Bonne Arrivée!
Hello.
From June 2001 to September 2003 I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Gabon. My project was community health. I extended for a third year in Bamako, Mali, where I worked with a social marketing NGO, PSI.
My main project the creation of the 100% Jeune website, 100pourcentjeune.org, that talks about AIDS (SIDA), STDs (IST), and la santé sexuelle et réproductive des jeunes. 100% Jeune, 100% Protégée!
I left Mali in April 2005 to start a Masters program in Public Health at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. I finish in May 2006 and hope to get a fabulous job somewhere not in D.C.
30 January 2006
Robin's photos of Bamako are the ones I always wanted to take.
15 December 2005
Just had my first final, in Les Roberts' Water and Sanitation course. Once a week, Les would come in with a powerpoint presentation full of slides depicting latrines and pumps and cholera treatment stations, hand out a case study, and proceed to illustrate his guiding principles. "Shit runs downhill and you don't eat it" was the most oft-repeated. Les is running for Congress in New York's 24th district, against a pretty tough opponent, but hopefully he'll be able to kick some butt up there like he's done in Rwanda and Congo.
5 June 2005
Home - have seen New Orleans, Nashville, Murray KY, Jackson Falls IL, Chicago, St. Peter and Mankato MN, headed to Telluride CO in a few days. Then out to Baltimore for school. Gotta get my study cap out of the basement and see if it still works. Here's a birthday picture with Cindy from high school, at a nightclub that promised circus stuff but only gave us flourescent dancing girls and weak drinks.
9 March 2005
Ugh. Hot season. Please kill me now.
3 March 2005
Ah, the mango rains are here. Heavenly humidity. Little puddles on the road. I'm taken back to those midwestern summer mornings when I would read, all day, to the sound of rain dripping through our gutters and splashing through the trees. Softness, green, ozone in the air, and a warm wind. I miss the Midwest.
24 February 2005
The Blitz at The Hanoi in Dakar: Anya, Joy, Cheryl, Kristen, Patrick, me, Ryan, Matt (seated) Emily, Mary, Bob
14 April 2004
Eleanor, Amanda, me, Matt and Laura at the BlaBla
13 April 2004
Courtesy Chris, taken at the (you guessed it) BlaBla.
Taco Tuesday
The Ladies
Amanda and Laura
Matty
11 April 2004 - Happy Easter!
I celebrated my first Passover seder last week at Eleanor's house. We ate the bitter herbs, substituted parsnip for horseradish, fixed a delicious matzo ball soup, and sang and read and drank to remember the day the Angel of Death spared the first born of the Jews and slaughtered the first born of everyone else in Egypt. Amanda had arrived Saturday, and we went immediately to the Bla Bla and drank two big beers each, then proceeded to the Byblos for dancing and free g 'n' ts. Sunday we recuperated, Monday was Passover, Tuesday Laura got in and we had Taco Party with about fifteen other people. We had beer and slabs of ice in the plastic laundry bucket, tunes on the laptop, cute boys, friendly ladies, and gallons of chili, not to mention Amanda's real crunchy taco shells. The girl is a demon in the kitchen, je te dis!
Trips to the Guinean embassy and the Immigration were uneventful; we visited Anounou at the artisanat and ordered matching silver bracelets to commemorate - well, I'm not sure exactly, but they're cool bracelets. We greeted Toumani friday at the Hogon, which made Amanda's night, and now the gals are in Dogon visiting real hogons. I love that this whole time we've had little or no plan, and after three years we just can't bring ourselves to worry about knowing exactly how things will turn out, what time the bus will really leave, whether they will find a guide, how to find the stage house...you just know everything will turn out fine.
An Example: today we went to the artisanat and needed to get cash to pay the advance. Nobody had anything. We go to the ATM, which has a tendancy to be out of money on Sunday afternoons. We were in luck. Finished with the shopping, Eleanor and I decided to go to work, but it was lunchtime and we needed to eat. Because of Passover she can't eat grains, so no rice, no bread. We spend some time exploring options in town, then get a cab figuring we can find tigadegena near my office. We waste tons of time in the taxi looking for change and I'm getting fed up because I realize that the tigadegena lady will probably be gone by the time we get there. Sure enough, she's gone when we pull up. There are no other food ladies, no restaurants, and it's 900 degrees out. I'm going to starve and I'm already cranky and this f*&$@#g country. Maybe we can at least get a coke and split Eleanor's avocado. In the coke boutique we find Coulibaly and friend chowing down on some yummy looking zame. "Come eat!" they say, because you have to. Usually I say no thanks but today I'm hungry and they have a lot so I sit down, wash my hands, and dig in. Coulibaly even buys us cokes and gives us his business card. "Come over anytime! I've never had friendships with white people before. You guys are great. Doumbia, why aren't you eating?" Eleanor replies that she's eaten till full and not to worry. "Dante, eat some more! This is great huh? I didn't have an appetite till you guys showed up. It's always better to eat in a group. N'est-ce pas!?"
As I told Eleanor later, I should really get it by now, it's just not worth it to stress over things. They always work out. This is Africa, after all.
9 March 2004
It's still cool, and the traditional healers have been chased out of their square. Le Chef des Docteurs d'Hemmorrhoids is gone, along with the twenty other men and their wives and hangers on. Each healer had a tent set up with a list of ailments he cures, a number, and a fire or two in front, tended by the family. I never stopped to see if they were just cooking fi res or for making medicines, and now it's too late. Yesterday, there were just the usual men playing petanque under the mango trees. Which is, of course, a little odd, but nice, in a quaint colonialist sort of way. Leftover pasttimes coopted b y host country nationals, as we now call them. The metal clink of the balls, the flip of the wrist as they're thrown, underhand, rising almost straight up and then plopping down in the dust to roll lazily towards the marker.
5 March 2004
Yesterday was cold - Eleanor and I were freezing at the Bla Bla over our capitaine and beef brochettes. The morning was hazy and yellow, but it didn't seem bad till I got back to the office. From the 4th floor, looking out over empty lots, it was like looking into squash soup. We couldn't see the construction across the street, let alone the hill a mile away. This morning Yoro was literally jumping up and down with cold as he washed out his little blue teapot. Such a change from last week when I slept outside for the first time, on my terrasse, and spent entire days sweating and just barely keeping my water intake up enough. Then the early mango rain came, washing everything clean and giving us a lovely (I didn't know how lovely it could be) partly-cloudy Monday morning. The Malians seem to think this bodes either very badly for the hot season, or very well - well meaning short, with a good rainy season afterwards.
On the news this morning (BBC) I heard the country representative of PSI Zimbabwe talking about how an anti-Mugabe opposition group had made stickers to place over their Protector brand condoms, effectively rebranding them. The stickers have a Z on them, and a website, www.zvakwana.com, along with the group's slogan, "Get Up Stand Up" (which Mugabe used himself in the 80's when he took power). There's an article in the South African newspaper which takes a slightly different slant than the BBC.
