Picturama!!!

I'm feeling really really patient today so I updated the whole blog and went back to add pictures here and there... Here are a few more fun ones, enjoy! Only three weeks or so to go, and I'm not ready to go back home... Time flies when you're having fun and learning lots, that sure is no lie! Of course, I can't wait to see all of you, though, so I'll be hopping on that plane. Because school is cool. Argh.

My boys in Waterloo should enjoy this one. My maple syrup obsession, confirmed!

This one goes out to my Waterloo boys as well, or anyone else into Ultimate Frisbee. Here is a picture of a cute kid with the world's most beat up frisbee. Oh you should see the other side of it. It's all black from their attempt to melt the thing back together. Here's the best part: they still play with it every day. I don't know how they manage to get that thing flying, because it weighs a ton, but it makes you appreciate their love for the game!

I think this one so cute. This is my girl Em and I when we went clubbing in Sévaré. The party stopped when there was yet another power outtage ahaha!

This is my best buddy Amadou. He took me to the traditional brewery where they make Chapata. You really need to get used to the taste, but the whole tour explaining the brewing process, given by Amadou himself pretending to be a great brewmaster, made it all worth the trip :)

Development with a capital D

My next big adventure consists of a five day escape to Ségou, some 7 hour bus ride away from Sikasso, for a mini-internship at the FODESA. Alex, another short term EWB volunteer from the Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal, was assigned a placement with this extraordinary NGO. When Louis had come for a routine check-up before the retreat, he had detected my falling motivation. I suspect he was still under the charm of the exemplary pro-poor approach used by the organisation after coming straight from Alex’s routine check-up, but he suggested that I take a few days off to go see what a functionning NGO is capable of on the field. I knew that I could benefit from observing experienced facilitators and that I would apply any found best practices to improve my interactions with villagers in the vitamin project. So I wrote up a nice letter to the FODESA coordinator, who was already familiar with Engineers Without Borders for having worked with Alex. I clearly stated my objectives, rubbed them the right way (because they actually deserve it, don’t get me wrong) and then patiently waited for their enthusiastic approval.

The bus ride to Ségou was an adventure in itself. That day everything happened so fast. I had been trying to reach Alex for days now. I found his “green light” in my inbox and I was immediately anxious to get going. Four months in Mali is so little time, and I wanted this learning experience to happen as soon as possible so that I could use it to a maximum. But Alex was impossible to get a hold of. I finally got through to him on a Tuesday at 4 PM. He told me that ideally, I would make it to Ségou that same night, that we would go into the office the next day for me to meet everyone, and that I would leave the next for a rural area with an employee from Promavie. FODESA Ségou contracts out to another NGO specialized in village facilitation to do start-up and follow-up work directly with the involved villagers, prior to and following the implementation of the appropriate technology selected by the beneficiaries. The idea was for me to leave Thursday morning with a facilitator and be his partner for three days.

Diallo drove me immediately to the bus station, where one little indie bus was getting ready to leave for Ségou at 6 PM. I asked how long was the ride, did the generous math accounting for the countless stops, and asked clearly: “Alright, so this means that I will be in Ségou tonight at about 1 AM, right?”. They assured me that this was the case. I phoned Alex back: “Allo, Alex? Hey, I’ll be there early morning, around one-ish. How do I get to your place?”. I went back home, threw a few essetials in my backpack, bought a snack for the road, and I was on my way.

By 11:30 PM we were only halfway, in Koutiala. The driver decides that there is more money to make if we wait for the bus to fill up in the morning, since we lost many passengers at this stop. “We’ll be spending the night”, kindly informed me another passenger who must have pitied my tired, confused look that screamed out “I am in no condition to even try to follow this conversation in Bambara right now!”. So I made friends with some young dudes making omelettes on the side of the road. I tracked down a guy with a cell phone to let Alex know that I wouldn’t make it in that night. I then had my typical bread/2-eggs/warm-mayo combo, chatted for a while with these guys, and lied down for a snooze across a full row of seats in a different, narrow bus that ended up taking me to Ségou when the sun came up. I made it into the office with undereye circles reaching my armpits, but here things went more smoothly. I would actually leave for the villages the next day. I thought I was dreaming: was part of our plan actually turning out? “Alex, pinch me!”.

Alex took me to see his friends at the djembe shop. We chilled on the front porch as Alex played some familiar tunes and his friends tightened the skins on the djembes as they smoked a few joints. We bought some trafitional malian alcoholic drink and we all moved to the resto-bar where they were performing that night. I knew it was time to go when I wouldn’t even get my butt off the chair for a little dance and that I was nodding off despite the pounding right next to my ears...

Alex posing and Jean-Luc on the left, who was just arriving when I left Ségou to go back home
The next morning, bright and early, I was sitting on the back of Khader’s motorcycle. Khader is an amazing thirty-something year old man with the world’s coolest job. I followed him around to visit the many villages under his responsibility with already installed appropriate technology projects, where he would hold meetings with the villagers or women organisations to build capacity and address concerns. We also visited the other villages who were at the requesting stage for a certain technology project. This means that he would help the villagers organize themselves to conduct activities to raise the required 10% of the project cost. FODESA finds the partners that will invest the other 90% of the total amount.

Visiting a FODESA community garden

The beauty of the FODESA method is that they first approach certain counties and ask them which communities are most in need. FODESA then sends contractors on the field in these specific villages to perform a week-long feasibility study. A team of specialists settle in the village for a week to run a series of participatory activities with the villagers. The result of this initiative is a very complete “Rapport Diagnostic” which draws a comprehensive socio-economic portrait of the village. Some villages identify “Poor access to clean water” while others will identify “No income generating activities”. There is clearly a long list of possible constraints, but most correspond to something in the menu of appropriate technology projects that the FODESA offers.

Once again, the FODESA does not do the implementation of the technology with its own staff, but instead contracts out to specialized NGOs or companies in the particular domain. The FODESA simply plays a coordination role, placing the big bucks in the right places. It ensures that the right technologies end up in the right places by having the demand originate from the villagers who identify their constraints on their own during the feasibility study, and it provides the necessary follow-up to ensures the sustainability of the chosen technology. All in all, their approach is hard to beat: if I was an NGO, I would want to be the FODESA!

An MFP women cooperative meeting. Can you spot Khader, the only man on the picture?

Welcome to Sikasso Beach (now don’t be fooled, there is no such thing as a beach in Mali!)

The time has now come for me to describe my “new” surroundings. Okay, perhaps they are not so new anymore, since it may have been over a month since I moved here... But between a little bit of malaria (please note: there is no such thing as a little bit of malaria), a 5-day escape to Ségou, another 5-day escape in one of our vitamin villages and absolutely no days off in between, I have had problems finding the time or simply accessing a computer to update my blog. The MFP project has still not received the 2006 funds necessary to start up the activities in the different regions of Mali. Which means that the Sikasso office physically exists, with computers, printers, photocopiers, a conference room and everything Diallo and I could possibly dream of to keep the show on the road but... the power was turned off long ago because the bills were not paid!

Ahhhh! So we simply do without, going around harassing Diallo’s (rich!) family in the area. Yet again another reason to be thankful for the extended family concept in Mali. Uncles and aunts are doctors or owners of large, prosperous companies. Diallo is also somehow related to one of the two notaries in Sikasso (for a total of less than 40 in the country, to give you an idea of how special that makes him). So I am actually writing this from the notary office. Mohamed has kindly granted me the use of a computer for two days while Diallo took the 8-hour bus ride back to Sévaré to pick up his cheque.

Thinking back now to life in Sévaré, Sikasso feels like a different country altogether. First of all, when I first moved to Sikasso in a packed, old, decorated school bus in the middle of the night, I was woken up by some intense shivers running through my body. And it wasn’t even malaria (yet)!!! It was simply air: the suffocation was over. The wind entering the bus no longer made you feel like you were standing in front of a massive hair dryer. I had reached heaven. I don’t even know how I had managed to fall asleep in the first place. Our bus driver, apparently exhausted, had been driving in a giant slalom across the paved road while the front passengers, sitting right next to me, had been taking turns yelling to keep him awake. They were holding on for dear life and that of forty oblivious others who had long left for a few hours in the arms of Morpheus. Our time had not yet come, so the three prayer stops we made along the way must have paid off (I suspect what they were praying for), because we made it in one piece.

Within a week of my arrival in Sikasso, I moved in with the family of one of Keïta’s wives. Keïta is one of the technicians at the MFP Sikasso office. There was enough space for a bed in the servant’s bedroom, so I moved in with her. She is a lovely young Peul lady also named Awa. Like the majority of the other Peul women, she has the characteritic black permanent tatoo surrounding her mouth, numerous earrings and a thin, elegant silhouette. We got along immediately, though we couldn’t understand very much of each other. If a picture is worth a thousand words, gestures, I believe, are worth much more! Here is a bad picture of us in our room.

The yard was very lively, full of adorable children with their typical screams, cries and giggles. It seems as though one of the little girls, Mariam, made it her objective to become more reliable than my shadow. From experience, I know that these little girls are the key to fast integration in a family, so I very much appreciated her company. But I left for a few days to go to my mid-placement retreat in the Pays Dogon, and I came back to a nearly empty yard. The kids had gone to Bamako to spend the summer with their cousins and grand-parents. No need to say that I was quite disappointed. From what I can tell this is a popular move in rich families that do not depend on agriculture. In farming families, the reverse phenomenon is true: all their children come back from the cities to go lend a hand in the family fields. Some had originally left after harvest to go to school in the city, if they could afford it. The less fortunate had gone in an attempt to find employment.

One thing that strikes me about Sikasso is the absence of in-your-face extreme poverty on the side of the roads. As opposed to Sévaré, I saw no women bathing in roadside puddles after the rain. People here greet me with regular salutations rather than a difficult “Donne-moi 100 francs!”. The streets are not filled with young children pleading for food destined to their marabou in their tomato cans recycled in buckets. You never have to run for cover because of a sandstorm, but instead you better watch out for an unannounced downpour. There is maïze everywhere you look! It is tall, green, strong and has nothing to do with the large, dry fields of Sévaré, where it was difficult for me to imagine anything ever growing...

Hence tô and baga are both made of maïze here, rather than the drought resisting cereal (mil, I don’t really know what that translates to) used in Sévaré, which makes it much more pleasant to eat. Baga is a basically corn flour and water. Rich families, or in poor families the head of the household, add milk powder and sugar. I couldn’t tell if it was the colour, the actual taste of the cereal, or some particular spice that perhaps everybody uses that made me gag in most (all?) Sévaré traditional meals... But those days are over, since I have been pleased with any and every thing that found its way to my stomach since I made it here. My stomach and and my tastebuds still disagree, though, and it looks as though I will have to deal with a “ventre qui coule” until my return to Canada. And according to past EWB volunteers and past experience after my return from Peru, it’s not as simple as walking off the plane and your tummy bugs (bacteria, amoebas, worms?) are gone. They have a frustrating tendency to overstay their welcome...

Mmmm... tô!

So more about this project!

MI is in fact a Canadian organization based in Ottawa. They are running a variety of food fortification activities around the world, supporting vitamin and mineral supplementation programs where malnutrition is taking its toll on the most vulnerable populations. MI has been working closely with governments of developing countries to encourage the adoption of laws enforcing fortification in widely consumed products (think of iodized salt in Canada). In addition, MI has joined forces with a UNICEF immunization program against polio in Africa to provide strong doses of vitamin A to the children during administration of their shots. A home food supplementation program was implemented in India, through which mothers of households themselves are responsible for addition of a micronutriment concentrate to the family meals. In Malawi, yet another method of food fortification was successfully set up in small scale mills during cereal processing. MI is currently looking at the technical and social feasibility of the last two methods through the pilot project that Diallo and I are leading. The results of our study will influence the direction of the project when it is expanded to a national scale.

Engineers Without Borders hence got involved in a nutrition project by association. Since three of us short-term volunteers were sent to MFP Mali for the summer, and that there was a need for support in this partner project, it only seemed logical to send of one the three. The pilot project was divided into two phases, held in different regions of Mali. Purely to satisfy your curiosity, a region in Mali is basically the equivalent of a province in Canada, and there are 6 of them. The first phase of the project was held in the dry, sandy Mopti region and was originally scheduled to last two months. The second phase is also scheduled to last two months, but will be held in green, lush Sikasso. OK, I may have been a little generous with the word "lush", but the sight of a green field after living in the Sahel is truly breathtaking. So I joined the project on the fourth month, just in time to catch the end of the first phase in good old Sévaré. Cherchez l'erreur. Bingo! We were already two months behind.

Now, in practise, what this means is that I got the chance to tag along for a few visits with Diallo in some villages surrounding Sévaré. Diallo had a tight schedule to follow, and had a lot of pressure to complete the first phase in Sévaré, so we never really took the time to go through the “What?”, “Why?” and “How?” of the project together. It may seem a little ironic that we couldn’t take a day to cover the basics considering that the timetable had already been stretched by two months at that point. Indeed, that nearly drove me insane. I am extremely curious and analytical by nature, therefore when I am put in a situation where my questions find no answers, I become extremely restless.

As soon as Diallo came into the office in the morning, we would hop on his motorbike to head for the villages and we would only finish work very late, sometimes past dusk. Needless to say, a motorbike is not the best environment to discuss my questions - or anything for that matter. And our time in the villages was reserved for formalities with the villagers and going through one mean questionnaire. It was particularly difficult for me to do these follow-ups with clients at the MFP, and also those households who had tried the individually wrapped version of the vitamins, without having been present for the introduction, education and distribution activities.

I truly enjoyed the village visits, mostly because my eyes could not absorb enough of the typical African scenes: the colorful clothes and buckets, the half-naked children, the old men sitting and chatting on cow skins, the straw roofs, the charcoal fire boiling some sweet green tea, a man in the shade performing traditional medicine on a suffering woman, the little chicks running between my feet, and I could go on and on… The interviews with the beneficiaries all occurred in Bambara, but the questions on my paper were all in French. The good part is that I knew what we were asking, but alas I could only pick up a word or two in the answer. I very much disliked the questionnaire, I knew that much. What a lame and limiting way to get people’s input! And how impersonal is it carry on a conversation over a piece of blinding white paper that clearly clashes with the environment I described earlier? I was still in observation and learning mode, and of course at this stage it was better to keep all these reflections to myself. I remember picking up wise advice from a past Junior Fellow who warned me from speaking up too fast…

Not even a week after I joined Diallo on this project, after visiting five villages or so, we had completed phase I. Diallo then left for Bamako on a 2-day trip to pick up the vitamins for the subsequent phase of the project to be held in Sikasso. He left me with some data entering, in other words countless questionnaires for me to capture in an Excel sheet. At this point I was thinking that it was too bad for me to have acted strictly as his secretary – a very sharp, inquisitive and nosy one, mind you – up until this point. I have some serious trust building to do indeed, and I realize that doing the bitch work (excuse my language) would do just that, but I do need to show certain competencies if I ever want to have a chance to contribute where I really want to make a difference.

My thought process in this case was that I was better off doing some mindless computing and taking the time to reflect carefully on my questions and problems with this whole project (and questionnaire!). I made a deal with Diallo that the time I was saving him should go towards a thorough Q & A session with me upon his return. And then he ended up being gone for 10 days… Ha! He returned to a five page document on my reflections and questions regarding the objectives and workings of the project. That’s what you get for leaving me unattended for too long! We were already in Sikasso by the time we ran through this document together. He realized that he was unsure of many of the answers, so we forwarded this monster to his boss with a nice introduction on who I am and another section on what EWB interns are out to accomplish, in case he was unclear on that. It’s surprising how misleading the term Engineers Without Borders can be sometimes, but I won't get into that. Anyways, a few days later, I found a reply in my inbox with a message from Diallo’s boss, informing us that he had worked on the answers with his own boss in Johannesburg, South Africa. Some answers were ok. But he insured us that they were impressed and encouraged by the serious thought and involvement that had been expressed. It felt like I got a test mark back and that there was a little star sticker at the top corner. But it all sure was nice substitute after bathing in confusion for over two weeks!

First impressions of Sévaré

Seconds after we pulled into Mike’s yard in Sévaré, it started pouring. This was the very first and much needed rain of the season for the area. The next morning we woke up and Mike introduced us to his friends and family in the neighborhood. They were all so kind and welcoming. Many of them thanked us for bringing the rain, so I couldn’t help but feel a little concerned. You need to understand that until that point I had only heard blames and thanks addressed directly to Allah for good and bad fortunes! But it took no time for me to catch on and realize that when mentioned jokingly, this was nothing but a passport to their good side, so I started bringing it up on my own.

I met up with a crew of lively, intelligent young men who live in the yard across from Mike’s place. It turns out this is where Levi stayed for about a year during his long-term volunteer placement with the MFP project. In fact Levi had left in early June and was kind enough to pay rent until the end of the month, so I quickly took the opportunity and moved in within days of my arrival. But on this very first day, as I was chatting up with my future neighbors and taking in all this teasing about my horrible choice for a last name (the cousin thing again), I started feeling a little weak. My head started turning and my body started sweating in places it never had before. In fact, I can now confirm that our bodies are entirely covered in sweat glands. I barely had time to tell Mike that I wasn’t feeling well, and I was gone! I lost it completely. A white curtain completely blinded my vision and all sounds became somewhat muffled. They sat me down and made me drink lots of water. I was back up and running within the hour, handwashing my entire wardrobe and what not, but still, way to make a good first impression!

(Home sweet home)

The first week back at the office was rather slow. I was really anxious to find out what my project would be for the summer, but all activities at the office revolved around summarizing and reporting on the Bamako workshop that we all attended over the past week. I was a bit amused at this review of a review of a review of the program. I thought we would have been ready to move on, but I was clearly mistaken. When they talk about capitalization, I guess they are truly sincere about learning from past weaknesses and successes. The following week, all of us volunteers were called in individually to have a word with the accountant. He presented us with fifteen thousand francs CFA each. This translates directly into about 30 Canadian dollars, but I must specify a non negligible caveat. The purchasing power of those 30 dollars is much greater than in Canada. You can feed yourself for a week in Canada with that amount if you skip the caviar, but someone in Mali can easily be fed for month.

Back to my awkward moment with the accountant. I was explained that this sum was a bonus for attending the meeting, and that all meetings held at the office are subsidized in this fashion. I politely excused myself and explained that I had come here as a volunteer, that I couldn’t accept this kind of money, and so on… I could only think of the few attendees who were snoozing away through the meetings, while others were playing cards on their laptops. And that day they were thanked with a month’s worth of the “official” poor person’s income (according to the dollar-a-day indicator). How unfair! Now I don’t know how much of this information I should be sharing, but there are days when I need to get things off my chest. I am familiar with the potential of the rumor mill, but I also hope that I am not mistaken with its limits. If you can read between the lines, you will understand that practices like this I cannot challenge, and therefore that you shouldn’t tell my coworkers about my dislike of the process!

Finally, a week later, there was an opening in the schedule of the great boss, and we were given the chance to sit down to discuss the projects that us three short-term volunteers would be assigned. I came prepared to explain why I wanted to work with the Micronutriment Initiative (MI), which is in fact a partner of the MFP project. There was very little arguing and discussion about my placement. All seemed very satisfied and unanimous at the need for an assistant for Diallo, who is heading a pilot project solo in the area with disappointing results. I was up for the challenge, and extremely excited at the thought of working on a nutrition project being the fake engineer who really should have gone into health sciences anyways.

But that day I had my mind stuck on the work term report that I would be required to write at the end of the summer for my University. I was once explained that the technical content of our reports should increase from one term to the next as we progress with our learning. I put that one worry aside and decided that I would take up the challenge only if and when it came up. I can always give my report a bit of a consultancy twist… These days I am more concerned with facing fun questions upon my return. I can hear it already: “EWB’s mission statement is to promote human development through access to technology… So why were you working on a vitamin project?”. Argh! Might as well ask why I chose to go into engineering.

Another quick editorial… I simply wanted to announce the next few chapters of my blog and take this opportunity to apologize for the way I am posting in large, irregular chunks. Hopefully I will be able to be more consistent as my life takes a new shape and pace in Southern Mali, more precisely in Sikasso. I am full of energy these days and am very excited at the thought of sharing all of my adventures, frustrations and reflections with you.

I spoke with about 20 Engineers Without Borders chapter members back in Waterloo during a conference call earlier this week. I told them how I was living a trip down memory lane because I was sitting precisely where they were about a year ago during the 2005 conference call to our overseas volunteers thinking “Wow! I really want to do this”. Actually, don’t get me wrong. Going overseas with EWB had been on my list for much longer than that. For those of you not familiar with my list of things that I want to accomplish before I die, let’s just say that it’s long, strong and certainly not getting any shorter… But it is so motivating to find out that if you want something bad enough and you’re willing to work hard for it, you can check the occasional item off the list. Oops snap back to reality, I can’t wait but feel a lack of humility now for writing such a statement.

Great, so let me all welcome you into a dead end, or U-turn if you will, of the depths of my brain. Let me explain this change of mind as an example. You see, during our spare time, Engineers Without Borders folks will spend extended periods of time trying to define complex terms like international development and poverty. And the word opportunity (or lack thereof), always finds its way in the definition. So I will judge myself openly and admit that I’m a self absorbed loser for even thinking something like “if you want something bad enough and you put in some hard work, you can make anything happen”, given my particular setting. I am surrounded daily by people of unmatched will who work harder than I could ever conceive before stepping on Malian ground. And because of the conditions of extreme poverty in which they were born and raised, though certainly not by choice, lack of opportunity will likely prevent the majority of these amazing people from checking that special dream off their list. Thanks for letting me share this… I rarely get carried away with optimism, and well, I just remembered why.

So before I got on this tangent, I was in the process of telling you how well I am doing after that phone call. The French West African retreat also contributed to this uncontained motivation. It took place last weekend, in the Pays Dogon, which is the number one tourist attraction in Mali (yeah, I know, I also thought it would have been the camel races of Timbuktu). A retreat in EWB terms means taking some time off with other members to capitalize on past activities and plan for upcoming ones, with a little bit of fun (read: nonstop fun) sandwiched somewhere in there.

I therefore met with the eleven other Engineers Without Borders volunteers from Mali and Burkina Faso for three days of learning, sharing and fun. Wow, I think I just succeeded in making our weekend seem really really tacky! But seriously, I had a blast and found a lot of energy there with loads of great advice to help me stay on track for the next two months. The weekend involved a fair share of beer, guitar playing, French talking and no Canada Day celebrating what-so-ever. Are you surprised? How in the world do a bunch of Quebec separatists make their way to Africa with Engineers Without Borders Canada? They’re engineers alright, but what part of “Without Borders” and “Canada” don’t they understand? Haha just kidding. And I never got a chance to tease because it was on our list of self imposed rules of the retreat not to get on the topic of Quebec separation. Ok enough, so where was I? Right! Sévaré.

The following week was defined by feelings from all ends of the spectrum during the grand Bamako sub-regional workshop. There, I met 3 other EWB long term overseas volunteers based in Senegal, Ghana and Burkina Faso, all of which are working at different levels on the Multifunctional Platform Project. I was anxious to dive into the Malian culture after my wonderful stay in the village, but we were lodged in what here is considered a fancy hotel, living and eating like tourists for the entire week. This is when it occurred to me that Malians working in our development NGO live very comfortable lives, to say the least.

One day, at the end of the scheduled workshop, the first rain of the season was pouring down violently. The conference room where we were located was about 200 metres from the hotel. Within minutes there were United Nations Development Program (UNDP) SUVs lined up to drive people back to the hotel. How ironic! The SUV represents in all its glory the antithesis of the humble development approach. That day, during a workshop, I almost fell off my chair when I realized that a 27 million dollar budget was going to be spent on the next phase of the project. I hopped in an SUV that day to spare everyone an inappropriate sight of me in a soaked white shirt, but I couldn’t help but wonder what proportion of this budget will go towards these luxurious vehicles, the numerous drivers and the deliciously inflated “overhead costs”.

One thing that struck me that week is the lengthy and sincere salutations. You cannot walk by somebody without saluting them if your eyes happen to cross. Contrary to what we are used to, a polite smile will not do. Basic salutations include: “Hello!”, “How is your family?”, “How is your health?”, “How is your husband/wife?”. And the most impolite thing you can possibly do is to approach somebody and start talking business or asking for a favor without this essential salutation ritual. It is likely more impolite than eating with your left hand, which is strangely the more widely-known “faux pas”. Amongst EWB volunteers, we became used to inquiring about each other’s bowel movements on top of the regular salutations, since those were generally the defining factor for our overall attitude on any given day...

It is important for me at this point to give an overview of the Multifunctional Platform (MFP) Project. This project started in Mali in 1998, with the intention of providing an efficient solution to poverty alleviation. The project proposes an appropriate technology to lighten the intense workload of rural women. The objective of the services offered by this technology is to liberate time that can be invested in education, caring for children, improving sanitary conditions and creating activities that may generate income. The success of the MFP is explained by the comprehensive social, economic and technical approach.

The MFP is in fact an 8 to 10 hp diesel engine mounted on a chassis that can power various agro-processing machinery like a mill, dehusker and oil press. It can also serve to generate electricity to activate a water pump or power a 250-bulb lighting network. The MFP can simultaneously charge batteries or power welding equipment. The approach also integrates an alphabetization program since the MFP is simply an energy business created and managed by women cooperatives. These cooperatives consist of a few female villagers who may not have had the chance to attend school and that are empowered by the management responsibilities resulting from the platform operations. Local artisans are trained to ensure the adequate maintenance of the machinery and the technical sustainability of the MFP. The female cooperative is responsible for mobilizing 8% of the initial equipment costs of $11,000 for the basic model including the engine, mill, deshusker and battery charger. All operation and maintenance costs are also responsibility of the women cooperative upon start-up, while the rest of the amount is financed by the MFP project through partners like the UNDP.

The three of us Junior Fellows were never really supposed to attend the workshop and it was a last minute decision to include us all, but we were kindly asked to keep a low profile. So the circumstances made for a very strange week. Presentation after presentation, my head kept getting filled with more and more questions that I could not ask openly. For instance, I really wanted people’s opinion on the Burkina Faso initiative to promote the privately owned and managed MFPs instead of the female cooperative management strategy adopted in Mali. Sure the affordable energy services remain to liberate time for women to improve the livelihoods of their families, and these benefits should not be undermined, but what happened to the important aspect of empowering these women through the alphabetization program and management training? It seems like this new wave of the project loses a significant part of the added value of the program that should not be neglected.

Approximately 535 platforms have been installed over the past five years. The audacious plan for the Mali MFP Project is to install 1500 more platforms over the next three years in an attempt to contribute to the achievement of the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs) for 2015. The MFP project actually tackles three of the eight MDGs more directly by promoting gender equality, achieving universal primary education as well as reducing hunger and poverty.

I did learn a lot throughout the week as the countries were focusing on the strengths and weaknesses of the program, their lessons learned and the urgent actions to be taken. By sitting through some long discussions I was able to grasp the important challenges that will be faced in the second phase of the program, enough that I could identify areas to which I can contribute and shape my internship accordingly. In particular, I discovered the roles and dynamics between different levels of management of the program, which will certainly come in handy given the importance of hierarchy in the Malian workplace. I also witnessed the interesting dynamics of our work groups, the difficulty of facilitators to control the workshops, and the interesting habit of giving a never ending introduction before a question, critic or comment!

We finally left Bamako and were driven by one of the many chauffeurs of the MFP Mali project in a good old SUV to Sévaré, where I am supposed to settle for a while. It felt so good to leave the movement, craze and alarming poverty of the sidewalks of the capital. I have always been comforted by the small town atmosphere and the stronger community feeling that gives hope to even the poorest of the poor. Somehow people’s shells are not as thick in less populated areas, and villagers are less inclined to turn a blind eye to their neighbor in need… Not to say that the reassuring community feeling was not observed in Bamako. This is Africa after all and the strong sense of solidarity is one of the riches that no one has yet succeeded to steal from its citizens. This preference of mine rather found its roots in Canada, where I have never seen someone sleep on the streets of my tiny rural hometown but where I saw countless homeless people make a home of the busy Toronto sidewalks. Perhaps things will be different from Bamako (or Toronto) in Sévaré. But I am well aware that when exploring a country that stands in the bottom five ranks of the Human Development Index, it is unreasonable for me to even hope for small towns without a single soul holding on for dear life on the side of the street. I knew I would find out soon enough when the sun came up.

Notre séjour dans "la brousse"

So I have a lot of catching up to do… First, I need to share our 3 day escape to Sido. Three of the five Junior Fellows who ended up in Bamako were scheduled to work on the Mali Multifunctional Platform (MFP) Project. Rest assured, more details on this amazing project will surely come in my next entry. Well, it turns out we made it into the country exactly a week before the sub-regional workshop held in Bamako. Now, what I had in mind for such a sub-regional activity was nothing huge. This is why I was rather surprised to get here and find out that my project and responsibilities for the summer had not been discussed in much detail due to lack of time... because of the crazy planning for this event!

I will attempt to make an analogy that will perhaps illuminate a few of you. Imagine an intern starting a position at the EWB national office one week before the yearly national conference. Everyone in the National Management Team, without exception, is running around like a chicken with no head trying to get organized. If you’re thinking that this isn’t a problem, and that all you need to do is send the poor intern to spend some time with chapter members in a university close by, think again. Clearly, chapter members across the country are busy putting together presentations that the Director of Chapter Development (or whatever Chad was) is demanding for end-of-week…

So it turns out this sub-region that the workshop was targeting is actually all of the West African countries participating in the MFP project. In other words, try to picture three of us in a similar pickle as this poor EWB intern filled with good intentions. Believe it or not, this is how we turned a few days of downtime into an amazing learning opportunity. Please let me introduce Mike, a cool chap from PEI and long term overseas volunteer based in Sévaré where I am also supposed to be based, at this point, for the summer. Jean-Luc, Véro and Mike came up with this fantastic plan of splitting the group into two teams. Each team is to make a surprise visit to a random rural community and to spend 3 days with the locals to learn about their way of life. The idea was clearly to get out of Bamako and live the real Malian experience while we had a chance. You may care to note that three quarters of the Malian population is located in rural areas, hence why the city life cannot itself fulfill our desire to understand the true Mali. Mike, who has been working on the MFP project since February and who will be doing so long after my return to Canada, suggested two random villages equipped with a platform.

I am still under the charm of the hospitality of the villagers of Sido. We were welcomed and treated like family, though they had previously never heard of EWB before. We explained to the mayor and dugutigi (chief of the village) who we are, our plans for the summer, and expressed our desire to spend some time in their lovely community alongside villagers to participate and learn. We explained that it would be extremely helpful for us to feel and understand the reality of the people we are truly trying to help through our work here in Mali and back home. They were absolutely enchanted and impressed at our preference to stay with locals overnight rather than to settle between the tall walls of the Mairie.

Within five minutes of hopping off the bus, I was given my Malian name: for the next three months, you can call me Awa Doumbia. It turns out that my name sounds very much like the word “yes” in Bambara, which is “owo”. And this word clearly comes up a lot, so I end up looking around to see if anyone is trying to get my attention every time that somebody agrees with another. If you’re thinking: “Come on, Cat, the world doesn’t revolve around you, nobody must know your name by now, anyways…”, well, I have news for you! People around here remember our names oh-so-quickly. They find it so entertaining that I have a Malian name, and kids and adults yell my name when I walk around the neighbourhood. It’s funny how the colour of your skin can turn you into a star overnight… The fact that I misunderstand the word “owo” 50 times a day as a call for my attention actually reminds me of math lectures in high school. I would hear the digit 4 in French, “quatre”, and always jump up on my seat thinking the teacher was about to ask me to shut up in the back row… You know. Quatre… Catherine…

Well, moving on. It took me a few hours to realize that the great majority of the residents of this community are Doumbia’s. It is apparently a custom here to rename foreigners, perhaps to make everyone’s life (but ours) simpler. Here is how it makes things a bit complicated for us newcomers. There is a very interesting phenomenon in Mali called “cousinage”, and my best attempt at a translation will be “the cousin thing”. Every last name comes from a specific ethnicity and hence comes with a great deal of history. Certain family names are therefore slaves of another family, and so on. This is all a big joke, and though it may have come from a truthful base, no one will take out a whip and claim another to be his slave. They simply kid around and tease each other according to the status of their last names, saying things like: “I saw your wife cooking dog”, or “I saw you eating beans” and a lot of other funny quotes I don’t quite understand yet…

Actually, in Sévaré where I am now based, they very much dislike Doumbias, because they are metal workers and they were animists. I am absolutely terrible at handling this teasing and though I could easily come up with random insults, they would likely be irrelevant. So for a while I just told everyone that they were hurting my feelings. I could tell that I was kind of ruining the game, but I didn’t want to blurt out something hurtful in return! But when I went to get my visa renewed, I met a kind lady who told me why all these people seemed to have a beef with my folks, and more importantly how to respond. Apparently the majority of the population around here is Peul, and these people are shepherds. All I have to do is call them thieves because they stole my livestock, and that they cook their meal over dried animal doo-doo. Ha! Now that I think of it, respect to them, for without them would have no walls…

During this stay in the village, I got to experience a lot of interesting “firsts”. I saw my very first multifunctional platform. You need to understand that I had been reading up on them for a while, finding out about the wonderful effects that it can have in people’s lives, and finally, I was standing next to one, wide-eyed. I also got to eat tô, which is a typical Malian meal of interesting texture that most households consume daily, and it is served with some kind of sauce. There are different varieties of sauce, including the Baobab tree leaves. Yummy… I will have to explain better when I can include a picture. For now, I have one word: gooey. Tô is supposed to be really difficult to cook, but my neighbour insists that I hang out with his wife to learn so that I can make some for friends and family in Canada. I got to mill grains manually for the first time. It didn’t last too long. The women would simply steal the tool away from me and laugh. Now I’m determined to purchase the necessary tools and prove myself that I can do it too. Sleep is overrated, anyways. On a more serious note, countless hours go into food preparation. It is a full time job. There is no way that I could manage a day job and come back home to cook dinner in the traditional way over a charcoal stove. Besides that, it was also my first time seeing walls made of cow poop and straw roofs, as well as using the hole as a toilet… Last but not least, I enjoyed my very first shivers in Mali early in the morning as I was having my first bucket shower of the summer!

I learned lots of the local language with kids, pointing at things and getting translations. They took out a cherished picture book that some other American toubab must have left them, and we looked through the beautiful images together looking for new words that they could teach me. At one point the ladies started pointing at my hair and their facial expressions weren’t too tactful in telling me that something had to be done. I couldn’t agree more, so I let one of my hosts have her way with my hair. She was braiding away as she was breastfeeding her child. Now that’s what I call multitasking! It took her about two hours to finish my cornrows. That’s right, cornrows! Those are the tight braids that stick to the scalp that have never looked good and never will look good on a white person. We were only halfway through the braids when the mayor called us in for a meeting. Way to make a good impression with my ghetto half braided hair straight out of a rap video… And this is the story of how I adopted the permanent head scarf.

The meeting with the mayor was an eye-opening experience. He had his entire council gathered for this meeting and we discussed about Engineers Without Borders, our individual projects and NGOs, and our goals for this surprise visit. In return they drew us a fair portrait of the situation of the community. They were so well aware of their strengths, needs and challenges that it made us all question for a moment how in the world we can come to this country and think that we have something to offer, especially knowing that we are far from being the kind of NGO that will dump a lump sum of money for a project and pack up.

The mayor spoke so eloquently about the importance of international cooperation and outlined the direct and indirect benefits on their community that we were encouraged nonetheless. They kindly asked us to write up a report summarizing our observations through this experience so they could capitalize on our fresh outlook. Véro pointed out that there were many more things for us to see to get a better grasp of their reality. They willingly agreed to guide us through their health clinic and school, where we had in depth conversations with staff and teachers.

Both of these stops offered shocking sights for my western eyes. Yet they walked us through with great pride, conscious of their advantage over the dozens of surrounding villages deprived of the proximity of such services. The health clinic was composed of five rooms, three of which were reserved for maternity care: the pre-natal room, the maternity room, and the post-birth room filled with beds and accompanying pink mosquito nets. My heart skipped a beat when my eyes met the baby bath tub filled with muddy water in the maternity room.

Another room was the “Magasin” with the refrigerator for vaccinations. It didn’t occur to me at the time because I was in a state of pure absorption rather than critical thinking, but this town is not electrified, so this refrigerator may actually be powered by batteries that the multi-functional platform charges every night. The last room was the pharmacy, with almost bare shelves from ground to ceiling. I had a peek at a jar that was at eye-level, and read the label to find out about some medication for venomous snake bites, which are apparently fairly common… Fantastic! So it seems as though the main activity in this clinic is maternity care. The other rooms of the clinic are filled with charts and old “Symptoms/Diagnosis/Medication” posters with the help of which the rest of the sores and pains must be identified and rectified. How dare do we complain endlessly about health care and refuse to step up when it’s time for our country to support Official Development Aid?

The school visit was another interesting experience. This was mid-afternoon on a Thursday and two teachers were hanging out in the middle of the school yard computing averages for end-of-year. This was exam period and only the grade six students had to write an examination that day, so most children were in the field helping to prepare for the shortly expected rainfalls. The teachers answered our questions and amongst other things discussed the difficulty to find and hire teachers, as well as their obligation to resort to an average of 110 students per teacher because of the sparse government resources invested in education. Their meagre budget goes towards teacher salaries and school materials, which are either inadequate or insufficient. The teachers attested that male attendance throughout the year is noticeably higher than female attendance because the girls’ help is required for the women of the household to accomplish their daily tasks.

I tried to take a quick peek at a classroom as the others were moving on quickly to another building, but I ended up staying a while to do a visualisation exercise. Or maybe it only felt like a long time. I stared at the school benches. Think cafeteria style, made of old wood, somewhat similar to the black and white school pictures of the olden days in Canada. I could not picture with all my might 110 kids packed in this room no bigger than our regular-sized classrooms for 30 students back home. Even the most patient teacher in North America with the best intentions would likely be tempted to crush fragile children fingers with a ruler in an attempt to discipline this kind of crowd I could imagine at that moment…

The last day of our visit, there was a village assembly organized to welcome a member of parliament for his passage through their community. Before the official beginning of the celebration, an old woman insisted that Noémie and I dance with her in the middle of the assembled crowd. We looked liked absolute fools but joined in with huge smiles that must have earned us forgiveness for sabotaging such an otherwise pretty sight. The villagers were amused and cheered us on, meanwhile I only had one wish to turn into an ostrich and dig my head into the sand. But then I started dangerously enjoying myself. You have all heard of the saying: “Dance like nobody is watching”. Indeed it makes the world of a difference. I have always loved to dance and this wasn’t about to change because a hundred people were staring (okay, and laughing)… Finally the three of us sat down for the beginning of a traditional dance with beautiful costumes and antelope masks. I sat in awe as two very fit local men danced ever dynamically to the sound of the djembes and traditional string instruments, watching the rivers of sweat stream down their beautiful dark skin. Jean-Luc explained to us that he had visited the museum in Bamako and seen such costumes exposed, but had thought to himself that he would unfornately never get the chance to see these worn. But all of a sudden these costumes were alive and performing an extraordinary dance in front of our eyes. I had butterflies in my stomach the entire time, and in fact they never left until I hopped on the boiling hot bus.

During the ride back to Bamako, I was determined to keep an eye out for the national brewery, which makes Castel, a decent blond beer. I am still a Molson girl after my 2 co-op terms at the Toronto brewery, and was curious to catch a glance of an African version. I missed it on the way to the village because it is so difficult to stay awake in this draining heat, and it was unfortunately no different upon our return. Another mid-day snoozefest to recharge my batteries!

Quick edit

Greetings everyone! Sooo I realized I'm uber excited and want to share absolutely everything, but I think I'm getting carried away and am writing too much. I'll try to be more concise in the future :) I'll post soon regarding our 2 day surprise visit to a random rural community a few hours away from Bamako and will also tell you a bit about the one-week workshop on multi-functionnal platforms that we just attended. I'm leaving for Sévaré tomorrow or the following day. I can't wait to live the real Mali experience... We've been living it up here in the capital because of certain circumstances, and that's definitely not what I came here for. I need to refocus, and hopefully the 10-hour bus ride will help me do that :) Sorry about the lack of visuals... I forgot my camera this week, but I have a few good pictures to share. Cheers!

I saw this in a conference room in Bamako and thought it was really interesting. There are times when I think it's kind of tacky as well, it depends on my mood. I'll let you be the judge. It says something like: "You cannot paint white on white or black on black. Each one needs the other to reveal itself". And check out how two artists, with seemingly different backgrounds, collaborated to put it together...

Welcome to Bamako

We spent our first night at Jean-Luc and Vero’s apartment. They are a cute EWB couple and they have been in Bamako since February. They are called Long Term Overseas Volunteers (LTOV) in EWB jargon, simply because they are part of the crew that stays overseas for a year rather than four months. Jean-Luc and Vero are both working on different development projects. They are pretty well integrated already and know of good places to eat, to hang out and have fun. They know the markets, the main roads and neighborhoods. And best of all, they totally understand how we feel because they went through what we are going through just a few months ago.

When we arrived at their place, we met with Tom and Eli, two LTOVs who were just finishing up their placements. They made a quick stop in Bamako to pick up some essential eletronics we brought for them from Canada, before heading off on a crazy biking/rafting adventure down the Niger River. Don’t quote me on this, but you should be able to follow their adventures through http://www.nigercurrents.ca/. The website wasn’t yet set up when they told me this, but it was the plan at the time. Brave, brave young men, I tell you.

Vero had made us some fonio, a type of grain mixed with peanuts, with some kind of meat sauce. She said fonio is a relatively new, healthier alternative to traditional grains used in the area. We enjoyed the meal eating with our fingers the Malian way, and it was quite tasty. As I was eating I felt something land on my arm. I looked over quickly, prepared for the worst, but found the cutest baby lizard, about 3 cm long, staring at me. It is still a mystery to me how this little guy fell from the sky. I am pretty sure that lizards don’t jump, but I could be mistaken.

We tried setting up some mosquito nets and had little success, so we slathered on some 30% DEET repellent and hoped for the best. We felt like such rebels after Dr. Wise’s warnings in Toronto… It was not long before we each found a spot on the floor of the main room and went to sleep. The heat was incredible, and most of us ended up sleeping in nothing but our underwear.

We woke up with humid, sticky skin and took turns to have a shower. Jean-Luc and Vero have a very nice place with a full luxurious washroom: a toilet and a shower, nothing too rustic except for more friendly lizards. We then did our laundry by hand on the scrubbing board, after applying some SPF 55 sunscreen. I watched the neighbors and try to take hints on proper laundry washing techniques. The women here do it so gracefully. Some of them are incredibly lean and flexible, so they keep their legs straight and bend at the waist, with their rear end in the air, while they scrub the clothes on the board for long periods of time. I could definitely feel the stretch as I attempted to copy their smooth moves. Little did I know, I was overdoing it and a simple task like walking turned out to be terribly painful the next day…

In the afternoon we had our first market experience. The Bamako Medine market is absolutely huge, according to Jean-Luc and Vero. I couldn’t say because they are convinced I didn’t see a tenth of it during the hour when they let us loose. It would have felt a bit awkward for 10 foreigners to scan the market together, so the LTOVs had planned a kind of treasure hunt to get us exploring. You can find everything from fruits and vegetables to a mattress in the market. The locals try to get our attention to their booths by calling out “Toubabou! Toubabou!”, which means “white person”. Resident expert Levi, who had spent a year in Mali, told us during training week that he would reply with a simple “Farafi”, which means “black person”. He said that it would generally amuse them, and though I find it absolutely hilarious as well, I am not quite comfortable using it yet.

I bought some local fabric with the intention of getting a traditional suit made. People here give a lot of importance to clothing, and they get their outfits custom made in beautiful, brightly colored fabrics that don’t necessarily match but make for such a lively scene. There are bright colors everywhere, and walking around the market I couldn’t help but think about how conservative we are at home with our boring choice of colors. Of course, this is coming from the girl who only wears strictly brown, green or neutral colours. But my point was that I like the market, I like it a lot…

The Never-ending Journey to Mali

Whoever came up with the expression “It’s a small world” is clearly not a Canadian who has traveled to Africa. It was quite the lengthy journey. Picture five of us Junior Fellows sleeping on the floor in the middle of a Charles de Gaule terminal in Paris. If you can’t do that, check out the actual picture. We must have miscalculated our nap, because we woke up 45 minutes before our flight to Bamako, the capital of Mali. At this point we still needed to find a banking machine to take out some euros for certain expenses in Mali, for instance extending our visas that are currently valid for 30 days only. Yikes! To access this machine we had to run around the airport, go through customs, find the machine, take out the money, go through customs again, go through security, and finally meet back up with Emily who was getting antsy. We must have been lucky despite all the line-ups, because we made it back on time for our flight.

“What would you like to drink? We have champagne, red or white wine…”, asked the steward. Hello, guilt trip! It is somewhat ironic that I was on my way to a developing country with the best intentions, and that I was still offered my peche mignon. I allowed myself one last taste of alcohol before four months of “drought”. “Could I please try some of your red wine?” Yum.

I slept for most of the way, but woke up in time to see the sun setting. Alex, staring in awe outside his window, called me over so that I could have a look at the scenery below. There were sand dunes as far as the eye could see, until the red sun met with the horizon far away. I couldn’t help but smile at the thought of these vast territories that have not yet been abused by entire cities of inconsiderate humans. The desert seems like such a peaceful place. I hope that I will have the opportunity to meet some Touaregs to find out more about this mystical place. From what I understand, Touaregs are the people who basically own the desert. They live a nomadic lifestyle and travel the desert on their camels. I could go on about things I have heard, but I will wait a while longer before I make the mistake of listing stereotypes that may not represent their reality whatsoever.

We finally arrived in Bamako, about 24 hours after leaving Toronto. My heart was pounding faster than that time George pulled a front flip. I stepped outside the plane and got a first taste of this 30-something degree heat I had been expecting. I took a deep breath and let myself be completely absorbed by this new atmosphere. There were so many people at the bottom of the steps, it crossed my mind that maybe our flight was filled with important people that I simply did not recognize. But I guess I will never know.

I went through customs with a shy smile as I tried out my first salutation in Bambara, the main dialect in Mali. I handed the man my passport with my right hand. I have been warned during pre-departure training that eating or passing anything with the right hand is extremely disrespectful. The left hand is reserved almost exclusively for going to the washroom. Toilet paper is overrated, inaccessible, or unnecessary perhaps? I will have to get back to you on that. But apparently all you need is what looks like a teapot of water and a good scrub with the left hand. Anywho, the man returned my passport with a smile and complimented me on my name. It was somewhat of an awkward interaction. It seems like he thought I knew more Bambara than I actually do. I smiled and said “N’Se”, which is, from what I understood during training, the equivalent of a smile and nod in Canada. I have the feeling I will be using this method a fair bit…

Surprise, surprise, all of our luggage made it to Bamako! There are tons of men fighting to carry our bags, and I cannot tell the difference between who works at the airport and who doesn’t. There are no uniforms to help us make the distinction. They were so insisting, and so was I. I can carry all my luggage on my own. I spent a few days just figuring out how to fit everything in my one backpack for this specific reason. With all this help I could have brought a few suitcases, after all! The hard part followed. They asked for a tip, and started telling us that they need to feed their family, and so on. They are obviously used to manipulating tourists, and quite frankly, the airport is the best place to do that, I’ll give them that much. The problem was that I had absolutely no idea of the money’s worth and did not know how much to give. Noemie and I looked at each other, completely puzzled. Then we heard Jean-Luc calling our names from the other side of the fence. Alex, the little messenger bird, brought a few Francs CFA that Jean-Luc gave him and paid our new friends to help us move on.

Pre-departure Training… Or How to Become a Change Agent in One Week

The Engineers Without Borders (EWB) National Office team had planned an intense training session prior to the departure of the Junior Fellows. I met all of the Junior Fellows last January at the EWB’s National Conference in Ottawa, but only met up with half of them for my training. The other half had had their training session the week before and they were all gone for Ghana by the time we arrived to the training house in Toronto.

Training was absolutely wonderful, challenging and exhausting. We’re talking six long yet amazing days of workshops from about nine to nine. Our training session was a bit more diversified, in the sense that we were not all headed in the same direction. Eight francophones were heading to French West Africa, more specifically Burkina Faso and Mali. The other 12 were headed to Zambia and the Philippines.

For the first time in EWB history, the training sessions were held in French for the francophone group, thanks to a few incredible and daring trainers facilitating the workshops in their second language. No need to say we were all delighted, and this allowed for much more participation from the Quebecois. What a treat!

It’s rather difficult to summarize all our activities since our busy schedule allowed us to cover so much ground. Some highlights include presentations about our NGOs to our peers, a facilitation session with a nutrition theme, a live case study, a culture choc session, a session on impact, integration 101, individual one-on-one check-ins and check-outs with National Office staff, an Ethiopian dinner, lunch with country representatives, a photography lesson, the legendary late night Q&A session with the EWB CEOs, and the list goes on…

On the very last day of training there was a graduation session, where we were asked to share with the group our favorite moment of the week and one lesson learned. One of the many lessons I learned is that there are no good answers to international development problems, but that the best way to stay on track is to ask the right questions. My favorite moment was a combination of all the energizers we did throughout the week. We played games, sang songs and danced, were lead through a few yoga poses, made a human pyramid but one energizer out of them all was hard to beat. My heart was left pounding for the next few minutes, ridiculing the many doses of caffeine I took throughout the week that never really did the job anyways...

First I need to introduce George, who is co-CEO and co-founder of EWB. I also need to introduce Levi, who was an all-star trainer for the francophone group. So our young, small and daring Levi decides to show off his back flip. Impressive, I imagine, but I missed it because of a poorly timed bathroom break. I made it back on time to hear not-so-young, not-so-small but oh-so-daring George tell us about the front flips he used to do. I got a good laugh out of this, but before I knew it George had pushed some desks aside and was running for it. I thought he would stop, laugh, and tell us “I got you good, eh?”, but instead we all watched him jump in the air into a ball – and land on his bum! I am apparently still amused two weeks later.

Somehow I think that training week allowed me to relive Katimavik again over the course of a few days. And it was more than the numerous workshops and energizers that did it. Training sessions were held at the University of Toronto daily, but the small house where we stayed at night was a Katima-house at its best: four bunk beds crammed in each room, house rules, a shower schedule, stuff everywhere, no privacy… I loved every minute of it, probably because I had survived nine months of this and I knew it would take more than a few days to drive me crazy!

Junior Fellow, eh?

The program I am participating in is called the Junior Fellowship Program, which is where the funny title comes from. There is a total of about 40 short term overseas volunteers from various universities across Canada going to Africa or the Philippines this summer for four months. The participants spend this journey working in a local non-government organization to get an idea of the challenges involved with being a development agent.

Of course, participants are encouraged to live a humble lifestyle during their stay and plunge into the local culture to understand the realities of the developing world. Besides doing our best to have impact overseas despite our short stay, our most important role is to share our experience with chapter members, friends and family back home. Upon our return, our role is to continue sharing and educating the public on the complexities of international development. Together, all of us Junior Fellows will reach out to thousands of people and get them thinking about small actions we can take collectively in Canada to make a big difference in the lives of our cousins abroad.

Intro...

English will follow... Man, this feels like a government document! Sorry about that ;) For you curious folks, the following message in French is just an apology, or rather a special request for my francophone friends and family to be patient and understanding since they will have to read my stories in English :)


Bonjour et bienvenue à tous et chacun,

Si vous ne le saviez toujours pas, je passerai tout mon été 2006 en Afrique de l'Ouest sur un placement bénévole à participer à des projets de développement international avec Ingénieurs Sans Frontières (ISF). Je vous invite personnellement à lire mes observations, mes péripéties, mes défis, mes joies et mes peines au Mali lors de cette merveilleuse aventure.

Le blog que je vous propose est écrit entièrement en anglais et, mes chers amis francophones, je m'en excuse. Vous comprenez, j'en dois énormément aux membres de ma section d'ISF à l'Université de Waterloo, qui est, j'en ai bien peur, presque exclusivement anglophone. Sans leur support lors de mes préparatifs et de la levée de fonds, je n'aurais jamais eu la chance de participer à un tel programme. Chaque minute devant un écran d'ordinateur se fait rare et est bien sûr compete ici au Mali. La traduction de mes textes ne me permettrait jamais d'en partager autant avec vous, alors, je me fie sur vos talents en anglais et sur votre patience quand vous souhaiterez avoir de mes nouvelles pour vous aventurer malgré tout dans mon blog. Il est remarquable tout de même que tous mes amis et toute ma famille avec qui je souhaite partager ce blog a une bonne maîtrise de l'anglais. Ca me rend tellement fière... Vous savez comme moi que demander le contraire à mes amis anglophones ne serait malheureusement pas possible, mais ainsi va la vie!

Enfin, merci mille fois de votre compréhension, et soyez sans craintes, nous trouverons un moment à mon retour pour aller prendre un verre et discuter les parties qui vous seront moins claires. A défaut d'un anglais raboteux, je vous suggère au moins de faire semblant d'en avoir manqué des bouts, quitte à nous donner un prétexte de partager les histoires de notre été dans un pub quelconque ou dans un bon resto de la belle province. Je vous promet d'afficher des nouvelles aussi souvent que je pourrai. Je vous encourage évidemment à afficher vos commentaires, ou bien à m'envoyer de longs e-mails si vous ressentez le besoin de vous videz le cœur à n'importe quel moment.

Finalement, je vous souhaite à tous un bel été, et je vous assure que j'ai déjà bien hâte de vous voir à mon retour en septembre!

Gros bisous,

CaT



Ladies and gents, welcome!

It is a true pleasure for me to share with you my experience in French West Africa this summer. For those of you who did not know yet, I am spending the entire summer in Mali on an internship with Engineers Without Borders working on an international development project.

I only ask that you accept to be patient and understanding with me, as my English may slowly disintegrate as the summer progresses and I slowly switch back into what I like to call my "French mode". English is my second language and as a result it is sometimes more difficult to express myself. In other words, don't expect anything poetic or literary, but don't worry, I can usually get my message across!

I promise to post as often as possible to keep you informed. I also want to take this opportunity to encourage you to reply with as many comments as you wish. Of course, don't hesitate to write me long e-mails, it will be a true pleasure to hear from you!

I want to send a special thank you to my Engineers Without Borders chapter at the University of Waterloo for making this possible: your support means the world to me and I couldn’t be here without you!

I wish you a wonderful summer, and I can't wait to see you all in September :) For now, take care and enjoy!

CaT