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!

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?!)

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.

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.