Animal Stories and Other Adventures

After roughly 7 months in Mali, I have finally "tracked," killed, and eaten an animal. My friend Hama showed up last week and brought three pigeon-like birds with him. He said that it was my job to slaughter the birds and cook them up for lunch considering he had brought them to my house. I sat staring at hte box for a while, trying to figure out how i was gonna go about this whole bird killing business. I tried to tell them I didn't know the correct Muslim prayers. so it would be blasphemous for me to kill the birds. Hama said that was nonsense and he would teach me. We struck a deal that he would kill the first one and I would watch, learn and then get the second. First, the pigeon flew off and went into my house. I "tracked" him through the first room, into the back room, under the bed and finally I caught him over the book case. Step one. After that, I took the bird out and stepped on his wings as instructed. Finding his neck, I pulled his head back by his beak. I took the knife and said aloud "Bisimilla," which means something like welcome to God. As I said this, I started to saw the little birds neck open, but it was tough and took some strength. I finally got through the skin, and blood squirted out all over my hands and feet. As this happened, I was instructed to say "Allah akbar!" God is great. As the proclaimed the greatness of God, the damn bird's head came off in my hands. I think I cut too deep. All in all, Djugal (a local kid), de-feathered the birds, cut out the insides and washed them off. I cooked them up in a pasta and tomato mixture for a delicious lunch. Currently, the third pigeon is being raised my my homologue's nephew to be eaten at a later point.

I came into Douentza this weekend for the Ginna Dogon, or the Dogon Festival. If you're going to give a festival to a group of people in Mali, it should definitely be the Dogons. On Friday morning, I left village on bikes with my friend Difru. We made it about 2 or 3 km, but couldn't go any further because of the intense wind coming straight at us... Harmattan I guess. A converted truck/bus picked us up for a small price and we headed back out onto the road at a much faster rate. After another km or 2, we stopped to pick up some more guys heading to the festival. The last guy to get on has about 3 guns, snake skins, and a monkey on a rope. This monkey did not want to get into the back of the truck, but his owner wasn't about to leave without him. The monkey was jumping and howling and just acting like deisagreeable monkeys act. The guy sits next to me with his moneky, and the monkey starts screaming in my ear, tearing at my pants and shirt and climbing all over me. I had my fist in the air ready to punch the creature right in his little head if he had any plans to bite me. The guy reassured that the monkey was his friend, wouldn't bite and would settle down momentarily. Needless to say, I was still a little scared, and the monkey never did calm down. The lesson learned is that monkeys do not make good pets.

The festival was awesome. I hung out with Fikru, Phil and Antony (three other Peace Corps Volunteers in the area... by the way, I'm in Mopti-manville.... the Peace Corps won't send girls up her for some reason.) The festival was full of Dogons shooting off their guns... they load them with as much gun powder as possible and fire them into the ground. Lots of noise. Lots of smoke. No bullets, thank god. There were skits acted to out drumming and music all weekend and I pet a hyenna that looked like a really big dog. Wierd. One night we went to a Malian "dance," which was like a middle school dance. Loud music and no one dancing. Maybe one or two brave souls in the middle with everyone watching. By this point I had had a beer or two and was in the mood to act even wierder than I usually do as one of the only white guys around. I grabbed a girl from crowd and dragged her out to the dance area and we danced like crazy dogons for a while. To dance like a dogon you have to semi-squat, kick your legs up real high from the knees, and hold your arms out straight. It almost looks like you're imitating bik riding. You can jump and spin, too, if you feel so inclined. Then I ran into the middle of a bunch of kids and danced for all of them as fast as I could, kicking up clouds of dust... as it hasn't rained once since I've been up here! The kids loved it and wouldn't let me leave the circle, so I was stuck dancing for a while. Once I broke out, my friends were ready to go. Maybe I embarassed them a little? Oh well, I had fun and the Malian kids loved it. The next day in market, I was surrouned by kids again yelling for me to dance, but I told them it was a one time thing. Maybe tomorrow?

Last week I had brought Rufus to Douentza to get his rabies shots. As he is too big to put in a basket on my bike now, I had him follow me on foot for the 25 km. It was a slow going 3 hour ride, but I enjoyed with because it gave me a chance to stop and speak with locals along the way instead of just breezing through on the bike. Rufus skinned the bottom of his feet a little, but he had a few days to recover. We left for village the following Monday and Rufus tagged along on foot. He was starting to limp, so I attenpted to hog tie him. After wrestling the dog for about 30 minutes, I managed to get the roap tied tightly around his legs. He bit and fought the whole time. Then, I put him on the bike rack and started to wrap rubber strips around him. This was, apparently, the straw that broke the camel's back. Rufus somehow flipped over got one of his legs out and hollered louder than I've ever heard a dog holler before. He fell off the back of the bike, teeth and claws flailing everywhere, and basically let me know he wasn't gonna be tied there. So, on foot he went. The best part was he slept for the entire next day, so I didn't have to deal with him at all after that.

On another note, here are some pictures of a house contruction project that I took a few weeks ago. It's a little bit different from the work I did back home, huh? This house is being built behind my house. You can see the dry brown landscape in the background with the little trees and scrub bushes that make up this part of Mali.

Making it happen

It's well into February. Hard to believe that I've been in Mali for almost 7 months already; I have 19 more to look forward to. After returning to site post-IST, project implementation has been in full effect. I was a bit nervous at first proposing my ideas for potential projects, as I've been sitting in village learning Fulfulde for 3 months straight. In terms of getting work done, I hadn't accompolished anything (don't worry.... it's not due to lack of motivation, it's the Peace Corps' rule). I practiced speaking about the projects to myself and my to my PC friends in Fulfulde before unveiling them to the villagers, and I worked out many kinks in the language. It's amazing how much a dictionary helps here. For the last week, I have been holding meetings at various places around the village in order to gain support for the projects, organize material lists, translate work between English and Fulfulde and back again. I pretty much just jumped into the work instead of trying to get my feet wet first. This has been a surprisingly easy transition and everyone I am working with in village is more than motivated to get going on the projects.

For the millet field test projects, I have already singled out 4 farmers to work with, devised a tentative work schedule, worked out cost benefits, and have made plans to store successfully grown seeds in the seed bank to sell to other communities the following planting season. That works out the best because it allows me to take out two projects in one. Those would be finding a drought resistant millet strain and updating the seed bank. Check.

Furthermore, the cereal bank project is going faster than I had imagined and is actually going to be a hell of a lot easier than I had initially thought. There is a pre-existing structure in village that housed grains at one point until the ceiling caved in (this happens often, as the homes are made of rocks, sticks and mud). We measured the dimensions of the building and plan to tear it down in the coming weeks and build a new one in it's place to roughly the same dimensions. This makes my job easier, as funding projects in Mali requires a minimun of at least 25% contributions from the village. My village will be supplying all of the rocks for the structure, all of the wooden cieling beams we salvage, all of the workers and hours. a strong metal door from the existing structure and will hopefully be able to kick in some grains. When I write up the proposal, I need to create a very specific materials cost and needs sheet that is divided up into community contributions and monies requested. This is well under way, in both Fulfulde and English. It's been difficult work, but has been keeping me very busy... obviously a big difference from the initial 3 months in village. Basically, the village will need the money for bags of cemement, record keeping materials, a new lock, scales, cereals, bags, lamps, etc. This is much less than I had originally thought.

I spoke with my APCD (Oumar, who is in charge of the Ag sector) today and he is thrilled to see that my work is taking off so quickly. He put me on a list of seed recipients for the millet field testing, but I want to call the project manager directly in order to ensure I get exactly what I need. We're looking for varieties that will seed in roughly 60-75 days, as we don't get much rain here. I also told him about the cereal bank project and asked about funding opportunities. More specifically, I wanted to know if the Peace Corps funding options covered the cost of the grains that will be stored and sold in the bank. He said it coveres everything as long as the commmunity contribution is at least 25%. So, I'm set there. Also, I met with a local NGO today and pitched my projects to them. They were very positive about my work and would like to collaborate on projects in the future becasue I live in village and am a valuable resource. We spoke about the cereal bank, and they have actually funded, built, and stocked multiple cereal banks in the Douentza area. They are willing to work with me on that project, so that's another win for me.

These projects will keep me busy through the next harvest season (until about December). After that, I will begin gardening projects during the next cold season with the villagers that are aimed at income generation. Really, I just want to grow vegetables to eat that aren't onions. I could go for some carrots about now.

In other news, Mike and Zack bought their tickets and will arrive in Bamako on June 12. They'll be in Mali for roughly 3 weeks, so I have a lot of planning to do before they get here. Also, I'm going to Bamako for more training in early April, and hopefully after that, taking a trip to Ghana with some friends to escape the hot season and get to the beach. I'm going to need a vacation by that point. I can tell that the hot season is inching closer and closer because it is getting near 100 degrees by mid day and I can't sleep inside anymore. My house is just rocks that bake in the sun all day. Funny how they showed us how to build a heat conserving mud brick stove that is built just like my home.