Hello Everyone!
It's been so long! much has been going on in the world of Peace Corps Mali. The holidays past with a blast and i've been working extremely hard on a project for my village. At this moment, a proposal is online to ask for donations for a Latrine and Soak Pit project. The letter below describes the project and incluses a link to the PCPP --- Peace Corps Partnership Program -- if you would like to donate. Furthermore, I have written up a community assessment paper that describes the project in full detail, with information on community demographics, economics and lifestyle. If you would like a copy, please email me at hannah.d.jordan@gmail.com and I will send you a copy. Thank you so much for all your support!
Here is the link to the PCPP website:
Hannah D. Jordan
Peace Corps Volunteer Mali
Health Extension Volunteer
hannah.d.jordan@gmail.com
_____________________________________________
February 12, 2012
Dear Friends, Family and Community:
"i bora so, i nana so" -- When you leave home, you come home.
Hello! My name is Hannah Jordan and I am a Peace Corps Volunteer in Mali, West Africa. I am the first Peace Corps volunteer invited to work in Niamana-Bouncouma, a rural Malian community of about 4,500 people. I work as a health volunteer. Diseases such as giardiasis, amoebas, pink eye, hookworm and malaria constantly ravage the community, to the point where they impede community members’ ability to work and live in a socially constructive environment.
For the last five months community leaders and I have been developing a project aimed at combating the environmental factors behind some of the above diseases, specifically malaria. Malaria continues to be an epidemic in Mali. Children and older members of my community die from malaria and malaria-related symptoms every year. Fortunately, we have been able to distribute treated mosquito nets to the entire community. Unfortunately, this is not enough. Walking around my community, it is common to see pools of human waste and bathwater collecting in the streets which provide perfect breeding grounds for malaria-carrying mosquitoes.
In order to combat this problem, during April and May we will build 36 simple pit latrines and 46 soak pits (water dispensing holes where wastewater flows and becomes distributed into the groundwater to decrease the amount of standing wastewater).
I have come here today to ask for your help. My village did their part and collected 50% of the proceeds for the project, an unprecedented feat in rural Mali. About two weeks ago, I discovered that we would not receive any funding from the Peace Corps for our project. Upon hearing this news, saying I was devastated was an understatement. Realizing that my community would not receive the funds necessary to undertake this project in which they had been working, collectively so hard for over five months, was crushing. In Mali, there is a saying, when you leave home, you come home. Niamana is my home, they are my people, and they are my family. I told myself I would do everything in my power to make sure my village receives the latrines and soak pits because they deserve them, because they deserve to be healthy, and because their children deserve to grow up in a healthy environment. This is where you come in.
If every person donates a minimum of $20 USD, we would only need 215 people to make this project a reality. There are ABSOLUTELY NO OPERATING costs. The way this works is the Peace Corps has a funding opportunity called Peace Corps Partnership Program (PCPP). Donations may be made to my project at http://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate. Search for the Latrine and Soak Pit project under my project number, 688-369, or by my name, Jordan, and then the country, Mali. Below is the contact information for the PCPP if you would like to speak with someone at the Peace Corps office regarding the program and other methods of donating to my project:
The Office of Private Sector Initiatives
1111 20th St. NW
Washington, DC, 20526
(800).424.8580 ext. 2170
donate@peacecorps.gov
All the money that you donate will go directly to my community and is tax deductible. As soon as my PCPP monetary contributions are complete, the money will be deposited into my Malian bank account, and we can proceed with the project. It is a simple and safe procedure to give, and your donations will help to clean up an entire village in Mali, West Africa.
Our goals:
1.To build 36 simple pit latrines and 46 soak pits.
2.To paint 12-16 health and education murals on the side of the health center walls.
This project could drastically change the lives of over 4,500 people for the better. There are limitless opportunities for improvements in every sector of life when the health of a community is improved. I am doing everything in my power to make this project successful, and I cannot do it alone. I need help. Please, any monetary contribution will be appreciated. If successful, we will be building 36 new latrines and 46 new soak pits, as well as increasing the overall livelihood and health of my community.
In addition, due to the high illiteracy rate in Mali which is currently fluctuating around 71%, our community leaders asked me to paint multiple murals alongside the health center walls in order to visually convey sustainable information about washing hands, the importance of covering a latrine, and other imperative health messages. Through this project, my community and I will be painting 12-16 murals throughout the next year.
Below I have attached my “Community Assessment Grant Proposal” which will detail the entire project from community demographics to outlines on all expenses and an approximate timeline. If you have any questions, please email me at hannah.d.jordan@gmail.com. I will keep all of you in “the loop”, and send pictures and updates on the current progress once the project begins.
Thank you very much for reading my incredibly long email! Any monetary contribution amount is greatly appreciated.
Sincerely,
Hannah Jordan
Peace Corps Volunteer Mali
Health Extension Volunteer
Hello World, Here I Come
Monday, February 13, 2012
Monday, September 5, 2011
Small Successes
It’s hard being where we are and doing what we are doing. Yes, it is hard being a Peace Corps volunteer, but living and growing up in this generation is hard to. Many of us don’t give ourselves enough credit for our accomplishments. We only look at the failures in our lives and forget about all the small successes. When I was in high school all I did was go go go. I had to do everything because I felt that people would think I was a failure if I wasn’t a strait A student, in all the clubs and doing numerous extracurricular activities. I was concerned not only with what my parents thought, but I was concerned with what my future college recruiter would think. At then when I was accepted to college, I started to be concerned with what my future roommate would think about me. Would I be skinny enough? Pretty enough? Rich enough? Smart enough? Good enough? Once I entered college, my thoughts concentrated around my coach and if I was good enough to be on the rowing team. Did I have what it took? For four years of my life, well for much of my teenage and young adult life, all I cared about was what people thought of me. Was I good enough? Was I matching life up? Was this the way I was supposed to act? I never one looked at the small victories in my life. No, I only looked at what I wasn’t doing, or what someone else was doing better.
I always said that I wanted to join the Peace Corps because I wanted to change my life. I wanted to leave my family and friends and come back someone different, someone better. I was so wrong. I am not becoming better here, none of us are. We are all growing into the people we all ready were, but had no time to find. I like to think of one of the most engaging and special moments in Mali to be one, which included a group of women and myself at market. Now, when I tell this story to other people they’re like “really Hannah, that’s your special moment?” – well yes it is. I was sitting there, on a log, at the end of a long market day. Since I am living in Mali, the sun was beating down on me so much that all my clothes, of course, were soaked in sweat. Nonetheless, I sat there, on that log, with this little 5 foot woman who lives in my village. We started talking – aka laughing and pointing at each other – when another woman (im not sure who she actually is) came up to me and said she loved my necklace. I said thank you and jokingly took it off and gave it to her. So she, in return, took hers off and, moving the hair, clipped her necklace onto my sweat soaked neck. She looked at me and said, there, now we’re friends. Then, of course, the necklace I was gave her broke, haha. Well, of course, I felt terrible and tried to give her necklace back. She would not take it, telling me she could fix the necklace and wear it all the time.
This simple act of friendship caught me so off guard I didn’t know what to do. Yes, I had been going to market with these women for months now, and yes we had talked before and yes they were the closest people to “friends” I had in village, but that simple act of kindness blew me away. I sat there on the horse cart going home and began to think about the differences between Malian and American culture. Yes Mali is one of the poorest countries in the world, with a illiteracy rate of around 70%, a malnutrition problem, where children only go to school till the age of, hopefully, around 13 and then – if we’re lucky – wait a couple of years to get married and start reproducing. Yet, with all of these “problems”, the people in Mali are a whole other story. They’re kind. They’re generous. They’re loving. They are funny. They care. Yes, they might not “think the way we do”, but is that bad? Why do we need to live with washers and dryers? Why do we need to drive a car every where we go when walking can do? Why do we need to blow dry our hair every morning, just so we can look cute walking down the street impressing total strangers? Why do we need all these things? I think back on my high school and college years and all I think about are the things I did to impress other people, socially and professionally. I never did anything for myself or because it was simply the right thing to do. I lost everything about myself that I wanted to be, everything that I wanted to grow up to be.
Mali is special in a way because it allows you to look at life simply. It gives you not only another view of the world, but another view of yourself. One of the aspects of the PC that I find so difficult is the way our mental thinking is challenged here. We cannot start a project from beginning to end just in a couple of months. Other things matter or get in the way, which prevent us from doing so. Sometimes it is very difficult. We have grown up in a culture and environment where everything is go go go. We have to get things done and get them done now. If we don’t, we are failures and we don’t deserve to be doing what we’re doing. We never give ourselves credit for our small successes when all we do is look at those few small failures. We are too hard on ourselves. We deserve so much more. For peat sake, we are in the Peace Corps. We are living in AFRICAN VILLAGES BY OURSELVES! We are eating with our hands, living without electricity, speaking new languages, peeing in a hole, sleeping with bugs. We, in its very definition, are a success. We have trained our brains to only think about the big projects, the big steps in life, big big big, yet, sometimes what matters is not big, but is small. The smells of shea ripening in the hot Malian sun, the smile of a friend who understands you and visa versa you understand them, a small gesture of friendship between two very different people. Life is full of small successes. Just because they are small does not mean they matter any less. We forget this. We are, in a way, trained to forget this.
In light of this, I have placed below some small successes. Some are my successes in country so far. Some are cultural gatherings between new friends. And some are plain beauty found in a country full of beauty, grace and eloquence.
First manicures ever! and with sparkelly nail polish too!
I always said that I wanted to join the Peace Corps because I wanted to change my life. I wanted to leave my family and friends and come back someone different, someone better. I was so wrong. I am not becoming better here, none of us are. We are all growing into the people we all ready were, but had no time to find. I like to think of one of the most engaging and special moments in Mali to be one, which included a group of women and myself at market. Now, when I tell this story to other people they’re like “really Hannah, that’s your special moment?” – well yes it is. I was sitting there, on a log, at the end of a long market day. Since I am living in Mali, the sun was beating down on me so much that all my clothes, of course, were soaked in sweat. Nonetheless, I sat there, on that log, with this little 5 foot woman who lives in my village. We started talking – aka laughing and pointing at each other – when another woman (im not sure who she actually is) came up to me and said she loved my necklace. I said thank you and jokingly took it off and gave it to her. So she, in return, took hers off and, moving the hair, clipped her necklace onto my sweat soaked neck. She looked at me and said, there, now we’re friends. Then, of course, the necklace I was gave her broke, haha. Well, of course, I felt terrible and tried to give her necklace back. She would not take it, telling me she could fix the necklace and wear it all the time.
This simple act of friendship caught me so off guard I didn’t know what to do. Yes, I had been going to market with these women for months now, and yes we had talked before and yes they were the closest people to “friends” I had in village, but that simple act of kindness blew me away. I sat there on the horse cart going home and began to think about the differences between Malian and American culture. Yes Mali is one of the poorest countries in the world, with a illiteracy rate of around 70%, a malnutrition problem, where children only go to school till the age of, hopefully, around 13 and then – if we’re lucky – wait a couple of years to get married and start reproducing. Yet, with all of these “problems”, the people in Mali are a whole other story. They’re kind. They’re generous. They’re loving. They are funny. They care. Yes, they might not “think the way we do”, but is that bad? Why do we need to live with washers and dryers? Why do we need to drive a car every where we go when walking can do? Why do we need to blow dry our hair every morning, just so we can look cute walking down the street impressing total strangers? Why do we need all these things? I think back on my high school and college years and all I think about are the things I did to impress other people, socially and professionally. I never did anything for myself or because it was simply the right thing to do. I lost everything about myself that I wanted to be, everything that I wanted to grow up to be.
Mali is special in a way because it allows you to look at life simply. It gives you not only another view of the world, but another view of yourself. One of the aspects of the PC that I find so difficult is the way our mental thinking is challenged here. We cannot start a project from beginning to end just in a couple of months. Other things matter or get in the way, which prevent us from doing so. Sometimes it is very difficult. We have grown up in a culture and environment where everything is go go go. We have to get things done and get them done now. If we don’t, we are failures and we don’t deserve to be doing what we’re doing. We never give ourselves credit for our small successes when all we do is look at those few small failures. We are too hard on ourselves. We deserve so much more. For peat sake, we are in the Peace Corps. We are living in AFRICAN VILLAGES BY OURSELVES! We are eating with our hands, living without electricity, speaking new languages, peeing in a hole, sleeping with bugs. We, in its very definition, are a success. We have trained our brains to only think about the big projects, the big steps in life, big big big, yet, sometimes what matters is not big, but is small. The smells of shea ripening in the hot Malian sun, the smile of a friend who understands you and visa versa you understand them, a small gesture of friendship between two very different people. Life is full of small successes. Just because they are small does not mean they matter any less. We forget this. We are, in a way, trained to forget this.
In light of this, I have placed below some small successes. Some are my successes in country so far. Some are cultural gatherings between new friends. And some are plain beauty found in a country full of beauty, grace and eloquence.
First manicures ever! and with sparkelly nail polish too!
Sunday, July 17, 2011
This is Peace Corps Life
In the beginning, we were told we would go on a roller coaster ride of emotions throughout our Peace Corps service. In this beginning, I thought I was doing great in terms of dealing with the culture shock and transition to living in Mali. PST was an experience, but generally I regarded the process with a sort of indifference to my surroundings. I had been away from home for months at a time, been in countries were I could not understand the language and been culturally and environmentally different from my own. Furthermore, I was living in a village with seven other Americans, many of them becoming my closest friends in Mali. Through this process, and after I swore in as a PCV, I went to site and felt ok with my situation. It was different, for sure, but I felt like I was dealing with my current predicament in a stable and mature manor. I knew I was having hard times. My previous blog postings depict that fact very well. My ramblings on about things that now seem irrelevant or overly personal was my way of “dealing”. I thought if I were open with the way I was feeling, I would get a positive feedback from my peers. Also, I thought that I was dealing similar to other PCV’s in my current situation. Well… this may not have been true. Some of my previous postings did receive a bit of feedback from my fellow PCV’s saying I was actually writing down what everyone else as feeling. This made me feel a little less lonely in my brusse village in east Mali.
Looking back on my previous postings, and reexamining my feelings during the first couple of months in Mali, I have discovered I was probably in my low slump of this roller coaster ride that is the Peace Corps. Additionally and unfortunately I feel like I am still in this slump. Returning to site after IST has been a challenge. It has caused me to revise my thinking on why I am here, what I am doing, and what I expect of myself. Also, I am confronted with what I call the Real Peace Corps Life and what that means. I am not living life in my village, counting down the days to IST where I will visit my friends anymore. Now, my village is even more represented as my home. That is where I live. I am not on vacation anymore. And I am definitely not at home in the states. I am having to reinterpret my views of who I am as a person, who I represent, who I want to represent, what is important in life, where I want to go, who I want to be and basically who I am. This is the easiest way to describe my emotional status:
I am in the desert and look around. There is nothing to see for miles but sand. I am alone. There are no paths to take, no sun to even get a general direction of where I am. I am lost. Completely and irrevocably lost.
The thing with the Peace Corps is you have so much time to yourself you start to examine parts of your life that you may have “accidentally missed” before. Things that happened to you or around you, experiences you had, or people you’ve met, and now you have the time to start mentally processing all of this. This is a good thing, especially for me. Its good I am learning how to scrutinize who I am as a person, and discovering new ways to either keep that behavior up, or change it for the better. Although this “mental examination” is good, it tends to leave me in a slump. A terrible, low, slump. A slump that sucks.
Now, I was told by some fellow PCV’s that I either needed to 1) stop blog posting or 2) stop blog posting because my blog posts were too negative and that the Peace Corps Admin would be reading it. Now, this got me thinking and I want to make some things perfectly clear:
1)Mali is great. Malians are great. My village is great. The people are generous, kind, and very friendly AND I have learned so much already being here for five months, that I am excited about my future as a PCV.
2)The Peace Corps is great. The people I have met are incredible and phenomenally strong individuals that I look up to with great respect. I am so lucky and blessed to be able to be surrounded by such caring, courageous and inspirations people.
3)ALTHOUGH THIS IS TRUE……THIS IS THE PEACE CORPS AND THIS IS MALI…this means……
a.ITS HARD! Its SUPPOSED to be hard. So I’m sorry and apologize for being negative, but sometimes that how it is and I don’t want to sugar coat anything for anyone. For people who are reading my blog and thinking about joining, it is important for them to know how it really is here. That this is no vacation. This is hard work, which will test you physically and mentally. There will be days you will cry alone in your hut. There will be days you will be so filled with joy and happiness because of an experience at site (although I have not had one of these days yet, I am hopefully that they will come). There will be days you will feel confused, lonely and well just plan upset. The Peace Corps is not supposed to be a walk in the park. This experience will change your life. It will mold you into a new person. But before you can grow, you have to build the bricks, and sometimes churning that cement and putting that cement in the mold is hard, excruciatingly difficult and strenuous work.
b.Not sugar coating my blog and writing as it is, is not only good for other volunteers to read but its good for our families. For the other volunteers, it’s great to hear that someone else is having the same problems and might be feeling similar feelings. We have a network of friends here, but we are all dispersed throughout the country. Knowing someone else is there, that you are not alone, is HUGE, sometimes it’s all you have. As for our families, I have found it is incredibly difficult to explain how it is to live in Mali. What that feels like, how that affects us and the relationships we have; both in country and at home. Writing what is actually happening on the ground and how I am feeling, hopefully, will allow my family and friends to try and start to comprehend what I am doing here and how I am living. We are so scared to actually tell others how we are feeling because of some due consequence that might befriend us. Being truthful with yourself and others, and admitting what is actually going on, is far more courageous than shutting yourself up and lying, telling yourself nothing is wrong. Sometimes the hardest thing to do is to allow someone else in, where this is precisely what we must do to survive and thrive.
Being a PCV is hard. Sometimes it even sucks. But this is 100% the place I want to be. I feel like it is right for me to be here and to be doing the work I am doing. Peace Corps life is just a more “in your face” example of real life, it IS real life. Sometimes its hard, so hard we don’t want to go on with it anymore. Sometimes its gives you the most joy and happiness, and all you want to do is bask in the radiance of the beauty of life. In the states, we don’t see it this way as much. We have so much to distract us from what reality is, that we forget the life we are living. Mali has been the most amazing experience to allow me to see the true face and reality that is life; the joy, the pain, the hardship. Just because sometimes it is difficult, does not mean you have to give up, it just means you have to work harder to get to the finish line, and hopefully, in the process, you will grow into the person you want to be, the person you can be, the person you were meant to be.
Looking back on my previous postings, and reexamining my feelings during the first couple of months in Mali, I have discovered I was probably in my low slump of this roller coaster ride that is the Peace Corps. Additionally and unfortunately I feel like I am still in this slump. Returning to site after IST has been a challenge. It has caused me to revise my thinking on why I am here, what I am doing, and what I expect of myself. Also, I am confronted with what I call the Real Peace Corps Life and what that means. I am not living life in my village, counting down the days to IST where I will visit my friends anymore. Now, my village is even more represented as my home. That is where I live. I am not on vacation anymore. And I am definitely not at home in the states. I am having to reinterpret my views of who I am as a person, who I represent, who I want to represent, what is important in life, where I want to go, who I want to be and basically who I am. This is the easiest way to describe my emotional status:
I am in the desert and look around. There is nothing to see for miles but sand. I am alone. There are no paths to take, no sun to even get a general direction of where I am. I am lost. Completely and irrevocably lost.
The thing with the Peace Corps is you have so much time to yourself you start to examine parts of your life that you may have “accidentally missed” before. Things that happened to you or around you, experiences you had, or people you’ve met, and now you have the time to start mentally processing all of this. This is a good thing, especially for me. Its good I am learning how to scrutinize who I am as a person, and discovering new ways to either keep that behavior up, or change it for the better. Although this “mental examination” is good, it tends to leave me in a slump. A terrible, low, slump. A slump that sucks.
Now, I was told by some fellow PCV’s that I either needed to 1) stop blog posting or 2) stop blog posting because my blog posts were too negative and that the Peace Corps Admin would be reading it. Now, this got me thinking and I want to make some things perfectly clear:
1)Mali is great. Malians are great. My village is great. The people are generous, kind, and very friendly AND I have learned so much already being here for five months, that I am excited about my future as a PCV.
2)The Peace Corps is great. The people I have met are incredible and phenomenally strong individuals that I look up to with great respect. I am so lucky and blessed to be able to be surrounded by such caring, courageous and inspirations people.
3)ALTHOUGH THIS IS TRUE……THIS IS THE PEACE CORPS AND THIS IS MALI…this means……
a.ITS HARD! Its SUPPOSED to be hard. So I’m sorry and apologize for being negative, but sometimes that how it is and I don’t want to sugar coat anything for anyone. For people who are reading my blog and thinking about joining, it is important for them to know how it really is here. That this is no vacation. This is hard work, which will test you physically and mentally. There will be days you will cry alone in your hut. There will be days you will be so filled with joy and happiness because of an experience at site (although I have not had one of these days yet, I am hopefully that they will come). There will be days you will feel confused, lonely and well just plan upset. The Peace Corps is not supposed to be a walk in the park. This experience will change your life. It will mold you into a new person. But before you can grow, you have to build the bricks, and sometimes churning that cement and putting that cement in the mold is hard, excruciatingly difficult and strenuous work.
b.Not sugar coating my blog and writing as it is, is not only good for other volunteers to read but its good for our families. For the other volunteers, it’s great to hear that someone else is having the same problems and might be feeling similar feelings. We have a network of friends here, but we are all dispersed throughout the country. Knowing someone else is there, that you are not alone, is HUGE, sometimes it’s all you have. As for our families, I have found it is incredibly difficult to explain how it is to live in Mali. What that feels like, how that affects us and the relationships we have; both in country and at home. Writing what is actually happening on the ground and how I am feeling, hopefully, will allow my family and friends to try and start to comprehend what I am doing here and how I am living. We are so scared to actually tell others how we are feeling because of some due consequence that might befriend us. Being truthful with yourself and others, and admitting what is actually going on, is far more courageous than shutting yourself up and lying, telling yourself nothing is wrong. Sometimes the hardest thing to do is to allow someone else in, where this is precisely what we must do to survive and thrive.
Being a PCV is hard. Sometimes it even sucks. But this is 100% the place I want to be. I feel like it is right for me to be here and to be doing the work I am doing. Peace Corps life is just a more “in your face” example of real life, it IS real life. Sometimes its hard, so hard we don’t want to go on with it anymore. Sometimes its gives you the most joy and happiness, and all you want to do is bask in the radiance of the beauty of life. In the states, we don’t see it this way as much. We have so much to distract us from what reality is, that we forget the life we are living. Mali has been the most amazing experience to allow me to see the true face and reality that is life; the joy, the pain, the hardship. Just because sometimes it is difficult, does not mean you have to give up, it just means you have to work harder to get to the finish line, and hopefully, in the process, you will grow into the person you want to be, the person you can be, the person you were meant to be.
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