A yearly wrap up of 2011

I’ve never really written my own Christmas card, I’ve always been signed on to my parents card, but this year, with all of my travels and adventures I had I thought I could use my blog as a way to write my own Christmas update card.

So first and foremost Merry Christmas to all of my friends and family and random people who read my blog, and thank you for doing so. So here is a re-cap of 2011.

I rang in the New Year in Ghana with my boyfriend Mark and three other close friends. Accra, the capital of Ghana was extremely more developed than the capital of Guinea or Mali so we were all excited to have chines food and ice cream as our New Year’s Eve feast. Midnight was celebrated on a roof top bar, ducking and dodging ill exploding fireworks. New Year’s Day we went to the beach and enjoyed the warm Gulf of Guinea. Our two week vacation was over and a 48 hour bus ride back to Mali with a quick 16 hour stop in Burkina Faso to see some friends was our next adventure. Surprisingly after about the first 10 hours of the bus trip your mind shuts off and you just fall into a daze and block out everything bad about West African public transport and you get through it. We were welcomed back to Mali by some very friendly boarder customs agents around 6 in the morning on January 4th, 2011.

In February the town I was living in, Segou had its annual music festival which is internationally famous (if you are into West African music). The quant city I love changes over night into a huge party filled with Ex-patriots and West Africans alike. The quite streets are alive with beer sellers and avocado sandwich ladies. I hosted six people at my house where they slept on my roof because of lack of space inside. We experienced an out of the ordinary cold front that week and experienced temperatures as cold as 60 degrees at night. Brr! I got some great souvenirs and listened to some great African music.

In April a good friend of mine from college came and visited me for a week. Molly in Mali was the tag line of the week. She enjoyed seeing my life, meeting my friends, my Malian family and experiencing a normal day in village. She spent several days in my town and a few nights at Marks village. It was a real pleasure of mine to be able to show someone a bit of my life here.

May brought in the hot season where temperatures rise as high as 125+ for two solid months. It’s a bear! There is nothing you can do to avoid heat that high, especially when you don’t have air conditioning. The only good thing about this year’s hot season was it wasn’t as bad as 2010’s hot season here temperatures were over 130 for three months.

One of Marks good friends from his American days came and visited us in July. It was nice to finally meet someone from Marks past. Since we started dating in Mali we hadn’t had a chance to meet anyone from the others past. AJ was a great sport, his luggage was lost on arrival, it was over 110 degrees and the city of Bamako was as dusty as always. Luckily luggage was found and our trip to Dogan country was able to continue. Mark, AJ, one other friend Kendra and I all did a one night hike through Dogan again. We chose a different route this time (Mark and I hiked Dogan in 2010) and got to see different villages and different cliff faces. Dogan, as always is a scary thing for me. I’m not much of a hiker and those deadly latters and bridges don’t agree with me. But somehow I suck it up and get through it. And in the end it is all worth it. AJ, Mark and I also went to Djenne, a historical village near Marks village what houses the world’s largest structure (a mosque) made out of mud.

I closed my service (COS) as a Peace Corps volunteer on July 27, 2011. It was a moment of pure happiness and extreme sadness. It is always hard to leave some place you love and leave the people who became your family. As crappy as the situation was that I ended up in Mali I will always look back fondly of the places I went and the people I knew. And thankfully with the internet I am able to keep in contact with my work colleagues and host family.

After a clean bill of health I was off to Spain with Mark for a two week adventure there. I had never been to Spain and really didn’t know what to expect. We landed in Madrid and after finding our way to our first hotel we walked the streets of Madrid in Aww of the architecture, the people, the smells, and the sounds. We sat down at this little restaurant in the middle of a square (with a fountain!) and indulged on pork and sangria. I literally ate so much pork sausage I thought I was going to be sick, but it was so worth it! After we re-awoke from our food coma we went to a grocery store for the first time in three years! Imagine you haven’t had options in three years and then you see aisles and aisles of choices. You would freak out too. It took Mark and I almost two full hours to pick out one type of cheese, one sausage and a loaf of bread (you really can’t make this up, it is sadly true). We took a day trip to Segovia to see the aqueducts and the castle there and tried suckling pig. It sounds gross but let me tell you what, it was delicious, so tender and flavorful. The city was great too, but that pig was to die for. Back in Madrid we stayed with a friend of a friend who was amazing. He gave us free tickets into all of the national art museums and a behind the scenes tour of a Picasso painting being restored. The Spanish art museums were incredible. I never had an appreciation for Spanish art but I loved walking around the never ending halls of old and new art not to mention the galleries were air conditioned. All over Spain they have these great things called daily lunch specials where you get a starter, a main and a desert plus a glass of wine for around 8-10 Euros. It is entirely designed for tourist to try different local meals year round but boy of boy did I love that deal. So we tried all types of local traditional dishes all around Spain this way.

Madrid was amazing but sadly we had to keep moving, next we went to Granada in the south east of Spain. This place was fantastic. It was settled by the Moore’s (the same people who reside now in Morocco) so it is very Arab and different than northern Spain. The Moore’s have always been dessert people so imagine someone from the dessert having access to unlimited water supply, they went crazy! There were fountains every 5 feet, lush gardens covering every square inch of “old town”, reflecting pools in every house and did I mention the gardens? Also Granada is one of the last places in Spain to still give free tapas (appetizers) with each drink. Mark and I discovered this fantastic bar where you order a drink and a plate of food shows up… FOR FREE! We ordered a beer, a sandwich showed with a salad. We ordered another beer and a plate of pork and fries shows. We order another beer and another plate of something fantastic magically appears FOR FREE!!! I could have stayed there all night but sadly a long day of travel was in store for the next day so we had to call it an early night. We hopped around for a bit and then went to Santiago.

Santiago is famous in the catholic world for being a pilgrimage place where in olden days Catholics from all over Europe would pilgrim to kiss the neck of St James. We also stayed with someone just outside of Santiago. He was great and showed us all around western Spain. He took us to one of his local bars and had us enjoy octopus legs which were chewy but good. He also introduced us to these little green hot peppers that were lightly fried in olive oil and covered in coarse salt which was a favorite of mine while in Spain. We also got to meet some of his life long friends which was a real pleasure to meet a group of Spaniards who all spoke good English and we were able to chat for hours.

Sadly I fell terribly sick in Spain. I had a major reaction to an anti-malaria medication I had to take after leaving a malaria zone. I had a terrible fever, cold chills, total body aches and nausea I thought would kill me. I wanted to die but I pushed through and continued to France. Once mark and I got to France I was near death and had to go to the hospital to get blood work done. Doctors were afraid I had malaria so I got tested and it came back negative so I stopped taking that medication and eventually got better.

In France Mark and I were WWOOFing, that is the worldwide organization of organic farmers. We volunteer our time to work on someone’s farm and they give us free food and housing while we are there. I really wanted to find a farm that produced wine and cheese but apparently so did everyone else because all I could find was gardening work and apple picking, which was fine. Mark and I did two stents of two weeks each so our first two weeks were spent in Auteze, an extremely small village in the mountains near Carcassonne. Coming from West Africa I had spoken good west African French however that is very different from France French so that was the plan while volunteering, improve my French! I would say I was able to do this but maybe not to the extent that I wanted. The work in Auteze, like I said was gardening so we picked veggies, dug potatoes and onions and de-clovered a field. Mark surprised me for my 25th birthday early and bought cheese, wine and olives and took me to this great spot near a babbling mountain brook. We spent my real birthday in Carcassonne and walked the old walled city, ate more cheese and tried duck wings (which were tasty). It was a great birthday!

Our second farm was with a French family (speaking no English) on an apple orchard. I sorted apples by size and quality for two weeks while Mark picked apples off the trees. It was hard work but the family made up for that by preparing great traditional dishes like ratatouille, French onion soup and French toast. There, we worked hard and played hard. They had a pool and transport into the big city was easy so we had the entire afternoon to relax and goof off with the other volunteers and family.

After two weeks there I never wanted to see an apple and I will forever look at apples differently, always gauging them by size and quality. That was our last stop in France, so we had to go back to Spain and catch our cruise ship in Barcelona Spain. We took three days in Barcelona and enjoyed the Mediterranean beach, the Barcelona museums and La Ramble (the main shopping street with a huge daily market) and the Spanish wine and pork.

We left Spain on the Disney Magic 2 week trans-Atlantic cruise ship. Mark had never been on a cruise and was delighted with the amenities and attractions on board. There were five ports of call and 8 glorious days of ocean sailing. The food, the shows, the gym, the pool, the sun, and the nice people we met on board made those sailing days fly by too quickly. You really can’t beat a two week cruise, across the Atlantic to travel back to America, not to mention it was cheaper than a flight! We docked in America on September 25 and I flew home for the first time in a year and two months.

To be home was amazing. I was greeted at the airport by mom, dad, Nick and his girlfriend Misty. They took me out to dinner where I enjoyed my first American meal of spicy chicken sandwich warp with fries and ranch dressing. Can’t get more American than that. I was able to see a lot of friends and family while home, but certainly not everyone. Most of my days were spent relaxing and starting a job hunt. Surprisingly I found a job less than two week after the day I started applying for jobs. I was hired on to a non-governmental organization called H.E.L.P. (Hope, Educate, Love & Protect) Malawi where Mark and I were both hired as International Program Managers. I left America exactly one month after arriving, back to Africa.

As of late October I have been in Malawi, and it is great to have my best friend here with me. Mark and I have been able to travel around a little bit and are starting to enjoy life in Malawi. We have gone to the lake twice and enjoyed the crystal clear warm lake water.

Well, this was my 2011. Not too bad. I was in 13 countries this year, shared a beer with people from all over the world, spoke 4 languages to varying fluencies and had the time of my life. So here is to an amazing 2012!!

The holiday season away from home, again

This is my third consecutive thanksgiving away from home, and going on my fourth Christmas away from home. There are many things that I enjoy about living abroad, however the holidays are not one of them.

You have to learn how to make traditional traditions and different family traditions into a special day. Holidays need to be celebrated. They are major mile stone in the year. It would be easy while away to not celebrate the Fourth of July or Thanksgiving, but I need to celebrate those to bring more stability and familiarity to my life away from home.

This year for thanksgiving I will be spending Saturday with several other Americans, trying to make a traditional thanksgiving feast. Instead of turkey however we are doing chickens, there will be mashed potatoes, green beans, cooked carrots and hopefully if we are lucky pumpkin pie. It wont be the same as sitting around Aunt Betty’s table but I will still be with good people, sharing good food and giving thanks for the things I have.

Lake Malawi

Malawi is known as the “Warm heart of Africa.” It seems as though everyone you meet is excited about life and willing to open their heart and home to you. There are many things to do and see in Malawi, I however have only been here a short while and have seen very little but something I am glad I did early in my stay here was go to Lake Malawi.



Lake Malawi is one of the largest fresh water lakes in Africa. It provides fresh fish for thousands of people who are fighting protein deficiencies; it is also a major tourist destination. I went to a lake side sleepy village called Cape Mclear which is on the cusp of the national forest and the lake.

Inside the national forest there is an amazing place called otters point which is a secluded section of the lake that has a rocky/boulder shore line. Mark and I met with some of our friends and colleagues there and spent the afternoon in the water, swimming among the fish and jumping off the rocks. It was a grand time. We also taught Able, the head teacher of Nanthomba primary school (the school I work with) how to swim.



All in all it was a fantastic day and a good get a way.

First day of work

It has been about three weeks here in Malawi now. As in all jobs the first few weeks are difficult, learning the ropes, finding your way around, and memorizing everyone’s names can all prove to be very overwhelming; but I’m starting to settle in, find a routine and make new friends.

My first day on the job in country I got a tour of the school I will be working at, met all of the teachers and played around with some of the students, or as they say here, learners. Next I got a tour of a fantastic health center with maternity ward 4 Km up the road the HELP has helped to build. I met Frank and Impatso, the local nurse and midwife. They showed me the vegetable garden they want to use as a nutritional showcase for malnourished children and mothers, and I even saw a first time mother, hours after delivery holding her first born baby son.

As the day was wrapping down I got to take a real “out of the Lion King” style safari. A group of us jumped into a safari vehicle and our amazing guide, Henry showed us several groups of elephants, including baby elephants, warthogs (little known fact, baby warthogs are the cutest thing in the world), bushback, impala, monkeys, baboons, and tons of other animals. Just as the sun was setting we parked our car, jumped down and shared an ice cold beer and popcorn watching the sun set over the mountains down river.

When we got back to camp we had a delicious dinner while overlooking the Shire River listening to the hippos in the distance. I must say, that was the best first day of work I have ever had!

An update of my life

As you all know I left Mali back in July, spent two amazing months traveling around Spain and France, took a transatlantic cruise back to America and then spent some time with my family.

To start things off, I had never been to Spain before and found it incredible. The people were amazing, the food was delicious and the sangria was to die for. Not to mention the Spanish culture, the flamenco dances and the public gardens. Mark and I spent two weeks bouncing around with visiting friends in Madrid, Granada, Santiago, and Barcelona. In Madrid we got a private behind the scene tour of the restoration room in the La Rein Sofia Museum where we got to see people restoring a Picasso, we toured the royal gardens and walked the city. In Granada we went to a walled royal city where there were lush gardens and fish ponds everywhere. It was such a contrast after living 2 years in the desert to see all the colorful flowers and fountains everywhere. In Santiago we did the last mile of a 1000 year old pilgrimage (El Camino) to the Saint James Cathedral in Santiago.

After Santiago Spain we went to France to start our World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farm (WWOOF-ing) projects. First we went to a small farm in Auteze where we were working with an older woman helping her with her garden. I pulled a ton of weeds, picked tomato’s, picked potatoes right out of the ground with my hands and also prepared for market day. It wasn’t the best two weeks of my life, but the work wasn’t that hard and the mountains were pretty. Then we went to Thuir and worked on an apple orchard. I would sort apples while Mark picked them. This was hard work and I would be content never seeing another apple again in my life. That being said, the people who ran the farm were so nice and it was a great opportunity to brush up on my France French as opposed to my West African French.

After our month if France Mark and I headed down to Barcelona and spent two days touring and hanging out on the Mediterranean beaches before we jumped on our Disney Transatlantic cruise. I must admit that I was a little nervous to spend 14 days on a boat with crazy Disney fanatics but it wasn’t that bad. There were plenty of Disney crazy’s but the majority of people were normal I’d say. We spent in total 8 days at sea and then stopped in Gibraltar, Madera, St Marten, Tortola, and Disney’s private island Castaway Cay. My favorite stop had to be Gibraltar because we rode a cable car up the rock and walked down stopping at ape caves along the way.

Once I got home from the cruise I started looking for work. I sent out probably close to 75 resumes and within a week I got an interview and two weeks later I was hired. I took a job with HELP Malawi and will be heading back to Africa for another two year paid contract working as a program manager. I’m writing this from the airport so once I got to Malawi I’ll blog again letting everyone know I’m alive and well. I’m also excited to show off my new lodging arrangements. I will be living at a safari lodge right on a river where I’ll hopefully be able to see wild animals from time to time. But if you want to know more go to http://helpchildren.org/

Ghana Christmas Vacation

In December two friends and I set off for our Christmas Vacation in Ghana, a two day trip on the coast of the Gulf of Guinea. We were lucky and got a direct bus from Bamako to Kumasi, Ghana which took 44 hours.

Kumasi hosts West Africa’s largest open air market and it was in full Christmas shopping swing when we arrived. Ghana is almost 50% Christian and 50% Muslim and with the larger disposable income of the country the market was swelled with people. It was amazing to see blenders, X-Box, iPods, and laptops on Christmas special where in Mali most of those things are inaccessible to most of the population.



We also visited several slave castles along the coast, including the two largest slave trade castles in West Africa. The historical significance of visiting these places, having local Ghanaian’s as tour guides explaining the savage history of their land will be something that I will remember for the rest of my life.


On a lighter note, we also meet up with two other friends from Mali and took the aerial walk outside of Cape Coast. Towards the coast of Ghana is rainforest and in the Kukuma National Park they have constructed a walkway bridge between eight trees stretching more than 400 meters into the air. You could feel the rope bridge swinging in the air and at parts you couldn’t even see the ground threw the trees below us.



Ghana also has some amazing coast lines. For Christmas we spent three days at a “Green Resort” on a secluded beach. We passed the days in the water and the nights around bon-fires on the white sand beaches. However, sadly all vacations must come to an end and this trip was no different.

Women in village vs. city

I recently read the book Monique and the Mango Rains about a Peace Corps volunteer in the 80’s stationed in Mali writing about her experience. The book focused on women’s rights and Malian culture. I thought I could give a brief profile of two different women that I have worked with during my service

Fatamata Sydibe

Fatamata (age 26) grew up in Segou Mali and went to high school up to grade 10 then dropped out to get married off at age 17. She is the first wife of her husband and she has three children under the age of eight. She works as a secretary at Miselini (my work) from 9-4 Monday threw Friday, and because she has a one year old child she gets an hour off every morning to breast feed. She wakes at 5am to start making the morning porridge and because her house servants left her she and her mother take turns preparing the daily meals in the morning before work. On Saturday it is laundry day where she washes by hand the family laundry for the week, which is no small task. She owns her own moto that she has worked hard to afford and the majority of her money goes to her husband who makes all of the monetary decisions for the family. From her salary her husband gives her an allowance for herself that she purchases her cloths. She is in charge of food shopping every week and rationing the food amongst the family.

Aminata Berry

Aminata (age 52) grew up in a small town in Guinea. She was one of 15 siblings and was the top female student in her class up until grade 5 where she was forced to drop out so her younger brothers could go to school and she would have to take care of the house. She was married by 14 years old and soon started having a family. Her husband moved around and married three other wives. When Aminata’s first son started going to school, she would take his text books at night and teach herself math, French and even English when they lived in Ghana. She ended up settling in Doune Guinea, and was working as the town mid-wife, activist against women’s genital mutilation (excision), president of the women’s group, village pharmacist, hospital nurse, village chef and host. She was living on top of a hill and was often seen carrying heavy buckets of water for her family. Due to her busy schedule she often got to skip making family meals and one of the other three wives would prepare while she was off working. She received very little money for any of her work and all of her money went straight to construction of her own house. After 40 years of living with a man she never loved she was moving out, something unheard of in village. She saved her own money and on the outskirts of town was building her own three bedroom house. She was also taking moto lessons; in Guinea it is almost unheard of for women to drive a moto. She was the president of the group I worked with and was by far the most influential person I had ever met.

Both of these women have a lot in common however they are very rare exceptions. In village it isn’t unheard of for women to never leave their compound with no contact with people other than their family.

Also women are in charge of all cooking, cleaning, fetching water, field work, raising children, selling in market and buying in market. All of those things are done by hand year round. Now I am not advocating polygamy but it is easy to see when there are several wives that the work gets split and life does become much easier.

Getting Braided

As hot season approaches I recently got my hair braided again. I have a serious love/hate relationship with getting my hair braided for several reasons.

On the side of LOVE:
-Every woman Malian has her hair braided from the moment the hair is long enough to braid
-It is much cooler
-It gives me a reason not to wash it
-I don’t have to fuss with it

On the side of HATE:
-Malian women don’t know how to braid white hair
-Sunburns!
-It takes forever to braid and even longer to take out
-My hair is so long it tangles inside of the braids
-It pulls a lot of my hair out and makes it more fragile

However despite all that, I went to a baptism and had my hair braided for it. Two girls came over in the morning and started to pull at my hair. After about five rows, my eyes are watering and they ask me if my hair is extentions because it has the feel of mesh. That is never a good sign, which means they are having a hard time braiding my hair in rows. Almost an hour later they were finishing up and all three of us were ready to finish.

All said and done, it looked ok and after two days the pulling pain went away.

Meeting Etiquette

Once a quarter my micro-finance organization has a meeting with five women who have been elected to represent the voice of our loan clients. These are most likely the loudest five women in Segou.

Our meeting was supposed to start at two pm on a Friday. I biked back to work after lunch to find the office locked up still from Friday prayer. So a boutique owner lent me a chair and some shade and I waited for half an hour for my bosses to show up and let me inside. Once inside it was almost three, and there was no sign of these five women anywhere. Normal work hours are 8am to 4pm here so when I saw it was past three and still no women I thought the meeting would just be canceled.

Two women show up around 3:30, so my boss and I start the meeting. Because the women don’t speak French, my boss was in charge of running the meeting and I was just to sit there and wait for translation. Over time more women show up and the meeting keeps getting repeated to catch the late comers up.

At one point all five ladies were screaming their heads off and my boss was screaming back at them. Because it was in bambara I still had no idea what was going on so I just sat there in awe of the argument. I mentioned earlier that these were the five loudest women in Segou, well the room was almost vibrating from the commotion. And by that time it was pushing 6pm… on a Friday. All of a sudden everyone sat down very calmly and said its over and the women left. I looked at my boss and asked what happened and he just shook his head and said they were talking about bread prices.