So you wanna know about my work...

Great news! I finally know what I am supposed to be doing here, and it only took three months! This week I had a tutor from Bamako come up to my site and stay with me. I had around 30 intensive hours of Fulfulde training and I am now able to speak about my work, conjugate the differenet verb forms with a lot more fluidity (I still speak Fulfulde like a Dogon because of my village), and have really increased my vocab knowledge. My tutor, Dauo, acted as a translator one night in a conversation between me and my homologue. Basically, my village has three main goals that they would like to accomplish. First off, the village received funding a few years ago for a seed and cereal bank. A small stoarage house has built and some seeds and cereals were bought. The village was able to increase profit by loaning seeds at first. People were able to pay back the seed loans with interest and the bank was running successfully. One day, the accountant running the books just up and left with all of the moneym leaving the villagers back at square one. My first job will be to find more funding to build a new and improved storage house and large stock. In January I will return to Bamako for inservice training and learn all about the Peace Corps Partnership Program and how to write grants/proposals and receive funding. This goal seems easily attainable and I am really excited to get it going in the coming months.
The second goal or the village is to improve the productivity of the community garden. Right now (mini hot season) the village is harvesting the millet that was grown in the rainy season, which is their main food staple. This will be accomplished within the next month. The next step is to begin working in the garden during the cold season. The villagers grow tomatoes, onions, garlic, bananas, mangos, papayas, lettuce, lemons, and other various fruits/veggies. Basically, they want me to introduce ways to increase crop yield so that they can eat more food that contains the necessary vitamins to maintain good health and to increase profit when they sell the goods in market. For the next three months I will be doing "farmers field school" experiments in order to see what works best. This means that I will take a plot of land in the garden, divide it into sections and change one variable (while the rest remain constant) in order to see what works best to increase crop yield/health. I will be experiementing with different natural fungicides, insecticides, and fertilizers. This should be some really exciting work that produces results that I can see and share with the villagers.
The third goal is more complicated, but it includes water conservation techniques during and after the rainy season because they receive so little rain this far north and it always comes and goes at different times. I am not too sure as to what I can do for this, but I will be able to look into digging wells, building irrigation canals, slowing soil erosion, and working on compost. This job should be a trip, but I will go into it head first.
All in all, I'm pumped to finally know what my village wants to do and it is really driving me to learn Fulfulde faster so I can work more effectively.

I might get a dog today! I am just waiting for these little kids to bring it over to the house I am staying in. I told them I want a black male puppy. The black dogs here always look so much healthier and cleaner, and I don't want a femals dog because I don't want to deal with 10 puppies in the future. I'm keeping my fingers crossed!

Anyway, it's about that time for my 25km bike ride home woohoo! Caggal Jooni.

Updates from the north!

I'n here!

PETA members look out, I'm now a proffesional turtle surfer! This tortoise lives at the training center and only has one eye. He spends his day running into people sitting on chairs to knowck them over, busting through screen doors to scare the girls and chasing everyone around... he can really move! And, he loves to mess with people.

So, on the way up to site 2 weeks ago we got into a pretty bad bus accident. After leaving Bamako early in the morning, the bus was heading north at the usual breakneck, horn blasting speed. About 30 minutes into the trip I was dozing in my seat dreading the 15 hour sweat box ride when the driving started honking incessentaly. Normally the bus driver hnoks to move cattle, goats, birds, pedestrians, other cars, small children, etc. This time he was really laying it on. The driver then slammed on his brakesm careened left and I was shaken from my nap rather violently. I pulled the curtain from the window in time to see a small white truck bounce off the front of our bus, skid off the road, and come to a grinding halt. There were a few men in the back of the truck and one was flung out onto the ground... luckily he was ok except for some pretty nasty cuts on his back and elbows. The front of the truck was crumpled in like tinfoil bu the driver was able to walk away from the accident. On the other side of the bus a man was pushing his moto, which you can see in the pic above. When he was the bus coming straight at him, he ditched the moto, which was dragged under the bus like a vacuum, and ran off the road as we barely missed him! The bus went off the road, blasted through a stand full of gasolinem broke through an open sewer covered by increments of concrete and missed plunging into a drainage ditch by a mere 8 inches. Looking at the scene of the accident, I couldn't believe that we hadn't flipped. Being on the bus, it felt like it was going over, but the driver handled the situation very well.

This is my house at site and the guys hanging out are some local villagers. As you can seem it's not much more than a pile of rocks glued together with mud, but nonthe less, it is the nicest house in the village because it is brand new and has a door and windows that close AND lock! Imagine that!

Hey Dad I got some of your Munsell Appraisal Service hats out to my Malian counterparts. The man on the rightm Ousman Kassambaram is my homologue and I will be working with him for the next two years. The guy on the left is Tijani Ongoiba and is kinda like the village go-to guy. He can fix everything.

This is me and my friend Ben right before going to swear-in dressed in our finest Malian outfits... kinda like a pajama party!