The end of hot season marks the beginning of rainy season and before coming to Kita we got about a foot of rain in Manantali. I hadn't seen real rain in months and it was nice to just stand outside in it and feel cold for once. It was a pretty fantastic storm and ended with standing water in the house due to the holes in the sheet metal roof. I'm curious to see what it's done to my termite ridden thatch roof in my village.
I'm about to start a big project in the village to put a 2m diameter well in a field so the women's association can start a community garden and improve the latrines in all of the concessions in my village. We're going to be putting concrete slabs over the latrine pits to encourage the kids to use them because right now there's no specified area for kids to use the bathroom and they're afraid to use the latrines because they think they might fall in the hole. It's rough trying to change the ways of the town. I did a formation with a Malian who works with Peace Corps using visual methods to teach villages how to improve their sanitation methods. He spoke a lot about keeping your living space clean and the villagers did a lot of cleaning up afterwords. I was really impressed by the amount of people that showed up and their dedication to meeting the goals we set.
Things are going great and temperatures are starting to drop. Everything's looking up. Here's some pictures:
The community map we made during the formation at my village in the only shady spot in town.
Me and Mohatmadi the day before his naming ceremony (yeah, I need a haircut)
Pigeon meat
The donkey cart relay for getting gravel from the gravel pit over to the area surrounding the pump. We made it fun and turned it into a donkey cart race between the pump and the pit. It was pretty fun.
The spider that's been tormenting my hut. It's tough to gage the size of it, but the piece of wood that is behind it (the one it's not standing on) is about as big as my thigh. That's the best picture I could get because it was moving pretty quick and the flash bleached it out a little.
The spider that's been tormenting my hut. It's tough to gage the size of it, but the piece of wood that is behind it (the one it's not standing on) is about as big as my thigh. That's the best picture I could get because it was moving pretty quick and the flash bleached it out a little.
