i *heart* village

(this top picture is in the village outside the pastor's house -
I thought this metal church toy was so cute!)

Yesterday I had the opportunity to spend the day in a village.  I love Malian villages!  Some of my most fondly memorable moments in Mali are those I've spent in villages.  This village was about 1 1/2 hours south of Bamako, the big capital city where I live.  I went with 3 other Americans and 1 Malian pastor.  Two of the white people were visitors here to see what its like, they may come back to work here.  So I got do a little translating for them and talk about my experiences of life in Mali. 

We went to a village where their organization has a big station with a church and a school.  For 3 months of the year it is a girls school, and 6 other months it works as a men's school.  The girls, ages 12-18, come from all over - most from villages not too far away though.   If they attend the school for 5 years they will learn to read and write and study and they can earn a certificate.  The school is run in the Bambara language and most of them don't really speak French at all.  So this was a good opportunity for me to practice the Bambara that I've been learning!

 We got to visit a couple classes in session before we went off to have lunch with the school director.  We had rice with peanut sauce and ate it out of a communal bowl with our hands.  There were big chunks of beef in the sauce and after they noticed that I didn't take any meat I got to explain my thing about not eating any 4 legged creatures.  I imagine that most Malians think that being a vegetarian (or semi-vegetarian as I eat chicken and fish) is just weird and doesn't make sense, but they don't make much fuss.  Me not eating meat means they get a little more.  Jean-Patrick likes it when we are at conferences and the food is dished out and I give him the piece of meat on my plate, so he gets double.
Anyway, after lunch the other white lady and I left the men to sit around and chat, and we went over to the dorms where all the girls were hanging out.  They have a lunch time break until class starts again at 3pm.  I made great efforts with my Bambara language skills (a work in progress!) and managed to communicate pretty well with the girls.  Eventually I asked them if they could sing for us.  They obliged and sang quite a few songs and that led to dancing and us white ladies even joined in much to the girls' delight.  Everyone was laughing and smiling. 

So I'm ending with a picture of a goat.  Kind of random, but I thought it was pretty cute, and it had been raining and the sky turned such a pretty blue color.  We don't have "African" animals here in Mali like the kind you'd see on safari.  But there are plenty of goats, sheep, pigs, donkeys, cows, chickens, dogs, and cats - and I saw all of those during our day in the village.

On Renewing a Passport

In the USA:
No matter where you live in the USA, you can get the form online to send in the mail with your passport photos and a check or money order for $110.  This will get you a new passport good for 10 years.  It is also possible to do the process at many post offices and passport centers nationwide.  Official information, forms, and instructions can be easily found online.  If you live overseas you can renew your passport at the nearest US embassy or consulate.

In Chad:
There is absolutely nothing online about getting a Chadian passport.  Heaven forbid that they let any top secret government information get out there.  The following information is not official, but it’s what I gathered through our recent experience of getting JP a new passport.
If you live in another country, too bad.  You must get your passport renewed in person in Chad, in the capital city N’Djamena, at one specific government building.  If you live in Chad but you are 10 hours away from the capital, too bad.  You have to come to the capital and wait there to get a passport.  No, they don’t know how long you’ll have to wait.  It could be a few weeks.  Too bad for you.  The passport only lasts for 5 years, so you have to deal with this process every 5 years.
You go to the official place.  To get into the walled-in yard you have to make it past the unfriendly guards first.  You must give a convincing reason why they should let you in.  Once you’re in there you get confused because there are several buildings and no signs to help you know where to go.  There are a lot of people sitting around and seemingly doing nothing though, (except one guy selling mobile phone credit, I wonder if he gave a bribe to be allowed to come in the gate?)  so you just ask a few of them which building you should go in.  You go in the building that a random stranger said to go in.  There are about 30 chairs in an open waiting room, and at least half of them are occupied.  There isn’t a reception desk or window, and there are no brochures, forms, signs or instructions posted anywhere.  So you sit down.  After a while a man comes out from behind a closed door and somehow notices that new people are sitting there.  (or maybe he noticed that there was a white person?)  He asked what we wanted.  JP explained that his passport was expiring and he wanted to find out what to do to get a new one.  The man said that first JP needed to go to a certain bank downtown to deposit the passport fee ($160) in the government account at that specific bank.  Then he can bring the deposit receipt back with him and continue the process.   He would also need to bring passport photos and photocopies of 3 Chadian’s ID cards that will show that at least 3 Chadians think he should be allowed to get a new passport. (or something like that.  Not quite sure.  I found that part really weird, especially since it wasn’t to get a first-time passport, but to renew.) 
And by the way, I think its crazy that the passport in Chad is more expensive than the USA passport, and when you consider that its only good for 5 years that makes it two times way more expensive!  The GDP per capita in Chad is less than $1000 per year and they charge $160 for a 5 year passport?!  That would be like a USA passport costing $8000 compared to the USA GDP. (I calculated this off of current GDP data on the WorldBank.org website.)
So we left the official building empty handed.  No list of instructions or forms to fill out.
JP went to 3 different banks to find an ATM machine that worked.  He got the money to pay and then went to the right bank to pay at.  It was getting close to noon on a Friday (Muslim’s mosque time, like Sunday morning for Christians) and there was already a line.  The teller closed the window and JP had to leave and wait for Monday morning to go downtown again to that bank. 
Skip ahead a few days: After getting the receipt for the money paid, he brought it with his pictures and photocopies and filled out the application at the government building.  He was told that they didn’t know how long it would take for the passport to be ready, but he could come back to check and pick it up in a few weeks.  No phone number to call and check if it is ready or anything like that, he would have to go downtown again to check.
Well, eventually he did get his new passport, thank God.  And in only 5 years he gets to do this all over again!

WATER

These pictures are from JP's mom's house in Chad.  The last time we were in Chad, 3 years ago, the way to get water was by paying a man to bring big jugs of it on a cart everyday.  The jugs would be emptied into a big barrel, and then when you needed water you would scoop some out of the barrel.  Some time in the last 3 years JP's mom was able to get this new system installed and it makes life easier! 
You can see the big black water tank.  It is connected to a generator (which runs on gasoline) and once a day it is turned on to pump water from a closed underground well into the tank.  This leads to the spigots - there is one faucet inside the wall, and there is one outside, but the control handle for both is inside.  You can see JP sitting inside the wall in the top photo.  See the hole in the wall?  This is for words and money to pass through.  Neighbors come morning and evening to fill a bucket with water.  It costs about 2 pennies per bucket (10 francs.)
In the bottom 3 photos you see a neighbor girl (who didn't mind me taking pictures of her) going through her daily chore of fetching water.  I don't know how far away she lives, and I don't know how much a bucket full of water weighs exactly, but I do know that I would have a hard time lifting it onto my head and carrying it home like that (and without half the water sloshing out!)

Are you feeling thankful for your in-house plumbing yet?  I am!

home alone

Just 3 days after getting back from our month-long trip to Chad, JP has left me home alone. Ahh! 
He took a bus this morning to the town where we used to live and where we will move back to when he is done with school to do a 45 day internship for his schooling.  A few months ago when he told me that he'd have to do an internship during his school break, I heard "45 days" and calculated that it would be about 6 weeks.  So for months I had it in my head that JP would be gone for 6 weeks.  Well, that wasn't right.  There was a bit of misunderstanding on my part and the internship is actually for 9 weeks because he has to do 45 days of work - the work is Monday through Friday, so it will take 9 weeks to get those 45 days in.  When I came to understand this just a week ago, I was pretty bummed out.  JP won't be home until mid-October.  For 2 months I'll be home alone!
I will probably be able to go visit in a few weeks, and he might try to take a day or two off his work so that he can come here over a weekend.  The thing is that its kind of a big trip.  When we traveled there in March the trip took 11+ hours due to road construction and public transport time-wasting issues like sitting at the bus station or the bus stopping for various reasons along the way.  So it won't be possible to see each other very often.
JP will be working at the town hospital, but I'm not quite sure what he will be doing there.  In school he was working on a lot of research and he had to write up a project for collecting data relating to baby malnutrition.  So it is all connected to our past and future work with the Centre Esther and baby malnutrition (I think.)
Just over a year ago we were not together for 3 months when I went to the states after the coup happened and all the white people needed to evacuate the country.  So this won't be as long as that, and we will even get to see each other once or twice during the time apart.  But knowing that doesn't make it feel easier for me today.  JP left this morning and the apartment seems so quiet and empty.  I do have my dog and cat here with me, so I am not really alone, it could be worse.
I guess I should try to be positive and think of all the things that are great about being home alone.  Here are a few:  I get to choose whatever I want to eat for every meal.  I can read in bed with the light on as late as I want.  No waiting for the bathroom.  I really never watch tv (we get 3 lame channels and they're all in French) but if I did I would have absolute control over the remote.  Um, I guess those aren't really all too exciting.  Can you help me think of any others? 

my ASKY AIRLINES review

For our recent trip to Chad, we flew on ASKY airlines.  This is a small African company, only a few years old, based out of Lome, Togo. 
The first thing I can say is that while they do have a website where you can get information, you can't actually book your tickets there. It looks like you can up until you want to book them, and then it doesn't work and you have to call a travel agent.  (you can't book their tickets on any search sites such as Travelocity or Kayak either.)
We flew out of Bamako, Mali on a weekday morning.  The airport in Bamako has been recently redone and its pretty nice.  Checking in there was fine.  The 3 flights to finally get to N'Djamena, Chad were fine. Everything seemed normal to me.  I really don't have anything much to say about our trip towards Chad, it was unremarkable.  We were served some kind of food on each leg of the trip:  one hot meal and then they handed out plastic wrapped sandwiches along with beverage service on the other 2 flights.  Each flight segment was only around 2 hours, so that is a lot better service than one gets nowadays on flights within the USA! 
I have a few more comments though regarding the trip back towards Mali.  We received a message from the travel agency a few days before our flight saying that the time was changed from 8:30am to 7:35am.  They recommended for us to arrive at the airport at 5am.  Uh, no, I'm not going to the airport at 5am.  I know from experience that the check in counter wouldn't even be open that far in advance of the flight so we would just be sitting waiting with our suitcases.  We woke up at 5 and got to the airport around 6:15, but it wasn't until 7 that we were let through the doors into the room where the check in counters are. 
We were driven to the airport by a couple and JP's mom.  When we got to a barred security check point about 1/2 mile from the airport, the officer wanted to see our plane tickets and passports.  Then they made JP's mom and the woman of the couple get out in the rain and wait over yonder.  They couldn't ride in the car up to the curb, and it was raining out, and these were 2 women around 50 years old.  I guess that this isn't ASKY's fault, this is a NDJ airport thing, but I am still mentioning it.
Every airport I've been to in Africa has been pretty small and seemed like what a small regional airport would be in the states and not like a capital city's international hub.  I was surprised though at how slowly things moved along at the N'Djamena airport, and how very inefficient things seemed.  When we were finally let through the doors to the room with the check in counters, there were 2 lines.  One had a big banner saying ASKY Business Class, and the other said ASKY Economy.  We went in the Economy line and waited there for a solid 20 minutes before someone told us that we were in the line for some humanitarian WFP flight.  It wasn't for ASKY at all.  We were told to move over to the line that said ASKY Business Class.  I guess my literacy was working against me.  When we got up to the desk it was 7:30 (we thought our flight was rescheduled for 7:35) but I wasn't worried about the plane leaving without us because there were still lots of people behind us in line.  And then I found out that the flight wasn't actually changed, it was still at 8:30 and we had gotten up an hour earlier in the dark for nothing.  At the desk I learned why things were moving so slowly:  the agent was new and had to ask his supervisor how to do everything, and the boarding passes and luggage tags were being written up by hand.  Ok, I can forgive a trainee needing to learn his job, but hand written boarding passes and luggage tags?!  Did we just warp 50 years into the past?  Even if power was out or something, this is an International Airport and there must be back-up generators.  Maybe their printer was out of ink?  I don't know, but this seems ridiculous to me. 
I'll skip the security and waiting room stuff and jump onto the plane.  So we thought the flight was for 7:35, but it was still supposed to be for 8:30.  We boarded the plane at about 8:20, but it didn't take off until after 10.  In that time everyone was asked to show our boarding pass stubs (yeah the ones we had already had examined 3 times before we could board the plane) and then they came around again with a list of names to check on us again.  Then they carried nice big glasses of OJ up to first class and gave us nothing.  I was sure that we would miss one of our other flights because of the delay, but they just delayed those as well so that no one missed their connections. 
Otherwise things were not bad once we were flying.  The flight staff seemed a lot more competent that the staff inside the airport.  I don't know why we were delayed like that or where the fault lies, but I guess that happens sometimes. 
One other thing - but this is about airports in Africa in general.  After you get your bags off the carousel and you're ready to leave the airport, you always have to pass your bags, including hand luggage, through an xray scanner before you can leave.  This makes no sense to me.  Stupidest thing ever.  After I've finished flying and I'm ready to leave the airport they want to see if I have contraband?  Did they forget about all the security I went through before I got on my flight?  Or are they checking to see if maybe I am trying to steal something off a plane or from inside the airport?  If you understand why they do this please enlighten me.
So I would say that our 1st travel day with ASKY was fine.  Nothing bad but nothing outstanding.  The 2nd travel day was a bit of a pain, but it wasn't all ASKY's fault.  The questions of would I recommend this company or would I fly with them again are kind of irrelevant.  When there are no other options you go with what is available.  There was actually one other option for our trip to Chad - we could have gone on Ethiopian airlines.  The problem with that is that it goes first to Ethiopia and then to Chad, which is like wanting to travel from California to Minnesota and going by way of New York.  It also has an overnight lay over making it a 2 day trip.  So we would definitely go again with ASKY.  I just hope they can get their printers sorted out at the NDJ airport before we do. 

they do grow up fast

 When we were in Chad 3 years ago, JP's cousin's wife gave birth to a little boy when we were staying at the family's village compound.  The mother had walked a couple miles into town while in labor, given birth at the hospital, and then almost immediately got a ride home on a motorcycle-taxi with newborn in arms.  I think it was the next day I was asked to decide what I wanted to name the baby. They were honoring me as a visitor and new member marrying into the family.    I was to announce the name in a little family meeting the next morning.  I decided to go with a Bible name because the family is all Christians and then I would hopefully be safe in choosing a name they could pronounce.  I also figured that if they didn't like the name I chose they would just give him a 2nd Chadian name and call him by that one.  Well, I named the baby Caleb and they are still calling him Caleb today.  I was pretty excited to get to see the little guy again now 3 years later. 

Maybe it looks like he's not thrilled that I'm holding onto him in the pictures.  Actually he liked me pretty well, we were buddies, but like a lot of 3 year olds he didn't like having to sit still.