Today we had to return to Bamako, but our Ouelessebougou Alliance Team returned to the refugee camps to share and teach these good people. I would have liked to have been there. Judy Hut shared these photos with me of Teningnini teaching the women and girls about Days for Girls. They were enthralled and grateful to receive the kits.
Djiba also taught them about basic health care and hygiene and things they can do to keep their living areas clean and safe. They have selected a woman named Mariam who speaks both French and Bambara to act as their Health Matron and our staff will train her so she can teach the others. They’ll begin with our “Good Health Begins at Home” program, followed by the Healthy Village Workshop.
What a blessing this education will be for these friends. I’m so excited our paths have crossed. It feels as if we were led to each other to make this little corner of the world a better place.
In our weekly security reports, we learned that “according to the U.N. Refugee Agency more than two million people are now displaced inside their own countries within the Sahel [sub-Sahara] region of West Africa. The UNHCR reports that internal displacement quadrupled in two years and continues to rise. The region also hosts more than 850,000 refugees with most from Mali.”
I hope Malians throughout the country will rise up to help their neighbors and help them navigate these difficult times.
Here are more of the photos Judy took today of these beautiful women and their Days for Girls kits.
It’s not uncommon here to see vehicles piled so high their center of gravity is a little unstable. Transporting goods from one place to another is an important part of the economy here, and we see all sorts of transporters–from wheelbarrows to donkey carts to three wheeled motorcycles like the one above, piled high with straw for animal feed.
From time to time, a vehicle must swerve to miss another, or a wheel edges off onto the shoulder, throwing everything out of kilter. Today I saw 3 overturned loads as we traveled back to Bamako. This one pictured was the smallest and most easy to correct.
The other tipped loads we passed today were large trucks like this one (photo by my good friend, Djiba). This truck is piled high with bags of coal for cooking fires. It’s not uncommon to see an entire truck lying on it’s side with the once-neatly-stacked load strewn all over the roadside. What a shame after such an engineering feat to load it so carefully!
This morning we visited an IDP Camp not far south of Ouelessebougou main town. We learned of this settlement thanks to Djiba’s keen observation as he drove along the main road one day and noticed a small settlement where there hadn’t been one before. So on the way back, he drove in and talked to this Imam chicken farmer who was his friend and he learned of their situation. Djiba told Anounou and they all came out to check things out. The Alliance ended up donating about 30 bags of millet, enough for each family to eat for 3-4 weeks.
We were greeted by a small group of men, women, and children who were expecting us. They escorted us over to an area where the group was gathered to talk with us. Djiba introduced us, explained why we were wearing masks, and then we asked questions to better understand their situation.
Here’s John’s summary of the things we learned:
• This settlement on the north side of the village of Sousounkoro was the first place occupied by refugees from the Mopti region of north-central Mali, a town called Bandiagara. They are Dogon people. The first had come down about three years ago and chose this location because there was another Dogon person who lived in the village and told them they would be welcome.
• The village chief was willing to let them stay temporarily. As in other refugee settlements we’ve encountered, the village elders observe the newcomers to see if they will be a positive addition to the community. This “testing” lasts up to five years. If they behave themselves, they may be allowed to buy the land where they have settled.
• This community now consists of 12 families, about 90 people. The vast majority have come in the last year, generally fleeing for their lives. We were told of one woman who was forced to watch the throats be slashed of her husband and two sons. She came down here but has since wandered off. They fear she has lost her mind. They fully expect that more of their people will come. They hope to stay here forever and are working hard to prove themselves. Most of the men leave early in the morning for Ouelessebougou to try and find any manual labor jobs they can to earn a little money.
• They shared with us their challenges, none of which were surprising. No clean water close at hand, no farmland to grow food, no school or clinic or mosque, no job opportunities for the men or women. We thanked them for sharing and explained that we were doing a quick visit today because we had to leave for Bamako, but another team would come tomorrow and take a more detailed look at things.
• They were happy to have us walk through the settlement to inspect their living situation. They are clearly very industrious and had built good mud-brick houses, latrines, and ovens. Things were well kept. Just off the edge of the open area where we were seated was their mosque—a plot of dirt that was outlined with 12-inch diameter rocks.
We looked at the crude well they had dug by hand that wasn’t very deep and therefore not very productive. Gratefully, a local group had come out, covered the well for safety, and poured a cement perimeter.
We watched the young boys make mud bricks to build more permanent homes.
We saw the bandaged mid-section of a young teenager who had had some sort of GI surgery at the Ouelessebougou hospital but couldn’t afford to stay there. Up north, he had had to hide in the bush for weeks to avoid capture like his brother and had suffered great physical trauma. His follow-up appt is tomorrow but they don’t have the money to pay for it.
• There was no pleading or begging or other histrionics. It was a serious-minded group of people trying to map out a new life for themselves in a strange new area. They wanted us to understand their situation and hoped we could find ways to help. But they seemed to understand that it would be a process that took time. They had been treated kindly by the village chief and villagers and OA had offered generous help with millet when they needed it most. They were willing to be patient. And grateful.
We gathered with these villagers and listened to their story.
It took us about 10 minutes to drive to the second settlement site, on the south side of Sounsounkoro. We went back onto the main road, then turned west toward Tinkele, Neneko and Selingue. After a bit, we turned south onto a short dirt road and found our second group of Dogon friends. The situation here is much the same as the first site, except they are a smaller group: 10 families with a total of 50 people. And they were granted some farmland use about four miles away. They haven’t farmed it yet. Plus, they are very close to Sousounkoro so they have easy access to schools, the mosque, and a midwife. These refugees have all come within the last year, along with the others in the first settlement. The chief divided them up because the north site was full. They also dug a well by hand, but there was no cement perimeter or safety cover. It was also shallow and polluted. No one is very old in either of these two groups.
These boys are in charge of bringing water to the village. They travel quite a ways to fill the containers, then haul them back with their donkey carts.
Their hand-dug well that helps them get by. The water isn’t clean.
These are the faces that keep me awake at night. I hope we will be able to help here. These people are lovely and kind and trying to survive on very little. I wish all my friends who have plenty could come visit for a day and feel inclined to share a bit more with others.
This afternoon in Faraba Deux we celebrated their new pump well with song and dance. We partnered with LDS Charities to dig this well here, in a place where water is precious and hard to find.
Imagine if you had to go far to find water, and then carry that water to your home every day–every drop for cooking, washing and bathing is precious. This well has helped to relieve some of the burden these good villagers have had to carry (literally).
These women were doing laundry today by the well. What a blessing this will be for this village!
While the women in Faraba 2 learned about Days for Girls and received their feminine hygiene kits, the men met under a mango tree and they had the “Men Who Know” lesson. The chief told us afterwards that it was the most important thing they could have learned.
Djiba and Anounou talked with them about honoring their women and what it means to be a strong man. As the lesson progressed, and these men came to trust their instructors, they asked question after question. They told us that the young girls have their grandmothers to teach them about menstruation, but no one–No One teaches the men about their bodies or about their wives’ bodies. The village chief thanked us over and over again for coming and for bringing this information to them.
This afternoon we taught the women in Faraba 2 about Days for Girls feminine hygiene kits. As you will see from their faces, these kits are a life-changer. The women were intrigued to learn more about their bodies and what happens inside of them each month. Then when they each received a kit to help them manage their menstrual needs, they erupted with joy!
Teningnini is an excellent teacher. She’s taught girls and women throughout the Ouelessebougou commune.
The women practiced snapping the shields and pads around the underwear.
Oh happy day!
We left extra kits for the women who weren’t here today and for the young women who have gone into Bamako to find work. The women did not want a single woman to miss out on receiving a kit. We gave out 43 kits in all. That’s 43 lives changed. It’s the best feeling Ever.
Here are some of the different ways I found children playing today in Faraba. These kids entertain themselves for hours and hours with their own inventions, games and toys. They are a joy to watch!
This game is called Bi. It’s a marble game where you draw a triangle in the dirt and each person puts a marble in the triangle. Then you stand behind a line 10-12 feet away and throw a marble (like bocce ball) to get as close to the marbles in the triangle as you can. From the place your marble lands, you take turns trying to knock the marbles in the triangle out of the triangle. If you knock one out, or “eat” a marble, you keep it. The one with the most marbles at the end wins. This is a really popular game with the young boys!
Here’s a slingshot in the making:
These tree-climbing kids were like monkeys. They were going after some small little citrus-type fruits, which they’d pop into their mouths after plucking them from the branches.
Children also help by tending the animals in the village.
Of course dirt is always a part of play here in Africa.
Here’s a little girl with her pink baby doll, like mother like daughter.
Balls are usually homemade. This one was made from strips of a sweater.
Today in Faraba I watched women preparing food for their families. Corn is the main staple here, cooked into a paste called To. To is served with a green sauce made from dried leaves, herbs and seasonings.
This woman is cleaning her corn.
The ground corn is then cooked over a fire in a pot of boiling water.
This mom is making the green sauce to serve with the To.
And here are friends and family enjoying their meal together.
Things drying. Not sure what.
These are the mortar and pestles that the women use to pound the corn, millet and shea.
This is a one-room school built by the Ouelessebougou Alliance in the 1990s. It’s no longer used as a school here–the children walk to a neighboring village school–but it still serves as a meeting place. Today we held our Healthy Village Training here.
The leaders in the village, including the chief, gathered for this anticipated lesson. In their first Healthy Village Training last year, they made a plan for changes they wanted to see in their village to make it a healthier place. These changes were drawn on a village map they created.
The Alliance has helped them work on their goals and today we talked about the next things that need to be done to continue this improvement. They were excited and so were we!
They set measurable goals in several areas of things they will work on in the next year. In addition to continuing with the general cleaning, sweeping and burning the trash, they want to move latrines farther from their homes.
In the future they’d also love to have a village garden and a maternity clinic and their own school.
You can see the date this school was constructed on the beam.
At the end of the training, lunch was brought in. We provided the ingredients for this meal and women in the village prepared it.
We had a fantastic day. We traveled about an hour west of Ouelessebougou, on a bumpy dirt road to a small hamlet called Faraba Deux. The Ouelessebougou Alliance did some work here in the 1990s and in the last year, we’ve partnered with LDS Charities to dig a pump well for the villagers here. Today we came to do a “Healthy Village Training” this morning and some Days for Girls work this afternoon before celebrating the new well with the villagers. We had a fantastic day.
This small village was wonderful. The people, in anticipation of our arrival, had cleaned every inch of ground and swept with their little home-made whisk brooms. You could see the sweeping patterns in the dirt everywhere we went. They’d burned piles of trash and weeds. It was beautiful! And they were all excited for our visit and greeted us warmly. They let us wander through the village and greet the families. We saw the well and walked through many of the family compounds. There were no walls or barriers between the families. They were happy and kind.
Here are a few pictures of my wander through the village this morning:
You can really see how the dirt was swept in this picture:
Roasting and shelling shea nuts to make shea butter:
Roasting and shelling shea nuts to make shea butter:
Our Cote d’Ivoire Abidjan East and Bamako, Mali Mission 