Im outta here...for a few weeks
That's right folks its vacation time. After a year+ here we are going to take some time off of work and see check out some of our neighbors here in West Africa. It won't be your classic relaxing vacation but it should be a lot of fun.
Our main destination is Mali with a few brief stops in Senegal on the way there and back. For those of you who don't know much about Mali you can check out the link below. Its a big country and much of it is desert but I has some amazing history/culture and some cool natural features.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mali
All this week has been something of a blur. Somehow I managed to have tons of work related stuff going on along with the preparations for this trip. Trip planning was a pain because we had to get approval from Peace Corps to travel and get papers signed and get travel documents ready and convert between three different currencies etc. I think at this point we pretty much have all that worked out. The only thing left is to learn French between now and Saturday. Ha!
At the college we had our official launching of the "new" network and Internet connection. We had a ceremony with all these dignitaries and donors. It was poorly planned but somehow turned out pretty well. This was just the official launching but the network and the Internet have been pretty much operational since December-ish. Its amazing that this project was started by the previous PC volunteer at my site and this phase is sort of finishing up just now. If you want to get an idea of how hard it is to get these types of things done here consider this. What took us (PC Volunteers, The College, various donors) 3 years to do could have been done in the states in maybe two or three weeks.
At the bee keepers we finally moved into our renovated building after some work was quickly done by the contractor over this past weekend. We also now have a generator so we can use the computers at the office for a few hours a day. This should help with overall productivity since before may people were working out of their homes at it was very difficult to communicate and keep everyone on the same page. We also started again on the well project that has been hanging over my head for the last year. The well diggers are deepening the well so that hopefully when I get back from this trip we can get the pump installed. We now have a nice new sign by the road to attract more attention and went crazy planting a bunch of trees around the place a few weeks back. Mangoes, Cashews, Mandarin Orange, Lime, Guava, Kaba, Sour and sweet sop, Japanese plum, and passion fruit among others. Were also looking into doing a new beekeeping training program nation wide but its unclear if its going to work/be a good idea.
The mango wine is DELICIOUS! After it sat and fermented for a total of about 4 weeks I siphoned off everything but the bottom goop into bottles. I tasted it at that stage and it was a bit of an ass kicker. Tasted something like grain alcohol with a hint of mango. Well after letting is sit another week in the bottle it is way better and actually tastes like wine. Now I will admit that its been more than a year since I have had real wine so my perspective is probably somewhat altered but I still say its pretty damn good and pretty sweet to make your own booze. We are going to leave most of it to "age" until we get back from Mali and then I will start thinking of what the next batch of wine might be.
For the last 40+ years or something Peace Corps has been sending volunteers all over the world Newsweek magazine. In some cases volunteers have little other source of world news other than shortwave radio broadcasts like the BBC or VOA. Well, due to budget cuts they notified us a few weeks ago that they were canceling the Newsweek subscription for all volunteers. Seriously, I make $200 a month and you can't spare me a magazine so that I might at least stay up to date on current events. I have pretty decent access to the Internet at least a few times a week so I could probably stay reasonably well informed but I will still miss the in depth things and finer points that I get from Newsweek. And I'm one of the lucky ones. There are plenty of other volunteers that live out where they go weeks or months without outside news so their pretty much screwed. Now, I'm acutely aware that I'm here on the dime of the U.S. Government which gets its money from you, the tax payer. I take that responsibly seriously and try to do my job well and I think at the least my being here somehow contributes positively to America's image abroad, however small that contribution may be. The point is I don't think that Peace Corps is a great contributor to national debt and particularly not a few thousand Newsweek subscriptions.
Anyway that's about it for now. Look for some exciting stories of Mali in early September. Later!
Our main destination is Mali with a few brief stops in Senegal on the way there and back. For those of you who don't know much about Mali you can check out the link below. Its a big country and much of it is desert but I has some amazing history/culture and some cool natural features.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mali
All this week has been something of a blur. Somehow I managed to have tons of work related stuff going on along with the preparations for this trip. Trip planning was a pain because we had to get approval from Peace Corps to travel and get papers signed and get travel documents ready and convert between three different currencies etc. I think at this point we pretty much have all that worked out. The only thing left is to learn French between now and Saturday. Ha!
At the college we had our official launching of the "new" network and Internet connection. We had a ceremony with all these dignitaries and donors. It was poorly planned but somehow turned out pretty well. This was just the official launching but the network and the Internet have been pretty much operational since December-ish. Its amazing that this project was started by the previous PC volunteer at my site and this phase is sort of finishing up just now. If you want to get an idea of how hard it is to get these types of things done here consider this. What took us (PC Volunteers, The College, various donors) 3 years to do could have been done in the states in maybe two or three weeks.
At the bee keepers we finally moved into our renovated building after some work was quickly done by the contractor over this past weekend. We also now have a generator so we can use the computers at the office for a few hours a day. This should help with overall productivity since before may people were working out of their homes at it was very difficult to communicate and keep everyone on the same page. We also started again on the well project that has been hanging over my head for the last year. The well diggers are deepening the well so that hopefully when I get back from this trip we can get the pump installed. We now have a nice new sign by the road to attract more attention and went crazy planting a bunch of trees around the place a few weeks back. Mangoes, Cashews, Mandarin Orange, Lime, Guava, Kaba, Sour and sweet sop, Japanese plum, and passion fruit among others. Were also looking into doing a new beekeeping training program nation wide but its unclear if its going to work/be a good idea.
The mango wine is DELICIOUS! After it sat and fermented for a total of about 4 weeks I siphoned off everything but the bottom goop into bottles. I tasted it at that stage and it was a bit of an ass kicker. Tasted something like grain alcohol with a hint of mango. Well after letting is sit another week in the bottle it is way better and actually tastes like wine. Now I will admit that its been more than a year since I have had real wine so my perspective is probably somewhat altered but I still say its pretty damn good and pretty sweet to make your own booze. We are going to leave most of it to "age" until we get back from Mali and then I will start thinking of what the next batch of wine might be.
For the last 40+ years or something Peace Corps has been sending volunteers all over the world Newsweek magazine. In some cases volunteers have little other source of world news other than shortwave radio broadcasts like the BBC or VOA. Well, due to budget cuts they notified us a few weeks ago that they were canceling the Newsweek subscription for all volunteers. Seriously, I make $200 a month and you can't spare me a magazine so that I might at least stay up to date on current events. I have pretty decent access to the Internet at least a few times a week so I could probably stay reasonably well informed but I will still miss the in depth things and finer points that I get from Newsweek. And I'm one of the lucky ones. There are plenty of other volunteers that live out where they go weeks or months without outside news so their pretty much screwed. Now, I'm acutely aware that I'm here on the dime of the U.S. Government which gets its money from you, the tax payer. I take that responsibly seriously and try to do my job well and I think at the least my being here somehow contributes positively to America's image abroad, however small that contribution may be. The point is I don't think that Peace Corps is a great contributor to national debt and particularly not a few thousand Newsweek subscriptions.
Anyway that's about it for now. Look for some exciting stories of Mali in early September. Later!
posted by Andy at
7:05 AM
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