Workshop Invitation

So, I just got an email from one of the instuctors that hosted my first youth program, the one that I got all the certificates from, that took place in an employment agency. He asked me if I'd be willing to talk to the new group. This will be after the program's started, so it's not like the focus group, or the information session that I've done guest-speaking roles for. This time, I'll be legitimately hosting a Workshop, which the day's schedule will be organized around. Nice!

This is going straight on my resume. Not as anything fancy, but I already have them down as somewhere that I've volunteered, performing guest-speaking roles for the focus group and information session, and writing an article for their newsletter. Now I can just add "Hosted Workshop" and extend the time I've been volunteering there to 2012.

More pictures. Kind of off people today.




These are the Karadie and Sirakorola signs, next to the road. The Sirakorola one means "Now entering Sirakorola", while the Karadie one means "Now leaving Karadie". I think I took both photos in one trip while I was walking from Karadie to Sirakorola, and that's why they're like that. There were always "Now leaving" and "Now entering" signs for each village, with the "Now leaving" marked by a red slash. I always wondered where I was when I stood between the two signs.




These are the chairs we had in the village. We would sit on those wooden chairs, those plastic ones, on benches, mats, or on these little wooden stools. Some were seen as better than others. The order of preference was the same as how I just listed them. The wooden chairs were the best. The plastic ones were the second best. The plastic ones were shipped to Sirakorola from Bamako, and purchased with money, whereas the wooden ones were made using subsistence material, but there were a lot more plastic chairs than wooden ones, and they were seen as worse, so city-produced stuff wasn't always seen as being better. The plastic strings were always breaking, and they'd be fixed by tying the strings together. When that eventually became impossible, they'd buy new plastic string, but reuse the frame.

After the plastic chairs, it was benches, and after benches, it was mats. If there really was nowhere else to sit, people would sit on these little wooden stools, which the women would normally use while they were working. Normally, the host would let the guests sit on the better seats, and he'd take a worse one.

When we were doing an Educational Activity Day at the village chief's house, I happened to be the last person there, so I went and got one of those little stools. No hard feelings, it's just a first-come first-serve deal when everybody's an equal, and the chief gets his wooden chair because he's a chief. Also, it's pretty funny, Ali the Giant sitting on a tiny little stool. But apparently the village women didn't think so, because they walked up with some wooden slats and they built me a chair on the spot that was larger than the chief's.



This is Sedio. Doesn't need to be said, but not the same Sedio as the eldest son in my family. He was a member of our group, but he grew up in Karadie. The school seemed to try and pick participants from the Sirakorola area. In the other group, there were two people who grew up in Sirakorola, and one that grew up in Karadie.

Anyway, what Sedio's sitting on is something the Malian's called a "Moto". The Canadians were always saying "They aren't quite motorcycles and they aren't quite scooters" and were fascinated with them.

Okay, I'm going to admit something. To me, that looks like a motorcycle. I don't really know where this "Not quite a motorcycle" jazz is coming from, but then again, I don't really know motorcycles...