March Kayes Regional Meeting

Since I now have the privilege of living in the regional transit house (with electricity, running water and internet), I am uniquely qualified for certain Peace Corps work. Simply because I can easily and frequently communicate with our staff in Bamako, I was one of few people in the region who could manage setting up our Kayes regional meeting in March. Also, I didn't really mind doing it. I had help from Billy in my region, and Artie who came out from Mopti. Budgets are not my forte, and I definitely needed to get some experience managing them for whatever it is I'll do next.

The participants included:
All 8 of us Kayes volunteers- Mike and Marisa, Luis, Matt, Jim, Billy, Jeremy and I
6 Malian work counterparts (homologues)
Our Country Director, Mike Simsik
20 representatives of community organizations/associations (only for one morning of the workshop)
Two "language and culture facilitators," (Peace Corps translators)
Four other Peace Corps staff from Bamako

My job was to arrange for the meeting room, housing for out-of-town invitees, food for everyone, the agenda of the 4-day meeting, etc.

All in all, I think it turned out really well. I got lucky with the food, which I paid to be provided by the Catholic Center where the meeting was held. Well-fed people are (for the most part) happy people.

It was really nice to have our Country Director (read: head honcho of Peace Corps Mali) in Kayes for three days. He took us all out to dinner and answered all of the questions that came up from being in a more informal setting than a meeting at the Bamako office.

A hi-light of the meeting for me was the Neem Cream demonstration. I hadn't really prepared myself to explain it in Bambara, but the Peace Corps staff that was there helped out with that. Neem is a certain type of tree that grows everywhere in Mali. It is even called Maliyirinin in Bambara, or "little Mali tree." Malians use the tree for traditional medicines, including making a tea with the leaves to cure malaria. My APCD sent me the recipe to make an anti-mosquito cream from boiled leaves, soap and regular cooking oil, so I decided to try it out at our training. It's a great idea, because it is easy to make, all the ingredients are readily available and inexpensive, and it actually works. Mosquitoes that transmit malaria are active from dusk til dawn, so sleeping under a mosquito net at night helps prevent getting bitten. The problem is that Malians sit outside 99% of the time (you would too here- it's HOT!). This means that in the evenings or at night when they are sitting outside talking, eating or drinking tea they are also being bitten by mosquitoes. During that time, I would put on my trusty Cutter or OFF bug spray, but that doesn't exist here, and the mosquito repellent creams that are sold here are really expensive. That's where neem cream comes in.

Take two bars of soap and shave them into tiny pieces. For best results, put the soap in a mortar and pound it into a powder.

Boil a couple handfuls of clean neem leaves in one liter of water for 20 minutes, then strain the leaves out while you pour the water into a bucket with the soap shavings.

Stir until the soap is dissolved in the water.

Add a liter of regular cooking oil and stir.

Explain that the cream is for use externally on your skin in the evening/at night. Also, it could be an income-generating activity- it could be made to be sold for a profit.

Et voila!

I got a really positive reaction from the Malian homologues who saw the demonstration, so I am working on finding community groups around Kayes who are interested in learning how to make neem cream.

The last night of the meeting, we volunteers made dinner-Mexican Night- at my house for our homologues and PC staff. Making tacos:

The Malians actually ate the tacos! I daresay they even liked them, except for the tortillas, which were really different for them. Malians in general are not very adventurous eaters, so I was happy that they were satisfied with dinner.