Thanks to everyone who came out on a beautiful Sunday afternoon to help edit, format, translate, and illustrate material for the forthcoming Bambara-language edition of Where There is No Doctor. And a big thanks to Mighty Minnow Web Studio + School for the use of their awesome collaboration space in downtown Oakland. We got a lot of good work done and of course swapped some good stories.

If you are good at MS Word and/or have an intermediate/advanced level of French, and can dedicate a few hours, we could use your help! Get in touch and we’ll get you to work! Or sign up for our email list (top right) to find out about upcoming opportunities to volunteer.

If you’re in the Bay Area, please consider joining us on Sunday for our fourth (?) Dokotoro Hackathon. The good people at MightyMinnow web studio and school, have graciously allowed us to use their offices. It’s right around the corner from the new Bissap Baobab!

Dokotoro Hackathon
Sunday, May 4, 2:00 pm – 5:00 pm
1440 Broadway #711
Oakland, CA

We have jobs for everyone, no matter your skill at languages or computers. We’ll be formatting completed chapters, and reviewing source text to send to our translation team in Bamako, etc.

RSVP to matt@dokotoro.org, or on Facebook.

It’s been a while since we posted an update on the Dokotoro Project. But that doesn’t mean that things aren’t happening behind the scenes! Here’s a run-down of what happened in the last couple of months, plus some exciting news about upcoming events.

Upcoming May Fundraiser! We’re planning a Peanut Sauce Cook-Off in May, in partnership with the Northern California Peace Corps Association. So dust off your recipe for sauce arachide or tigadɛgɛna. It will likely take place on one of the first two weekends in May, in Berkeley. This will be open to the general public, and recipes from all over the world are welcome! Details coming soon!

Our translators just finished their first draft of the First Aid chapter. This is a long, complicated chapter, with information on dozens of medicines. Because of this, it’s undergoing an additional round of proofreading to make sure everything is accurate.

There is exciting some news regarding new French-language publications from our parent organization, Hesperian Health Guides. A new French-language edition of A Book for Midwives is forthcoming. This was partially funded by the African Birth Collective in Eugene, Oregon, and translated by the nonprofit ENDA in Senegal. In addition to the print edition to be distributed in West Africa, Hesperian is planning to make this freely available as a PDF document and as web pages on their “health wiki,” and also for purchase via “print-on-demand.” The layout is being finalized, but they still need money to pay for printing, so there is a fundraising campaign online at Global Giving.

Please join me in saying a big thank you to Anh Ly, who is be stepping down from the Steering Committee after more than a year of dedicated service. I’m extremely grateful for all of Anh’s time, energy, ideas, and very generous donations to the project.

Next, please join me in welcoming Lyle Hansen to the Steering Committee, who will be taking over soon as treasurer. Lyle’s been a steadfast volunteer at our hackathons, and he’s also a talented photographer who conducted a successful Kickstarter campaign to travel to Mali and document development projects and every day life.

We’ve recently received news about a sizable donation… I’ll say more when the check is in the bank! We still need about $15,000 to finish having Where There is No Doctor translated into Bambara. Please consider making a gift online via First Giving, or tell a friend about us!

Lastly, our taxes are done! (Are yours?) We don’t owe anything to Uncle Sam, because we don’t make a profit (all the income is earmarked to be spent on translation) but we do have to submit paperwork to the IRS. A huge thank you to tax preparer Bruce A. Sahs of in Rochester, New York who volunteered to do our taxes free of charge.

From the Smithsonian Institution’s exhibit on the architecture of Mali, meet five master masons of Mali in this series of short videos. Click through to watch a set of interviews (in Bambara, with English subtitles). I learned a lot about this ancient craft, and was struck by the incredible amount of pride these men take in their work. Plus, I learned a new proverb:

Kɔgɔ t’a fɔ a yɛrɛ ka di. –Salt shouldn’t brag that it’s tasty.

http://www.mnh.si.edu/exhibits/mud-masons/meet-mud-masons.html

In honor of this past week’s Mardi Gras festivities, how do you say “Laissez les bons temps rouler,” or “Let the good times roll” in Bambara?

A y’a to kodumanw k’u tile kɛ u fɛrɛ ma!

or

A ye waati dumanw to u ka tɛmɛn u fɛrɛ ma!

Note: In Bambara you would add fɛrɛ ma meaning “librement” or “freely.”

Thanks for this translation go to Djibril Coulibaly, our fantastic editor. Djibril was one of my Bambara teachers when I was a Peace Corps trainee 15 years ago, and now teaches French in Thibodaux, Louisiana.

How about you? Would you like to see more Bambara lessons on the blog?

Hello all Dokotoro friends,

Next weekend, on Sunday March 9th, we will be having our next Dokotoro Project Hackathon, or volunteer party. And we need YOUR help! No special language or technical skills necessary (although if you speak French or Bambara, that’s a plus).

Please let us know if you can join us, either in person in downtown Oakland, California or virtually (for example, one of our volunteers will be working from her own computer that afternoon).

If you are joining in person, please bring a laptop if you have one. Afterwards, we’ll have food and drinks and plenty of time to hang out and socialize.

Dokotoro Project Hackathon
Sunday, March 9, 2014, 1:00 – 4:00 pm
RSVP to Matt for details

We’ve posted five new draft chapters of the Bambara-language edition of Where There is No Doctor on our downloads page. Several more chapters have already been translated, but need to be formatted. Take a look, and send us any feedback, especially if you read Bambara or work in Mali. More coming soon!

Our volunteers may have taken a few weeks off over the holidays, but things are still happening behind the scenes at the Dokotoro Project!

The dust has settled from our November fundraiser, and we’re delighted to announce that we raised nearly $11,000 by the end 2013. We extend a big, heart-felt thank you to everyone who donated or volunteered to make this such a big success. And we owe a special thanks to the anonymous donor who gave a $5,000 matching grant. Not only did we meet the match, we exceeded it by nearly $1,000.

Translation – We’re just past the half-way mark in translating Where There is No Doctor into Bambara. Our Bamako-based translation team is working on the First Aid chapter right now, which is one of the longest and most complicated chapters in the book, with nearly 80 pages of material. There is a lot of challenging material, with many new medicines, and lots of detailed figures and captions. The translators should finish a draft sometime in March, at which point we’ll pass it on to our editor/proofreader for correction. Continue reading →

Tiécoro Sissoko is a griot from the Kayes region in western Mali, and a skilled storyteller, singer, and guitar player. He has played and recorded with some of Mali’s finest musicians, and until recently, he played a weekly gig with Toumani Diabaté at The Diplomat in Bamako. Tiécoro passed away in May 2012, before the California-based record company, KSK, would released his first album Keme Borama. Enjoy this great video.

Have you noticed the photos that grace the “masthead” at the top of dokotoro.org? We’re using a WordPress feature where it posts a random photo each time you re-load the page. For a long time, we’ve had the same two photos–both of which I love–but I’ve been looking for new ones to add for a while.

Our friend and Dokotoro Project volunteer Lyle Hansen has graciously agreed to contribute a few photos for our site. Lyle recently returned from a month in Mali, where he took loads of photos, and visited several projects run by African Sky, our fiscal sponsor. His trip was funded by a successful Kickstarter campaign called Jarabi: C’est la joie de vivre.

Please join me in thanking Lyle! Better yet, go check out his website lylehansen.com for great pictures of everyday life in Mali.