As the time goes by here in Mali-la I am, finding myself some new projects. I recently attended a Shea Butter formation in Sikasso with a woman from my village. First of all for those of you who don’t know Shea Butter comes from Shea trees found all over our region. Shea butter can be used as an oil to cook food in or it can be made into soap. Shea Butter is also an additive in beauty and cosmetic products all over the world, including American lotion and lip balm products I use (i.e. Burt’s Bees and Hempz). It’s really great for the skin, with natural UV protection properties. Women here use the raw butter as a skin product; I personally, use it and like it except for one thing, the smell… step in Peace Corps volunteers
In other West African countries like Burkina Faso and Cote d’Ivoire the women use an ameliorated method to make their Shea Butter thus producing a smell-free/high quality product that they are able to sell to exporters which gets them a lot more money than they would get at the local market.
Peace Corps along with USAID and other actors are trying to teach rural Malian women a better way to produce Shea Butter and thus more income. My women are interested and I have a potential back that wants to help my women with the infrastructure needed to improve their Shea Butter quality. Thus, a new project in the works.
So here’s the deal, Shea nuts are ready to pick during rainy season, which is also the busiest work season for all Malians. So the women pick the nuts and store them in these deep holes in the ground until they are ready to process the nuts, however during this storage period usually months long the nuts ferment and get a bad smell, this smell makes it all the way to the finished butter. During the processing of the nuts, women in my village also smoke the nuts, which doesn’t evenly ‘cook’ the nuts and the smoke also emits dome kind of carcinogen.
What we want to do is get women to boil the nuts right after they’ve harvested them and then dry them in the sun. But because this is during the rainy season, there is high humidity, not enough sunlight, etc, etc.
In my village the women are hoping to find the money to make some big solar dryers where they can dry the nuts, thus making a better product, thus being able to sell their butter for a much higher price than they would before.
This potential back is also buying schoolbooks for my school, which is really cool, since we wrote up a project months ago only to find that the school could not meet their required contribution. So, this is really cool for the school, which desperately needs a lot of improvements. I think starting with actually having some textbooks is a good first step.
In more personal news this week at site I: roasted cashew nuts, milked a rabbit and improved my tigadegena making skills.
Tigadegena, is a peanut butter sauce that is poured over rice, quite tasty and I made a good batch at site yesterday…
I bought three rabbits in January and now have a total of 8!!! Crazy how they multiply. But one of the mother’s is a first time mom and her tiny baby was getting tinnier by the day so I had to start making her give her baby her breast which included some milking by my fingers. Did you know rabbits have 6 nipples? The little white one on the salt lick is my favorite, he's so sweet and friendly... I hope he tastes good...

I also finally tackled my PC dream about making cashews and teaching people in my village how to do. So cashews are everywhere here, but no one eats cashew nuts because they don’t know how to process them, again you can go over the border to Burkina and find tasty, well processes buts, that find Burkinabes a good profit. The deal is that the shell contains a highly acidic liquid that emits during the opening, making the opening very difficult. I boiled the nuts in Shea oil to release the liquid then dried and cracked open. If any of this seems easy think again. It’s high dangerous when it’s realizing the liquid in the oil and then all the liquid is usually not release and then it’s hard to know when the nuts are ready to be taken out because the lack of a stable hot temperature of the oil. I hardly had any nuts that remained whole after cracking. Then, the nuts are raw and must be cook in oil before being eaten. So my attempt to show the women how to make a sellable product didn’t go to well, because you can’t get a good price for cracked nuts and I basically burnt ¼ of the nuts when I was trying to release all the oil. But not all hope is loss, a minor setback. I will eat the nuts myself and try again with a group of women.

And finally Jacq, one of my best firends here in Mali who I love so much has accepted a transfer/extension to China. She leave Mali around the end of May and will be there for two years. It's a really great opportunity but I'll miss her tons...