Hakili Sigira

As I near the end of my service in Mali, I cannot help but feel my time here is just starting. I guess that’s the big pay off for sticking it out the full two years; to realize at the end that it all has just begun. The best part is that in recognizing how little time I have here left I can savor the passing moments: working with the tailor, participating in the daily shop talk and gossip, attending my association’s adult literacy classes with my teacher and being so proud of what amazing strides these women have taken in such a short time. Feeling accepted, loved and at home where before I felt uncomfortable, hot, guilty and so very alone.



The last few months have been a whirlwind of soul searching, hosting, teaching and learning for me. I helped train a promising new group of volunteers in February who helped me realize just how much I’ve accomplished here already and motivated me to finish off my service strong and with good intentions - something that is often forgotten amongst end of service volunteers with temptations of “senioritis.” Then, my home that I miss so much was brought to me when my cousin came to visit with her friend in March. While it was challenging to represent my whole life here in a short three weeks, whilst acting as their translator and tour guide, the rewards of quality time outweighed the company stress. And after short recuperation, I was back at site, full of my overload with American time and ready to reassess why I’m here and what I want to show for it.



I came back to a surprisingly prepared women’s association, all geared up and ready to realize their dream. They had the plans, the trainers and most importantly, the budget outline ready for me to write up a proposal in hopes of getting a SPA (small project assistance) grant through Peace Corps and USAID. Only five weeks later and I’m here in Bamako, waiting for my 4 million CFA grant (about $8,000.00) to build a multifunctional education and sewing center for my women’s association that is open to all women in the community. The center will start primarily to teach sewing as a skill, but the space is available for their adult literacy classes (funded by my stateside mothers) as well as nutrition and HIV/AIDS trainings and a community garden. And my favorite part – they’ll be learning to sew on recycled plastic bags picked up locally and sell the products for a profit.



It’s truly amazing to be at this point in my service. I’m at the best my language can be, I’m working with highly motivated community members who make my volunteer work effortless, and I have strong relationships with people here who trust me, I trust them and we are truly the happiest just to be around each other.

My counterpart and friends keep asking me to extend another year (or two or three!) and when they look at me and I think about all they have done for me these last two years, it breaks my heart to tell them “no.” I simply say, “My mother will not agree. She will not be happy and she wants me home NOW!” That, they understand, because mothers are the most important.

Project MU-SEW

I am happy to report a successful technical exchange I took with my community counterpart, and the President of my women’s association. We toured the northern part of the Segou region, meeting with women's centers and associations involved in female empowerment and income generating activities in hopes of opening a women's cooperative center with the members in our community

We started the exchange in Markala with an adult literacy group. They hold basic Bambara reading and writing classes and basic math once a week in the volunteer’s counterpart’s concession. They were provided literacy books from peace corps and the chalkboards, chalk and notebooks were provided with funding by the Peace Corps Volunteer.


In Niono, we visited the “Center for sewing and cutting,” of which the current PCV serving there has contributed to their impressive organization.

The center highlighted their teaching approach for their students, starting with sewing simple straight lines, moving on to making patterns from paper and then on to childrens’ clothing. Additionally, they hold seminar trainings on HIV/AIDS, female circumcision, nutrition, cooking and other useful information for their demographic of younger troubled teens.

As an added bonus (!) I gave them samples of my recycled plastic bags and they LOVED them. And want to start producing them right away. Niono is a dirty town, I mean dirty... and these plastic trash bags are everywhere with no real solutions. So small projects like this could make a real impact and raise awareness.

At the debrief with our association following the technical exchange, their enthusiasm for the project increased ten-fold. They are actively in touch with many associations in their communities who make soap, shea butter and are interested in food drying. My association is VERY interested in starting a sewing center and literacy classes, and they have a strong partnership with my counterpart NGO, where they would provide information seminars on topics such as AIDS, nutrition and female circumcision.
Seeing those associations in action was invaluable. The association's President was inspired and motivated. It was very important for her to see a successful Malian organization because simply hearing it from me, the "toubabu" sounds like folklore. Witnessing the determination of the other associations showed her that opening a center like this takes tremendous work but is entirely possible.

I am actively looking for potential sponsors for the center and have a few inquiries already, but am putting some of the pressure on the association and my counterpart to utilize all of their resources first, before I can contribute my part in assisting them with realizing their goal.

Meet "Jessica Duncan Kebe." Aka, Alima

That's right! They named a baby after me. Move over Mother Theresa! ok, maybe it's not quite sainthood, but it's a pretty good feeling. Of course, having a baby named after you comes with some attachments, like taking it back to America with me...j/k Oh come on mom! she's pretty cute! Officially her name is Jessica, but everyone calls her Alima fitini (little Alima), which means I have graduated to Alima koroba! (big, old Alima...) what an honor. It's my tailor friend, Vielle's baby.





In other news, I'm happy to announce the start of my first funded project. My women's group got their millet grinder last week and are preparing to install it. They're taking out a loan with the local bank in my town to build a cement house to hold the machine, then work can begin. In'shallah, there will be minimal setbacks and hassles, and they can start earning for themselves quickly.




While not entirely tabled, my plastic bag project is on a bit of a hold while I study for the GREs, and try to figure out the best way to approach things. Although I have found a women's sewing center to produce and bags and children are coming to my house by the droves with collected trash bags, it's a matter of connecting the dots and convincing everyone that the project is worth it. Thankfully, school has started and a handful of children are doing some pretty good advertising for me with their bookbags in class, so I know parents are interested, as well the Supervisor for the NGO I work for. As with most things, anything that could be done in a day in America, usually take about a month, give or take. I'll be sure to post updates.

Initiation

A few days ago, during a 6 hour stretch at the tailor, I faced an inevitable evil at the machine. I sewed my finger.

I was just finishing a sack to match a dress I had made that day and was feeling pretty good about my progress as a ‘seamstress.’ Fasting was about to break, so the sun was setting and because of the late afternoon rains, we had all retreated inside where now my only light source was from the door way into the windowless shop.

On my last few stitches, the machine lost my attention as I guided my hand right under the needle and it stabbed clear through my index finger. Normally, the force of an electric machine would have swiftly pulled the needle out without much hesitation, but this machine is manual. Something as dense as flesh and bone slows it down a bit, to a full stop and my finger stayed pinned down. As I sat there staring at my finger, needle pocking out both sides, in shock of course, I took my free hand to manually remove the needle by turning the wheel.

No blood. No blood. I’m OK. I looked toward Dirisa, a well-seasoned tailor, sitting across from me, not able to communicate what had just happened. Half embarrassed, half pissed that I was so dumb not to pay attention to something so easy to avoid. Then I looked back at my hand as I saw the blood, not a lot, but thick, coming out both the entry and exit wound. For some reason, it doesn’t take much for me to feel woozy in this climate, so I broke into a cold sweat. I thrust my hand to Dirisa, who now understood my predicament and he too was speechless. He called Vielle over to look at my hand. Only seeing one hole, he said to me, “Oh don’t worry Alima, this is nothing. Little Vielle pierced his finger last week and the needle went clear through!” I had my head down on the table, moaning in between bursts of nervous laughter. I heard Dirisa’s voice mumble lowly, “Vielle, it went all the way through, there was blood on both sides.”

Vielle barely reacted. He calmly doused my wound in machine oil(!) and wrapped the finger in a piece of cloth from the shop floor. Work, for me, was done for the day.

We sat outside giggling over my mishap, breaking fast with tea, bean cakes and peanuts. Knowing me almost too well at this point, Vielle joked, “You had better call your mom and tell her what happened!” And I secretly had been wanting to hear her voice, so I called to make her miss me that much more.

The other tailors were on their way back from praying and upon seeing me with my bandaged finger raised above my heart promptly knew what had happened. “Eh! Alima! You stabbed yourself with the machine needle! You’re a true tailor now!” What a way to finally be welcomed into the group. They all proceeded to share with me their war stories of them versus the machine. Some do it all the time, others only once. But in all their years as a tailor, only one of them has never once sewed their hand into the machine, Vielle.

Waste Management

Last month, I followed a hunch down to Ghana to research an organization called “Trashy Bags.” A group of sixty women collect plastic trash bags from the streets of Accra and turn them into recycled accessories ranging from simple handbags and toiletry organizers to change purses and even kitchen aprons.

I’ve struggled, as most first year Peace Corps volunteers do, with not only starting a project, but finding something that inspires me as much as it inspires my community counterparts. While some volunteers find solace in soak pits and community gardens, I’ve been drowning myself in the local language and culture, while patiently waiting for a project more creative to present itself.

Only now, at the year mark, do I have the confidence in my relationships, language and integration to feel like I can go out, have some semblance of blending in, and start a “dooni dooni” project. That being, a lifestyle change that I set as an example, seeing it catch on by people who feel capable of doing so, and having that action stay sustainable until after I am long gone.

For the past six months, I have worked closely with a tailor to learn how to cut and sew complets, dresses and handbags. I started off on his grandfather’s antique foot peddle machine watched by the other tailors as they snickered at me trudging along, fighting with the machine to hem a straight seam. Recently, however, I’ve graduated to the better machines, gaining trust amongst even the tailor association heads who frequent my “sewing station” tucked back in the market place which is barren during the days of the week until Sunday market day when it booms with children and women’ selling various goods.

Before arriving on this continent I was told that Africa’s 'flower' was the plastic bag. “You’ll see it everywhere, just prepare yourself.” Imprinted on my subconscious, that comment is finally taking shape as a possible project. Only, instead of stopping to smell the roses, I’m picking them up off the ground of my village, washing them and sewing them into stuff. Litter is carelessly scattered everywhere, which originally lead me to think that it would be difficult to convince Malians to pick up the trash on their own streets, so I set out one day and just started picking up plastic water bags as a sort of social experiment. I went only as far as my block when I had to turn around and get another receptacle to fill up. Within minutes I had children following me with their own trash bags, pointing to areas where I could get more while women even brought me their own collections from inside their concessions. I was impressed by the community’s receptiveness to cleaning up.

That morning, I washed the trash in alternating buckets of soap and bleach, lay them out to dry on a reed mat in my concession and took them over to the tailor’s to experiment. That day I made a small purse, a book bag and a dress.

Upon seeing my creations, Malians had varying reactions. Mostly they were very impressed by the book bag, women wanted to buy the dress and children were screaming for me to make them one. Ok, not exactly what I was going for, but it’s starting a conversation. One of the tailors asked, “Alima, why are you picking up trash when you can just buy plastic and make things out of that?” As I started to speak, a women sitting in front of my machine, waiting for her complet to be finished interjected, “this opens people’s minds about picking up dirty trash, buying plastic does not help people.”

Ok, so the ideas are there, Malians do not want to live in their own filth and are not shocked by people picking up trash, even if that person is white. I am still in the VERY early stages of this project as an income generating activity, but my smallest success was measured this morning when I returned to my concession. Three children were at my front door waiting for me. They each held out a trash bag full of empty water sachets they had picked up from around town. “Here Alima, you can make something out of this.”

One year in...

My Women's Association and me after our training last week.

Women participating in a community map!


Wedding motorcade through town for my host family

Signing the marriage license at the mayor's office

How to eat a mango

I love mangoes. I love mangoes so much that I agreed to come to Mali for two years and live in a mud hut, 100+ degree heat with no A/C, poop in a hole and eat only rice, millet paste and dirt sauce because I read that Mali had ‘the best mangoes in the world.” Thankfully, what I read was true and all the other stuff is worth it because the mangoes here are phenomenal.

My favorite part is not just eating the mango, but how. I was recently surprised by Americans who cut into a mango, befuddled by its mechanics and end up with reckless chunks, peels and a yellow sticky mess. I've always known mango eating as a ceremony that pays homage to the best fruit on earth. First, remove all white clothing and stand near a sink or easily accessible paper towel. Then cut the two large sides off the mango around the pit. Taking each halve, score the “meat” like a checker board, invert it so the perfect square pieces unfold into a flower. This method has relatively little mess aside from the pit section, which is peeled and the remaining fruit bitten off around the pit with nature’s floss as a takeaway. I had always assumed that everyone knew this was the proper way to eat a mango…I was wrong.

When I saw my first mango eaten by a Malian, it was barbaric; the way they bite right into the skin like an apple, and then suck the juice out through a hole. Once they had gotten most of the meat out, they’d pop out the pit, chew on the skins, then throw the remains on the ground for a donkey, sheep, or closest wandering farm animal to graze. And I rarely see a Malian eat a perfectly ripe mango; always the super tart green ones, or those way past fermentation. I would cringe, and even tried to show a few of them my method to no avail or impression.

As with every other Malian habit that takes some getting used to, at first I’m appalled and then shortly after the shock wears off… I’m integrated. Malian mango practices are now endearing, romantic and above all, practical. Of course they’re not going to take the time to cut, score and flower their mangoes. There are just too many mangoes to get through before the season is over and they’re all rotten on the roadside, who has time to waste with a knife? And lastly, once the fruit under the skin is exposed, it’s a race between you and persistent flies the size of dogs that swarm instantly and stick into the pulp.

I’ve since thrown away my meticulous scoring and flowering method and dive right into these huge, buttery delicious mangoes. I barely even rinse them off at this point (sorry Dr. Dawn!) I usually bite off the bottom, then peel away the skin with my teeth, eat the rest like an apple while doing the "Macarena" in a circle and waving the mango hand back and forth to keep the flies away. Then, with my upper body drenched in mango leftovers and flies at the ready, I race to a salidaga*, rinse off and wait for the next mango eating time to present itself, which is usually within the half hour. Ah, Africa redeems itself.

(For those of you who don’t know what a salidaga is, I guess I didn’t bless you with a “Peace Corps Mali” bathroom story while I was back in the states. Like an acid flashback I remember the graphic descriptions I gave to some of you, and for that I am so, so sorry… They are plastic tea pots filled with water used instead of toilet paper and running water… think about it.)