The Cinzana School Garden Project Part 1

The Cinzana School Garden project was my attempt to incorporate every sector of Peace Corps in one project. I acquired a piece of land, put up a fence, cleaned and repaired a well, rebuilt a pump, and purchased seeds and gardening materials. (That took me over a year) The children are responsible for every aspect of the garden from planting and harvesting, to selling the produce at the local market. It will allow them to learn new agricultural techniques as well as standard business techniques and mathematics. My hope is that the health of the students will also be improved by making fruits and vegetables available all year round.

The Cinzana School Garden Project Part 2

Pumps are a blessing and a curse. They make the act of getting water from a well much easier, but they break very often and are expensive to repair. Many good wells sit unused because the pumps can't be fixed by the village. The problem is that they require routine maintenance and care that aren't provided on a local level. If a pump is used properly it could last for many many years. However, the people of Mali are not gentle people and when they grab a well handle they start slamming that thing up and down like it stole something from them. I truly believe they think the harder they pump the faster the water will come out. So, inevitably the pumps break and they return to the wells with their ropes and pulleys.

The Cinzana School Maps Project

Maps are the default projects of volunteers.

Cinzana Water Sanitation Project - Wash Station 1

This is a wash area in the middle of my village. The women of Cinzana like to gather several times a day and wash dishes while they gossip about the village. Before this wash area the water would collect in puddles in the street and breed mosquitoes and other diseases. The wash area now drains into an underground pit that lets the water soak back into the soil.

This is my homologue(work partner) Adama trying to prove to me that he's still a young man. Behind him, you see the young men digging the area that will become the soak pit where the water run-off will soak back into the soil.

Cinzana School Well Cover Project

This project was to cover the well at the school in Cinzana after I observed a child standing on the edge of the well pulling up a heavy jug of water. It is common in Mali for children to fall in wells and die. The wells in Cinzana are anywhere from 10 to 30 meters deep.

This was a large project over several months where I helped people improve the drainage of their latrines. Like the women washing dishes, most latrine run-off collected in the streets and provided a breeding ground for mosquitoes and another diseases. On several occassions I watched children playing in these puddles and animals drinking from them and the thought of the diseases that were being spread horrified me. So the concept is the same, the water drains out of the latrines into a covered hole where it soaks back into the soil.