the biggest church

Last Monday we spent the day in Zamblala, a nearby village. The first thing we did when we arrived was to attend their church service - I guess there wasn't enough time on Sunday to celebrate Christmas enough, so they held a service on Monday morning as well. It was 3+ hours of mostly singing and dancing.
What is special about the church in Zamblala is that it is the biggest church in Mali. I think that there are usually around 700 people in attendance. The building is huge and really well built. Next year they will be celebrating their 75th anniversary. It is unusual to have a majority Christian village, and to have such a big church here, it is a country with over 90% Muslims after all. So it was a really cool experience for us to join them for a church service.

shoes

We spent the whole day after Christmas in a nearby village for the Centre. It was a great and full day.
I found many things notable, among which are these shoes. I think you can see why. Where can I get a pair of those for me?

i feel like chicken tonight

We are trying to raise chickens, but it hasn't been going that great. We now have 3 chickens left. We had 5 more that haven't made it. They all got sick, and 4 of them I found "sleeping on their sides" - thats what I thought when I found the first one dead, that it for some reason was sleeping on its side! No, it was just dead.
When a chicken is sick and then dies it has to be thrown out. But for some reason there is this idea that if a chicken is sick and you kill it before it dies on its own, its ok to eat. I think this is kind of gross.
I came home the other morning after my early Bambara lesson and noticed that one of the hens wasn't in the coop anymore. I peeked around the corner and saw JP and Martin - the boy who does some gardening for us- they were sitting at the little charcoal grill cooking up the missing hen. She had been sick, and rather than watch her also die, they decided it would be better to eat her now.
A few years ago I would have not been able to handle raising chickens. I certainly would have been upset to see that they were grilling up one of our hens, and I definately wouldn't have eaten any. But time and circumstances change a person I guess. So when JP invited me to pull up a chair and grab a wing or a drumstick, even though it had been a sick hen, I decided that I didn't want to let this rare chance to eat chicken pass me by. And it was delicious.

It is cold season right now and we are hoping that once it gets warmer again we can get more chickens and hatch some chicks and they will do better. For now we are getting a few eggs a week at least.

little mommy

I can remember when I was a little girl I always wanted to hold the baby if there was one around. "Please, can't I hold the baby, I'll be careful," I would beg. Occasionally the adults would sit me in a chair or on a couch and gently place the baby on my lap for a few minutes of supervised baby holding.
I often see kids, many younger than the girl in this photo (she is maybe 8), with baby brothers or sisters strapped to their backs. And it certainly isn't because they begged for this privelage. They don't have much choice in the matter; this is their work, their contribution, to take care of and carry around the baby is their duty. Here is another picture with this same little girl, now with me so that you can have a better idea of how small she is.
Instead of being sent to school she stays at home to help care for this baby and perhaps other younger siblings. She probably does lots of work everyday such as drawing and hauling water, lighting fires and cooking, sweeping the yard (yeah, as opposed to raking... many people here sweep their yard with a hand broom everyday, the yard is basically their living room), taking the grains to the mill, looking after grandparents, running errands, buying food at the market, ect. She doesn't have the opportunity to learn to read. She is given very little time for herself, very little time to play. When I stop to think about the differences in my childhood and that of a little girl like this one, I am so thankful for what I've had.

our new puppy

I'm so happy to have my new puppy!

Isn't he cute?
After 5 days of calling him "puppy" we finally came to an agreement on a name. (there were many names suggested and rejected between me and Jean-Patrick) His name is Teddy.

Our kitten hated the puppy for the first couple of days. The puppy was calm and didn't do anything to bother the kitten, but the kitten just looked at the puppy and started hissing and puffing its fur out. I think the kitten realized that the puppy wasn't going to try to hurt it, and he started to relax. This photo is the first night when they started to be friends. I was washing dishes and they both came to lay down at my feet. Sweet.

its beginning to look a bit like Christmas

For me, it doesn't look "a lot like Christmas" because there is no snow. We have overnight lows now down to about 60 degrees, daytime highs at 90. It is the coldest time of the year here, but its nothing like Minnesota where I grew up.
But we are getting ready and making it Christmasy at our house. Someone found us a tree at a sale and so we got that set up and put up the few other decorations that we have.

Here we are putting together our tree - we've had it in storage for months, so it was exciting to finally take it out of the trunks and see what it looks like.

kidnappings

There were 6 people kidnapped in Mali last month. They were all taken from far north of where I live. But these were the first ones kidnapped from in town, so it seems that Al-Qaeda is becoming even more of a threat.
The first 2 were Frenchmen taken in the night from their hotel room in Hombori on November 24th. On the 25th there were 4 men taken from a restaurant in Timbuktu: a German, a South African, a Swede, and a Dutchman. The German man refused to cooperate with the kidnappers to get in the truck and was shot and killed outside the restaurant.

I am glad that I had the chance to go to Timbuktu last year because it might be impossible for me as a white foreign person to go there from now on. It took around 20 hours of traveling last year for us to get to Timbuktu, so it seems far enough away that I feel safe where I am.

Here is an article about the kidnappings:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45437035/ns/world_news-europe/t/witness-european-killed-kidnapped-mali/

Here is a newer article regarding the arrests of suspects from the first kidnapping:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-16156458


Heres one that talks about the kidnappings hurting tourism:
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503543_162-57343312-503543/timbuktu-al-qaeda-kidnappings-hurt-mali-tourism/
I found a couple points in this particularly interesting:

"The number of tourists visiting Timbuktu had drastically decreased in recent years. In 2006, 45,000 tourists visited the city, the number fell to 6,000 in 2009 to a meager 492 in the first quarter of 2011, according to statistics published by the Malian Press Agency in November."

It also says that with Mali being one of the 10 poorest countries in the world and not having much for natural resources, it has greatly depended on its tourism industry for revenue.

I pray that the hostages will be unharmed and soon released.

at our house

An interior shot: this is our big open livingroom/diningroom space (notice the chair and table in the foreground)

Our means of transportation: our motorcycle. Not in the picture is a fuzzy grey seat cover that we have on the seat now. (it resembles muppet fur) If the motorcycle is ever parked in the sun, even a couple minutes, you come back to find the seat too hot to sit on without the fuzzy seat cover.

Here are some girls that came to visit me sitting in our screen porch.

This is part of our yard. If you can make the photo bigger you can see a hammock (kind of in the middle of the photo). We have a lime tree and an orange tree (the 2 with skinny trunks) and there is a grapefruit tree blocked by the big tree trunk at left. The citrus trees need to be watered a lot, but then they make nice fruit. Our clothes lines are in this part of the yard, too.This is where we live! This is what you see when you come into our yard from the gate. You go in through the screen porch first, this is good to keep flies and mosquitoes out of the house.

The gate to our house. We use the single door to the left all the time. We wheel the motorcycle in and out of that. The big double gate doesn't get used too much since we don't have a car! Here is our gate again, but you can see our street here. The street in front of our house is very wide, its a busy one because it leads to a little market and a big school not too far away.

so sweet!

This is me with the new baby of friends of ours. Her name is Grace Shalom. I haven't actually seen her eyes yet because everytime I've seen her she has been sleeping and hasn't woken up. And I don't think I'll take up the offer of stopping by at 3am to see her eyes (thats when the momma says she is sure to be awake!)

making bread

Not a bad Saturday morning's work, huh?

The only bread that is available here to buy is a baguette type long white loaf/stick of bread. (this is thanks to the French who were here when Africa was all colonized, also why we speak French here) There are boulangeries in town that pump out thousands of baguettes a day. Each piece costs 150 francs, or about 30 cents. We eat plenty of those, often a half a baguette each for breakfast or as bread with salad for dinner. But after eating only one kind of bread, and white bread at that, for months on end, it gets pretty old. So I have taken to baking my own bread. I had never baked a single loaf of bread in my former life living in the states. There are a lot of things that I've learned to do here, especially in the kitchen without all of the modern conveniences that I had so taken for granted in the states.

In the photo are 3 loaves of simple "artisan" bread and BAGELS! It was my first try at bagels, but they turned out really well and were devoured very quickly. To make bagels you boil dough that you put into bagel shapes and then put them on pans and bake in the oven. My directions said to put the bagels one at a time in boiling water and once they floated they had boiled long enough. But they all floated immediately when I put them in the boiling water, so I just left them in there for awhile... I sort of guessed, and then took them out and baked them and they turned out great.
Sometimes I make bread with millet or ground wheat or oatmeal or some combination of those. It isn't really hard to make bread, but if I put interesting ingredients in it, it can be a lot of work. To put in millet or ground wheat I have to go to market and find these unground. Then I take them home and wash the grains, and wash and wash the grains again. (my first try left me with crunchy sandy bread and I don't want that to happen again) Then the grains are spread on a cloth to dry in the sun. Then I take them to the mill to be ground. Even white flour has to be sifted for bugs before I can use it. So it is all quite a lot more work than just buying bread, but it is so nice to have something different. And the aroma of baking bread in the house and then eating some still-hot-fresh-baked-bread that I made is amazing and definately worth it.

nice things in Bamako

I went to Bamako at the end of October with a group of friends. There was a fantastic English women's retreat that we attended (not as in British, but as in in the English language). It was mostly women from all over Mali and some from other neighboring countries as well. This is an annual event, and it was my 3rd October here, but my 1st time going to this retreat. I hope that I can go again next year!
I love our town, but it is a bit exciting when I get to go to Bamako (the capital and Mali's big city, about 6-7 hours away) because there are a lot of things there that we don't have here. After the women's retreat we spent another day and a half in Bamako. We packed that time full of activities and it was great.
The upper photo is necklaces, taken at the Artisan's Market. It is really cool there, you can watch the artisans working on leatherwork, trunks, shoes, metal, African drums, jewelry, paintings, fabrics, ect.
The bottom pic is from a new place that is appropriately called "ice cream", and it is a real ice cream parlor. I had no idea that there was a place like this here! This was really quite good ice cream, and LOOK at all the choices! Wow. There is no ice cream in our town. (unless you can make it yourself, which I won't) So this was a great treat, it was just hard to decide which flavors I wanted. I think I settled with double chocolate and coconut. Delicious. I will definately be going back there on my next trip to Bamako.

yuck and icky

These photos are from my recent trip to Bamako. It was a really good trip and I had my camera in my purse the whole time, so I took pictures of lots of interesting things I saw.

The baby bat was on the top handle part of a ladder-rail for getting in and out of a swimming pool. We went to this really cool restaurant/hotel place and they have a nice pool there. If you buy something to eat you can swim for free. I didn't swim cause it was late and I was tired, but a few of my friends did. And they noticed this tiny bat hanging out on the ladder rail. How weird. I don't know if it fell out of a tree and someone picked it up and put it there or what. It was there the whole time we were there. I think it was going to die though. I see bats here all the time, but in the air flying and not close up like this. Tons of bats live in mango trees (and we have tons of mango trees) and at dusk they start squeeking. It sounds like a swingset that needs oil. So, ok, kind of gross and icky, but kind of cool, at least I found it interesting.

The other picture is dead parrots. This was at a market area that we visited. They are sold, along with other bits and pieces of dead animals, for use in witchcraft and traditional animistic religion - to cast a spell or something. I don't know exactly what they do with the dead parrots, but we found out that you can buy them for about $2 each. I asked the man selling them just out of curiousity. I wonder how much a monkey skull goes for?

too much

I really think that this little truck is trying to haul way too much wood at a time. Yikes.

October News

We are going into harvest time in Mali. People were hard at work in the fields during the months of rainy season, and now the rain is done and I am finding some great vegetables in the market. The most important crops here are cotton, millet, corn, and peanuts. But I am pretty excited for carrots, squash, and green beans.

Jean-Patrick takes his turn shoveling dirt out of the pit. When they were finished it was about 8 feet deep.

One really tough job that the men put their muscles to was digging through layers of dirt, clay, and rock to make a pit latrine.

This is working hard with his pick tool, it is a “daba”. A cement floor will go over the pit and walls will go up to surround a hole in the floor for people to go to the bathroom.

At Centre Things are starting to get busier at Centre with the change in season. I was concerned in August when we got back from the states that there weren’t as many ladies coming to have their babies weighed, but I learned that it was because so many people were out in the fields to work on the crops. I was also hoping to start scheduling some village visits right away, but when we called to arrange things with our contacts in nearby villages they all said we need to wait until after the harvest is finished. So we will be very busy visiting villages (sharing, doing nutritional and health education programs, and cleaning and bandaging wounds) in December and January. I’m looking forward to it!

The big chubby boy is Daouda (Bambara for David) and the too skinny little baby is Pierre (French for Peter). This woman has had 11 children, but only 5 survived childhood. Can you imagine having 6 small children die?! Too many babies die in Mali for preventable reasons! Pray with us that Pierre will gain some weight and live.

Other:
* JP has just gotten his Malian drivers license (to drive cars and trucks, a license isn’t needed for a motorbike here!) Someone gave him the money to go through the month-long school and then he passed the difficult test!
* I am getting ready to go to Bamako with some friends for a women’s conference for English speaking ladies. I am really excited for this and I hope it will be a nice break for me. Thanks for reading our news.  Love, Erin and Jean-Patrick

our kitten had kittens!

We got back to Mali and were greeted with the surprise of our little kitty, not yet a year old, being pregnant. She waddled around with her big belly for the last couple weeks, and a few days ago gave birth to her kittens. There were 3 but we have 2 surviving, doing well and growing fast. Our cat is learning to be a better mother now. At first she didn't seem to even notice if we picked up a kitten, and she would hop out of the box and leave them alone for long stretches of time if they were sleeping - like she had better things to do. But now she meows at us and seems at least interested if we pick up a baby.
But what I really want is a puppy!

Not as I’d planned…

We got back to Mali very late Friday night/ very early Saturday morning. Thankfully the flights were fine, no problems and no delays. At the airport ALL of our bags came right out on the belt. It couldn’t have gone smoother! We were even prepared for the weather here because it had been around 90 and humid in the states before we left, and that is exactly what we have returned to here. We were really looking forward to getting home to our town and our friends and our house after being away for 3 months. So we were planning on just sleeping a few hours and taking the afternoon bus on Saturday.

But suddenly JP needs a visa to be in Mali. They made him pay an exit visa fee when he flew out of the airport, and now when we returned through the airport, he had to get a visa to be in the country. He has lived in Mali for 8 years and never had a visa before! At the airport they gave him a temporary 4 day visa for $30 and said he needed to go on Monday to get it extended. So on Monday we went downtown to go to the immigration office and get his visa taken care of.
But first we needed to get some money to pay for it, so we went to an ATM. I guess that not too many years ago ATMs were unheard of here, but luckily now there are quite a few. Luckily because we had to visit 7 of them to finally find one that had money in it and would work. So that was pretty frusterating. I have to remind myself that my reaction and attitude makes all the difference in a situation like driving all around town and having 6 ATMs in a row not give me money. Finally we had some money, so off to the visa office.
The visa office is pitiful for a national bureau in a capital city of a country. There were like 15 people crammed into what is basically a hallway, not in any real line or order, just all filling out papers or waiting. At one end is a woman in a uniform at a desk who is processing the paperwork amidst the noise and chaos. There was a piece of paper taped to the wall explaining the different visa fees. For JP to have a 1 year visa it will cost $120. And now he needs to go get a visa every year to be in Mali because if he doesn’t he will have to pay big fines the next time he wants to leave through the airport. Somehow its ok to cross land borders without a visa, but for the airport he has to have a visa. This makes no sense, but I guess it is a kind of tax on the “rich”.

The visa will be ready to pick up on Tuesday afternoon, which means that we won’t be home until Wednesday afternoon because we will have to wait for the Wednesday morning bus. So not as I’d planned is that instead of ½ day in Bamako, we are here for 4 ½ days because they decided that JP needs a visa. And not as I’d planned is that we now have spent $150 for him to get it.

On the brighter side is that we will now return home and be well rested instead of exhausted from traveling from the states. And I am very thankful for the lovely family that has so graciously hosted us during our surprise extra days here.

in America for the 4th of July

We got to have a great American 4th of July this year! You can see we are decked out in the patriotic shirts we bought just for the occasion.
We went to the parade in Cloquet in the morning and to Duluth for the fireworks at night. We went early to Bayfront Park to enjoy the music of the Duluth/Superior Symphony Orchestra. It was a good day. God bless America!

weekend in the cities

We just spent a long weekend in the cities. (in MN we have Minneapolis and St.Paul, known as the twin cities, but we just say "the cities" usually)
We did lots of fun stuff! We visited Valleyfair, the sculpture garden, Ikea, the Mall of America, a big church on Sunday, saw friends, ate Chinese buffet, and got to swim in a nice pool at the hotel. And it actually felt like summer! It was pretty hot and humid, but I was glad to not be cold!
Us with the spoon-cherry bridge at the sculpture garden.

At the Lego place in the Mall of America.

valleyfair

The alpine coaster (see previous post) was just a warm up for our trip to valleyfair- a big amusement park near Minneapolis.
Jean-Patrick liked the rollercoasters and was brave enough to try rides like the tower where you ride high up and then fall. (that one is too scary for me!) We got to go on lots of things, some not so extreme -like bumper cars, ferris wheel, carousel, ect. The park also has some waterslides and rides, so we did those too.

Jean-Patrick is in the blue shirt, he went on this ride with my mom, and I took pictures.

alpine coaster

We decided to try out the "Timber Twister" alpine coaster that is at Spirit Mountain in Duluth. This is new since the last time I was in the states. You get on a little cart that looks like an alpine slide car, but it is a "coaster" because it is (thankfully) attached to the track. It went so fast and I felt like we were going to fling into the woods, especially around the sharp curves. I admit it: I was screaming like a girl. And JP was lauging and yoo-hoo-hooey-ing. Seriously, that was the noise he was making.
The photos are from when we were riding back up the hill to the end - it would be kind of hard to take pictures while zooming down the track.

the Mining place in Chisholm

Jean-Patrick Mally found a sign with his initials.

JP on one of the huge trucks that they use for mining. (I don't think you're really supposed to climb on top like that, but there wasn't anyone around to yell at us.)

Me with a truck that could scoop me right up.

Getting comfy on a big mining scoop.

We visited this Mining museum place in Chisholm, MN. It is about an hour and a half from where I grew up, on the "Iron Range" of MN, but I had never been there before. We had fun! We got to learn all about the mining process. They find iron ore and make it into taconite pellets, then it goes on trains to the harbor where big ships bring it down to Chicago to get melted and whatever. Then we got to go outside and see the equipment and even climb on some of it.

the Duluth aquarium

Here are a couple photos from when we visited the Duluth aquarium. A friend gave us some free tickets to go (thanks Aimee!) and we got to go and see all the fish, the cute otters, and some birds. Some things like the moose statue that JP is with are not very aquarium-y but I guess its a diverse place. There was also this cool play area for kids with a hollow "tree" that you can climb up in and take the slide down from. It totally reminded me of the Bernstein Bears house! (well, they didn't have a slide, but still...) The otters were really cute, and I felt bad for them living in their little enclosure, but the lady explained that they had been orphaned and taken in very young and now wouldn't survive in the wild.

Tennis Anyone?

How cute is my husband? We had a good time playing tennis. JP did a great job! It was another first for him. He said that tennis is easier than rollerskating!

Rollerskating

Jean-Patrick got to try rollerskating for the first time. We had a really fun time! We actually went twice - the first time with a sweet friend and her 3 energetic boys. I think it might have been a little embarassing for JP to be sticking to the wall and falling down as the 3 boys went zooming by, but he didn't let it show. He kept a good attitude and was ready to go again with my cousin. The second time showed a lot of improvement. Me with my cousin Steven.