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!!