work

waitin on money for my clean water project. guess I can talk a little bit about work...

to start, this work really isn't what I had in mind. the scale is a lot smaller than I expected. I'll end up leaving with maybe a few concrete items to boast about my stay. hopefully, and within the goals of peace corps, where are work really makes a difference is the number of people we reach with capacity building. there's just a complete lack of resources here - knowledge, tecnology, capital, etc... if we could hook the bush up with some of this modern stuff, they could turn the corner with a vengeance

so I'm gonna improve eight village wells with a concrete well wall, head wall, apron and metal cover. also purchasing a 1/2 million cfa pump repair kit to fix all the pumps in my area. within this work is the more important capacity building that will occur, by showing villagers how to do quality concrete work and other construction techniques. introducing them to engineering with pump diagrams and disassembling the pumps for basic troubleshooting. what frequently happens is that an NGO will install pumps that end up breaking down and leave the village without the technical capacity to fix them.

NGOs also do a lot of other things that probably do more harm than good, like throwing money at big projects, which ends up getting pocketed by corrupt government officials. more often than not. that's more in regards to those big first-world contributions and programs that make the bulk of the development industry. it seems like local malian NGOs are a different story... usually smart, savvy and well-intentioned people who've seen shit at its worst and decided to do something about it. they've experienced the problem first-hand and tend to be the most qualified to remedy solutions. instead, most aid money is the product of feel-good. many people who contribute aren't informed about what's really going on, they give and it feels good no matter where it goes. once you've been here and seen what's going on and realized what it'll take, you see a lot of work wasted in a place that can't afford lost opportunities. the most unfortunate thing is the difficulty in explaining the situation here to people in the first world; it's hard to comprehend all this without a personal account. but a discouraging fact remains... you can't empathize by simply giving. their plight is still an abstraction.

so I've also been increasing awareness about water-borne diseases and their prevalance, via oral-fecal transmission. diarrheal diseases that most developed parts of the world have eliminated are still a serious problem in the third world, especially since it contributes to high infant mortality rates (mali's high in the top 10, with 23 percent not making it to age 5). there is a wide variety of preventative measures that can be taken, including adequate hand-washing, ending open-defecation (O-D is just people not shitting in the nyegen, but in the streets or fields instead), increasing access to potable water, practicing sanitary water-taking practices, etc. also doing well treatment demonstrations and motivating the village's water and sanitation committee to make monthly collections to purchase the bleach used for treatment.

hosted the country director at site. talked about everything from getting kicked out of the bamako transit house to projects to development work in general. had beers together, a real chill dude. an authority figure I can respect and a smart man with lots to share. I'll soon be hosting a photojournalist from the states who wants to do a story on the water situation in mali. he'll stay at my site for a couple of days, that'll be pretty cool. until then...