Sahelian Adventures: A few pictures

Here are a few pictures of my time so far in San, Mali. The connection is a little slow so you only get a small taste :)


The moon above my Hotel in San, Mali




The rain is coming!

Keeping me company while I work

Sahelian Adventures: the Scenic Route

We had a workshop in a community today, the last day of a two day participatory exercise with various project stakeholders. It is a bit of a drive from where we are staying in San, off the tar roads and out into the bush. The workshop went well and it was a really interesting experience although we had to end early because it was threatening to rain. So we all piled into the vehicles and left the project office to head back to San.

Our driver, Charles, likes to drive fast and is a little competitive, preferring to be the first to arrive places (in my head I hear Rowan Atkinson saying “Is a Race!”). So this afternoon on our way back to San he decided to take a short cut. Instead of following the other vehicles that had left before us he turned off the road onto a little track. It was not a main road, but it looked fairly well used and was clearly visible in the red soil. After a little while the track became a trail and at one point we lost it entirely. We were driving through the middle of open bush with no sense of where the road was. I had the sense that we were in a scene from a Discovery Channel documentary, on safari or maybe trying to find some mysterious and elusive creature in some unexplored territory. At one point we pulled up to a house in the middle of nowhere, much to the surprise of the family who lives there, and had to ask for directions. We found the track again and it meandered here and there past farmer’s fields and baobab trees, our Land Rover barreling along sending goats, piglets and chickens scrambling in all directions. At one point it took us right through the center of a little settlement and we had to drive around a well. Some women who were pounding millet into flour had to move their huge mortars to make way as we drove past. We kept following this track, but it soon narrowed back into a trail and then as it wound its way through thicker bushes and trees it became a bit of a river so that the Land Rover was fish tailing and hydroplaning through the bush, splashing water up over the hood. We were laughing and joking that we were taking the ‘scenic route,’ but all the while I was so sure that we were going to get stuck in the mud. The Land Rover had turned into a kind of boat and we had so much mud stuck to our tires that even when we were not driving through the water it felt like we were slipping and sliding in all directions. We did get a little stuck at one point but Charles was able to get us out without resorting to us pushing the vehicle with us up to our knees in red mud. Finally, just as it started raining we found our way back to the road and made our way back to San. Oddly enough, even after our off-roading scenic detour we were among the first vehicles back.

 I guess Charles won the race afterall.

Sahelian Adventures: A picture of San, Mali

Today I was driving in a Land Rover today over packed red roads through a rural area of Mali, West Africa. The sun streaming through the plumes of red dust being tossed up by the Helix truck in front of us gave the flat, dry landscape an almost dreamy quality as if I was looking at a sepia coloured photograph. The countryside is dotted by huge baobab trees, freshly plowed fields and scrawny bushes and donkeys, cows, horses, pigs, goats and sheep that give the impression that someone has randomly strewn about pieces from a child’s farm playset. The rainy season only has just started but there are already a few places where we had to drive through water and in a few weeks these places will be largely inaccessible.

Now I am sitting outside under a porch listening as the wind picks up and brushes through the leaves of the mango and moringa trees in the courtyard. You can tell the rain is coming because the wind picks up suddenly and there is a lot of dust in the air and the birds start to get very noisy right before the rain starts to fall. For now it is not raining very hard; for all the thunder and wind only a very few drops actually fall to the ground. It may be raining harder somewhere else, but for this area, so desperate for rain, the ground will have wait for a good drink for another few days. I have been told the rains are a bit late this year, and while no one expects another food crisis and most indications are that this year should be a good harvest, there is a still some anxiety in the voices of the people as they look at the mostly cloudless skies and then back at their still bare fields.

I wanted to have a few pictures to add to this post but the connection is not fast enough today. Hopefully sometime soon.

A la prochaine!

Saharan Adventures

I'm back! I have this horrible habit of just dropping my blog as soon as I set foot back on Canadian soil. I have this perception, true or not, that my life in Canada is not very interesting, especially compared to dinner with Hippos on Lake Tanganyika. Some interesting things have happened since my last post. I came home, got aclimatized to Canadian winter, watched lots of Hockey (the NHL lockout was just waiting for me to come home!), tried to work on my thesis (fail) and then got a new job. Now I am working for World Vision Canada as the Regional Program Officer for West Africa. It is a short term position while the real RPO is working for a different WV office for a year. But it is a job, and I really really like it, so I'll take it, even if it does mean more uncertainty and being unable to plan for more than a few months at a time. More on that another time maybe.

Which leads me to this post. As part of my job I help to support Canadian funded programs in Mali, Mauritania, Chad and Niger. Today I am leaving for a three week trip to Mali and then to Mauritania. I'm excited because this is an area of Africa I've never been. I have images of rolling sand dunes, nomads on camels and sweltering heat. We'll see how these images match up with the real thing.

These are very different contexts than those I've worked in before. Both countries are Muslim republics, both countries stradle the Sahel and the Sahara and struggle with producing enough food. the coup in Mali last year and the following conflict and security issues have added to challenges people face. I have always been facinated by Mali and Timbuktu has been on my list of places to see for a long time. Timbuktu was a center of trade and learning dating back to the 13th century. It holds a certain mystery and allure, with its secrets and insights into a different time and culture. Unfortunately I won't be able to see Timbuktu because of the precarious security situation in that area. It is sad because the rebels have destroyed large parts of the ancient city that has stood as an icon on the continent for hundreds of years. I will be staying in the South of Mali, well away from where the French army is working with Malian forces to weed out the islamist rebels who have been causing so much trouble. While there is always risk when you travel overseas I've been assured that the security situation in the areas where I'll be going is safe and calm. So those of you who tend to worry, I will be safe but maybe you shouldn't read the news about Mali for the next couple of weeks just for your own peace of mind!

After Mali I get to fly from Bamako to Nouakchott, Mauritania. I'm really looking forward to this as well. Mauritania is not exactly your typical beach destination, even if it is on the Atlantic Ocean. It does have plenty of sand though....

These are not pleasure trips or vacations. I'll be working a lot and it will be exhausting and probably uncomfortable. I know that I'm going to witness levels of poverty that I haven't seen before. I'm going to struggle with our work, the difficulties people face and trying to figure out how we can help. I'll also have to accept (again) that we can't do everything for everyone. Bathrooms and showers are going to be few and far between and I am leaving my ergonomic pillow behind.  Regardless, I'm looking forward to driving through the Sahara, sleeping under the stars in rural Mauritania, eating goat and couscous with my hands, seeing the laughing, smiling faces of the children World Vision works with and to meet the staff who work hard for the wellbeing of children, families and their communities where we work.
Allons-y!