M, my older daughter, is serving with the Peace Corps in Mali. After several weeks away, she once again has Internet access. She's been without internet access for a while, so she has a lot to say:

Since the fourth of July I have been working with my homologue [host] on the mobile bank. By Malian standards we've been working pretty intense hours, i.e., a couple hours a day a couple days a week. I asked for all of the client books (121 for N'tjilla, 99 for Bougoulaba, 49 for Sibirila) to be brought in, and all of the bigger bugs (accounts, loans, etc.) so I could compare them all against each other. I like dad's phrase of "forensic accounting." That seems to accurately summarize what I've been up to. N'tjilla's books were 1/3 full of errors since Katy left, Bougoulaba's were 1/2 full of errors, and Sibirila had less than 5% mistakes. N'tjilla has the most people working in village on the bank, but the attendance at meetings is erratic. I think Bougoulaba needs a review of the systems and also at least one other person working there. I'm still hoping to have a meeting in the next couple weeks with the regional coordinator, M, and an older volunteer (in Mali years) who helped set up the bank originally, D.

I was going to go to the internet cafe to write to you guys, because there is only one computer here at the house, and it is D2’s private laptop, which she lets other people use, but which I didn't want to fight over if other people were going to be here, but D2 and T headed out to market, so I'm here by myself. The Bougani informal transit house is coming together nicely. Little by little, or dooni dooni, of course, but that is the way here. The bunk beds have sheets and mosquito nets. The negen wall has been raised so that you can hear less noise from the neighbor's negen on the other side of the wall, and the little work area/office has been rigged up with a table, pillows on the floor and fabric on the ceiling for a "Morrocan" theme. There's also an oven in the kitchen and a bookshelf with a decent selection of books and magazines brought in and exchanged by other volunteers. I just picked up Monique and the Mango Rains, which I've been looking for a copy of for months, by a volunteer here in Mali in the 80s. I also got a half dozen books from T when I went to visit her on Thursday in D'jambugu.

The village behind T’s on the road going away from the main road is Toefula (sp?), there is now a family of four Frenchmen living back there. The husband is French, the wife is Scottish, and the kids are very international, in that they've been raised in a combination of those two countries, but also Saudi Arabia and Morocco, at the very least, possibly other places as well. The husband is C and the wife is M2. They are working on an eco-friendly gold mining enterprise. Apparently instead of dumping toxic chemicals into the rivers, their method for extracting the gold from other rocks and minerals using centrifugal force gets out 92% of the gold instead of 96% or something like that. They are having trouble finding investors, so they are here trying to prove that it actually works, and that it really is much better for the environment. Anyway, they have had T over for lunch a couple of times, or have given her rides if they run into her on their little shared back road (they have a truck, several motorcycles), and they suggested that if she wanted to invite some other volunteers over, they'd have a little party for us. So on Thursday I biked over to T's house in the morning (14 km), took a bucket bath, and then C and his son picked us up, and we got D2 at the bus stop on the side of the main road and headed back to their house. Three of their Malian staff and his wife were waiting for us, with beer and chicken and some root vegetable that wasn't potatoes. The lunch was delicious, and the beer was an unexpected pleasant surprise, since that is impossible to get in village, and actually not readily available in Niena either. One of their Malian staff figured out whose house you could buy it from on the down low. We played cards, a Malian game called 151. The conversation ranged from English to French to Bambara, and although I couldn't follow every conversation 100%, I think I was one of the people present who could follow most of the conversations (the Europeans couldn't follow the Bambara, the Malians couldn't follow the English, and the Americans couldn't follow the French). It was nice hearing pretty French French as opposed to West African French. I've only been to the river once near my own village, and that was during the heat of the day, this was at sunset, and it was very pretty. Also, the water has definitely gotten higher and faster flowing, despite our not having gotten tons of rain, I guess what little we've gotten, or what they've gotten up river has been enough to make a difference.

I like doing the long stretches in village because you can get more work done, and I really don't love travelling within the country on the buses, but it can get depressing. Even when nothing goes wrong per se, it is just a hard life. If you do any gardening or farming, your back hurts. If you are a little too nonchalant with what you eat, you get sick. If it rains, the roads quickly turn into muddy rivers. Everything is just low level stressful, all the time. And sometimes it adds up. And sometimes things actually go wrong, which is of course even worse.

I went out with some of the women from my compound to plant peanuts. You just dig a little hole and put a shelled peanut in it. I was obviously moving slower than the women who knew what they were doing. One of the children wanted to help but none of the women wanted his help, so I let him help me, but instead of putting one peanut in the little holes I dug he'd put in 5 or 8, and then cover them with dirt before I could fish out the extras. Then he'd laugh maniacally for ages. He seemed so happy, I didn't have the heart to be too stern with him.

I also went to watch the Fane (my last name here) women fire their dagas (water jugs and clay stoves). They build a big bonfire around the pottery, and then when it dies down to ashes they pull the pottery out, harder than it went in I guess. Obviously there is no kiln here. I think the sun-drying they do beforehand does a lot of the work of solidifying them too. Afterwards, since I was in the Fane, or blacksmith, section of town, I sat with some other women and watched them weave baskets. Apparently the female equivalent of being a blacksmith in this country is pottery and basket weaving. It is actually pretty cool to watch, and it is also nice to see someone in village doing something to add value to a product and then sell it on the local market, either in village or in Niena, since most people just sell raw goods with no improvement, and thus no ability to charge for their time and labor. The women making the baskets also made more tea than I've ever seen anyone else in village drink, which I think was a status symbol showing that they do in fact have disposable income.

[Question: When will you return to power and the Interet]

I'll probably be coming back in late August for a mural painting thing at a local school. The roads have also gotten noticeably better in the last couple of months as they've finished construction, so instead of 2 hours it takes something more like an hour or an hour and a half to get from Dugukolobugu to either Bougani or Sikasso. Three weeks seemed like a long time to be in village, but I think I'm going to try and make that my average. I'm spending this whole next week in Bamako, so I think I'll be ready to go back when it's done.

[How is numeracy in Mali?]

Some can do the basic addition in their heads, but they use calculators for most things. Most shops or stalls at the market will also have calculators, because if there is more than two numbers, they really don't trust themselves to do it mentally. I guess the average person working in the service industry in America wouldn't be trusted to do it in their head either.