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Tuesday, December 22, 2015

The Second Worst Road-Trip Ever

So the first worst (or the very worst, or simply... the worst) road-trip ever was in February 2011 when I had to travel from Timbuktu to Koutiala while suffering from MALARIA.  A driver was supposed to be coming to get our group at some ridiculous time like 3:30am to begin the trip.  So we were awake, dressed, packed, and ready to roll at 3:30 sharp... but of course the driver didn't show up until - I think it was - about 8am.  Then the overcrowded, non-air-conditioned vehicle broke down several times on the long sandy road/path that we took out of Timbuktu.  When we arrived in Douentza I got to sleep a bit between all the shivering, sweating, and almost throwing up but not actually throwing up that I did that night.  The next morning, still horribly sick and very weak, I had to get on a bus to ride quite a few miserable hours south until we got home.  I have never been so glad to see my own bed!

The second worst road-trip ever took place this past Wednesday. It might actually sound worse than the trip I just explained, but if you've ever suffered from malaria then you can understand why the malaria trip trumps everything else.
So here is what happened on Wednesday:
I teach English on Wednesday mornings from 8-10.  As soon as my class was done I went home to get last minute things arranged and pack up the truck to go with JP to Bamako.  The truck is a 25-year-old Toyota Hilux pickup which belongs to the Center malnutrition health center where JP works.  We had arranged to pay milage (kilometrage) to take the truck to Bamako so that we would be able to haul back lots of baggage and fit the family of 4 that is coming to Mali in there with us to return a few days later.
We were on the road by 11:15.  Everything was fine (as fine as it can be on a rough Malian road in a very uncomfortable 25-year-old pick up with no AC) for the first hour and 45 minutes.  Then suddenly for no good reason, something happened and I thought it was that a tire had blown.  JP kept it under control and pulled over to stop.  We got out, I expected to see a shredded tire, but all the tires were fine!  JP found the problem when he looked under the car: a metal bar was detached and dragging on the ground.  This is the bar that connects the two front wheels and makes it possible to steer!  If this bar isn't there the tires can turn in different directions.  JP tied the bar up with a piece of rope so it wouldn't drag.  He could go super slow, but even then if there was a bump in the road the truck would shake violently.  We were 15 kilometers before the big town.  We called friends and asked them if they could send a mechanic to help us.  They did, and we thought we might as well continue at a snail's pace toward the town.  We got a call later and learned that the mechanic didn't find us on the road after driving 15 kilometers out of town.  The mechanic had gone the wrong direction out of town.  So we wound up driving all 15 kilometers into town and it took over an hour. (so we traveled at maybe 8mph!)  Once in town, the mechanic took the truck and we sat and waited almost 3 hours.  Our friends gave us some food and it was nice to see them, but I realized that my plans for meeting a friend in Bamako that night were shot.
The mechanic replaced the ball joint of the steering bar thing, the joint had worn out because it was old and there is so much sand to wear things away here, so it had just gotten too big to hold the ball in place.
We drove about 1 1/2 hours to where we needed to drop off some things at a friends' house. Just as we were getting to the checkpoint for the town where we needed to slow down to go through, the brakes suddenly seemed to not really work well anymore.  That is a pretty major problem to not have brakes working! Eek!  We slowly made it to our friends' house, JP used the parking break a few times, and they called a mechanic to come check it out.  Our friends fed us some good food and it was good to see them, but by this point it was already dark out and it is very bad to have to drive here in the dark.  The mechanic discovered that the brake fluid had a slow leak and it was completely dry now.  He added fluid and said it should be fine for a few days. 
So we got back on the road and had to go kind of slow because it was dark.  The brakes were better now, but JP said the steering seemed really hard.
We drove 2 hours to arrive on the edge of Bamako.  Driving across the city to the guesthouse would take about 30 minutes.  And guess what?  The brakes were suddenly awful again, almost not working at all.  We decided to try to get the truck to our organization's base and leave it there and take a taxi the rest of the way to the guesthouse.  By now it was just after 10pm. We got to the base and had to quietly go in and try to find someone who wasn't sleeping yet.  They got a taxi to come get us, and we unloaded our bags from the truck into the taxi.  We got to the guest house at about 11pm, so in all we had been traveling for close to 12 hours for a trip that should take a maximum of 6 hours in a private vehicle. 
That is the end of the very bad day of travel, but not really the end of the story.  JP had to go a few times (by taxi) to check on the truck and bring money to the mechanic.  I wish I could say that then there were no more problems, but...
We got the truck back, all fixed up, on Saturday night.  Sunday morning we left the guesthouse early to get the family of 4 and pack up the truck.  We were on the road at 7:30am.  All went well until just after noon when we were only about an hour from our destination.  The truck started making a ticking noise that wasn't quite right, so JP pulled over to the edge and turned the engine off to go investigate.  The investigation didn't lead to any sure reason for the ticking, but when JP turned the key again the engine wouldn't start.  The guys looked more at the engine and tried starting the truck again in a few minutes, and now it started.  We went about 5 minutes down the road and the truck stalled out and wouldn't start up again.  So we pulled over to the side of the road, about an hour from home but kind of in the middle of nowhere as we weren't close enough to any villages to get help.
We hadn't even figured out what to do yet, and a mini-bus came down the road in our direction and stopped.  I heard JP shout, "Matthias!"  What?!  Could it be?!  It was Matthias the brother-in-law of the family we rent our house from and who has his metal shop just outside our front gate, the Matthias we see every day!  I knew a few other people in that mini-bus as well; they were coming back from a wedding in Bamako.  AND, there were empty seats in the mini-bus.  So we left poor JP on the side of the road with the broken-down truck and got a ride home.  JP had to wait for someone to come and tow the truck to our house, so he didn't get home until after 6pm - about 4 hours after the rest of us.  I have decided that I won't be going anywhere in that truck again.

Wednesday, November 25, 2015

1 hour 15 minutes in town

A day in the life of me: Today was a Tuesday. I don’t teach on Tuesdays, so it is a day that I do a lot of preparation for teaching and correct any homework or tests.  On Tuesday nights we have a meeting at our base.  Sometimes I am involved with leading music, but this week it was someone else’s responsibility, so I only needed to show up and not spend time preparing and setting up for that.
This morning I worked on school stuff and made 4 loaves of bread.  In the afternoon I had an amazingly productive 1 hour and 15 minutes in town.  Here’s how that went:
I left home in our car at 2:00 with a long to do list, printed pages, ATM card, and money.  (Even though I was planning to get money from the ATM I needed to bring enough money for everything I wanted to buy because getting money from an ATM is never a sure thing.  On more than one occasion I have visited 3 machines in a row and still not gotten any money.)
I had just printed up 2 pages I needed to have photocopied.  One was an assignment page for my 9th grade students, the other was a page that will be cut into 4 little advertisement flyers for the next trimester of adult English classes to begin in January.  My first stop was the little photocopy shop.  It costs 5 cents per page for photocopies.
Then I went into a back road of the downtown market area to find corn.  We needed corn, or really I guess it is maize, for feeding our chickens and ducks.  I was asked to buy a lot so that we don’t have to go buy more again any time soon.  I found a place that sells corn, and I greeted the guy there.  There were other guys sitting around nearby.  They seemed to only speak Bambara and all had big smiles in reaction to my attempts to speak their language.  I said I wanted corn and the guy asked if I wanted white corn or red corn (which is actually yellow.)  I said I didn’t know, it would be to feed our chickens and “the ones which are like chickens but they like to swim in water.”  I blanked out on the word for “duck” so that was my explanation, and they all thought it was pretty funny and then reminded me of the word for duck.  I wound up calling JP to ask which color corn we wanted, and I bought a 100 kilogram sack of red (yellow) corn.  It cost $20.  I sat a chatted (or tried my best) with the seller and his buddies for a few minutes.  Before I left I was given a decent size bag full of dried hibiscus flower as a gift; this is used to make a special juice.  I’m not sure if the gift was in recognition of the entertainment I provided or in hopes that I will become a repeat customer.


Next I went to the street corner where salad fixings are sold.  It is on the edge of the market area.  To go into the market I’d have to find a place to park and then walk a bit into the market and wander around there.  The salad corner is super convenient if you only need limited produce.  There are always baskets full of lettuce, and usually you can find cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, eggs, and a few other small things.  I went to a lady that had veggies and eggs and bought some of almost everything she had to offer, even green beans! (those are coming into season now) I was happy for the 1 stop shopping.  On the way back to the car that I had left around the corner, I stopped to greet one salad lady who knows my name.  I saw that she had plantain bananas for sale and since JP loves to fry those up to eat, I thought I’d buy some.  “How much are the… um, strange/wonder bananas?”  I asked.  I couldn’t remember if I had ever learned the word for plantains in Bambara.  She smirked and said, “ah, the loko?”  Yes, that was what I meant!  The name we call the pieces of fried plantains is “aloco” and that’s what people say when speaking French.  There are plenty of borrowed words in Bambara that come from French, so it’s not bad to try the French word when I don’t know the Bambara word for something.  I bought some “loko” and went on to the good gas station.
There are several places that sell gas, but only one that we trust.  A man in a red uniform pumps the gas for you, you just stay in the car (or stand next to your motorcycle) and tell him how much gas you want to buy.  I filled up the tank to be ready for the trip out of town that I will take for Thanksgiving.  Gas is pricey here and the price doesn’t fluctuate.  It stays at about $5 per gallon, I can’t say exactly because though the price here doesn’t change, the exchange rate does.
JP usually gets money out of the ATM for us.  I feel quite safe in our town, but there is something about coming out of an ATM (they’re always inside a little room)where obviously I went into to get money, that makes me feel a bit nervous like someone might be lurking and ready to try to steal the money.  Today was nice in that I got money out of the first ATM I visited.
I turned back toward home and stopped at the drive-thru banana tables.  These are tables with piles of bananas for sale conveniently located right on the edge of the road.  I stayed in the car and the lady brought the bananas to me, what service!
After the bananas (regular bananas, not the strange/wonder ones!) I drove the 4 minutes that it takes to get from the downtown area to our house.  I arrived home at 3:15 and was quite impressed with how smoothly my 1 hour and 15 minutes had gone (not counting the language hiccups) and how much I had accomplished already for one day.
I realized I hadn’t eaten lunch yet, so I used some of the veggies I’d bought to make a salad and I sliced one of the fresh loaves of bread I had made that morning.
We went to our base for the meeting and then came back home to welcome a visiting friend.  I cooked a quick meal to share together and we visited for a while.
Now it’s late and I should be sleep.  I will be teaching 9th grade English from 8-10 tomorrow morning.

Thursday, October 29, 2015

teaching 9th grade English

I've been teaching 9th grade English at our school for almost a month now.  It is VERY different from the adult classes that I've been teaching for the last few years.
In my adult classes I've had 8-20 students in each class, usually 15 or 16.  In the 9th grade I have over 40 students.  The adults are motivated since they chose to take the class and paid to be there.  Some of the 9th graders do want to learn, but some of them are just there because they have to be.  Adults are mostly calm, quiet, and attentive.  The 9th graders poke at each other, steal pencils, whisper or talk, and need to be told repeatedly to open their books and follow along with what we're doing.  It also seems like some of them are still in the stage of pushing and testing the teacher to see what they can get away with in class.  I don't like being tough and strict with them, but that is what I have to be for now.  I have taken down some names to deduct points from those students' scores, and on Monday I had to ask a disruptive student to step out of the classroom.  She initially refused, so I calmly said that if she didn't go now I would go find the school principal to come and see her.  She went then, and I hope that this incidence is the worst that I will have to deal with in this class.  Everyone got really quiet when I asked the student to step out!
In class on Wednesday, when I teach them for a 2 hour block, they started getting antsy and talking more during one of the exercises we were doing.  Though I try to speak in class in English as much as possible, I took a little break to give them a reprimand in French.  I reminded them that they are incredibly blessed/lucky to be in school, that there are plenty of kids in Mali that don't have the same opportunity.  You could have heard a pin drop as I gave this speech!  I said that if they want to waste their time in class by not paying attention and working, that they could go outside and sit on a bench instead of bothering the students who do want to learn.  I said that I want to see them all succeed and pass the test they have to take at the end of the year; that I will to my part to teach them well, but that they have to do their part to learn.  I said that it is a shame to waste their chance for an education, that with a good education they will have choices in life, they can do what they want.  I also reminded them of what I said on the first day of class: that I love the Malian people and want to help them in the small way that I am able to help.  I have given the students my phone number and said that they can call if they have a problem and need someone to talk to, and if they want to come by my house to visit sometime that they are welcome if they can call ahead to see if I am at home.  I don't know if any of them will ever call or come to visit, but at least they know that I care. :)
Here is what the classroom looks like from the back.

And here are a couple of chalkboards that were in the back of the classroom one morning. There is very little in the way of resources for the students but they can learn a lot if they apply themselves.

blister bug wound - ouch!

I got a blister bug wound!  It isn't a "bite" because they don't bite but rather secrete their nasty blister-juice.  I had heard of these, but after 6 years in Mali this is the first time I've had one myself.  I didn't see the bug (actually a beetle), though I may have squished it to make it do this to me.  Often a blister bug wound will be a long line and mine is round, but I am pretty sure that it's from a blister bug.  The stuff they put out is called "cantharidin" and it blisters one's skin because it's a poisonous chemical.  So what I have is a second-degree acid burn.  And it's really painful!  This picture is after 5 days of suffering.  That is the side of my leg/knee in case you're wondering.


Here is what Malian blister beetles look like.  I didn't take this photo, just found it when I did research.  I was trying to see what I might possibly be able to do to relieve the pain of this blistery wound.  There isn't much that's very helpful to do but wait, but I felt a little better by reading that it is a burn and that burns are the most painful kind of wound.  So me thinking that this hurts terribly is justified.  The poison of this bug is so strong that horses and other animals can die if they eat it! 

Duck gets a wife

Our male duck is no longer a bachelor!  We got a female duck from friends in the village.  When I brought Mrs. Duck into the yard and set her down, Duck did a dance.  At least that's what it looked like to me; he seemed pretty happy and was shaking his tail feathers and bobbing his head.
This isn't a great picture, but the ducks are shy.  They waddle quickly away if I come close to them, but they seem to be learning not to go too far if I bring them food.

our land: wall progress

Here is what our land and the progress on the enclosure wall looks like today.
The foundation is done all around and the cement sections are started.  This big open space that you are looking in through will be the gate.  They need to put more metal pieces between the sections and cement them in and do more bricks to make the wall high enough all around.  Once that is all done the wall will need to have a coat of cement smoothed over it so that you won't be able to see the bricks anymore.  For right now we are waiting for more money for this project, so this is probably what it'll look like for a few weeks at least.

Sunday, October 18, 2015

our land in Mali

Just over 2 years ago we bought a piece of land in Mali.  We were given a special gift of money to be able to buy 2 lots on the edge of town, maybe 3 miles from where we live now.  One lot is considered sufficient for a house, but it seems to me that if you build a house on 1 lot there's hardly any yard left after.  Our 2 lot piece of land measures 20 by 30 meters, which is about 66 by 98 feet.
In the first picture you can see JP standing on our land, this was just after the purchase was final.  As this is the edge of town, you can see that there are a few small mud-brick houses in the picture, but mostly it is open fields. The big tree was on our land, but we had to cut it down.
 The second picture was taken about 6 months later.  The first picture was during the rainy season, so it was green.  The second picture shows the brown desert look we have here the rest of the year.  You can see that the big dangerous tree that was cut down.
 The last 2 pictures are from this week.  There have been some big changes, and there are more to come!  There are 2 neighbors that have built houses that border on our property.  The whole neighborhood has a lot of new construction happening.  We have been gifted more money for this project, and we've been able to have a well dug (you can see a man using the well in the bottom photo, he is standing on it and that black thing is to pull up water) and we are in the process of getting an enclosure wall built around the property.  It is normal and necessary here to have each property walled-in.
 Below you can see 2 men in the trench that was dug for the foundation bricks of the front wall of the property.  One day there will be a gate right where that guy is bending down.
Work is really progressing!  We are going over there almost every day to check up on things, so I'll post more photos soon.
We would love to build a house on this property, and if fact we already have an official approved blueprints plan for a house.  Before we could start building the wall we had to turn in all our plans for the property to be approved by city hall.  It was fun to design the house and map out the property.  I minored in Art in college, and I saw those design classes I had to take coming in handy.  I was drawing and erasing and drawing on graph paper for a few weeks! There aren't mortgages here like in the states, so it is just a matter of if we can find a personal loan or more gifts of money to allow us to go forward with building on our land.  We are so thankful for what is already happening!

Saturday, October 17, 2015

we got a duck!


We got a duck!  We want a male and a female, but so far we found this male, or "drake."  We should be getting a female soon and then hopefully they will make some cute little ducklings.  The adult ducks here aren't so cute, but the babies are.  This guy is not very friendly.  He seems pretty afraid of people; if he can see me at all he just freezes and stares at me unless I come too close and then he runs/waddles away.  He hasn't made the connection yet that people give him food.  The duck and the 6 chickens we have get along fine.  They all sleep in the coop together at night.  Two of our hens are sitting on eggs right now, so I should have some cute baby chick pictures in a few weeks. (but don't count your chickens before they're hatched, right?!)

Sunday, October 4, 2015

village clinics

We were able to go along with a doctor friend to see 2 medical clinics in villages.  Some of the "roads" we traveled on were really just paths or trails, and we were lucky that it hadn't rained in a few days because the village roads turn into mud puddles, or mud pits rather, after the rain.  It was clear why some people need to have Land Cruisers!
Above: this is what the first clinic looked like from the outside.
Above is our doctor friend, he is a fantastic pediatrician.  What is he doing?  Putting up shelves!  It is good to be flexible and ready to do whatever needs doing!  JP stepped in and helped with the shelf project once it got started so that the doctor could do other work.
The reason the shelves were being put up is that the clinic's office/exam room is small and they didn't seem to be very good at organizing things there.  The man in charge of the clinic is trained and certified as a nurse, but the work he does led me to think of him as a doctor.  In the photo below you can see his desk before the shelves.  How could he find anything?
Here is the nurse/doctor at his desk after the shelves were up.  It was going to take some time to get down to the desk surface, but don't the bottles of medicines on the shelves look great and orderly?
We went to another clinic in another village.  This one is newly built and was larger and better organized.  One of the big things that these clinics do is provide a safe place and trained nurses to help women give birth.  I read that in Mali 1 in 19 women die in childbirth, so this is a huge need.

about school and the first day

Thursday was the first day of school for kids in Mali.  The schools (even private schools like ours) all run on the same schedule set by the government, but the government doesn't let anyone know the schedule until the last minute.
I know I could look online and find a schedule for every school I attended in the states for this year, and it would show all of the days off for the year as well as when the last day of school is planned to be (which depends on snow days since I am from MN, but still it would give you a good idea of dates so you could make some plans.)
People here found out on Tuesday that school would begin on Thursday.  We don't know the dates for days off, they'll let us know a day or two in advance.  I am not a fan of this system.

  My first year in Mali I helped in the school's kindergarten which now has its own buildings across the street and is where I teach English to adults in the evening. Now I am teaching 9th grade English.

I get excited and a bit nervous when it is the first day of class for adult English class, but I've done that quite a few times now and I feel like I know what I'm doing there.  This was a different and new situation and I was very nervous but didn't want to let it show.

On the first day of school there was a short ceremony around the flagpole. 
At 8:00 it was time for class to begin.  The 9th grade classroom is on the second floor of this building.  They stay in the same room all day and teachers for different subjects come in for 1 or 2 hours at a time to teach.  I was given a class list... 46 students.  This is WAY too many for 1 class, and especially for trying to learn a foreign language, but 46 students in 1 class is way less that you'd find in any public school here.  On the first day of school there were "only" 26 students in class, and it was the same the second day, on Friday.  I imagine that this is due in great part to the fact that they only announced the date for school to start 2 days before school started!  A lot of kids spend time during their summer break in villages with extended family.  Plus, it was the biggest Muslim holiday of the year last week, so a lot of people travel for that.
So here is a picture in the classroom of the 26 students on the first day.  I tried to be very cheerful and energetic but I felt like I got a lot of blank stares in return.  Education is done a bit (really more than a bit) differently here than what I experienced growing up.  The government has tests that the students must pass at the end of the 6th and 9th grades to be able to continue to the next grade.  Every school uses the same school books, and the tests are based off of what they learn in those books, so I do need to teach in a way that they will be prepared for their big test at the end of the year.  The students could buy books for themselves at local bookshops, but most don't.  In many schools the students don't have books to use at all and the teacher writes from the book on the blackboard and the students spend time copying into their notebooks.  Our school has enough 9th grade English books so that every desk can have a copy, or 1 book for every 2 students to look at.  They are not allowed to take the books home, only to use them during class.
The first day of class was mainly introductions, rules, and a little bit of review of things that they were supposed to have learned last year.  The school principal came in and greeted the class, told them to show their teacher respect, and reminded them that they need to work hard and remember that they will have a very important test at the end of the school year.

I had a dry erase whiteboard made and installed in this classroom before class started.  There is also a huge chalkboard at the front of the class.  I am going to try with the whiteboard a bit more, but I may have to wind up taking it down and putting the 2nd chalkboard back up.  The students, especially those in the back, complained that they can't see well because of light reflecting off the board.  Closing the window shutters isn't an option, so there will always be light hitting the board.  I can use the board in adult English classes, so it isn't a waste, but I am terrible at writing with chalk - it is very different from using a marker on the board.

One more thing for now, I usually am able to learn all of my student's names within a month when it is a class of less than 20 and they are wearing name-tags.  I am hoping to learn these 46 students' names at least by Christmas!  I spent time this weekend making name cards for each student to display on their desks during English class.  I hope that this idea will work.

Tuesday, September 15, 2015

baby dedication in the village

We just spent a gorgeous Sunday in my favorite village, an hour or so (depending on the condition of the roads) from where we live.  We traveled in a vehicle with 6 others to attend and celebrate the baby dedication for a friend.  
This little herder boy and his cows wandered past our party.

I was very amused by the fun decorations in the church, which I was told came in shoeboxes.  I think the balloons are actually water balloons, and the blue ball in the middle is a beach ball.  The white balls are paper lanterns, and seem like they'd be too big to fit in a shoebox, so not sure about those.  They put these bendy flowers on the pulpit, that was the cutest touch I thought!  Yes, a pastor preached with those smiley flowers there!


Above is most of our group with the friend.  JP and a friend brought their guitars and we shared 2 upbeat songs.

This is what it looked like.  There were a lot of visitors from out of town (out of village?) and many  village folks showed up for the event.  
 Here is the chorale with some drums and other fun noisy instruments, and the kids sitting on a mat on the floor.

base salon project, before and after

I have just completed a project of giving a face lift to the salon at our mission base.  Salon as in living room, not a place to style hair.  The salon is an oddly shaped kind of circle room, maybe the building is an octagon? It's kind of an all purpose room at the base, but very often we have our Tuesday night worship meetings there.  When I lived on the base back in 2009, the salon was our living room; if we wanted to hang out indoors but not in our dorm bedrooms, it was in the salon.  As you can see from the before pics, the salon really needed some TLC and especially a new paint job.
Every time I was in there before I was distracted by the need for new paint and by several places that the cement wall was crumbling around the bottom.  I thought "this should get redone, someone should redo this" and then one day I realized "I should make it my project to redo this."
We used some money we had set aside for special projects.  It took up quite a bit of time but wasn't all that expensive really, the price for labor is low here.

The first thing to be done was to replace the old florescent wand light bulbs and fixtures with modern small spiral low energy bulbs.  I guess you can't see that in any of the pictures, but they're there.  There were 7 lights on the ceiling of the salon, plus one in a smaller attached room and one in the bathroom on this ground floor of this building.  So that was 2 appointments with the electrician.  The first for him to come and see and make a list of what he needed to buy and the second to come back and install.  I got to sit and watch the exciting work. (that was sarcastic, it was not exciting to watch.)

The next step was to get a mason to come and tap and scrape around the bottom of the wall and patch it up with new cement.  Then I pulled out nails and screws and patched the rest of the wall with plaster.  The painter came and spent a whole day scrubbing and cleaning the walls.  While he did the walls I did inside of the window ledges that were caked with dried mud (accumulated dust having mixed with rain) and dead bugs and lizard poo.  Then the painter spent a few days painting.  I washed all the windows, and these louvered windows are a pain to clean.  I also painted all the bottom edge by the floor with a brush to help the work go faster; the painter used the ladder up high and I sat on the floor and scooted around.

Here is the painter in action.  He did some painting in our house last year.  He does good work, and with only 1 hand!  He lost the other one in a hunting gun accident.



 The paint comes in a big bucket and it is white and really thick.  Water and colorant has to be added to it.  There aren't strips of color samples to choose from (unless you go to one certain place in Bamako and pay way more money for paint) so you mix it yourself and hope for the best.  When the paint started going on I thought it looked like mustard, but it dries much lighter and it ended up being a cheerful sunny yellow color.  Don't the walls look so much nicer!  The salon has a whole new feeling to it, I find it much more relaxing and nice to be in there.
The bathroom needed some a minor tune up from the plumber, so that was another appointment. The final thing in the project was to scrape and paint some of the metal doors and trim for the salon. This is the screen door, the screen had to be removed and replaced in order for the door to be painted, so the metal worker took care of the screen.  In all, there were 8 people involved in getting this project done.

I enjoyed making this project happen.  A few people expressed surprise that I (a woman) was the one directing the work and even doing a bit of it myself.  For example, one worker came to the base and didn't seem ready to have me show him the work to be done, he asked where my husband was a couple times!  I like disturbing people's stereotypes.

house help and tortillas in Mali, with recipe

A young woman named Nyagali comes to our house 3 mornings a week to help with cleaning, laundry, food shopping, and cooking.  Everything seems to take more time and effort here, so I could either expend huge amounts of my time and energy to keep our home functioning, or we can do as is expected of missionaries here and hire someone to help.  I am so thankful to have the help!
Nyagali is great at preparing the food after she brings it from the market. (though I still go to market myself fairly often)  All of the vegetables and fruits need to be soaked in bleach water and cleaned before going in the fridge.  Eggs also need a good soak and scrub because they come filthy straight from the coop.  There are few conveniences here, so Nyagali also does things like sifting sand and pebbles out of the dry beans and rice we buy.  If we want whole wheat flour or corn flour she buys the grains, washes and dries them, and carries them to a mill to be ground.  I also enjoy not having to wash dishes the days she is here.  It is rainy season now, so the dust is not as intense, but during the rest of the year the dust here is something that you really can't understand unless you've experienced it.  I am thankful not to have to be the one to wash our tile floors by hand three times per week (three times per week seems to be the minimum needed to not walk around in a layer of dust.)  All of this help allows me to focus on the work that I am here to do.  
Nyagali can make several different meals for us.  JP especially enjoys eating some African dishes that she can cook that I don't attempt to cook.  
But I kept hearing from others about how their house helpers can cook some pretty exciting things.  I have tried to make tortillas before, and while they turned out edible, they couldn't be described as good.  So I heard that our friends' house helper was a tortilla making expert and I talked with him to see if he could come to teach Nyagali how it's done.


 Jude and Nyagali are both from the ethnic group called Bobo.  While they were working in the kitchen they were chattering away in the Bomu language and I couldn't understand anything.  So I'm not sure what was said but the end result was a beautiful stack of delicious tortillas.
I'm hoping to get Jude back here soon for a lesson on bagels!
(it made me smile to see him wearing my Minnesota apron!)

Here's the recipe for tortillas:

TORTILLAS           makes about 10

3 cups flour
1/4 cup shortening (margarine or crisco)
1/2 t. salt
1/2 t. baking powder
Mix these together well, then add:
1/2 to 3/4 cup water
Knead the dough a bit, then separate into about 10 sort of golf ball sized balls.
Roll each ball out on a floured surface into a big round circle.
Place each tortilla in a pan over low heat and turn them over so each side gets a bit golden.
These can be kept in the freezer, so you can make a bunch at a time.
Hint:  You can roll out a bunch of them before heating the pan.  Layer them between waxed paper (we used big ziplock bags) before cooking.

Wednesday, June 24, 2015

an African story starring Turtle

I love a good folk tale.  Today during my Bambara lesson my language tutor told me this one, and I understood enough of the story to make sense of it. (yay! I am making progress!) So here is my retelling of a traditional African story:

Many of the forest animals were friends.  Turtle learned that two of his good bird friends would be having their wedding up in the sky.  Turtle really wanted to go to the wedding, but since he didn’t have wings it seemed impossible to get up there.  One of his bird friends got the other birds together and they all agreed to each give one of their feathers to Turtle.  Turtle gathered all of the feathers together, and then he was able to fly up to the bird wedding in the sky. 
The festivities took place over several days.  When the birds and Turtle arrived, they were asked their names by the host.  Turtle said that his name was “You All.”  The host cooked some good food and gave it to the guests saying “Here is some food for you all to eat.”  Turtle said “Did you hear that? The food is for me!”  And he ate all of the food without sharing.  This happened again and again in the same way for the next few meals.  The birds were very angry with Turtle, and they each decided to take back the feather that they had given.  Turtle was left with no feathers, so he could not fly back home. 
When the wedding was finished and the birds were ready to go back to the forest, Turtle pleaded with them, “Will you please give a message to my wife?  Tell her to take everything soft out of the house, like our mattress, couch, and pillows, and pile it all together in our yard.”  Turtle was planning to jump down from the sky and he wanted a soft place to land.  But the birds were still angry, so the message they said to Turtle’s wife was, “Turtle wants you to put all of the sharp and hard things together in a pile in the yard.” 
So Mrs. Turtle took the cooking pots, knives, and metal tools and piled them up in the yard.  Turtle jumped down from the sky and his shell shattered into pieces when he hit the pile.  Mrs. Turtle picked up the pieces of Turtle’s shell and brought them to the cobbler who sewed the pieces back together.  And this is why a turtle’s shell looks the way it does.

Sunday, June 21, 2015

make friends, get bonus fruit

Hot season in Mali is intense.  We have temperatures over 100 degrees every day for a couple months.  Soaring temperatures with no air conditioning and frequent power cuts is brutal.  Thankfully there is an immediate reward for this suffering: Mangoes!  I don’t know why mango season coincideswith hot season, but I’m glad that it does!
Mangoes can be found for sale everywhere for 10 to 25 cents each.  Or you can get them for free if you have a mango tree in your yard or if you have a friend who does.  There are many different kinds of mangoes and I have learned the names of a few of my favorite varieties so that I can be sure to buy the really good ones.  A really good mango is huge and perfectly ripe so as to be juicy but not squishy and it is sweet like candy but somehow healthy because it is fruit.
If you take a trip on the road, there are many places to stop along the way where there will be long lines of ladies selling piles and piles of mangoes.  I am looking forward to one day getting a chest freezer so that we can cut and freeze mangoes and keep having them throughout the year.  For now, I just eat as many as I can handle during mango season.
There is a paved road near the house I am staying at and in the evening there are ladies with tables on the sides of the road.  Some of the ladies have vegetable tables with lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, and onions.  And some of the ladies have fruit tables with mangoes, bananas, and possibly some oranges and imported apples. 
I have made friends with one of the fruit sellers.  In Mali you have to greet before you do anything else.  It would be ok just to do a basic quick greeting and then get to business.  But since I wasn’t in a hurry and there were no other customers waiting, I started chatting with the fruit lady.  She doesn’t speak any French, so it was good practice for my Bambara.  I learned that her name is Aissata and she is of the Dogon ethnic group.  I can’t really remember what all we chatted about, but she was a nice lady and we talked for a few minutes before I asked about the prices of fruit.  I chose a pile of 4 premium mangoes  for $1 and I picked 4 not quite ripe ones at 10 cents each from the back of the table.   Aissata put the mangoes I chose into a plastic bag.  Then she looked at me to make sure I was paying attention and she grabbed one more of the 10 cent mangoes to add to my bag as a present.  Then she went a step further (and ensured my repeat business) and put a free banana into my bag as well.  I have gone a few times since then to buy fruit from her.

Here is what $1.40 worth of mangoes looks like.  They are in these basins so I can soak them in bleach water.  The greenish ones will ripen in a day or two on the counter.  The ripe ones go in the fridge.


Friday, June 5, 2015

now we're cooking with gas!


Of course the gas ran out the day after my husband left on his trip. 
Stoves run on a bottle of gas here, similar to a gas barbeque grill.  Having an electric stove wouldn’t really work out too well because the power cuts pretty often and because the price for electricity is high.  A bottle of gas costs $20 or so to refill.  Mine usually lasts for about 6 weeks.
While I’m in Bamako to teach English I’ve been staying at the house of some friends who are away.  They left a note saying that when the gas runs out there’s a spare bottle in the storage room out back.
 
Today at lunch time I wanted to bake some fish so I lit the oven and popped the pan of fish in.  After 15 minutes I went to open the oven door to check on the fish and I could feel that the stove was only slightly warm and I saw that the fish was still raw.  The gas had run out shortly after I had lit the oven.  Ugh.
So I unscrewed the empty gas bottle from the hose connected to the stove.  Then I thought hard about where the key for the outside storage room might be.  I finally found a bowl of keys by the house’s main door and had to try a half dozen keys before one would go into and turn in the lock on the storage room door.
I found the full bottle in the storage room.  It was thickly coated with dust and webby stuff.  I got the bottle out the door and then brought some water over to rinse it off.  The distance between there and the stove in the kitchen might be 60 feet, but I had to carry the bottle in in 3 segments.  Those things are ridiculously heavy.  I got the bottle to the kitchen and attached the hose to it.  By now I was quite sweaty as the temperature is still 100 or more during the day and it has become very humid as it is raining about once a week.  Soon we will be in rainy season and it will rain every day and the temps will cool off a little bit. 
Now I just needed to turn the knob on top of the gas bottle to open the gas flow and relight the oven to cook the fish.  The knob on top of the bottle wouldn’t budge.  I tried using a towel to get a better grip on it.  I went into the office and dug in some drawers and found some tools.  There was a hammer but no kind of pliers.  I tried banging on the ridges of the knob in the direction to get it to open.  That didn’t work, but it got me much sweatier for the effort.  I don’t know exactly how long everything took me up to this point, but it was a long time.  I finally gave up because I needed to get ready to go teach at school.  I put the pan of fish in the fridge and ate some toast.
After school I came home and the night guard was there.  Most international workers employ guards to, well, guard their house.  The guard will usually water plants and sweep the yard too.  We have never employed a guard, but it is normal for most expats to have them.  Anyway, the guard was there and so I asked him if he could help me with the gas bottle in the kitchen.  Bernard came in and put his big man hands to work but he couldn’t get the knob to budge either.  I felt much less wimpy in that moment.  He left to ask the shopkeeper a couple doors down for a tool to use.  He came back with a not-completely-appropriate-for-the-job pliers type tool.  That didn’t work.  He went back to talk to the shopkeeper.  He came back and asked me if there was a hammer.  I gave it to him.  Several minutes later using the inappropriate pliers and the hammer together, Bernard got the knob to twist.  And I got to eat fish at 9pm.



Tuesday, May 19, 2015

on ATMs and friendly Malians

When I'm in America there are things I miss about Mali.  When I'm in Mali there are things I miss about America.
Last week (I'm staying at my friends' house in Bamako) I needed to go to an ATM and withdraw money.  In America it is usually pretty easy, even boring, to find an ATM and withdraw money.  It would be fairly rare I think, in America, to get to an ATM and find that it was not working.  Certainly if the first ATM wasn't working you could easily find a second one that would be working.  In Mali simple things like getting money from an ATM can become a time-consuming friend-making adventure.

First I decided to walk about 10 minutes out to the main road because it is lined with businesses and I thought maybe there is a bank with an ATM somewhere out there that I don't know about.  In my long, loose, flowy skirt I walked until I did find a bank, but this bank didn't have an ATM.  I started to walk the other direction on the main road, and suddenly the wind started blowing.  I wished I hadn't worn such a loose flowy skirt.  I tried to keep going while trying to keep my skirt from blowing up and showing too much leg, but the wind was picking up clouds of dust and it seemed like it was going to start raining.  A man at a tailor shop saw me through the window and opened the door to tell me to please come inside.  I went in and he found a chair and asked me to sit.  I chatted with him about the tailoring business and we watched dust and plastic bags flying around in the wind.  It did start raining.  I waited a while, but the rain continued.  Although the tailor would have been glad for me to sit in his shop all afternoon, I felt like we had run out of easy conversation, and I wanted to get home.
I walked a couple blocks to a gas service station.  There were a lot of people waiting under the hangar there, so I decided to wait with them a few minutes and see if the rain would stop.  The shop owner saw me (I don't blend into a crowd too well) and insisted that I come inside the shop and sit on the bench he had there.  He was very friendly and asked me a lot of questions, like what is my phone number and could he come visit me at the house.  I decided to continue on my way even though it was still raining.  I walked to the house as people under hangars and awnings stared at the white lady walking in the rain.  I smiled back and said hello.
My first attempt was unsuccessful.  There is not an ATM in the neighborhood I am staying in, at least not within walking distance.

The next day I decided to take a taxi across town.  There is a western style grocery store that I could buy a few items at and I remembered that there is a bank with an ATM next door.  The ATM did not work.  The guard sitting outside of the ATM booth said I could just cross the street (a busy road with 4 lanes of traffic) and find an ATM down the road.  I walked to the edge of the road and hesitated.  A man that works for the store as a parking guard saw me.  He came up and said he would cross the street with me.  It wasn't a question, he already decided.  So the nice man ran across the street with me and then he ran back to his work.  Across from the grocery store is the veterinary office with the vet that gave our dog his yearly rabies shot when we lived in Bamako.  He was standing at the door of the office, so I had to go up to greet him for several minutes before I could continue on my way.  I need to read a book on improving memory or something because the vet greeted me with "Eliza!" (the name I go by with Malians) and I have no idea what his name is.  Bad Eliza. :(
I got to the bank with another non-working ATM.  I think that the problem is mostly that they are out of money.  Another bank was down the road a bit further.  At that ATM (my 3rd of the day) I was again disappointed.  A guard at that place told me I should walk down the road a bit more (even further away from the grocery store where I started) because there is another bank that direction.  As I walked, a man pulled up beside me on his motorscooter and asked if I wanted a ride.  I said no thanks.  He asked for my number.  I smiled and said "no, sorry."  I kind of think its funny when I get asked for my number when I am a sweaty mess in 100+ degree weather.  Mostly the men are not creepy, they're just wanting to see how I'll respond.  I guess I must not look as gross as I feel with sweat dripping off my face.  

When I got to the bank there were 3 men sitting outside; one dressed as a guard and two of his buddies.  They were boiling up some Malian tea.  They greeted me and offered me some tea.  I answered with "maybe after."  I went in the ATM booth (4th of the day, 5th bank I tried since the day before) and was relieved to finally get some cash!  From now on I'm just going to go to this ATM first!  When I came out (with the money secured in a cash belt under my clothes) the men called me over to have tea and sit in a chair they had waiting for me.  I sat and chatted but I declined the tea, not because I didn't want to drink something strangers offered or because I didn't want to drink out of the same little unwashed shot glass that everyone else would drink out of, but because it was already the afternoon and the tea is very strong.  I told them I wanted to sleep that night so I would pass on the tea.  After learning everyone's names, places of origins, and ethnicity, and being shown the traditional musical instrument that one of the men had (like a harp-guitar) I thanked them, wished them a good evening, and left to walk back to the grocery store.

The two sides of that whole experience are so inescapably Malian.  Things don't work at all or as easily and quickly as I think they should; a simple task can gobble up a lot of time and effort.  And, people will go out of their way to help and be friendly and show hospitality - even to strangers.  People are more important that any task at hand.  I can get frustrated or I can keep smiling and marvel at these generous, good-natured people.  I never made 5 or 6 new friends when I went to get money from an ATM in America.  Now, if I could only remember their names...

Saturday, May 2, 2015

we're home! and we're hot!

We were so excited to get home yesterday afternoon.  As soon as we got to the outskirts of town and started recognizing buildings we couldn’t stop smiling.  When the gate to our house was opened our dog barked at us for a few seconds but quickly changed to doing a happy dog dance when he realized who we were.  The people staying in our house welcomed us with a clean, dust-free bedroom (which, only a day later is already coated in a good layer of dry-season dust) and one of my favorite meals: Atchike and fish.
As I write this it is Saturday evening at 6pm.  It is over 100 outside, and over 90 in the house.  I just looked at the weather forecast for the week, and the daily highs for the week ahead are between 104-109 degrees, and the overnight lows are down to 80-82 degrees.  It stays hotter than 80 inside though because the brick walls absorb the heat of the day and keep us baking inside at night.  Thankfully we have an air conditioner unit in our bedroom, so we can use it at night to sleep.  Because it is expensive to run, we usually only use it when we just couldn’t sleep otherwise, but that is the case right now!  It was 97 degrees in our bedroom before we turned on the A/C to sleep last night.  The A/C cooled it down by 11 degrees so we could sleep.  I am not sure how we can find 86 degrees to be a comfortable temperature for sleep when we’ve been sleeping in 65-70 degrees for the last 6 months.
Maybe it’s because we are pretty exhausted in dealing with jetlag and the heat and the whole adjustment of being back here.

I’ve been trying to get the suitcases unpacked, but I am unpacking them just to tuck a lot of the stuff away into storage for the next 2 months.  And then I need to repack a new suitcase!  I will be home for a week and then I’ll spend the rest of May and all of June in Bamako teaching at the English school that I taught at when we lived in Bamako.  The school really needed more teachers as several teachers are just leaving on their furloughs.  There are some short term people coming at the end of June who will take over the classes that I’ll start teaching.  There is also a house for me to live in very close to the English school.  It is empty for May and June since my colleagues are traveling.  Our house and our dog are being taken care of by a lovely family and they need to stay until the end of the school year at the end of June.  So a lot of details worked out great for me to be able to go teach English now just as we’ve returned to Mali!  Jean-Patrick will see me in Bamako before and after a trip that he will make to Senegal to see medical clinics there.  So we have a couple more months of unsettledness, but I am enjoying the adventure. 

Monday, April 27, 2015

heading home

Here we are in the flower house.  I told JP I want a flower house for my birthday!
 Once our suitcases were all packed and weighed and our goodbyes said, my mom drove us down to the twin cities to spend a fun weekend before we needed to go to the airport to head back to Mali.  We got to eat a few last really delicious American meals, visited a huge church on Sunday morning, made a quick stop at a store for some last minute necessities, and spent several enjoyable hours at Como Park Zoo and Conservatory.  I love seeing animals, and this zoo is awesome because it's not too big and it seems like you really get to see the animals close up compared to other zoos.  The conservatory is filled with trees, plants, and ka-zillions of flowers. Oh, and I also like that it's free go to there!  Of course they are glad to accept donations, but everyone is welcome whether or not they pay.  So cool!

This picture is in the Japanese garden part at Como.  It was so beautiful to walk through.


My favorite animals to see at the zoo were the monkeys, but here's my mom and JP with the zebras.  The giraffes could be seen close up like this too. The African animals were inside because it isn't quite warm enough yet for them to be outside.

Sunday evening my mom had to go home and we stayed at a hotel that had a shuttle to bring us to the airport very early Monday morning.  We flew to Washington DC, and we've been hanging out all day at a hotel here, its a very long layover!  We thought of trying to go into the city and do touristy things, but it is really kind of nice to have some quiet time to be alone and reflect on our time in the states and mentally prepare to arrive back in Mali. Tomorrow we will be on airplanes for a total of 20 hours!  Add that to the time we will be in the airports, and we are sure to be exhausted when we arrive in Mali on Wednesday afternoon.  We will fly all the way to Ethiopia and then back west to Mali.  After a few days in the city, we should be home on Friday.  It will be so nice to be home and sleep in our own bed after 6 months of traveling around, but we aren't ready to stay home and settle down quite yet... but I'll write more about that  next time.

Wednesday, March 25, 2015

never a dull moment

I thought I'd give you a little peek into what our lives are like right now.  We have been in the states for almost 5 months and we have 1 month to go before we head back to Mali.

Two weeks ago we went down to southern Minnesota.  We stayed with a lovely family for a few days.  We had the cool opportunity to share about Mali in 2 elementary school classes.  As it was public school we needed to be sensitive to not make it a religious presentation in any way, but that wasn't a problem.  We talked about the culture; JP taught greetings in other languages,  and I showed pictures of some kids I know and explained what life is like for them there.  Our friends also hosted a dessert night where we got to share about our work in Mali.  It is humbling and such a blessing that they would go out of their way to help us and create opportunities for us to share about Mali.
We visited the little town of Lanesboro, Minnesota.  I had never been there before, or even heard of it, but it is really quite adorable.  I guess its fairly tourist-packed in the summer, but in March it was wide open.  We have been having unseasonably warm weather, so it was even nice to be outside.

On Sunday morning we shared about our work in Mali in Wisconsin near Wisconsin Dells.  When we share we usually are able to set up a table to display some information and to sell bags and necklaces that we brought from Mali.  We get there early to set that up and make sure that our powerpoint and video are ready to go with the projection system.  It is amazing to meet so many people and I just wish we had longer to chat with them.
Sunday afternoon we went to Madison to visit a friend who I went to school with from 4th grade through high school.  It was great to see her!  I have found it interesting to visit a few friends that now have kids and to get to see them as moms.  JP had fun playing soccer with the kids.

We made Monday and Tuesday vacation days in the Dells!  We got a cheap hotel room that included tickets to an indoor waterpark.  Besides the waterslides, we had fun going on the river in an amphibious Duck boat.  It's a car/boat that was made for World War II and apparently it's a popular thing to go on tours in them in the Dells.  It was really nice to have a couple days to ourselves to just have fun and try not to think about all the things I need to accomplish for a while.  Sometimes people ask how our vacation in America is going.  A vacation and being in the states on furlough is not the same thing! We had 2 fun vacation days in the Dells, but we spend the majority of our time in America working.  It takes a lot of time and effort to do support raising while we are here so that we can get back to doing our "regular" work in Mali.  I'm not complaining; we mostly are having a wonderful time, but there is a lot of work involved.

When we got back I worked on catching up with things like appointments, emails, thank you notes, organizing plans, grocery shopping, and doing laundry.  We prepared for and shared at a children's program three times.  We helped get my mom's house cleaned up because yesterday I had some friends over for a jewelry party. I worked on making food for that, too.  

So that's some of what we've been doing.

Thursday, February 26, 2015

Joshua Tree

The Cholla Cactus Garden.  If you walk too close to this kind of cactus, some little prickly balls will velcro onto your clothes.
 One thing that we did during our roadtrip that wasn't visiting people was to spend a couple days at Joshua Tree National Park in Southern California.  I liked the idea of going to a National Park that was on our route during our trip, and I also liked the idea of being in warm, non-wintery places, so that is how I decided on Joshua Tree.  I would love to go back during the spring and see how the desert blooms with color and flowers.  It was still pretty for us in early February, but it was the dormant period.  There was a video to watch at a visitor center and it mentioned the Sahara desert (just north of where we live in Mali) and how the "desert" is so named for being deserted, void of life.  The kind of deserts found in Joshua Tree Park are very full of life.  And I learned that they even get a bit of snow there sometimes.  Not at all like the Sahara!
JP on our hike.


JP resting at the oasis.
My favorite part of our time in Joshua Tree was an early morning hike we did.  We went up and down a mountainy trail to get to the oasis where there is always a little stream of water and some palm trees. 
There was a sign that showed all of the different plants and animals to watch out for.  I only saw birds, no wild mountain sheep or anything else exciting.  But I can now identify several kinds of cactus that I didn't know before.
The other best part of the park for me was walking around an old abandoned homestead.  We went to a ranger program where a woman told the story of the people who lived there, so after that we had to go check it out.  There were walls left but no roof from the house, and lots of old junk laying around to see.  The people who lived there were trying to mine for gold and they learned how to live well in the desert. 

Mostly I enjoyed being in the sunshine and nice temperatures and seeing the gorgeous landscapes and crazy plants.
Old rusty tin cans at the abandoned homestead.
JP with a very large Joshua Tree.

more about our roadtrip

We are back in Minnesota after almost 6 weeks of traveling around America.  The trip was so amazing that it is hard to figure out how to write about it in brief.  I think that knowing people in so many places is cool and I am glad that I could visit friends and family around the country.  But it is also hard to say goodbye and know that it will be some years before we see each other again.  I know some really wonderful people!  When I am in Mali I miss certain things about America and when I am in America I miss certain things about Mali.  Sometimes I wish that all of the people I love could all be my neighbors so I could see them all the time.  Maybe it's like that in heaven.  I know it could be a lot harder and I am thankful for the ways I can stay in touch with people easily through modern technology.  For missionaries in the past it was much more difficult.  Just 15 years ago I wouldn't have had a cellphone or easy internet access in Mali.  It makes the world seem smaller to think that at any moment in Mali I can just dial up my mom and at the same time her phone rings thousands of miles and an ocean away and (for about 40 cents a minute) we can talk.

So enough of my rambling and back to the roadtrip:  JP got some really good experience driving in the states.  We were never stopped by the police.  The only car trouble we had was one flat tire (or rather I was driving on a low tire which someone pointed out to me and we had to put the spare on, no biggie.) We had to go through 3 border patrol/immigration checks when we were near Mexico.  I would have liked to cross into Mexico, but that wasn't possible because JP's USA visa is single entry, so we can't go to Canada either.  At 2 of the border control places they just looked at us and waved us through.  But at one they asked if we were both US citizens. I said that JP is from Africa and they made us pull over and find his passport to look at.  We almost ran out of gas once.  The light was on for a long time telling me that the gas was low, but we were in the middle of nowhere in southwestern Texas.  There is nothing there for a long time.  Finally an exit with a gas station appeared and I was able to get some gas, even if they were charging an extra dollar a gallon!  We were lucky because the gas prices were lower that they'd been in years during our trip.  When we left MN it was about $1.89 (it's up to $2.25 in MN now) and the highest prices were in California at about $2.59.  We enjoyed all kinds of weather along the way, but now we are back to below 0 freezing cold winter in Minnesota.  We've been inside a lot since we've been back!

Saturday, January 31, 2015

Big American Roadtrip

We’ve been on the road for 3 ½ weeks now!  We left Minnesota early on a below-freezing morning.  Just 20 minutes later we were in Wisconsin and a few hours after that we entered Michigan.  We like to keep things exciting, so we managed to drive into and through a snowstorm on the first day of our trip!  After that we headed south until we hit the Gulf of Mexico in Alabama where the weather was much more to our liking, and from there we’ve been going west.  When we get to California we will go north and east until we return to Minnesota about 2 weeks from now. 
The main reason for this big trip is to visit family, friends, and people who support us in our work in Mali (who are generally also family and friends.)  It has been amazing to see so many people that we haven’t seen in a very long time, or in some cases to meet them for the first time.  Besides seeing a lot of special people and receiving gracious hospitality, we have appreciated a lot of other things about this trip as well.  Some examples are:  seeing so much of the USA, experiencing American culture in varied forms in different homes,  JP having to practice his English a lot,  the wonderfully low price of gas, spending a lot of time together as a couple, being out of a regular routine helps us step back and see things from a new perspective, trying new foods, and having that exciting sense of adventure.


A big fancy house in the snow in Michigan.
On Wolf Bay off of the Gulf of Mexico in Alabama.