We are here in Cunit, Spain. We´ve taken a brief break from relaxing on the beach in order to check our email. We´ve also come to plan our trip from here to Madrid. We are looking at either an overnight train or a cheap flight, if possible. It´s been really nice laying around in the sun, but we´re also excited to see Madrid. Ben has visited there before and has fond memories and good stories about it.

Yesterday we relaxed on the beach, played badminton and frisbee, and grilled out all day. It rained pretty hard last night so we were up late waiting for it to die down. We got to hang out and drink beer with some Germans who were stuck out of their tents, too, so that was interesting. On Saturday, we took a train into Barcelona and had a really good time walking around. We saw lots of cool architecture that Antoni Gaudi did- the famous Park Guell, with the mosaic lizard, a huge cathedral called La Sagrada Familia, and a very neat house, Casa Batllo. We also walked around on the streets, went in some shops, and walked by the ocean and in parks. Barcelona is a fun place! Today we plan to laze around again on the beach. We will leave for Madrid tonight or tomorrow.

That´s all for now. See you all again soon!

Love,
Mariel and Ben

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We're a few days late in letting you know, but we've made it to Spain safely. We got here on Wednesday and found a campsite, which proved to be farther away from the ocean than we expected and full of RVs. After getting about 2 hours of sleep, we transferred to a hotel downtown. We are moving again to another campsite, which is about 50 km south of Barcelona and 30km south of where we are now, Sitges.

We spent all day yesterday hanging out at the beach and wandering around town. It's very nice here, and the beaches are spectacular. The water is amazingly blue and clear.

Sorry for the short entry, but we've got to go catch the train to Cunit!

Hasta luego,
Ben y Mariel

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We arrived in Marrakesh, Morocco (aka Spice Capital of the world) today after a long day and night of traveling. Our plane left from Bamako a little late last night (it was supposed to leave at 2:30am but really left around 4), so we only got about 2-3 hours of sleep in the terminal and plane. Immediately after getting off of the plane at about 7:30am, we boarded a train at the airport that took us to Marrakech by way of Casablanca. The train ride was long and we were pretty cramped and sleepy, but we met some interesting people. We even got a chance to speak some Spanish again as we sat next to a couple from Equatorial Guinea, even though we found ourselves saying "oui" instead of "si" at times, and even throwing in some Bambara...

We rested this afternoon and walked around the city of Marrakesh some. Our hotel is right downtown, just a few blocks from the famous spice (and other stuff) market. We're planning to go there tomorrow. I'd like to buy some spices to bring home, but I'm not sure they'll make it through customs. Anyone know? I won't buy any strange white powders, maybe just some red and yellow ones. We'll see.

Anyway, the city is very nice. It seems more European than Middle Eastern. It has a lot of big fancy buildings, nice restaurants, and good hotels. We found one for a good price that has a wireless connection nearby that we have tapped into. Tonight we took the opportunity to sample a Happy meal at the local McDonald's. We were excited at first for burgers, but about halfway through we remembered that McDonald's really isn't that good. Oh well, it was a good time.

So tomorrow we look forward to checking out the market and renting some bicycles to ride around town. We'll spend tomorrow night here too, and then fly out to Barcelona the next morning at 11am.

Hope everything is going well at home, and we'll talk to you again soon!

Love,
Mariel and Ben

P.S. About the promise of photos last entry: I had a really hard time uploading them, the connection was very slow, so there aren't any new ones now. I will try to get them up if I can in the next week, otherwise they will certainly all be posted when we get home to Iowa. We'll let you know on here!

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We made it back to Bamako after 2 weeks back in the bush with the Brydens, Joe, and Dr. DeVore. All in all, we had a really great time in Nana Kenieba and the other villages. We hope to be back next summer, or maybe even sooner..! During the past couple weeks we've done many things. We wrapped up our mosquito net program by visiting all of the villages again and checking to see if they'd sold their nets. 2 villages, Nana Kenieba and Saguele, required 2 followup visits to get them motivated to sell, but as of now, the women have sold all 20 nets in each village! So the program was a success. The next step is collecting the buyers' payments every week and eventually they will generate enough money to buy more nets in Bamako. It's all in their hands now; it will be interesting to see if the program has continued on our next trip over.

Another highlight was accompanying Dr. DeVore on a few medical cases. Mariel learned a lot about asking the right questions to patients in order to make a correct diagnosis. He even did a surgery on our friend and host, Kany Diarra (who Mariel is named after). She had an infected, swollen thumb and DeVore cut out the infection, which was quite deep, and stitched her back up. For one reason or another, Mariel had a near-fainting experience while holding the flashlight during surgery which we chalked up to being a friend of Kany's. In any case, she recovered quickly and most assuredly does not have a phobia of blood or other bodily fluids. There were a couple more interesting cases: a little girl with a staph infection on the skin all over her body, an abcess on the eyebrow of a young girl, a lady with a dangerously swollen and infected hand, and a woman who found out she was pregnant unexpectedly were among them.

We also traveled to a village called Sandama, which is up in the mountains near Nana Kenieba. It has big redwood trees and is very interesting because it's a village that Medicine for Mali hasn't worked in yet (they are planning to install a water system soon though). It was very obvious that MFM hasn't been there, though. The water supply is just plain gross, we looked in one of the wells and pulled out water that was off-color and opalescent, as if it had oil on top. The children were in general in much worse shape. We saw a girl teetering around on stick legs with a swollen belly who was truly the poster child for malnutrition. Hopefully this village's health will improve drastically once their water system is improved and they receive some health education; these things have done wonders in the other villages.

Another interesting couple of experiences happened when the whole village came to our compound with a group of drummers to play for us and dance. People predictably pulled us in to dance in the middle of the circle one by one, and we all took our turns trying to make our American bodies move to African beats. We many not have succeeded in that, but we definitely had a lot of fun, and the Malians got a good laugh out of it. You can see some pictures of us dancing on the webshots page, which there should be a link to in the last entry.

We have many stories, plus there is plenty to tell that seems mundane to us now. For example, it is common for children under the age of 10 to drive donkey carts alone for miles, even the nurse's children wear witch doctor snake charms, and hissing is a sound that means children are calling you. We really internalized a lot; for example, in the restaurant where we sit now writing this, a waiter is named Moussa and his name keeps being called, and every time, Ben looks up - Moussa is his Malian name. We responded to Kany and Moussa for 6 weeks, so it feels pretty natural now. We made a lot of friends in Nana Kenieba and learned more than we can say. The experience certainly confirmed to us that working as physicians in places like this is really what we want to do for the rest of our lives.

As for the rest of our trip, we will be leaving Bamako tomorrow night, or Monday morning at 2:30am, rather. We land in Casablanca, then make our way to Marrakesh and spend a night there. On the 8th of August, we fly from there to Barcelona, then we have 8 days there before making our way to Madrid and flying out of there on Aug 16. We fly back to Casablanca on that trip, then the next day fly to JFK in New York. After taxi-ing to La Guardia and making a few connections, we arrive in the Quad Cities on August 18. For the information of anybody interested in coming, Ben's big White Coat ceremony is on Friday the 24th of August. This is the induction to the medical profession where the entering class receives their official white coats and takes the Hippocratic Oath. School starts up shortly after, and our lives will be crazy yet again.

So that's all for now, see everyone soon!

Love,
Ben and mariel

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We thought we'd check in one last time before heading back to Nana Kenieba tomorrow morning. Steve DeVore, the Brydens, and Joe Dunlay arrive tonight in Bamako, and we'll all leave together in the morning.

Today we changed our travel itinerary for the way back a little. We still return to Moline, Illinois on August 18 but before we get there, we'll be in Spain for a week. We'll fly from Bamako to Casablanca, Morocco on Aug 7, then make our way to Marrakesh and spend the afternoon there before flying off to Barcelona, Spain. Our flight back to Casablanca is on Aug 16 from Madrid. We plan to spend the week checking out Gaudi's awesome art in Barcelona, eating good food, and camping on the beach - woo! This all means we will be leaving Nana Kenieba slightly earlier than planned, on August 6. We are confident we will return in the near future, though - possibly next summer - so it won't be too sad.

That's all for now, we'll be writing again in a couple weeks!

Love,
Mariel and Ben

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Today we are busy running around Bamako... well, not literally. We rode a sotroma, which is very similar to our South American transportation of the colectivo: both are fast-moving brightly colored vans that have amazing amounts of people cramped in and a man who hangs on the side, hustling up other passengers, no matter how full it is. They're not usual tourist transport, which is of course why we like them. Between the villages and larger towns like Siby and Bamako, we ride similar vehicles. These are a lot shabbier, though, and generally hold a lot more people and items. Here is a picture of the sotroma we took from Nana Kenieba to Siby last week:

This picture was taken at about the 3rd village we went through, so a lot more stuff was piled on the top and back before the ride was over. The vans like this in town look similar, but all are bright green.

After our ride to the center of town, we got off in the middle of the market. We saw a whole lot of things, but sadly could not find the fetish stalls, our apologies to those of you who asked for dried sheep heads. We did find a lot of nice fabrics. The local fabric is called waxcloth, and the nicer it is, the waxier it is. The really expensive stuff looks and feels a lot like plastic and has brilliant tie dyed and batik designs. Mariel opted for the cheaper variety of waxcloth, which feels like regular cotton. We'll go to a tailor by where we are staying and have him make a dress later today. We've gone to this tailor before, the last time we were in Bamako. He made a fancy skirt, top, and hat for Mariel, a button-up shirt for Ben, and a wrap skirt called a pagne for Mariel. In the photos you'll see later, it's the red and yellow skirt Mariel is wearing. The pagne is standard everyday wear for Malian women. It can be anywhere from ankle-length to just below the knee, but that's pretty edgy. Mid-calf is the most comfortable, but truthfully Mariel has had a hard time understanding why these long, hot things are worn. They also have a bad habit of sticking to sweaty legs and whipping around your ankles but I'm used to it now.

This picture comes from one of the villages that we visited during the mosquito net program. Ben decided to help out some girls with their hoeing. Everything is done like this, with small, hand held hoes that are made with a hammer and fire by the village blacksmith. We bought a man and woman version in Nana Kenieba for one dollar each. They are very well made, with carved wooden handles and thick iron.

Lastly, here's a picture of a typical village. You can see a bunch of nuts on the ground, these are karite nuts. On the karite tree, they have a fleshy avocado-like fruit around them, which is very nutritious. After that part's eaten, they dry the nuts inside and then roast and smash them. The end product is a butter, cream, soap or oil known to Westerners as shea butter. It makes a really rich nice soap.

We have lots more photos, but they're slow to upload on here. Check out a bunch more here: http://community.webshots.com/album/559952487LbSMJA

Enjoy!
Mariel and Ben

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We are spending the day in Bamako being tourists. This morning we visited the National Museum, which was surprisingly nice and had air conditioning - also very nice. There were displays of Malian archaeology, art, and textiles. At the museum cafe we ate our first sandwich in a month, which was glorious. Then we petted some adorable puppies that were lounging in the scale models of the famous Djenne mud mosque outside the museum. We've now made our way to the embassies and nightclubs part of town, called Hippodrome. We've located what may be the fastest internet in all of Mali, but we didn't bring the cable for transferring photos. Rest assured that we know our way back and have enough free time that there really will be photos soon.

In Bamako, we are staying at the house we did before - Fanta's house. Her house is always full of visitors from somewhere and this time we've met a guy our age who goes to college in Toronto and is from Senegal. He speaks flawless English and is fun to talk to. The house is a refuge from the heat and action of the city.

Tomorrow we plan to head back into the city and wander around the large market at its core. They are supposed to have anything and everything there, from dresses to milk to car parts to dried monkey heads, the latter being part of the fetish market. There's some info herehttp://community.iexplore.com/planning/journalEntryActivity.asp?journalID=52267&entryID=53888&n=Artinasat+and+Fetish+Market for you to check out. Put in your requests for souvenir sheep brains and powdered snake teeth now!

That's all for now, more news and photos tomorrow!

Mariel and Ben

Mariel and Ben's Big Day in the City remains copyright of the author vagabundos, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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We arrived in Bamako this afternoon following a long-ish ride in an ancient van down bumpy, muddy roads. It takes about 5 hours to get to Nana Kenieba by this mode of transport; we know someone in NK who says he can get here in 45 minutes by motorcycle, but we're suspicious of that. We've come here to get back to the internet for a bit and maybe look at some museums. Our work in NK is on pause right now because we have to wait. We have to wait to start the vaccination program until the next dose is due, which is next week, and we have to wait before we can go check up on our mosquito net program in order to let it get started. This program is what we spent the 1st couple weeks doing. We traveled around by motorcycle to 6 villages including NK. While there, we gave a general health education program, then trained 5 female volunteers from each village to treat mosquito nets with an insecticide. They then decided on a price to sell these for, so that as many people as possible could buy them. This was a little more than the cost. The idea is that from the 1st 20 nets which were donated they will make enough profit to buy 22 more, and plus 2 every time. We just have to go make sure everything is going smoothly. The vaccination program entails visiting 6 or 7 surrounding villages and helping the nurse of NK, Moussa, to vaccinate children. Since it takes quite awhile to travel to these places, this is a 5-day operation. Ben is getting very good at motorcycling because of all this traveling by moto on terrible roads. We haven't fallen off yet.

In the time when we aren't doing programs like these or surveys of villagers, Mariel usually follows Moussa around doing medical stuff, and Ben intensely studies Bambara. He's getting very good at it; Mariel has down the greetings only. She utilizes the translator more as Ben perfects his French and Bambara. In following the nurse, Mariel has helped examine, treat, and operate on many people in Nana Kenieba. Because of this and our reputation of helping people out as far as money for prescriptions when needed, people are starting to bring their injuries and sicknesses to Mariel. While most of the time they're told this is a health center matter, she's been trying out her clinical skills on some small infected wounds, pink eye, and an ear infection. There is one boy named Djibiril who is particularly interesting. His sister took me to this one and a half year old smiley baby and showed me a big, infected-looking lump under his arm. I brought him to the health center ASAP and he's been coming in every day since to get it cleaned and examined. It's being treated as an infection so far. His parents are gushing with thanks; his mother said that up until about 3 days ago she thought he was going to die, but now she knows he will be fine. It's an emotional place because there is so much poverty, and people die from things that could be easily treated with ample supplies, medicines, and interest. We're doing our best to help out when we can. As a result of all this clinical stuff Mariel has been doing and a birth she (almost) witnessed early in the trip, she has been asking questions and going to prenatal consultations with plans to write her senior honors thesis on rural childbirth, or something along those lines. But there are ,mlany possibilities.

So that's what we've been up to. We'll write again before heading to NK again SUnday.

Love
Ben and Mariel

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We are still in Bamako but will be heading to the village, Nana Kenieba, tomorrow. We will be there for the next 3 weeks, working on the malaria surveys and other ones. Then we will return to Bamako to meet Dr DeVore and Mark, Kris, Aaron, and Joe, then we will head back to NK again. We are having a nice time in Bamako but are anxious to get to the village and do what we came to do. It is also very very hot here and we hear it is much cooler there, though still in the 90s every day. I suppose we should mention that while in Nana Kenieba we will have no internet connection, so the travel blog will be pretty quiet for the next several weeks. I promise a big, detailed entry and some great pictures when we return. As of now we havent taken any photos in Mali, we are working hard to adjust to the language, the heat, and the customs. Our Bambara is coming along, lots of people like us to try to speak it and give us credit for trying. Everybody is very nice. We have a good friend called Amadou who comes around the city with us to help us out. He speaks good English so we have a good time communicating in 3 different languages here.

One interesting cultural story we have comes from last night. We were told that there was a ceremony going on in the house. After trying for a long time to guess what was going on, somebody informed us that our host Salif was getting a second wife, and this was the ceremony for that. We greeted everyone and saw the veiled new bride, dressed in white for the ocassion. We werent allowed to go in for the ceremony as we are not Muslim, but we had a good time talking with the guests and experiencing something very new. The new wife and him will live in Libya, where he has already been working and living for awhile.

So that is about all we have been up to lately. We will go photograph Bamako some now and post some pictures when we can. Internet is, not suprisingly, not the most reliable here and pretty slow, but pictures will come someday.

We miss you and love you,
Mariel and Ben

On to Nana Kenieba remains copyright of the author vagabundos, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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We made it here to Bamako, Mali last night ... or very early this morning really. Our flight was good, packed and very lively for 3am. We are staying at a host family's house here until we meet with Dr Bagayoko; the Malian doc with Medicine for Mali. They are very nice and have a nice home in the city. We should head out to the village later today or probably tomorrow. Today We are traveling around Bamako in the sweltering heat with one of our hosts, Amadou. He is helping negotiate prices and lead us through the chaos. Mariel bought some exciting African wear today too. This city is very different than any we have seen before and looks something like the Africa we have imagined. Stay tuned for pictures; right now we dont have any though. Please excuse the short entry; the keyboards have a strange layout, so I am half using the old hunt and peck typing method! That is all for now, we'll keep you as updated as possible!

Love,
Ben and Mariel

Mali at last remains copyright of the author vagabundos, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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We thought we'd update our loyal subscribers and let you all know what's going on with us tonight. We were supposed to leave for Bamako, Mali tonight, but when we arrived here at the airport, they told us that airline workers in Bamako are striking, so there are no flights in or out of the country. They say the strike should be over tomorrow or the next day, so we are hoping they're right. We can't find much info on this on the internet (any news would be appreciated) but it doesn't sound like too major of a thing. In the meantime, the airline has put us up in a very nice hotel near the airport with room and board on them, so we are not struggling or anything. The next flight (if the strike is over) is tomorrow evening at 11pm. We'll let you know what's going on as we do!

Mariel and Ben

Well, not quite the last night after all remains copyright of the author vagabundos, a member of the travel community Travellerspoint.

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We're hanging out in the internet cafe again (in case you're in Casablanca, it's Apollo Cafe and they have great banana juice); we come here enough to email that they know us and shake our hands. Sadly it's probably our last visit, as we leave for Bamako, Mali tonight. The flight is at 11pm, so we will start working our way toward the airport via taxi and train at about 6 or 7. The flight will get into Bamako at 2:30am or so, and Dr. Bagayoko (most often Dr. B) of Medicine for Mali will pick us up then and take us to our host, Fanta's, house. She gets a lot of visitors from the US, as her husband was in Nebraska at a university for awhile. Mariel has been working on learning Bambara, the local language in Nana Kenieba, and Ben's French is getting quite good (Mariel's is slowly coming along). Our stay here in Casablanca has been great. We've tried lots of interesting foods and drinks (with no negative repercussions) and seen some interesting sights.

The Hassan II Mosque, 2nd biggest mosque in the world! It holds something like 105,000 people. This place is gigantic and very pretty.

Here's the stairway inside our pretty cheap hotel. There is pretty tilework like this everywhere, so that's one stereotype about Morocco proving to be true. One that isn't is the wearing of full body covers by women. Some wear headscarves and long robes, but it seems like most women our age stick to jeans and tops like Mariel wears. Al-Jazeera is on in about every coffee shop, though. That may have been expected.

And just because we didn't post any pictures the other day from New York City, here's the standard "I went to NYC" shot:

Hope everyone and everything back home is going well. We miss you and love you!

Mariel and Ben

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So, we are in Casablanca and have no specific plans until Monday afternoon, when we leave for Bamako, the capitol of Mali. We will just be relaxing and frantically checking mcat scores daily until it's time to get to work. Ciao for now!

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No, we haven't left for Mali yet, we just thought we'd try out this new travel blog (so no, you're not going crazy, we have switched sites to a more reliable one). Anyway, I thought this would be a good opportunity to tell you all what we expect to be doing during our 8 weeks in the village of Nana Kenieba, Mali (plus our 8 days in Morocco).

While there, Ben will be completing his public health practicum focusing mainly on permethrin-soaked mosquito netting, useful in preventing malaria infection. Mariel will be doing some unstructured research for her senior honors thesis in International Studies (Global Health) and working on a variety of things. We'll both do work on the mosquito nets (or bed nets) project. The plan for that one is to get the bed nets to some local women's groups, who will distribute them to people in their village, especially children and pregnant women. Another project we're talking about doing is a demographic survey, where we just find out about people's families, what people have died from, how many babies they had, etc. There may also be a nutrition study, which sounds particularly interesting, where 2 villages that are virtually the same are compared because one has a lot of malnourished people, while the other does not. Mariel might also work on a survey regarding cooking/stoves in the village, which could help out Mark's work there. We have also talked about working on repairing some latrines. There has also been mention of us doing some basic health education, which Mariel is especially excited for. But to sum it up, we are looking at lots of different public health projects that could use help, and we're going to be doing whatever we can while we're there.

As for general background on the area of Mali where we're going, most of the people are Muslim, though Mali is a secular state (not Islamic). Women do not wear headscarves or the full-body outfits typical of the Middle East, though. Modesty is expected, but it comes differently: women must cover their legs down to about mid-calf, but shirts are optional. Women typically seem to wear long skirts and tank tops. Men are pretty free of rules, and it looks like they stick to loose-fitting semi-Western style clothing. They mainly eat rice and millet with sauces, especially peanut sauce, and it sounds like we will be eating meat often, though most Malians don't. We will have a cook there who also does laundry, and a translator. Ben has taken intensive French and been studying it a lot, too, so he knows a fair share of that. He's also begun to study the local language, Bambara. Mariel, on the other hand, has been pretty busy with the MCAT and applying to medical schools, and knows very little French (si, non, oui...) and no Bambara... maybe Spanish will come in handy? Another thing we've been busy learning is how to ride a motorcycle, as the organization has a small one there for us to use. Once again, Ben outshines Mariel at this so far, but we both have plenty of time to learn on the ground.

Well, now anyone who reads this knows about as much as we do about the whole thing. We're very excited and can't wait to tell you more!

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