Oh shea! (and Thanksgiving)

Oh Shea!

Finally! A blog about what I'm doing in Mali. Thank goodness.

One of my main projects in my community will be working with our women's association to produce a better quality shea butter and find a buyer interested in offering them a good price. Shea itself is pretty cool-- you can eat the fruit to get the nut, and then your opportunities are endless! Butter to be used as a cooking oil, a lotion, a pommade or even soap! The butter made from the shea found throughout the sahel region of Africa has a high melting point compared to another type of shea in central/east Africa, making it wonderful for the production of chocolate that won't melt... so it's a magical thing, and a lot of fun.

In the mean time, while waiting for next shea collection season to start from the beginning of nut collection with good practices, I'm in the midst of working with the women's association to get their recipice-- or an official document that allows them to sell their products as an association. This has been hard for many reasons, but mostly because of the need of internal organization and structure that has been disrupted by the coming of harvest season (and everyone heads out to the fields to return exhausted later in the evening). Hopefully this will be something we can accomplish by the time I leave to celebrate Christmas!

Here is a picture of some kids shelling shea nuts, which has a tendency to take place at all times of the day and night. It's a great activity for socializing.

Here is a picture of my friend beating her ground (and now semi-liquid) shea paste. It's hard work and more fun when a group of women get together to kolo gosi or beat the nuts. The white part on the top is the emulsifying fats rising. The bowl of dark chocolate looking substance in the back left is the ground shea paste pre-beating. The women in my village usually meet once a week to beat their butter. After it is beaten, the whiter part is skimmed off to be heated and then left to solidify (which can take 2-3 days, depending on the quantity).
Daily Living

Another picture of my house and negen (bathroom- concrete structure to the left of my house)

I'm also working with my women on the selling of sumbala, or a local spice they use when cooking. Many of the women will make a batch (ingredients include datu and nere, two plants/spices not really found in America, at least to my knowledge). This is a picture of the day I helped to roll the sumbala. Honestly, it doesn't smell to good to me, and it looks like a submarine without a periscope, but they do use it when flavoring my food and I can't complain tooooo much.Thanksgiving in Sikasso

If I had to give up American football on Thanksgiving for one thing, beautiful waterfalls would be it and that's exactly what I was able to enjoy this Thanksgiving. After stuffing ourselves silly on Thanksgiving (and I did end up getting cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie), a good number of us headed to the waterfalls south of Sikasso. It was marvellous.

Ne photo ta!

(take my picture!!) So, I haven't taken as many pictures as I would have liked to simply because of the chaos that it creates as soon as my pink camera case comes out of my bag. Here are some select photos that I have been meaning to put up for a while, but just haven't gotten the chance... A substantial update and story about shea butter selling is in the works to be posted Thanksgivingish time, hopefully! Happy Turkey Day in advance. Please eat as many cranberries as possible for me-- not sure if we'll get them here.

Animals

This is one of my favorite pictures of a beautiful bug on millet, taken just before the harvest! Too bad millet doesn't taste as wonderful as this picture does...

The possible monitor lizard that I wrote about last night. Yikes!

Baby antelope, anyone? They say they are really difficult to catch and I haven't seen any others than this one.

So sweet so

Pictures of my house and random parts of my village. This is the entrance to town. The very first building on the right side is the school.

This is just a beautiful sunrise. If you look closely enough, you can see the donkey hanging out. A few ears of corn are in the foreground... unfortunately corn harvesting season is over now.

Our gorgeous mosque. Yes, with papaya trees out front. The view from the back of the mosque at sunrise.

The view out my front door. I have a nice "gwa" or thatched shaded area where children and goats like to play. The next building is the back of my neighbor's concession.

Out my back window-- the same trees that I adored from the beginning are still amazing, even as they start to lose their leaves as we move into the dry season. And yes, there are goats on my partial wall.
The town center and the location for a decent number of random dance parties. Women will gather here during the day to su-su or pound things like millet, corn and rice with the kolon or huge mortar and pestle. The path to the left goes to my house. I had never seen cotton being harvested before. Pretty cool.

Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!

Yay Election!
Before I actually write this message, I would just like to congratulate our nation on another successful democratic election. Way to go USA! Even without me there and without the timely arrival of my absentee ballot (UGH), it went off wonderfully and now I am suffering from a severe lack of sleep, since we stayed up for Obama's speech, which was at around 4:30ish am our time. I'm more than content right now. Exhausted, but happy.

Wait, did you say bears?
Okay, so back to the blog. None of the above listed in the title, really. Sorry for getting your hopes up. It's more like monitor lizards, mice, and scorpions, oh my! Just as scary when you read about the bacterial-ridden mouth of the lizard, the thought that my good food might be eaten (including my peanut butter) and that the smaller scorpions are actually the more poisionous of the scorpions-- and I've had more than my share in and around my house. Exciting the first time. Nerve-wracking the second, third, and fourth when I have to plan an escape route before getting out of my mosquito net tent just in case things get bad in my attempt to ward off the second two. Luckily for me, I have yet to find the monitor lizard anywhere near town... my town says that they live in the forests, so that's why I'm not going there any time soon. The picture I have of this 2 1/2 ft (at least) beast is coming, but again, the lack of adequate internet is preventing me from sharing that.

Celebration of successes
My small victories of the past few weeks include: (1.) successfully travelling to the larger village about an hour a way and filling my gas tank to hook up to my three burner mini-stove in a certain time limit because the tank was too heavy to bring any way that wasn't by car, which only comes once at certain times on market day. Phew! Which led me to... (2.) making French toast with cinnamon and sharing it with my host family, who doesn't like it as much as I do and therefore let me eat most of it! It even made my house smell delicious for the next few days. (3.) Making curtains for my windows out of an old skirt that I couldn't wear anymore. You would be surprised how some curtains really spruce up a home.

The Hundred Shea-acre Woods
I've drawn a map of the route that I take whenever I bike the 8km to the road for market or for language tutoring. I'm not so sure why I'm proud of this, but I've named most of the sections of my road. It definitely makes the trip more enjoyable and let's me think of home or other happy thoughts. Again, I have pictures, but they will have to wait for another day. Until then, let your imagination don a bicycle helmet and travel with me on a typically day:

First, when leaving village, I take route 345. For those of you from home, you'll probably figure out that this is the road that goes by the school before heading on to bigger and better things. The first hill is Red Rocks, PA named mostly because of the red rocks. The top of the hill is called Leischman's Pt and sits just outside of view of town, but reminds me that I'm almost there on my way home. Myrtle Beach is the first of two really sandy sections of the road-- really annoying during rainy season because mud is almost more difficult to bike through than sand... almost because you often will end up getting of your bike to push your way through anyway. Since the rainy season has officially ended, I won't be seeing that mud anymore until next June! Agrocrag-- isn't that what the huge mountain was called on the Nickelodeon show "Guts"? Well, there's a mini-one here. It's hard.

The Hundred Shea-acre Woods is what I'm calling my region in general because of the vast number of shea trees there and the innumerable shea nuts that have been collected and will be collected. At this point in my trip, the shea trees become more apparent out in the fields (of corn, millet, cotton, sesame, etc). The wide open spaces, recently razed to clear the tall grasses are Lion King inspired-- the Pride Lands. The first two are called Nala and Simba. Like I said, no lions, though, so it's more that I just picture that part in the movie where Simba looks on the pride lands and is sad because of the lack of food. Rafiki field comes next. Supposedly other volunteers have seen monkeys there, although I've missed them the bazillion times I've ridden by so far. Oh well. I know that rafiki is swahili and actually doesn't even mean monkey, but rather friend. Meh. Again with the Lion King theme are the Pride Rocks at the end of Rafiki field and at the peak of a small hill, which becomes Pride Lands #2, Zazu on the other side. Unlike Simba field, I have seen Zazu birds there.

The Great Divide is just a split in the road and then Global Guts (this Agrocrag is twice as long as the first). Finally we arrive at Daytona Beach with more sand and can stop at the well I've deemed the Pit Stop to get water. Well, I can't. The High Road inspires the lilty song in my head. This was one of the first areas on my trip that I learned to recognize. I'm still not sure if the low road was dug purposely to collect water during the rainy season-- the drain or ditch of sorts, or if it is the former road, now abandoned because of it's tendency to be more of a river than a path.

Then comes the 7th Inning Stretch (or 3rd if you're going home). A whole bunch of nothing exciting. Included in the 7th inning stretch are the mines where they make charcoal. It's not mined, but smoked... I'm not really sure how they do it, actually. Yogi Berra is what I've named the fork in the road (I take it every time). And then we approach South Bend, the final turn that signals the end of the 7th inning stretch.

Troubled Bridge Over Water is not really a bridge and not really water, but enough so that during the rainy season this section of the road is almost impassable. Again, musical inspiration. After the bridge we reach the Thruway that gets pretty heavy with traffic on market days... I'll usually have to pass a donkey cart or two. The first exit takes you to the Rapids: a section of really bad road that would be treacherous to walk, swim, or kayak, let alone bike, during the rainy season. You have to know just where to go or you'll drop suddenly into a pit or pool of water. Kinda scary even when it's completely dry.

The last section I've named Custard's Last Stand for no reason other than I wanted to... that's what kept popping into my head! It has a slight grade, but isn't really that daunting at all. Because then you arrive at the Banana (Mango) Split or two huge mango trees that welcome you at the top of the hill. You have arrived. Finally, I bike through the Stage Door to get to Hollabaugh's or a small mango grove that reminds me of the fruit orchards of Pennsylvania.

Now all you have to do is try to picture it. It's a ton of fun.

Are you working yet?
Yes, yes, the magical question. Like I said before, I'm expected to integrate first before doing any real "work," but I have really enjoyed my time so far hanging out with my villagers and heading out into the fields. I've pulled peanuts, husked a ton of corn, among other things. It's absolutely amazing to see where all of our pre-packaged madness in American actually comes from and the effort that it takes to farm, harvest, prepare and store. Being in the fields also helps me to realize how difficult the agrarian lifestyle is... I'm exhausted usually by mid-afternoon and ready for my evening bucket bath.

I'm still attempting to work with my women to get them registered as a real women's association, but because it IS harvesting time, coordinating a meeting has become difficult. Soon, things will start to be more focused once all of the crops have been harvested. Malians LOVE the question: "Can you find THIS in America?" Corn and peanuts, yes. Other things like the guava and papaya are a little lacking in the states.


This was a pretty random entry, I know. Apologies. :-) I'm pretty sure the next time I may be internet bound is Thanksgiving. So until then!

Three months in

Minnie N Majo
Some of the days during my first month at site have been extremely trying, from the times when children would stand outside my closed door and then, peeking in my windows, yell my name, after I told them that I was going to lie down, to the general lack of English language and good conversation that I had grown accustomed to during pre-service training. In these cases, the strangest things seem to be comforting and refreshing, including the taste of my favorite childhood snack: Peanut butter balls from my Minnie N Me Disney cookbook. Yes, all of the ingredients are here and readily available (minus the wheat germ) and yes, I now eat peanut butter balls all the time, made with the freshly produced peanut butter from the market. As I eat an entire batch, sitting at the table in my house, I think back to the times when I would do the same thing at home, but this time mom isn't here to yell at me...

African Frogs
My first pet as a child came as a gift from my aunt and uncle and although it wasn't a typical pet, such as a dog or a cat, it began to teach me the lessons of responsibility and patience. North country friends, you might remember Amy and Bill, our "African Frogs" that lived in an aquarium, first in my room and then in my basement. They definitely escaped more than once and died more than once (but we got replacements, Amy II and Bill II). Well, the frogs in Mali are multidinous and quickly reproducing, but look nothing like the African frogs I had so many years ago. It makes me think of the exoticism that we placed on the word "African" that actually leads to a generalization and grouping of the whole continent into a single place, a single idea. It also has allowed me to reflect on the idealization that I, myself, had of Mali and the "developing world"--that all of the issues here are completely different and not the social issues that I often complain about in America. But, no, perfection isn't here either, just like it's not at home. Again, I think that we're in need of some great compromises and meeting in the middle so that the world as a whole and the human population as a population can move forward.

Mothers are ba's everywhere
For those of you still worried about my health, I would like you to know that yes, I am still healthy with only the most minor of health concerns, including a one day horrendously sore-throat two weeks ago. I would also like you to know that mothers will continue to be mothers and care, almost too much, for your well-being.

After I had told my homestay family about my sore-throat and taken the morning to attempt to sleep it off in my house, I returned with some of my own tea and asked my dia-tigi or homestay mother to warm some water for me. That seemed to mean that I was willing to try to eat things (no, no I never said that) and do you know what is best for a sore-throat when you can barely swallow? Fish balls. Yes, pulverized whole fish (bones included) mixed with a flour-y paste and cooked in fish juice. Let's just say that it's not quite the chicken soup I was looking for and no, I didn't eat more than one bite. It's the thought that counts, right?

Okay! I have to go right now, right now... I have more to write, but it will have to wait! Ah! Talk to you in a few weeks!

P.S.

P.S. Check out the other pictures that I've posted to the right of this on my blog. Click "Sara's pictures" More will be coming when I have time to sit at a computer and upload them.