Swim project started

Today was finally day one of the swim project!

It has been a rocky couple weeks, but we're finally under way. We had originally planned to start the project Monday March 16th with 68 people - 48 from the Protection Civile and 20 from the Brigade Fluviale of the Gendarmes. The problems started when the whole week preceding the 16th we kept calling both but were unable to get in touch with either. Finally on Friday the 13th we were able to get ahold of the Protection Civile, who told us that they regretted that though they had been promising us 48 people since December, they could only afford to give us 10 people, and wouldn't be able to start that week. Basically what happened was that we'd been dealing with their training director, but their overall director had stepped in and said "no" for budget reasons at the last minute. We couldn't even get a meeting with them face-to-face since the guy in charge was being uncooperative and wouldn't even take the calls from Al Kalifa, our Peace Corps Mali Safety and Security Coordinator who has been our point-man for dealing with both government agencies. We did get a meeting with the Gendarmes that Friday, who said that they would only be able to provide us with 16 people, wouldn't be able to provide more than 8 on a given day without leaving the office unstaffed, and wouldn't be able to start that week either.

So the weekend before St. Patricks day was pretty bleak, our project had been cut down from 68 people for 8 weeks to 26 people for 7 weeks (we have a time constraint on the other end of the project so every day later we start is a day less we can provide training).

Wednesday the 18th we finally succeeded in getting a meeting with the Protection Civile. The director we spoke to (the one who'd been being difficult) was... shall we say less than cordial. He tried to give Al Kalifa a dressing-down to make himself feel more important, but that didn't go so well. For those of you who don't know, Al Kalifa is kinda a legend in Peace Corps Mali. Before serving in the Peace Corps he spent 20 years as an officer in the Malian Army, serving as a keeper of the peace in Sierra Leone during their civil war, Liberia, and other places. He has been known to make a grown Gendarme break into tears over the phone all the way in Gao, and making people mysteriously disappear. Just this past Christmas some guys snatched and ran away with a volunteer's purse, jumping on the back of a moto and speeding away. She had her phone in the purse and reported it to the security guards at the office, who called Al Kalifa at home at 10pm on Christmas Eve (not a special day for him since he's Muslim, but a holiday anyway) to tell him. The next day Al Kalifa called the stolen phone and the bandits picked it up. We have no idea what he said to them, but he got them to return the purse, phone, and wallet with ID cards etc (all but the 2000 cfa or about $4 that was in it) to him, picking it up on Christmas Day. He's the kinda guy who walks into a Gendarmes post in civilian clothes and gets saluted by everyone there. We change those Chuck Norris jokes to include Al Kalifa (Chuck Norris doesn't sleep - he waits. Chuck norris doesn't read a book, he stares it down until he gets the information he wants). We weren't exactly sure what would happen when the Protection Civile director tried to give him a dressing down - we were afraid he might disembowel the man with a flick of his little finger, but that would probably have made them less cooperative for the swim project so instead he just smiled and took it. By the way, Al Kalifa (his given name) is Arabic for "The Guardian."

At any rate we successfully negotiated a promise of 30 trainees from him - 22 from the Bamako area including six women plus one from each of the eight regions. Unfortunately the director got wind of the name of our Malian Red Cross CPR and First Aid trainer, who apparently works for the Protection Civile, and was not pleased. He told us we couldn't use the guy. So now we had 46 people promised but no CPR trainer.

It was worrisome when, over the weekend, we were unble to get ahold of the Protection Civile again to confirm that they were actually going to show up on Monday. One thing about Malians is that they usually need to be told something six times if you expect to show up somewhere, so we were worried we'd get to the pool Monday morning and have nobody show up - especially considering 8 of the trainees were coming from very far away. Nevertheless late Sunday night we did finally get ahold of them, and this morning we had an amazing 27 people out of the 30 we were expecting show up, and at least one of the three that didn't had a ligitimate excuse.

Today was just an introductory day - introduce ourselves and the project, go over logistics, etc. Another notable thing about Malians is that they can't do anything without arguing. When we told them we wanted them to divide up into three groups of ten however it was convenient for them, there was much arguing over I-don't-know-what before it was finally sorted out. Explaining the schedule was also a bit of a fiasco - we'd prepared an Excel spreadsheet with the schedule, but Malians aren't used to information represented visually in general or spreadsheets in particular so it took some explaining and more arguing before everyone got it (I hope).

To close out the meeting we decided I should jump in the pool and demonstrate a few of the skills we'd be teaching them - treading water, front crawl, breast stroke, and side stroke. I was quite hot (it's hot season after all) so I did a neat little dive into the pool, to a collective gasp from the crowd. It's so strange as an American to think of a whole society of people having no exposure to swimming, but this group (like all Malians) is full of people who have no idea how to swim. There was some concern expressed during the meeting that we'd make them get in too fast. After demonstrating the strokes I got out again, and a few of the participants ran up to me, wide-eyed, and accused me of being a fish. They asked if we'd really be able to teach them to swim in 7 weeks, and admitted that at present they're more like rocks in the water than fish. Insh'Allah, I said, we will teach you.

Still no camera so I still have no pictures, but I've already bought a camera and it should be arriving shortly. Tomorrow is our first day in the water with the trainees!