Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy thanksgiving from Mali!! We're heading out in a couple hours for a big thanksgiving meal in Sevare with duck, pie and ice cream. This may sound unhealthy but I've been almost starving myself all day so I can eat as much as possible tonight!

First off...THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH!!! The youth center project has been funded and when the money arrives sometime this month we should be able to start construction on the building. I really can't express how much it means to me that you all supported my project. he only thing we're lacking now for the space is the books to put in our library. I'm trying to find French or English organizations that donate books so if you know of any please let me know! or if you have any old books in English or French that you'd like to get rid of please leave me a comment and I can send you an address to send them to. Any help is greatly appreciated!

I feel so grateful for the amazing friends and family I've been given and it makes me so proud in village to tell people that my amazing friends and family care about them! I'm so lucky for the friends and family I have. AND not only for the money but for the love and support i get everyday. I always know they're will be a facebook message, email, letter or package waiting for me and although it sounds silly, a letter makes my week!

Weeks have been flying by lately and I can't believe its almost Christmas. After Halloween and the election I had lots of work to do at site before heading down to Sevarre and Bamako for Thanksgiving and meetings. Bess and I are planning a gender and development camp for young women in our village. We're focusing on AIDS/HIV prevention, child and maternal health and girls empowerment. At the end of the three day camp the girls will write a play or radio broadcast to present to the community and then we'll have a party. Its been really fun to plan and the doctor's helping us and the girls we've invited are really enthusiastic and motivated.

The tree pepiniere association has grown again, adding several new members and having discussions about finding a bigger space to work in. We've faced some obstacles in selling the trees and deciding how to market them. I'm hoping that another volunteer will be placed at my site so that they can continue to help them.

Its almost time for the elephants to arrive in Gossi so tourists will start coming soon. We're in the midst of setting up a guide office/info center and artisan room at the local lodge and I'm hoping to collaborate soon with another volunteer on a gourma region biodiversity website too to raise awareness internationally.

Its almost time for Tabaski also known as Eid al-adha(i think i've talked about this holiday in another post) so everyone is buying ram and fattening them up for slaughter to honor Abraham's devotion and willingness to sacrifice his son for God. Allah intervened and offered a lamb to sacrifice instead.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eid_ul-Adha
We've been seeing buses going by, their roofs packed with a hundred or so sheep heading south. ITs really a site to see. It seems like rams are appearing everywhere now. Im looking out the window at three in our peace corps concession that the guards are keeping here before the fete. Eveyrone buys the rams ahead of time because the price climbs high the week or two before. Last year by day three of the celebration Bess Jared and I were acutally getting sick of meat, which considering how little we get usually is pretty shocking. Its a fun time for everyone, children get all dressed up in new cloths, and women (who can afford it) decorate their houses with new drapes etc. My host mom is putting in new plastic flooring that i bought for her in gao, kind of like fake tile? She's very excited. im kind of on holiday overload, with thanksgiving, tabaski, christmas new years etc.

Thats pretty much it in terms of a quick update. Ill try to get some funny stories down over the next couple days since i have wireless access.

love to everyone!

ps--I wanted to post some pictures from the last couple months to share with you all. From the election party we had in gao and from a trip to the dune rose- a beautiful huge sand dune located next to the Niger near Gao.



obama WINS!!!



the dune rose

old posts just putting up now

I wrote these entries before the internet broke the last time I was in gao. Nothing new to report; things here are great and its actually CHILLY in the morning. Making preparations to ehad down south for thanksgiving and my vac meeting and another volunteer is coming to our site to paint murals at our school. Shes going to let me help, which for those of you who know my artistic skills, she’s really being very kind and taking a big risk putting a paintbrush in my hand.

I also need to ask for all your help. The funding for the youth center library has almost all come in but I still need to fill it with books. If you have any books you would like to donate, French preferably but we’ll take English too for any age group, please contact ldf@flournoylaw.com, my momma, and she can give you the address to send the book too. Also, If you know of anyone who has an old computer or laptop too that they don’t need or are looking to get rid of/donate to an excellent cause, and only basically functions, we would put it to good use. Please contact me on the comments section of the blog. Thank you notes are on the way to everyone who donated! Thank you all so much for helping us to make this happen.

November 3, 2008


It’s the day before the biggest day of the year. This could be better than Christmas birthday and St patrick’s day combined. Ive made sure that I’m with friends so that if in the two possible alternate scenarios, I can either be put on suicide watch or supported as I have seizures of joy. I’m sure in the states its been nothing but election coverage 24/7 and every possible argument and conjecture has been made, analyzed and then made again on another cable channel five minutes later—and I kind of miss that, just a little. I mean I was the fifth grader who had a map set up next to me in front of the tv to keep track of the electoral college. But even here in the land of the midnight sun, as we affectionately call this remote corner of the world, there’s been a lot of election excitement- the mayor of Gossi holding us hostage in his office for half an hour sharing with us everything he knows about barrack and emphasizing how important the American election is to the entire world and expecially mali (he had some good reasoning) or the old man seated outside the gendarme station, asking us if we knew how long obama would be visiting his sick grandma in Hawaii, or the man coming up to us at the track in gao, pleading us to vote for obama and then pumping his fist in triumph when we let him know we’d already sent in our ballots. The rest of the world is pretty invested in this America. So please don’t mess it up.

My only excuse for not writing for over a month is actually a really good one. We haven’t had internet. Its back up now, kind of, so if you’ve sent me emails etc I apologize for my lack of response. We did manage to get out an email to invite all the volunteers in the country up here for Halloween. This past week Gao has had the highest concentration of white people in mali apart from maybe Bamako, and certainly the highest concentration of crazy white people. We had a our party visited the tourist sites of gao, and pretty much overwhelmed the populace with our 35+ group of white people trekking through town. It was nice to see people from down south that I haven’t seen since april but its incredible to realize how close you become to your teammates just out of proximity and sad how much you miss being separated from the people you were close to in training but who are now on the other side of the country. Its given me a new perspective on friendships and meeting people. I absolutely love my teammates and I think we might get along better than if I had to choose 10 people to work live and have fun with. We even each other out. We’re funny, calm, sarcastic, spiritual, hilarious, serious and almost uniformly goofy. They’re my family right now and im grateful for such an amazing group of individuals.

We’re on another positive upswing in gossi, we’ve decided to give work another chance. (not to be sarcastic, ok maybe it leaks out once in a while but you would understand when you’ve shown up for a meeting three days in a row or four weeks in a row, waited an hour, used up your phone credit and then returned back to your house to try to find something to do since you’ve already read the five books you brought to site with you—im exaggerating, about the books). Our ongoing conservation efforts with the elephants and the gourma biodiversity have been receiving lots of support and help from the USFS and it looks like we’re going to be able to collaborate on some small projects including environmental education and handouts of educational materials. The members of my tree association planted new seeds for trees to sell the other day that we think will be more marketable including more fruit trees. I’m trying to be more and more hands-off so the project is sustainable. A friend from Gao has offered to come and paint murals at our school too. She hopes to do a sign and a world map on the wall. Besides that it’s the day to day grind, going to market, greeting people, maybe starting up some plots to grow flowers for Rachel and kevin’s wedding (two volunteers from our stage, met here, fell in love, and are going to get married here in mali in January.) I wish I was there to watch the election but I think we’re going to have a good time here too.



I wrote the following after no sleep… I felt the moment needed to be recorded but maybe I should have taken a nap first. My apologies….
November 5


I’ve been hit by an emotional truck of joy. Ive cried, wept, cried again, sang, kissed the tv, laughed hysterically at how destiny likes to play funny tricks on us (joe biden is from the hometown of the office, Scranton pa-maybe jim will be secretary of the treasury) and ive woken up with a huge grin still plastered on my face. I will remember where I was at that moment for the rest of my life, who I was with and how surreal I felt the next day. We didn’t sleep but spent the night watching our future unfold in front of our eyes. And so when that beautiful family walked on to the stage my face flooded and didn’t let up until joe biden’s grandma practically fist pumped.
This means a lot for volunteers. We were proud to serve our society, our nation but now we’re proud to serve the administration, to represent our government. No more qualifiers necessary (“I support democracy but I don’t support our president”, Malians don’t get that). Thank you everyone back home who voted and Congratulations!!