By Merritt Frey, Executive Director

The US- and Mali-based staff spent two weeks in January together in the field in Mali. Our incredibly limited access to the internet did not allow us to post our blog updates from the field, so we are sharing them now from the zippy wi-fi of the U.S. Join us on the blog for the next few weeks for updates on the trip!

On of the most fun — but most challenging — things we do is select a new partner village. It is hard to do because so many villages need a middle school and truly every child deserves a chance to go to school. How can you ever select just one village!?

To take on this challenge, we always meet with several villages and really get to know them and their need. We are looking for a village where the need is great — where the nearest middle school is too far away for children to walk and where quite a few children would attend the new school. We are also looking for a village where we know the villagers will be strong partners — where they have a good track record of caring for their primary school, where they are clearly passionate about education, and where they can contribute the local match to take ownership of the project.

Visiting a new possible partner village

On Day 9 of our trip, we visited one potential village — the village of Banko. This is in many ways a great candidate. There is a clear need, with the nearest middle school 10 kilometers of rough dirt road away. This is just too far for kids to walk, so they do drop out after 6th grade. In other pros for the village, they clearly take very good care of their primary school buildings. These two buildings were built nearly 20 years ago and are in good shape structurally (although of course they do show their age). The parents were very engaged in the discussion and I felt like they really were passionate about education and their responsibilities. They have a great plan in place for paying for maintenance of the school building, which is really critical.

Although Banko is definitely on the list, we have at least two other villages in contention for our next school. It is so hard to visit a village and know we may not be able to build a school there — if only we could build a school in every village with deserving children! For now, we left Banko feeling that this is a great candidate for partnership and I personally hope we will return soon.

After visiting Banko we had a long drive back to Bamako. We had to head back in order to take Courtney to the airport for her flight at midnight. Before we say goodbye, we take Courtney to the Bamako market of the artisans to pick up some great mementos of her trip. We know we’ll miss Courtney, but we are so glad she came along for so much of the trip.

Off to Sikasso

Day 10 is devoted to a road trip from Bamako to Sikasso. It is a national holiday — Army Day — so our schools are closed anyway. This made it the perfect day to devote to 8 hours on the road. We saw few signs of the holiday, other than a strange bike race that zoomed by in the opposite direction as we were headed out of Bamako. Otherwise, Day 10 was just a long, mesmerizing day of tarmac and roadside villages whoosing by.

We arrived in Sikasso, the second largest city in Mali to made our way to the hotel. The air in the Sikasso region is more humid, and night dining outside is very pleasant. After the long day on the road, we all went to bed fairly early to prepare for a long day on Day 11 — a day devoted to visiting our most far-flung school in the village of Mamarraso.