:30am start time, all members were present! We shall see what happens as we move forward, but hopefully the commitment is now entrenched. Hearing the stories of other volunteers though, this will likely be a constant battle.

Pump Replacement Project

Festival sur le Niger

The seventh edition of the Festival sur le Niger, a music and culture festival in Ségou, took place from Tuesday, February 1st through Sunday, February 6th. Mali is a country well-known for its impressive array of diverse and quality music. Two major festivals showcase this annually within Mali; the Festival au Desert in Timbuktu and the Festival sur le Niger. The Festival sur le Niger is a more recent entrant, but due to the security concerns present in the northern reaches of Mali over the past several years, it has taken it's place as the preeminent music festival in Mali, drawing the top acts within the country, as well as from the region.

I feel privileged to have attended this year's festival. From Tuesday night through Sunday night, each day from 10am through 6pm was filled with concerts on a side stage and several smaller performances put on by different 'troupes' of musicians, griots, dancers, acrobats, 'jacko(s)' (or masks/ mascots), marionnettes (puppets), and the like. These events were free to the public. Each night involved a concert on the main stage with the major acts. Access for the night shows required a ticket, but at a much-reduced rate for Mali nationals. This resulted in a festival that certainly attracted it's share of tourists from across the world, but was heavily enjoyed by the local population.

The main stage at the festival, where the nightly 'Concert géant sur le fleuve' took place. The stage is set upon a barge, which was pulled up along the shore of the Niger River.

I could not have been more impressed with this festival. The concerts may not have always been on-time, but they were pretty damn close, more-so than most festivals in the states. The setting was incredibly scenic, being along the Niger River. Just a month prior, the Niger River was still brown and swelled, I'm assuming due to sediment runoff from the rainy season, which ended in October. During the festival, the river was stunning, with rather clear, blue water. Small beer gardens with food and drink were set up throughout the festival grounds, and a large area of booths was set aside for local craftsmen, as well as a couple local bottlers of food and beverage, including some tasty mango juice.

Another view of the main stage at the festival.

I have always enjoyed live music and festivals, and have been to my share back in the states. But the Festival sur le Niger was by far the most entertaining and enriching festival experience I have ever had. The music was phenomenal and diverse, and the varied aspects of all the diverse cultures represented was incredibly interesting. Below are some pictures of what I would personally consider the highlights. Unless otherwise noted, these are all Malian performers:

Wednesday

A traditional hunter performance troupe dancing and playing wooden whistles during the opening ceremony.

A group of Tuareg musicians closing out the opening ceremony. A traditional gourd drum provided a constant, monotonous percussive rhythym while a traditional Malian guitar drenched in effects played overtop. The end result was incredibly hypnotic and addictive.