Kassela

Today I was able to escape the big city for a drive to the town of Kassela. It lies around 1 1/2 hours SE of Bamako on the road that takes you to the Burkina Faso border.

As we left town I felt quite at home. The landscape was reminiscent of the north of SA or the south of the NT. Very red dirt. Small mounds of rock. Sparse, but dark green, vegetation. Arid but beautiful, and ironically not that far from the mighty Niger River.

The objective was to see if we could start a community gardens project in the area. Unfortunately it is not going to be possible. The cost to benefit ratio, alone, makes it prohibitive and we had to admit that there was insufficient research done before we had arrived. Further, there was no available land that was both affordable and farmable for the local people.

This was a little disappointing. Of the 500,000 displaced people, 28,000 are in this province. Food security was an issue apart from the conflict and is only getting worse.

We will continue to look at other ways of assisting, but for now it's back for a quiet night in town, ready to go to our next workshop tomorrow at Bako-Djikoroni.