A donor asked us if we could help create a Dokotoro gift card. We loved this idea and were happy to oblige. For $50, you can dedicate a page of the forthcoming Bambara-language edition of Where There Is No Doctor.

Just go to our online giving page at First Giving, make a donation of any amount, and you’ll get the link to download a file that you can print out or email. If you’d like to customize it, we may be able to help. Contact lyle@dokotoro.org.

We are getting closer to our goal of raising $15,000, which will give us enough to finish the book project. Please join us in making this become a reality!

Please join the Friends of the Dokotoro Project for a holiday Happy Hour in Oakland next Saturday. We are helping organize this event to support our friend Bintou Diarra, who has seen a big drop in business at her Oakland hair-braiding and gift shop.

Bintou has been a longtime supporter of the Dokotoro Project, cooking huge pots of delicious Malian food for our annual fundraisers. Bintou is interviewed in this broadcast on KQED on how Americans’ irrational fear over Ebola has impacted African-owned businesses.

This special event will take place:

Saturday, December 13
4:00 – 6:00 pm
African Hair Braids
1944 Broadway
Oakland, CA 94612

Enjoy live music, drinks, snacks, and holiday cheer, and do some holiday shopping. With a wide selection of African jewelry, art, home goods, and musical instruments, you’re sure to find that perfect handmade gift.

Hope to see you there! And if you can’t make it, please do consider stopping by Bintou’s store this month to support her business.

It’s Stage Saturday! The Dokotoro Project has enjoyed the support of members of many different Peace Corps Mali stages throughout our project. These volunteers have helped to format documents, translate English to French and vice versa, organize information, and raise funds, all in the service of completing Where There Is No Doctor in Bambara.

In honor of these volunteers and the stages they represent, we are compiling a list of stages from Peace Corps Mali and the dates of their service in country. Help us complete the first ever comprehensive list of Peace Corps Mali stages!

To further honor these stages and their work, please donate to the Dokotoro Project today – we have almost finished the book!

We will update the list as we receive your comments.

• Vanity (1993)
• Waikwong (1994)
• Frenchy (1995)
• Attitude (1996)
• Love (1997)
• Massage (1998)
• Mommy (1998)
• Me (1998)
• Lust (199)
• 12-Step (2000)
• Baby (2001)
• Sorority (2002)
• YMCA (2002)
• Butterknife (2004)
• KISS (2004)
• Denny’s (2004)
• Ginsu (2005)
• Belushi (2006)
• Breakfast Club (2007)
• HOBOs / Honey Bunches of Oats (2008)
• Risky Business (2009)
• Team America (2010)
• The Kennedys (2011)
• Goodfellas (2011)
• Mad Hatters (2012)

Comment below to add your stage information to the list!

Today we are launching our (hopefully final!) fundraising campaign. We are trying to raise $15,000, enough for us to pay our translators to finish translating every word of Where There Is No Doctor into Bambara. We started this project over two years ago, and the end is finally in sight. Please consider making a donation to help make this dream a reality, and put life-saving information into the hands of ordinary Malians. As of today, we’ve already raised $7,743, so we are just over halfway towards our goal. A huge thank you to everyone who has already donated!

The theme of our fundraising campaign is Walenyumandon, the Bambara word for gratitude.

What are you grateful for in your life? Many of us have been touched by our time in Mali, with incredible host families, unforgettable life lessons, and cherished friends. We are also grateful for the health resources we have here in the United States, often lacking in West Africa. Many of our supporters do so out of a desire to “give back” in some small way for all that we’ve received.

We encourage you to share with the world what YOU are grateful for this Fall, whether it be a host family that cared for you while ill, great friends you made abroad, or simply having access to a hospital in the United States.

Today we are kicking off our 2014 online fundraiser campaign by asking our friends and supporters to share what they are grateful for. If you appreciate the work we do, please give now to help us meet our fundraising goal.

Thank you to everyone who attended our third annual Fall Fundraiser on October 25. We would also like to thank everyone who contributed their time, effort, and talent to make the evening such a huge success.

And thanks to our donors, we raised $6,543 to help finish translating Where There Is No Doctor into Bambara. When you add that to several recent online donations, and a few friends who have promised us that “the check is in the mail,” we are over halfway towards our goal of $15,000 that we need to finish the book!

If you could not attend, now would be a great time to give. Please donate now to help us meet our goal and put this life-saving information into the hands of ordinary Malians.

The good folks at CIIS have offered us two tickets to the Touré-Raichel Collective show on November 8 in San Francisco. We’d like to give them away to one of our supporters. Make an online donation before November 5 for your chance to win. We’ll draw one lucky winner at random. Make sure to send us your name, email address, and phone number after you donate so we can contact you and pass your information on to the show organizers. Email matt@dokotoro.org.

I saw them in concert a couple years ago, and it was an amazing show! From CIIS:

If you’re unfamiliar, Touré Raichel Collective are a cultural triumph featuring the guitar virtuoso, Vieux Farka Touré from Mali, and the Israeli pop star, Idan Raichel. Their music reflects the natural spontaneity, free-form creativity allowing audiences to experience firsthand the invention of sublime and transcendent music that crosses boundaries of country, culture and tradition.

First off, we share the world’s concern about the news that the first Ebola case has been confirmed in Mali. The first confirmed patient is a 2-year old-girl in Kayes whose mother died of Ebola in Guinea and was brought back to Mali by relatives. Our thoughts and prayers are with this little girl, her family, and her community.

Keeping with our tradition of Friday party here at Dokotoro, we’ve been thinking a lot about la cuisine (or gwǎ in Bambara–go ahead and pronounce that long a with a falling and rising tone). I just learned about Mariam Diallo, a Malian who stars in her own TV cooking show and has written, with Awa Diarra, a gorgeous cookbook of Malian food. It’s only available in French, but you can download it here, on the Slow Food Foundation’s website (PDF, 4 MB).

See you Saturday, when we will bien manger at our Fall Fundraiser. We’ve got a small army of friends, volunteers, and tanties cooking up tigadegena, dabileni, lenmuruji, nsaame, dolo, and more!

We’ve been busily preparing for our biggest event of the year. If you are anywhere near the San Francisco Bay Area, please join us!

Saturday, October 25, 2014
6:00 pm – 9:00 pm
St. Alban’s Episcopal Church
1501 Washington Ave
Albany, CA 94706

RSVP online or to Lyle Hansen at lyle@dokotoro.org.

Featuring live music from two bands! The fantastic Josh Austin Quartet will play jazz standards, and Dr. Yacine Badian Kouyaté and Friends will play traditional and modern Malian songs. Dr. Kouyaté is from Mali and is a talented musician and music educator. Wear your dancing shoes!

We’ve also planned a great lineup of dishes from across West Africa, including poulet yassa, award-winning sauce arachide, and nsaamɛ. Plus tasty beverages! Come hungry and have your dinner there.

Available for Immediate Distribution – Ebola  Factsheets for Health Workers

Download now:

We have worked together with the Mali Health Organizing Project to create one-page factsheets about the Ebola virus for use in Mali and neighboring countries. The factsheets are available in French and Bambara, as MS Word files and as PDF documents. Please share this information with anyone who can use it.

As of September 27, 2014, there have been no confirmed cases of Ebola in Mali. However, according to Mali’s Health Minister Ousmane Koné, there have been 25 reports of suspected Ebola, but so far all of these turned out to be negative. The country is on high alert. As we have seen in the areas hardest hit by the epidemic, rumors and misinformation spread quickly, hinder prevention efforts, and cause unnecessary deaths.

For more information about these factsheets, please contact the Mali Health Organizing Project‘s staff in Boston or Bamako.

We encourage you to support organizations that are helping to fight the Ebola epidemic, such as Doctors without Borders, Catholic Relief Services, Samaritan’s Purse, PSI, or others.

Please join us for our Annual Fall Fundraiser!

Saturday, October 25, 2014
6:00 pm – 9:00 pm
St. Alban’s Episcopal Church
1501 Washington Ave
Albany, CA 94706

Anyone who has attended our annual Fall Fundraiser will tell you: it is a lot of fun and it’s for a great cause. Live bands, African food, delicious drinks, and great company! This event is free and open to the public. A donation request will be made. Please join us!

RSVP online or to Lyle Hansen at lyle@dokotoro.org.