Ghana

I'm not sure if I ever explained "joking cousins" here, but if I have then this'll be a refresher course in Malian culture. In Mali, your last name is everything. And people know certain things about you by the last name you have. So if your last name is Coulibaly then you joke with everyone whose last names are different then yours. And this joking can get pretty intense. It isn't uncommon to here people call other people donkeys or a common one is "ah Diallo, your my slave." Back in the day the Fulani people used to capture other ethnicities and make them their slaves. So now when people joke with Peuhls they always say "Now your my slave!" I think I have talked about bean jokes in one of my first posts, and this joking cousins thing is where the bean jokes come in. So anyway...

Last year I spent all of hot season at my site and ever since I swore that this year I would get out of Mali and away from the heat. So, after 60 hours on buses, sleeping overnight on cement floors in bus stations like bums, broken down buses in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night, and probably the worst case of B.O. I have ever had, myself and 3 other volunteers made it to Ghana.
And it was good.
Good food, great weather, the beach. All my maladies that have been pestering me in Mali cleared up almost immediately after the border. I think I saw Jesus there too.
Oh and they have good beer and more than 2 kinds.
Most of the trip was just hanging out by the beach and thats exactly what we wanted. No schedule or itinerary of things to see or dates we had to reach certain places. Which really, when travelling in Africa is the way you have to do it. If you come to this continent with a set plan and try and make it work on public transport then...
But we did make it to a few sites. In a town called Cape Coast there is a giant castle that was built in 1482 (I think. I forgot to write it down) and for long time it was a main hub for the slave trade.

One time a Mali volunteer went to this castle and actually ended up running into a Malian who had been living in Ghana. So they go on the tour together and find out they are joking cousins. The whole tour they are going back and forth raggin on each other until the Volunteer yells out "You're my slave!" to a Malian, in a slave castle. I think the joking stopped after that.


There is also a rain forest preserve in Ghana. These crazy Canadians built these little platforms around the trunks a some of the trees and then built bridges to connect them and now tourist can come and walk these bridges that zigzag through the canopy of the forest.

So I guess those were the highlights of the trip. After we headed back to Mali. Right after the border my sinuses clogged back up, my stomach hurt, wounds that had healed and were long gone came back. I think I saw Lucifer. Maybe I exaggerate, but there is a huge difference between Mali and Ghana. You forget just how poor Mali is until you see a plce like Ghana and what could be.
So after Ghana I had my COS (close of service) conference. This is where they tell you that you time is almost over and you need to start thinking about wrapping up projects, moving your stuff out, and they tell you all the paperwork you have to have filled before they will release you. Most of it was unnecessary, but it was fun and good to see people that I haven't seen in a long time. Some of the people there I hadn't seen since April of 2008. I also didn't realize how many people had gone home. We came in with 82 I think and are now down to 51.
At this conference most volunteers pick their dates to go home. They hung paper on the wall with all the dates and then just kind of set us loose. I was expecting fist fights and broken faces over those early dates, but surprisingly people were very well behaved and I think everyone got pretty much what they wanted.
And before i knew it, it was over. That is the last time my whole group will be together in the same place in Mali.
So (if anyone is reading this) you might be asking "When are you coming home Braxton?" And the answer is, I'm not. At least not yet. I asked for and was given a 6 month extension so I will be here through March 2010 and we'll go from there. The extension is open so if I want more than 6 months then I can stay longer, but I thought lets start at 6 and go from there.
I think you are all up to date now.
Hope life is good in Ameriki.
Take Care
BraxP.S. Ghanaian English is hilarious. My buddy Antony was on public transport and a Ghanaian opened up the window on the bus. As the window slid back it clipped the man's hand who was sitting behind him. The man raised his hand up and full of outrage he exclaimed "ah! You have wounded me."

Hard Times

I'll keep this short but I wanted to tell people back home whats been going on since I got back from America. On December 2nd there was a tragic accident here in the Mopti region and we lost one of our best. Cristina Nardone was a RPCV who had taken a job as the coordinator of the Global System Tourism Alliance (GSTA). She was visiting a village where she had helped fund the building of a water tower to help irrigate a medicinal garden. Cristina asked that the village fill it and as they were walking away it collapsed and killed her. Another woman, Brenda, suffered a broken leg and we later found out that after surgery infection set in and they had to amputate.

I'm at a loss at what else to say. It is especially tragic because she had finally made up her mind that it was time to go home and be with her family, but she agreed to stay until March so a replacement could be found. She had gone home for about a month as she transitioned from PC to her new job, but really her family had not seen her for the last 3 years. But she loved her work and believed what she was doing was making a real difference in peoples lives. It wasn't just a job for her and I think her project had the success it had because of her. She very easily could have done a lot of her work from behind a desk and sent others to do her field work like most NGO workers, but she loved going to these small villages and working with the people to help improve their lives.

I'll wrap it up before I get too sentimental. It has been a hard few weeks for us all here. Peace Corps is an enigma to me in that I've only known the people here for maybe 15 months, but some of my teammates have become closer to me than people I have known my whole life. Cristina was one of those people and I miss her.

She was the best of us all and you won't find anyone here who will argue that.

Farming

ToH

This is Dege. This is what I eat (drink) for lunch most days. Mmmmm...

This is Toh. This is what I eat every day at least once a day, but sometimes more.

Out With the Old, In With the New

I can't believe I haven't put anything on this since June. Sorry about that, but really nothing too exciting has happened in the past few months. I was able to get about 180 trees donated to my village so I spent a few weeks giving those out and helping people plant and protect them. I will head back down to site tomorrow and see how many are still alive. Finger crossed they were well protected and if rains didn't come then people remembered to water them. We should have a healthy number of survivors.

I am pretty much 1 year in. I can honestly say I can feel it. I think from talking with volunteers that around the 1 year mark you definitely don't have that skip in your step that you had in the beginning. I can say that the past few months have not been the easiest for me. Its been the rainy season which also means its time to go to the fields. Village life is fun during this time. They ask you why you aren't going to the fields to farm so you go. Then they don't think you are able to do anything so you try. Then they tell you you are doing it wrong and they make you sit down. Then they tell you you are tired and should go home, so you go home. Then they yell at you for not going to the fields. Fun.

Its also COS (Close of Service) time for the group that came in the year before me. Its really reallt weird watching these guys go. Some of them I got to know really well and others not so much, but it officially means that my grouped are the veterans now and in no way do I feel like I deserve that title.
The new volunteers will finish their training in about 1 week and then they will be installed in their sites. We get 8 newbs up here in the Mopti region. I guess the only thing that really makes me feel like I have been here for a year is watching them and their struggles. Its kinda funny, but you have to help them out where you can cause you were where they are a year ago and Mali is a tough place to call home. And we all want them to stick around.

So my hour is about up at the computer lab and I think I have you all up to date. I had my midservice medical and found that I have ameobas. So all those stomach issues and dysentary that I've been dealing with since last March, we finally found the cause. They gave me medicine for them, but its potent stuff, and I will probably just get them again, so for now I am going to try and make friends with them and let them hang out for awhile.
Hopefully everyone is doing well at home. I'm missin it in a bad way right now.

There's a storm a comin!!!

Elephants and Big Rocks

So I guess I haven't talked about my projects for awhile and some people have ben curious about whats going on with that. For my garden the village has given me a space thats About 50 by 50 meters with plans to expand if we ned more land. Now I have to talk to the well diggers so I can get a well dug inside the garden. This way they won't half to haul water from 1 KM away to water their veggies. I'm also doing a lot of work with trees and reforestation. I would like to help them plant more trees because they play a very important part in the lives of the villagers, but they are disappearing. So right now I am interested in finding tree species that can be planted in and around the farm ground, but wil be beneficial for the farmers even though it takes field space. I'm looking at trees that are nitrogen fixers and trees that have fruits and leaves that can be used in sauces or as medicine. Its fun, but my access to resources here is limited so its also slow and frustrating at times. So thats my "work."

Now for some fun stuff. I came into Sevare about a week ago to get out of the heat because I had developed heat rash all over my back and upper chest and down my arms. And I also wanted to pick up a few things that I needed. It wasn't really suppose to be a long trip and I had every intention or getting in and getting out and back to site. But after a few days a fellow volunteer came in and said he was meeting up with a bunch of people in Hombori to go rock climbing and said I was more than welcome. So I ended up spending 3 days climbing all over rocks. I have to admit its a fun hobby. Illinois needs rocks.

After climbing I went with another PCV and his brothers to a place called Boni

to see elephants. We hired a vehicle and went driving around in the bush for about 2 hours until we finally found them. Once we found them we had toget out of the car and kinda stalk up to him. It was good though, he was very cooperative and we got some good pictures of him. After awhile though he had enoughof us and started to flare his ears and stomp the ground. When they do that its time to go. So thats my most recent adventures. I had spent a lot of time at site so it was good to get away for awhile. Speak some English. In just a few weeks I will be a year into my service.