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