JOHN DAY – Timbuktu was probably the furthest from Karmen Unterwegner’s mind when she graduated from Grant Union High School in 2003; however, this year she’s getting pretty close.

Unterwegner traveled to Mali, Africa – the country where Timbuktu is located – in late July for a 27-month stint of service with the Peace Corps as a water and sanitation engineer.

A 2008 graduate of University of Oregon, Unterwegner holds a degree in architecture, which should help with the work she wants to do in the small village of Drametou, where she currently resides.

Her mother, Tracie Unterwegner of John Day, says Karmen’s goal is to facilitate a community-driven and community-built clean water project which will be something locals can use, repair and manage themselves.

Before starting on the water project, Karmen’s first goal was to get a handle on the languages, Bambara and Khassonke, and customs of the people she will live and work with for the next two years.

Her first two weeks of training were spent in Sinsina, a village of about 2,000 people – including 1,200 children under the age of 15.

According to information Tracie has found about Mali, 50 percent of the population is under 13, and the country has one of the highest infant mortality rates. The adult life span is in the 40s.

Many become sickened with waterborne diseases because of poor water quality.

In Sinsina she lived with a family of 18, which included one father, three mothers and 14 children.

The people in Mali are primarily of the Muslim faith, and in Sinsina polygamy is a common practice, Tracie said.

In the remote Drametou, she has a smaller host family with one dad, one mom and three small children. She lives in her own small, round hut with a thatched roof near the family.

When Tracie spoke with her daughter in October, she heard good news: the people are friendly and welcoming, and Karmen feels safe. It’s also a relief for Tracie to know that there is another mother watching out for her daughter.

Besides the friendly people and beautiful views, Karmen also enjoys being surrounded by exotic animals _ most of them.

So far, she’s seen hippos, bush rats, monkeys, geckos, tarantulas and lots of interesting insects.

One day she saw a 6-foot mamba snake and alerted her host mom, who then called into the village to warn others.

“She was the talk of the village for warning them about this large snake,” Tracie said.

In her online blog, Karmen tells of her experiences in Mali, including the eating Malian food her host family prepares for her, and eating it the Malian way. There is no electricity, and food is prepared over a wood fire.

“For breakfast I had porridge,” she wrote August 18, “typically rice, but sometimes mono, which is mildly sweet with balls similar to tapioca and made from some variety of grains. Lunch was always rice with either peanut sauce (runnier that Thai-style, but very tasty) or a green sauce that I can best describe as spinach-like. Dinner is prepared all day by the women because it is millet couscous, so it must be pounded with an oversized mortar and pestle, sifted, then cooked. The couscous is accompanied by a slightly spicy sauce, and both it and the rice are eaten with your hands, the porridge with a gourd spoon.”

Every few weeks she travels to the nearby town of Bafoulabe and buys groceries and checks the mail.

Getting there is an “adventure,” she says.

There are no roads in her area, so she takes a 5-and-a-half mile bike ride followed by a trip across a river in a pirogue (a large canoe-like boat steered with one paddle and a pole).

Surely more adventures await.

She says in her blog, “I really feel like this is the place I was meant to be at this point in my life.”

Tracie Unterwegner doesn’t know exactly how her daughter arrived at making the decision to join the Peace Corps, but she said Karmen had a professor who had been a member and the family – Tracie, her husband Tim and their children Lee and Karmen – would discuss it when it came up in the news.

“I’m really proud of her for wanting to help out with a country that has a lot of needs,” Tracie said.

She does worry a little bit about her daughter’s remote location, but says the Peace Corps seems to do a good job of putting their volunteers in safe places.

She’s hopeful that the opportunity to get acquainted with another country and lifestyle will be good for Karmen, and the people of Mali will benefit from knowing her daughter.

“We are definitely are not all the same in this world,” she said.