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 9^th 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 9^th grade English from 8-10 tomorrow morning.

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.

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?!)