With less than a month before our Peace Corps departure, I have decided that I need to write a little about where the wife and I will be spending the next 27 months of our lives.

Geography

Mali is a land-locked country. Its size is just over 478,767 miles (1,240,000 km) with a population of 14.5 million. Its capital is Bamako. Mali consists of eight regions and its borders on the north (where we won’t be for safety reasons) reach deep into the middle of the Sahara, while the country’s southern region, where the majority of inhabitants live and where Ashley and I will be, features the Niger and Sénégal rivers. Timbuktu is in Mali near the middle of the country.

Income

Despite being one of the most stable democracies in the African continent, Mali is the third poorest country in the world. The average worker’s annual salary is approximately $1,500 USD. The country’s economic structure centers around agriculture.

Religion

An estimated 90% of Malians are Muslim, approximately 5% are Christian and the remaining 5% adhere to indigenous or traditional animist beliefs. Islam as practiced in Mali is moderate, tolerant, and adapted to local conditions; relations between Muslims and practitioners of minority religious faiths are generally amicable. The constitution establishes a secular state and provides for freedom of religion, and the government largely respects this right.

Health

In a 2000 survey, only 62 to 65 percent of the population was estimated to have access to safe drinking water and only 69 percent to sanitation services of some kind. Mali has one of the world’s highest rates of infant mortality, nearly 11 deaths per 100 live births. The average Malian life span is under 50 years.

We made our way down South this month. Lots of hiking, camping under the stars and enjoying the beaches of Eliat.

One of our fellow participants skimming across the cliff path.

One of the local mountain climbers, known as an ibex (pronounced eye-bex). They are not afraid of people and will come right up to you.

Did I mention they have tiny legs and are super cute!

View from the top of the mountain overlooking Shehoret canyon.

Look at those two good looking people.

If you’re happy and you know it jump and pose!

What appears to be vines or moss is actually salt deposits. They engulf an entire wall of rock, it was beautiful.

Our campground at Wadi Shehoret. The night before we watched the meteor shower in complete darkness.

The shores of Eliat.

Tres beau.

The building in the background is Club Med.

A simple question, what is terrorism? For people in the United States, they think back to 9/11 or Oklahoma City. These big events resonate in our minds. But for the people living in Sderot near Hamas-run Gaza, terrorism is part of their daily lives.

We spent Thursday visiting the small town of Sderot, located 10 kilometers (6 miles) outside of Gaza. It is a purely civilian town, no military camps or bases. The night before our visit, five Qassam rockets exploded in the town right next to them. To date, more than 200 rockets have fallen since January.

This is part of the collection of Qassam rockets that have hit the town. They are made out of irrigation pipes left for the Gaza residents when Israel pulled out of Gaza earlier this decade. When Israel left, the land was green and flourishing. Now its an arid semi-desert. Instead of growing crops, Hamas tore out irrigation pipes to convert into weapons. Instead of building homes and schools, Hamas uses the cement to create nozzles for their rockets. The rockets are a simple design, steel pipe filled with shrapnel. They are launched into civilian areas of Sderot and surrounding towns.

The entire day I kept asking myself, “Why would anyone want to live here?” But I realized the answer is same to this question, “Why do people live in New York after 9/11?” Sadly, the citizens of Sderot have adapted to the attacks. They have the highest per capita number of bomb shelters than any other community in the world. When the sirens sound, people have 15 seconds to take cover.

This giant snake figure is actually a creatively designed bomb shelter. The walls are designed to withstand a direct hit. This shelter is in the main play ground of a park in Sderot.

Other shelters feature murals from artists around the country and community, most of these shelters will not withstand a direct hit and are intended to protect from shrapnel.

The reinforced cement shielding at this elementary school costs more than the school itself. From what we were told, the community was unable to afford protecting the entire school. When the children hear the sirens, they have 15 seconds to make it to the protected area. A former resident told us this story, “A child was asked by her teacher, ‘why do snails have shells?’ The child replied, ‘to protect from the rockets.’”

When Israel left Gaza, they left them the infrastructure to succeed; to grow crops, to purify water, to be self sufficient. Only when they began dismantling that infrastructure to physically attack the people of Israel did Israel start banning the shipment of materials used to create those weapons from entering Gaza. Even now, Israel delivers almost a million tons of supplies to Gaza each year. In the first quarter of 2010 alone (January-March), Israel delivered 94,500 tons of supplies to Gaza:

• 40,000 tons of wheat—which is equal to 53 million loaves of bread;
• 2,760 tons of rice—which equals 69 million servings;
• 1,987 tons of clothes and footwear—the equivalent weight of 3.6 million pairs of jeans; and
• 553 tons of milk powder and baby food—equivalent to over 3.1 million days of formula for an average six-month-old baby.
• During the Muslim holy days of Ramadan and Eid al-Adha, Israel shipped 11,000 cows into Gaza—enough to provide 8.8 million meals of beef;
• More than 3,000 tons of hypochlorite were delivered by Israel to Gaza for water purification purpose—that’s 60 billion gallons of purified water; and
• Israel brought some 4,883 tons of medical equipment and medicine into Gaza—a weight equivalent to over 360,000 260-piece mobile trauma first aid kits.

I agree that life in the Gaza Strip is not great. Bad things have, and continue to, happen there. But keep in mind that their government is a terrorist organization, specifically targeting civilians. Hamas has made the country what it is today. The former beach and agriculture paradise is now a wasteland.

The United States wants to build a wall across the US-Mexico border to prevent immigrants from entering the country to work. Israel is trashed in the media every day for building a wall (most of which is chain-link fence) across the West Bank and Gaza borders to protect from gun fire, suicide bombers and other acts of terrorism.

If a hostile country launched a single rocket on to American soil—at a school, a playground, your neighbor’s house, your house—what would you do? What would you demand your government do?