Hi everyone,

Sorry for the lack of updates--as you might have heard, there has been a coup d'etat in Mali basically overnight and we know less than y'all do at this point. But never fear! We are safe and happy and very far away from all the craziness in Bamako. They are taking good care of us and trying to keep us updated, so we'll try to do the same. People in village are kind of upset and it's eerily quiet, but nothing bad has happened at all. We love it here and hope that we can stay with these amazing people!

We will be working on our previously-planned blog posts since it's a lot of not working and waiting right now. Stay tuned!

Hi friends,

We just wanted to write you a quick note to say that we are not able to upload pictures to the blog from our village, despite our best efforts. We can basically check e-mail and upload text, but very little else. We really like showing you guys what life is like rather than describing it, so we're going to just compose a horde of blog posts here at site and upload them in Sikasso, our regional capital, when we go next. That means no more awesome photo posts until maybe late March, but look out for them then! Blog posts to come: first few weeks at site, photos of our house, and themed blog posts about stuff like gardens, water, food/cooking/our market, day-to-day living, malaria, our counterpart organizations, making shea butter, and more! We have a lot of great stuff to show you, we promise!

<3 Cass and Carolyn