clean water

We are blessed to have pretty good water at our house that is piped from a water tower in town. I drink it untreated from time to time (like if I'm offered a drink at a friends house or when I'm brushing my teeth and just need a little sip after) and I've never gotten sick from it. But we do filter water at home and drink filtered water most of the time. We have a metal unit that you put untreated water in the top of, then it passes through 3 ceramic "candles" (what you see in the photo) into the bottom tank that has a spout. We fill plastic bottles with the filtered water and put them in the fridge.
In the photo you can see how dirty the candles (filters) get - the one on the left has been scrubbed clean. Even though the more important work that they are doing is filtering out invisible stuff that could make us sick, its cool to be able to see some of what they are keeping out of my drinking water.

playing pass the papaya

I love these kids! These photos are from the fun we had this morning. Its like "hot potato" but with a papaya.

why did you eat your bed?

This is my puppy Teddy in our screenporch in his cardboard box bed that I so skillfully taped together for him. I think the picture is when he already had it for a day or two because you can see where he just barely started chewing on the front.

And here is Teddy in his bed a few weeks later, just before I threw the box in the trash. Nice job.

We have since ordered a dog house for him. I printed a picture of a cute one I found online to give to the carpenter along with measurements. I hope it turns out well.

malnutrition

At the Centre we weigh babies, educate mothers, and give out beans or other protein foods. I have read that 37% of children under 5 suffer from malnutrition here in Mali. I see malnourished kids all the time here, but never more than when we make a visit to a village.

There are 2 kinds of malnutrition: Marasmus and Kwashiorkor. Marasmus is when someone is reduced to skin and bones, starving to death for lack of food. We do see this some, usually in very young babies, especially if the mother is not able to produce enough milk. When this happens in the USA, we just start giving the baby some formula. But buying infant formula is not an option for most people here.
Kwashiorkor is the other form of malnutrition, the one that we see a lot.

"The name is derived from the Ga language of coastal Ghana, translated as "the sickness the baby gets when the new baby comes" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwashiorkor

When a baby is weaned from mother's milk and introduced to solid foods, there is often not adequate protein in these foods. The baby's tummy might be filled up with millet or corn porridge everyday, but the lack of necessary protein is a huge problem. The outward signs of this lack of protein are edema (swelling), and the big bloated belly like in the picture. Inwardly the body cannot function normally, and in severe cases there can be liver and even brain damage.

"Nutrition is critical throughout life, but nutrition from pregnancy to age 2 has dramatic potential to shape the trajectory of a child’s life. Simple, cost-effective nutrition interventions would not only save millions of children from illness or death, it would also improve their health, intelligence, and productivity for the rest of their lives." http://hungerreport.org/2012/full-report/contributors/understanding-malnutrition

dinosaur birds

These are guineafowl or guinea hens, in French they are "pintade", but with my bad pronounciation and having never seen the word written until I looked it up just now, I call them "paintards". Anyway, they are pretty common here. A friend saw that we had started keeping chickens and offered to give us a couple paintards to add to the coop. I asked JP if we could please politely refuse, and we did. These birds are creepy and annoying. They make an incessant irritating squawking noise. And I think they look like they just stepped off the page of some dinosaur book.