advice

i cannot tell you about all of west africa or francophone africa; only about mali. however, i is reasonable to assume that many things are the same or similar in neighboring countries. so, with that said:

if you are ever in mali or a nieghboring country and an organization of any kind invites you to an atelier/workshop/conference; go.

i have been to two thus far with the apdf. the first on prevalent problems facing malian womenand collaborative solutions andthe second on child/adolescent and forced marriages.

both were informative. if you go to an atelier, it will be informative. also you will meet potentially helpful people. also it will be air conditioned and you will most likely be treated to a coffee break that includes pastries and a lunch that includes chicken and sodas of every flavor. also there will be bathrooms, most likely with toilet paper provided (malians use a kettle system instead so finding toilet paper is really really rare). also, they might give you free money. "for transportation". and there might be guys there to take your picture if you want. its like a fair almost. but better.

i realize that besides the free money, probably none of this sounds luxerious but here it really is. ateliers are great.

"j'adore le mentalite blanc!"

a phrase you don't hear often, huh? i walk to apdf every morning now and then walk home for lunch. sometimes i go back to apdf in the afternoon. its about a fifteen minute walk, used to be twenty but i cleverly found a short cut that also takes me past a nice alimentation where i can buy some yellow colored juice in a bag that i like to think is pinapple soda type drink but most likely is something else. its good. juice in a bag is popular here. its on every corner and cheap and cold. other popular bagged items include water, milk, and yogurt. you just bite out a corner and suck on it. the juice in a bag is half frozen and very refreshing. i plan on making some when back in the us. anyway, point being, on my walk i sometimes pass this malian man who is very attractive and also, like nearly all the men i have encountered here, very friendly/aggressive towards us white american women. if he was not so nice to look at i would not talk to him. he is the one that said he loves america. and the white mentality. i am not sure what he meant by this.

on another note, it has started raining here. a few days in the evening between 4 and 7 or in the middle of the night. the first time it rained recently, it started coming down really hard and i danced and showered in it with the 8-12 year old boys in my fam. i dont mind bucket showers for the most part, but it is really hard to wash my hair. so i had to take advantage of the heavy streams of water running of the roof to get in a good (clothed nonetheless) shower. i sort of love when it rains here because it cools things off dramatically (the other day it was 41 c which is almost 106 f! and they say it gets hotter in may). however it really is a pain for the women of mali who have to sweep away the water after to try to expediate the drying process. everything that is dirt becomes mud, in courtyards and side streets and main roads too. so the rain is not all good. i guess i have mixed feelings about it.

my work with apdf is coming along slowly. i am reading a lot and slowly getting up the confidence to speak with the women that work there and ask questions. now that they are more familiar with me they have begun to talk with me and explain some of their work, which is helpful. today i began looking at letters written by women who request mediation services from the apdf. in the letters they describe the problem they have - often they are classified as 'disagreements of personality' with their husbands and less frequently but still a few per every month, phsycial violence or threats of. tomorrow i will go with apdf staff to a big conference about human rights internationally and in mali. hopefully despite the language barrier i will still be able to take something from it.

in other news, i recently made a list of all the kids in my host family: there are at least 23 under age 18, not counting at least one, maybe more, of hte bons (servants) that are under 18. 14 of the 23 are under age 7! its a good thing i like kids. when i came back from my mini usa trip, i brought lots of books wich i read with the kids almost every day. the adults like them too because they have easy to learn english.

in still other news, i have malian fabrics to get tailored into dresses and skirts once i find patterns i like...

what else?

i celebrated passover with a couple other students. made latkes surprisingly sucessfully.

speaking of food, i ate at a restaurant chinoise recently which is the same food as everywhere else in mali haha.

that is about it for my life here.

i am excited for my summer internship in brooklyn and for living in brooklyn and hiphop in nyc. recently bought tickets to the paiddues festival which is about half the price of rock hte bells i think, and almost hte same lineup.

next time i have access to my pix, i will post some from the grand excursion and tell you about it via captions.

a couple fav pix

aicha, our "bon" (servant)'s daughter

me (necklace from grand excursion) with sidiki and beny

more on photo album 5, just added. also see my house, courtyard, and bedroom

photos updated

me and my host sister mama at the wedding in kati


*******check the sidebar links for facebook albums

dont have time now to upload grand excursion pix or write more about it, but one day i will :)

lots of love

heather

grand excursion update part 1

i am back from our grand excursion!
as usual i do not have as much time as i would like to update but since today was our last day of classes and the next month is free for independent study, i am on my own schedule now and will probably be able to update more regularly.

for independent study (isp)i will be interning with the apdf - Association pour le Développement des Droits de la Femme - examining cross cultural approaches to addressing the problem of domestic violence. two interesting things that i plan on looking into are the apdf's strategy of mediation between abusive husbands and their wives, and also the present project of constructing mali's first dv shelter. i will be working in french and writing most of my paper in english though i plan to write up a portion of it in french to present to the organistation at the end. during this time i will be staying with my family in bamako and can walk just 20 minutes to the apdf office so that is great. my family is great too -- upon returning to bamako last night they made me herbed chicken -- real chicken -- and plantains for dinner and then gave me mangoes after that because they know i love this food. especially chicken. we dont even have an oven but we went to someone elses house just to bake the chicken. it was really good :)

speaking of grand excursion, let me tell you about it. be forewarned, i had trouble taking in a lot of hte tour guide info bcause it was in french so most of what i learned from tour guides was second hand thanks to peers of mine that are more fluent and kind enough to translate. still i am sure i missed a lot of stuff. eventually pictures from before the excursion and of the excursion will be posted. i promise. it just takes forever to load that stuff.

*** first we went to segou, then djenne, dogon pays, mopti, and then stopped again at segou for one night and returned to bamako yesterday. we spent lots of time in buses and roughly about two days in each city, visiting historical spots, the grande marchés, and the river and holding lots of little kid hands while telling them that no, we can not give them gifts or pens or water bottles or money. more on that later.

i am happy to be back n bamako where i dont play the role of tourist so much. while touristing was necessary on the voyage and what i wanted for a short time, it got tiring by the end. i do however have many gifts to bring back for myself and for you probably too. every artisans stand is like a museum -- the items are beautiful. unfortunately it is rare that the visit does not include a lot of hassling from vendors.

next time will post a city by city break down. each region was different from the one before it and eachcool in its own way. i especially enjoyed djenne and mopti.

in other news, i heard jayz and beyonce got married! woah!