Ben in Mali

last post

2009-12-04T13:20:00.002Z

I'd been thinking I needed to do one last post, now that I'm back in Ameriki, to put some closure on this whole blog thing. Yeah I've been busy, blah blah, but the truth is I've been avoiding it, maybe even a little afraid of thinking about it.

It seems a little cheap, then, to give you a link to someone else's blog - but honestly it can't be said better than Braxton (with a little help from Natalie) has said it. I almost cried when I read this and I don't ever cry. If you've asked "How was it?" or "Was it hard getting back to America?" and didn't get a satisfactory answer from me (and I certainly haven't given an answer that was satisfactory to me), please please please read this post:

Braxton's last post

Thanks for reading,
Ben

what I've been up to for my last few weeks in Mali

2009-08-21T12:03:00.005Z

Okay time for a brief rundown of what I've been up to for the past few weeks, since I haven't had time to sit down and write anything. I'm not going to talk about the fact that I'm leaving site one week from this morning, because I tried to write about it and failed completely, I can't even explain how I'm feeling to myself. Here goes then!

I got a goat! My dog Suruku having been run over by a car (or so they tell me), I've been needing companionship at site. Clearly I wasn't going to get another dog (Suk was the second I've had die on me here), and I needed to start thinking about what to give my host family for a present when I leave, so I figured getting a baby goat and fattening it up would serve the purpose and be cheaper than buying an already fat goat later. A sheep would have been a better gift, but I hate sheep. Seriously. So here she is:

my new goat, her name is Goat Light (inside joke... go to Ghana)

Hanging out inside during a rainstorm... because I'm a pushover and let her in. Yes those are orange pants I'm wearing.

although she's a much pickier eater than you'd think a goat should be, she's just as good as a dog at scraping the rice bowl
I just think this picture is cute

Apart from buying a goat, I also did some work. I'd noticed pretty much none of the Malians I've met at any age have any idea at all about world geography. Statements like "I'm from the United States of America" are often followed with questions like "Is that in the Amazon?" Since I was looking for a project to do, I decided to paint a world map at the school. This only deepened my appreciation for just how bad the geography school learnin' is here, after having to constantly answer many questions like "Is that (a town nextdoor)?" while painting Kazakhstan (not that I expect them to know what Kazakhstan is, but they should at least know the outline of Africa, which is in designs everywhere here). Perhaps the root of the problem was illustrated by the fact that even when I had the whole thing painted and was labeling countries, teenagers and adults alike were still coming up and asking what they heck I'd painted, having no clue that it was a world map. Oh, and the map I borrowed from the school for guidance with French country names still had the USSR on it. Luckily all those names are the same in French.

Latin America, pre-labeling

the South Pacific, which it turns out is a lot less empty than I'd always thought

ta-da! Completed and labeled map. All in all the map is over 3 meters wide by 1.5 tall

Shortly after my trip to Gao, I headed back to Bamako to go to the wedding of one of my brothers from my host-family during training two years ago. Malian weddings are always an experience and this was no different, involving the wedding party wandering around the muddy streets of Bamako, and the ceremony at the Mayor's office of the Niarela quarter of Bamako, where 18 weddings were going on that morning. Traffic was stopped for blocks around, and they let in the wedding parties (or at least the essential members thereof) one at a time and shut the doors, while the next five wedding parties tried to force their way in and generally try to kill each other. I may have mentioned before that Malians hate waiting in lines.

a little girl holding up the bride's train is a necessity when wandering the muddy streets of Niarela

The bride and groom, serious as always

I actually caught them smiling!

Ablo, my younger host-brother, was very happy to see me

as were pretty much all of the kids whether I knew them or not, who fought all day over who got to carry my water bottle, sit next to me, etc.

And now for something completely different:
what may be the very last mouse I had to kill in my house. He was not at all afraid of me or my camera, too bad for him

I was so disappointed with the effect my world map seemed to have (everyone was highly impressed at my painting skills while having very little idea what it was I'd actually painted), and since I needed something else to keep me busy for my last 3 weeks at site, I decided to paint a map of just Mali and its neighbors, with the main roads and rivers and cities, plus the less-major cities in Mali. This was arguably more depressing, since the kids who would always crowd around while I painted can't even identify Burkina Faso, which is 15km away from town. To be fair though, those kids were pretty young. Still I was dismayed that the teenagers watching me couldn't pick out our town on the map, even though it has its own city-dot and I'd pointed out the two nearest cities, Koutiala and San.

Mali map, pre-labeling. Measures 1.54 meters square

Yesterday, Thursday, was exactly one week before I'll be leaving site. My camera only had enough batteries to take three pictures, and out pops this crazy-beautiful rainbow over my house and my moringa tree (which I planted in May of last year by the way and is now something like 12 meters tall).

Well as I said I'm leaving site next Thursday, and I'll be at a good-bye party in Sikasso until Sunday at least. I brought all my books into Koutiala last weekend and finished The Quiet American in about 5 hours and was stuck without anything to do, so I packed. Yep, I'm pretty much all packed already, and have already brought all my cooking stuff (gas tank, stove, pots and pans) in to Koutiala. Those last couple days are going to be tough!

the far northeast, camel steaks, and oliphants!

2009-07-18T10:43:00.012Z

Sunday, July 12^th

So I finally made it to the far Northeast! L and I took advantage of the last Peace Corps shuttle going to Gao before we head home. Unfortunately it was on July 3^rd - 4^th (that's how long the drive is) so we couldn't go to Manantali for the 4^th of July celebration like last year, meaning we gave up our last chance to see hippos, but it turned out to be well worth it.Plateau near Hombori

It's the rainy season, and despite the fact that the rains at site had been far less than satisfactory, the area is quite green. I never realized just how green, though, until driving to Gao. The vegetation gets progressively thinner between Segou and Sevaré, where we spent the night after driving for around 12 hours It's not until you leave Sevaré and head north, however, that it really starts to get sparse. The drive between Sevaré – Boni – Douentza – Hombori – Gossi has been described as “Mali's Monument Valley,” and it's a good description – Plateaus and ridges line the road, providing a beautiful drive even on the abnormally hazy day we passed them. Just outside Hombori is the Hand of Fatima, advertized in guidebooks as 600 meter tall fingers-like spires of rock that resembles a hand reaching out of the desert. In fact it looks nothing at all like a hand (at least from the angle we saw it), and even “fingers” is a stretch. I even half-wonder whether our Peace Corps driver was mistaken, but then as non-hand-like as they were, nothing else came close.

the Hand of Fatima

Past Hombori is where all pretense of a reasonable amount of vegetation is dropped. The land is wide, flat, and sandy, with only small, bone-dry shrubs reaching to about waist high to keep some of the sand in place. Sand is continually gusting across the road, burying it in places. The debris and ridged sand covering the road in other places, along with the crumbling shoulder that has been undermined and washed away, attest to a recent flash flood – after all it's rainy season here too.

Gao city itself is a sprawling and dusty place, much bigger than seems necessary for its 40,000 some-odd people, and the wide lanes are on average three times bigger than what I'm used to in the south – like someone made one road for cars, then made the sidewalk on either side just as big. Pretty much all the men wear turbans, and the sun is brutal – I'd often been told that wearing long sleeves and covering all skin against the sun actually keeps you cooler, but only here, in this area completely devoid of moisture, is this actually true. It's so dry that in the tomb of the Askias, built over 500 years ago using lumber hauled across the Sahara on camelback from Mecca, a good deal of that 500-year-old wood, exposed to the eyes and the elements, remains in amazingly good condition.Tomb of the Askias with 500 year old Meccan wood!

Flood plains of the Niger, which reaches the wall when the river is full

Driving into the city you have to cross the Niger River, which at this time of year is mostly a vast expanse of dry floodplains waiting for the rains upstream to arrive in a couple months. Across the river to the west of the city is the Pink Dune, a behemoth of a sand dune sitting on the edge of the river that is said to glow reddish at sunset, the main tourist attraction of the city. Getting there involved a hike across the floodplains and a pirogue (canoe) ride across the river, then you hike up it to watch the sunset. At the foot of the dune the annoying and flip-flop piercing thorns and scrub brush disappear, so we took our shoes off for the climb. There were five of us for the occasion. The Pink Dune is exactly what you picture when you think of the Sahara – a giant, undulating mound of sand with a sharp ridge at the top, where gusts of desert wind constantly blow a spray of sand up, over, and out into the air. It's what I pictured when I first learned I'd be coming to Mali, and I was glad to have finally found it (Timbuktu being disappointingly full of scrub brush).

Crossing the Niger, with the Pink Dune (Dune Rose) in the background

Arriving on the other side, Rose Dune

Climbing up

and up...

some more climbing view from the top

One of the Gao volunteers had suggested rolling down the side of the dune, but it was so steep once we got to the top that we wondered if she had been kidding. There was nothing for it but to try, especially once it became clear that if I was going to be hesitant about doing it then L would go first, which as a self-respecting male I couldn't allow. We tested it out, jumping and sliding part way down, then went for it. You get going pretty fast, so that even if you try to open your eyes your vision is completely useless as the world races by. The perception of sky - sand – sky-sand-skysandsky is felt rather than seen, and when you stop it takes a good couple seconds to regain your bearing. Then you have to climb back up the steep, shifting, sinking ridge, which is no easy task. It was so much fun I had to do it again, starting from higher up and tucking tighter to go faster. Upon coming to a stop the second time it took considerable willpower not to throw up, so I decided twice was enough. Sadly all the blowing sand was gumming up my camera so I was too afraid to have someone take a video, but I got a couple pictures.getting ready for my second roll starting to feel sick...oh man that was awesome!trudging back up I've got sand in my everything!

crossing back. apparently they haven't invented the mast yet

Despite its arid climate and remote location, Gao managed to offer two culinary delights. Ouigila, a traditional Sonraï dish of steamed flour dumplings with a beef, tomato, onion, and date paste sauce, was absolutely delicious, the only Malian dish I would consider making at home except that it takes 4 hours to make. The second dish, from a toubab restaurant, was camel steaks! None of the local ethnic groups eat camel, nor do they raise them for slaughter, but there are enough wandering around that I wonder if someone from the restaurant goes camel hunting in the desert or if they're all salvaged roadkill. Camel meet tastes and looks pretty much exactly like not-so-tender beef.

Ouigila

Leaving Gao by public transport (the 781 miles to Bamako can usually be covered in 24 strait hours on a bus on a good day), we decided to break the trip into three days, the first of which brought us to Boni, where the rare Saharan elephant herds are hanging out at this time of year, during their 435 mile migration circuit. A volunteer is stationed in Boni, which is situated between two beautiful plateaus, to work with elephant tourism (not a bad gig!), and he arranged everything for the five of us to go out in a 4x4 with a guide the next morning. The guide and driver were impatient to get started early, in hopes of making it to the market day in Hombori, so they suggested and we agreed to all go out to their campsite and spend the night, 20km out in brousse.

The road to Boni the cliffs around Boni she refused to leave, six toubabs in the same house is just too weird

We piled the seven of us into five seats and bumped our way out into the brousse in the dark at breakneck speed despite the poor visibility provided by our dim headlights. It was a full moon, and looking out the window the sand glowed white in the moonlight, reminding me strangely of a drive along a back country road after a snowstorm. When we came to a stop in a seemingly random clearing I joked “we're here!” We were. Luckily we'd brought along two mattresses and we spend the night on the ground under the full moon, thankful that this part of the country was too dry for hordes of mosquitoes (there were just enough to annoy us). We were slightly annoyed in the morning when we woke up with the sun and saw our guide's hut 100 meters off, with mattresses and mosquito nets, though the health volunteer in me smiled approvingly. After two rounds of tea we got going around 7am.the guide's campsite tasty!

We drove around all day chasing elephant droppings in various states of desiccation, stopping every once in a while when we encountered Fula herders to ask if they'd seen the elephants, to which the first answered “oh yes, I saw them this morning right over there,” but apparently we drove the wrong way because the answers got less and less encouraging as the morning progressed. Elephant sightings get harder and harder as the day heats up and they retreat into the groves of trees and watering holes impenetrable to our 4x4, so when we hit noon with no luck we were pretty discouraged and had to discuss whether or not we'd stay and try again the next day. We stopped to make tea and get some shade ourselves when we finally got a good tip, and sure enough immediately found elephant tracks (which can be surprisingly hard to find on hard-baked mud flats despite their size). Malians don't kid around about their tea though, and our guide proceeded to build a fire in one of the deeper tracks, making two rounds of tea and wasting about an hour before telling us to stay put while he walked into the grove in search of the elephants we figured had surely been scared off by the fire.

Oliphant tracks - not as conspicuous as you'd think

He'd been gone most of an hour when the driver, who'd been sleeping in the car, ran over excitedly. In his typically candid Malian way, he explained “I went off over there to take a dump and I hear an elephant trumpet! I was so scared I couldn't poop!” We followed him that direction (he made sure to point out the site of the abandoned attempt at defecation) and, sure enough, ran into the freshest elephant droppings we'd seen all day. A short distance later the driver pointed through the trees and told us that the elephants were off that way, but that he was too scared and wasn't going any further. This was extremely frustrating, but we'd all heard enough stories of idiot tourists who get trampled by elephants after not listening to their guide, and we grudgingly decided we'd have to go back and wait for the guide to return. At this point, if we didn't get to see them then the driver was going to be in more danger from us than he'd been from the elephants.

making tea in an elephant track

The guide did come back from the other direction a few minutes later, saying he'd seen some off that way so we'd drive over in the car. He then proceeded to sit down to make the third round of tea. The driver seemed to have realized his predicament, and yelled at the guide – in another minute we were off.

We drove around to the other side of the grove, parked the car and got out – all except the driver, who still didn't want to go anywhere near the elephants. A short, silent creep through the bushes later, there they were. You'd think, given their size, elephants would be easy to spot and hear. Not so. We were 50 feet away from the group before our guide pointed them out – first just a tree swaying without a wind, then they slowly materialized and differentiated into three adults on the other side of a copse of bushes. Admittedly, we didn't have a great view – the head of one, rump and flapping ear of another, and the rear side of a third. Still there's only one way to describe them: huge. We were able to creep a little bit closer to them, but when they gave a warning noise and our guide gave us two sharp finger snaps we high-tailed it out of there, adrenaline pumping. The guide was glad to be getting out of there, and we made it back to Boni in time to catch the afternoon bus to Sevaré.Elephant visage!Elephant hiney!

Sadly, shortly before this trip Peace Corps Mali decided to pull all volunteers out of Gao and Timbuktu regions due to the instability that has plagued the region stemming from an ongoing Tuareg seperatist movement and, recently much more actively, Al Qaida of the Maghreb. All volunteers will be out before November 1^st (most are out already), and it will be off-limits to volunteers without special permission. Actually I think it already is (oops!). Boni is now the farthest site in that direction that hasn't been pulled, and that decision may well be made soon.

on being a rock star

2009-06-13T15:11:00.010Z

It's rainy season, and that means thunderstorms!

Monday, June 8^th

One thing I didn't think I'd miss upon returning to the states is being a Rock Star. White people in Mali, especially those that speak Bambara, are treated like Rock Stars. Everywhere I go, everyone takes notice. Whenever I walk into a room, bus station, wherever, I get mobbed with a bunch of people who want to talk to me. Walk down the street and all the children shout “hey! Look, a toubab!” or, if they know my Malian name, just “Demba! Demba! Demba! Demba!...” Adolescents shout “hey! Le blanc! Bon soir!” regardless of the time of day, fall into peels of laughter, and often follow it up with a “donne-moi l'argent!” Step off a bus and the taxi drivers and beggar children swarm. Take my bike anywhere and as soon as I stop at least one person is bound to remark “that's a nice bike! Will you give it to me?” Even when it's not so blatant, everywhere I go and everything I do, all eyes are on me to see what I'll do. Sometimes, when I'm being watched by children and trying to ignore it, I get a running narration on what I'm doing:

“Look, he's reading!”

“Look, he's going to drink water!”

“See! He's drinking water!”

“Look! He's picking his nose!”

Even when they're being nice it can be annoying – arriving on transport or to the bank, etc., someone's bound to be intrigued and ask me for my life story. Sometimes I just don't want to tell a stranger my life story, I just want to buy a loaf of bread and take it home!

I long for anonymity. I can't wait to get off the plane and walk around New York and feel like no one cares in the least who I am or what I'm doing there.

To be sure, the attention isn't all bad. Sometimes it's nice to be able to talk to anyone at any time and have them listen intently to whatever it is I have to say – which usually isn't earth-shattering if it's in Bambara. I am... nervous? afraid?... Of going home and losing that. A lot of fellow volunteers have told me that's the hardest thing about going home – having so many experiences and stories to share and not being able to find anyone who can relate. Relatives and friends who ask about your service and then go glass-eyed immediately. Having spent over two years of our lives out here, how do you deal with people who ask how your experience was and don't want to hear anything but “good” or “fine”? Even for those that really are interested, I'm afraid of misrepresenting things. How do you condense two years of incredibly rich experience into a reasonable answer?

And the crowd goes wild!

I'm off on a tangent, I meant to be telling you about last Saturday. Last Saturday was by far my most Rock Star day in Mali. In short, a bunch of NGOs and aid groups had gotten together and bought a lot of machinery to set up shea butter production facilities in five villages surrounding my site, and since the Peace Corps is heavily involved in the shea project I was asked to go along and provide a presence for the dedication ceremonies.

Donso serenade at the first village

Malians know how to throw a reception. Each village brought out the whole population of the village for their ceremonies. Driving up in our Land Cruisers, the Donsos (traditional hunters that wear mud-cloth and wield home-made muskets) would fire off their guns as we approached to warn everyone to get ready. Stepping out of our vehicles, we were greeted with a wall of sound – hundreds of villagers singing, clapping, playing instruments and pounding drums. One of the villages had around 300 school children line up on either side of the path from the cars to the reception spot, chanting “Bienvenue mes amis!” in near-unison.

Welcoming procession

Once we got over to the reception area we were ushered into our seats. Malians get really nervous when a guest doesn't sit down. I kept saying I'd rather stand (like the rest of the 500 people in attendance were doing), but when the fifth person ran up to me with a chair (not an easy feat through the amassed crowd) and insisted I sit, I gave in. The music was still going, including different kinds of drums, balafons, koras, a metal instrument that sounds a bit like a cowbell combined with a metal washboard and played with a brass baton, gourd rattles, and two or three other stringed instruments resembling guitars. The musicians came right up into our faces to play for us. Meanwhile a clearing in the crowd formed in front of us, and the Donsos all danced around in a circle playing their own instruments and firing off volleys from their muskets in ear-splitting effusions of esteem and gratification.

Donsos dancing and firing off their muskets

When the music stopped, the talking began. First the sound set-up: Malians seem to think that if they're going to go through the trouble of setting up a loudspeaker and megaphone (which have to be hauled out to the village on donkey carts and run with generators or car batteries) they might as well set them at full volume. Since the equipment is generally a couple of decades old, this results in enough distortion that it would be hard enough to understand what was being said if it stopped there. But no! Not only do they turn up the volume to the max and shout into the microphone, they set up a second loudspeaker by strapping the second microphone to the front of the first loudspeaker. By the time this reaches your ears, it has been amplified and distorted two or three times, and is completely unintelligible if very loud. The microphone-to-loudspeaker setup also creates a nice feedback loop.

How many Malians does it take to give a speech? Note the guy standing at her shoulder, that's the "true!" guy

A note about Malian public speaking. As I've mentioned before, most public speaking is done by Griots, a hereditary caste whose job is essentially to sing and shout at the top of their lungs at any given Malian function. Before beginning their speech, each speaker has to greet every important guest and attendee individually, which can be twenty names or more. When they get along to what they want to say, the attitude seems to be “anything worth saying is worth shouting as loud as possible.” This despite the fact that they have three microphones and the people they're speaking to are five feet away. What is perhaps most peculiar about Malian public speaking, however, is the need to have someone acknowledge and agree with everything they say. This means there's always someone standing behind the speaker, sometimes with their own microphone and sometimes just shouting, whose only job is to say “true! truth! that's true!" every time the speaker pauses, whether they've just made a statement that can be agreed with or just half a phrase or even a single name. Hence sometimes it comes out as:

"We are very grateful to Madame Diabate" - "True!"

and sometimes it comes out as:

"Mr. Secretary..." - "Truth!"

"We are..." - "That's true!"

I wonder how someone gets that job. For us it was the same guy who followed us around all four villages we visited, and the only thing he ever said was "true!" Maybe he's a lesser Griot, or a Griot-in-training.

True! guy is on the left

After all the speeches were over there was more singing and dancing, maybe the schoolchildren would sing a song, the Donsos would fire off their muskets some more, and then we'd head on to the next village to do it all again. In all we visited four villages and were celebrating from 8:30am to 6:30pm. It was something else, and although I knew I was only there to represent the Peace Corps and hadn't actually done much for the project myself (besides those workshops a year ago), I have to admit I thoroughly enjoyed my day of Rock Stardom. When it was over I couldn't help think that this kind of thing isn't likely to happen again before I go home, and unless I do eventually become a rock star, probably not ever. Maybe I will miss some things about Mali after all.

End of the swim project

2009-05-20T07:41:00.006Z

Wednesday, May 20^th

One of the Protection Civile groups

Well it's been a crazy couple weeks. I finally did get a new camera, and just about 3 days later my computer died. Blue screen of death, couldn't even boot to BIOS to wipe the hard drive! It's just as well I suppose – I got that computer in 2002 and among its many quirks the most amusing and infuriating was that it tended to overheat and shut down when taxed with such memory-intensive programs as gmail. This meant that I had to stick the whole computer in the freezer about every ten minutes to keep it from overheating. Seriously.

Westin and Dramane

Anyway we wrapped up the swim project a week and a half ago. All in all it went very well! We didn't have to miss any more weeks due to the pool being disgusting, though we were close a couple times. Basically it would get really gross, they'd pour a whole mess of chemicals in, and then it would be clear and blue again for a couple days before repeating the process.

Ami, the best of our female trainees Chef Tall practices first aid

What to say? For the most part everyone learned to swim. The Protection Civile were particularly dedicated to class, coming even on Malian holidays (Malians love their holidays – you never realize quite how many there are until you try to schedule a training) and to all of our optional Friday practice sessions. The Brigade Fluvial took the project much less seriously. To be fair, I think they would have come to practice sessions but their commander wouldn't let them (he'd gotten it into his head that one day a week should be sufficient – the Protection Civile were getting three). This really showed by the end of class, as none of the Brigade Fluvial members that didn't already know how to swim (about 6 of the 12 were decent swimmers already) had improved much. The Protection Civile on the other hand had improved by leaps and bounds. Now I'm not saying it was a perfect success – of the 30 members of the Protection Civile we had probably only 20 of them were comfortable swimming without life-jackets, and I'd really only trust about eight of them to actually save my life without a lifejacket – but given the time constraints I'd say we did very well.

Our first day on the Niger Fatoumata was a little panicked in the river Yumm, river scum by the shoreline

The last week of the project we spent doing mock-rescues in the Niger River in the middle of Bamako. This is probably really gross, and it's pretty likely we all contracted schistosomiasis. Peace Corps will test us for it in a couple months when we head back to America though, so we should be alright. The mock-rescues went very well. Most of the trainees took off their life-jackets for at least one attempt, which was very brave of them to do since we were in the middle of the very wide river (we motored out to the middle to try to avoid as much gross water as possible – though very wide, the river is not very deep – about 7 or 8 feet at the moment, though that's its low point during dry season, and still plenty to drown in).Here's Fatoumata trying to drown Holly...

To close out the project we had a ceremony at the Peace Corps office. All the trainees came, as well as their commanders, the Director of Peace Corps Mali, and we even had a representative from the American Embassy. There were rumors that ORTM, the lone Malian TV station, might show up, but it was not to be. We had Mike, our director, give a little speech about the beginnings of the project – Matt and Justin and the accident that took their lives. After that we had a slide show and gave out certificates. The trainees surprised us with gifts – we all got a wooden Ciwara, which is the Bambara symbol of hard work, and a very nice outfit made of mud-cloth. They were very grateful to us, and everyone not directly involved in the project (our director, the embassy rep, the commanders, etc.) were all very impressed.

Closing ceremony - Westin, Holly, Alkalifa, me, Mike, with pictures of Matt and Justin

One of our best swimmers, Yaya, came up to me after the ceremony and told me he'd already been recruited by his commander to go up to Koulikoro to watch over the swimming area there and teach a few colleagues how to perform rescues. I couldn't believe that they're already putting what they learned to use!With the project completed, pizza and beer were in order!

I want to say thank you again to everyone who donated to make this project happen. It was a great success and has made me feel like my time in Mali was at least a little productive. I should add that since we got the use of the pool for much cheaper than anticipated, we have a little money left over that will be going back into the Peace Corps general project fund to go towards other (smaller) projects. Your money will continue to do good in places and ways we will never know.

I'm heading back to site today. I haven't been there since the end of January, and I'm quite nervous about getting back, though also a little excited. Write about it soon.

the roller coaster continues

2009-04-05T20:24:00.009Z

Introduction to lifejackets before hitting the water
Second week of the swim project is over! The first week went wonderfully. The whole crew was excited to get in the water, and the whole crew showed up on time every day. We started them off fairly quickly - after showing how to put on a life jacket we lined them up and had them get right in. The pool is 3 meters (10 ft) deep throughout - no shallow end, no place where you can touch bottom. There were more than a few terrified expressions when they got in for the first time, and a few people panicked despite having the lifejackets on. Luckily the pool has a little mini-pool attached that's only 1.2 meters deep, so Holly took these few over there to introduce them to the water a little more slowly. Mostly though, they were splashing around and enjoying themselves within a few minutes of hitting the water. By the end of the first class, some of the trainees even took off their lifejackets and swam across the pool by themselves! Certainly those are the few that already had some idea how to swim (there's 3 or 4 that are decent swimmers already and one that is really good - he can swim from one end of the pool to the other underwater while wearing a lifejacket!). All in all it was a very encouraging first week, especially considering that we weren't even sure we were going to be able to do the project at all a mere two weeks earlier.

We had a bit of a surprise when we arrived Monday for the second week of the project - the pool was looking pretty green and murky. We got in the water anyway though, and had a good day. Some of the crew were looking a little tired after last week, but most of them were still psyched to be there and didn't want to get out of the water when the class was over. After class we talked to the pool owners and they promised to put some product into the pool to clean it up.

Tuesday went a bit differently. By then the pool was a dark grass green and completely opaque. We decided that we couldn't get the class into the water, it was just too gross - even the Malians (and I've seen Malians drink from standing water in irrigation ditches) were worried that it would make them sick. The day wasn't a total waste, as we did CPR training for the two groups, but then let them go home. We talked to the pool owners again, who promised to put more product in the pool and that it would be ready for the next day. Part of the problem is also that the pump is broken, so that the water isn't getting filtered. Bottom line is that the water was really gross.

The mini-pool is slightly less green, but smells like mildew
Wednesday was no better. In fact it was worse - they had obviously put a bunch of product in the pool the previous night, but without a working pump it hadn't gotten mixed at all. There was a good film of solid chemicals floating on the top of the pool. We were getting frustrated by this point and might have gone in the water despite the color, but decided we'd rather not end up drinking a whole bunch of pool chemical concentrate. The trainees were getting antsy too - a bunch of them aren't from Bamako but are only here for the project, so when they're not swimming they have nothing to do. They were already disappointed to only be swimming three days a week, and tell us that they aren't getting the per diem that the Protection Civile is supposed to be providing them for living expenses. All in all morale was very low, and the pool owners' assurances that they would get it fixed if we could give them a couple more days were not very helpful. We told all the trainees that we wouldn't have class at all that week and that we'd have to see about next Monday.

The pool was so murky you couldn't even see the second rung on the ladder!

Plus there was a nice film of algae and dead flies on the top

After class that day we weren't at all sure that we had a pool for the project. We're already doing the project in a week less time than we'd planned, thanks to our late start, and we weren't at all sure how much longer the trainees from outside Bamako would stick around if there was no swimming. We figured that if we didn't have a pool by Monday we would be in serious trouble. We decided we couldn't just wait and see if the pool was fixed by Monday, we had to have a plan B - so we spent the afternoon driving around Bamako in a Peace Corps car looking at other possible pools; both at hotels and at expat houses. The most promising one we found was at an expat's house across the river, but the pool was about one third the size of the pool we were in currently. It was a load off, though, to know that we'd be able to do the project one way or another!

Makan, our CPR trainer from the Malian Red Cross, demonstrating proper CPR techniques

Our Country Director told us not to lose hope - he said his pool can get green and nasty like that, and all it takes is the right combination of chemicals to perform a miraculous transformation. We were skeptical - with all the algae in the pool I was pretty sure the only way to get the pool in decent condition would be to remove all the water, scrub the pool clean, and fill it with new water and chemicals, and who knows how long that would take! I was wrong.Who says you need to get IN the water to practice your flutter kick?

Thursday afternoon I got a call saying that the pool owners reported having fixed the pool. I jumped in a cab and headed over to check it out and sure enough, the pool was blue again! We called up a few key members of the Protection Civile and told them practice was back on for the next day (Fridays are our optional practice days). When we showed up Friday morning the pool was not only blue but clear - we could see the stripes of lane lines on the bottom. I hadn't even realized there WERE lane lines before.

Practicing the reaching assist Practicing gliding Swimming with the aid of a lifejacket Holly demonstrating proper arm technique for the front crawl

Friday went very well despite the fact that half of the group hadn't been in the water for a whole week. In fact nearly every one of the 30 people that showed up Friday (the Gendarmes' commander isn't letting them show up to practice) ended up taking their lifejackets off and swimming across the pool without it - even though this was only the second time in the water for the vast majority of them! I continue to be amazed by how courageous they are and how quickly they come along. Actually they may be a little too courageous - in Monday's class we had to repeatedly rescue a couple people who would try to swim without the lifejacket, sink to the bottom, have to be pulled out, and then try it again 30 seconds later. They did much better on Friday.One of our better swimmers, without a lifejacket already Maiga, our star swimmer

So now we're on another upswing, hopefully this one will last. I just hope that they can keep the pool clean for the next 5 weeks!

Swim project started

2009-03-23T17:24:00.002Z

Today was finally day one of the swim project!

It has been a rocky couple weeks, but we're finally under way. We had originally planned to start the project Monday March 16th with 68 people - 48 from the Protection Civile and 20 from the Brigade Fluviale of the Gendarmes. The problems started when the whole week preceding the 16th we kept calling both but were unable to get in touch with either. Finally on Friday the 13th we were able to get ahold of the Protection Civile, who told us that they regretted that though they had been promising us 48 people since December, they could only afford to give us 10 people, and wouldn't be able to start that week. Basically what happened was that we'd been dealing with their training director, but their overall director had stepped in and said "no" for budget reasons at the last minute. We couldn't even get a meeting with them face-to-face since the guy in charge was being uncooperative and wouldn't even take the calls from Al Kalifa, our Peace Corps Mali Safety and Security Coordinator who has been our point-man for dealing with both government agencies. We did get a meeting with the Gendarmes that Friday, who said that they would only be able to provide us with 16 people, wouldn't be able to provide more than 8 on a given day without leaving the office unstaffed, and wouldn't be able to start that week either.

So the weekend before St. Patricks day was pretty bleak, our project had been cut down from 68 people for 8 weeks to 26 people for 7 weeks (we have a time constraint on the other end of the project so every day later we start is a day less we can provide training).

Wednesday the 18th we finally succeeded in getting a meeting with the Protection Civile. The director we spoke to (the one who'd been being difficult) was... shall we say less than cordial. He tried to give Al Kalifa a dressing-down to make himself feel more important, but that didn't go so well. For those of you who don't know, Al Kalifa is kinda a legend in Peace Corps Mali. Before serving in the Peace Corps he spent 20 years as an officer in the Malian Army, serving as a keeper of the peace in Sierra Leone during their civil war, Liberia, and other places. He has been known to make a grown Gendarme break into tears over the phone all the way in Gao, and making people mysteriously disappear. Just this past Christmas some guys snatched and ran away with a volunteer's purse, jumping on the back of a moto and speeding away. She had her phone in the purse and reported it to the security guards at the office, who called Al Kalifa at home at 10pm on Christmas Eve (not a special day for him since he's Muslim, but a holiday anyway) to tell him. The next day Al Kalifa called the stolen phone and the bandits picked it up. We have no idea what he said to them, but he got them to return the purse, phone, and wallet with ID cards etc (all but the 2000 cfa or about $4 that was in it) to him, picking it up on Christmas Day. He's the kinda guy who walks into a Gendarmes post in civilian clothes and gets saluted by everyone there. We change those Chuck Norris jokes to include Al Kalifa (Chuck Norris doesn't sleep - he waits. Chuck norris doesn't read a book, he stares it down until he gets the information he wants). We weren't exactly sure what would happen when the Protection Civile director tried to give him a dressing down - we were afraid he might disembowel the man with a flick of his little finger, but that would probably have made them less cooperative for the swim project so instead he just smiled and took it. By the way, Al Kalifa (his given name) is Arabic for "The Guardian."

At any rate we successfully negotiated a promise of 30 trainees from him - 22 from the Bamako area including six women plus one from each of the eight regions. Unfortunately the director got wind of the name of our Malian Red Cross CPR and First Aid trainer, who apparently works for the Protection Civile, and was not pleased. He told us we couldn't use the guy. So now we had 46 people promised but no CPR trainer.

It was worrisome when, over the weekend, we were unble to get ahold of the Protection Civile again to confirm that they were actually going to show up on Monday. One thing about Malians is that they usually need to be told something six times if you expect to show up somewhere, so we were worried we'd get to the pool Monday morning and have nobody show up - especially considering 8 of the trainees were coming from very far away. Nevertheless late Sunday night we did finally get ahold of them, and this morning we had an amazing 27 people out of the 30 we were expecting show up, and at least one of the three that didn't had a ligitimate excuse.

Today was just an introductory day - introduce ourselves and the project, go over logistics, etc. Another notable thing about Malians is that they can't do anything without arguing. When we told them we wanted them to divide up into three groups of ten however it was convenient for them, there was much arguing over I-don't-know-what before it was finally sorted out. Explaining the schedule was also a bit of a fiasco - we'd prepared an Excel spreadsheet with the schedule, but Malians aren't used to information represented visually in general or spreadsheets in particular so it took some explaining and more arguing before everyone got it (I hope).

To close out the meeting we decided I should jump in the pool and demonstrate a few of the skills we'd be teaching them - treading water, front crawl, breast stroke, and side stroke. I was quite hot (it's hot season after all) so I did a neat little dive into the pool, to a collective gasp from the crowd. It's so strange as an American to think of a whole society of people having no exposure to swimming, but this group (like all Malians) is full of people who have no idea how to swim. There was some concern expressed during the meeting that we'd make them get in too fast. After demonstrating the strokes I got out again, and a few of the participants ran up to me, wide-eyed, and accused me of being a fish. They asked if we'd really be able to teach them to swim in 7 weeks, and admitted that at present they're more like rocks in the water than fish. Insh'Allah, I said, we will teach you.

Still no camera so I still have no pictures, but I've already bought a camera and it should be arriving shortly. Tomorrow is our first day in the water with the trainees!

Back in Mali

2009-03-07T09:28:00.002Z

Just got back from vacation in Senegal, Ghana, and the Cote d'Ivoire. I promise I'll write a blog about it, but I won't post it until I can get some pictures from Laura's camera - my camera disappeared about three days before we left for vacation. Although I'm very upset about this, at least all the pictures that were on it - I had a 2-gig memory card, so about 3 months of pictures including all my Timbuktu and Dogon pictures - didn't get lost, as I backed them up to my computer a couple weeks ago. So now I just have to make sure my computer survives the last couple months here...

Anyway I'm back in Mali and living in Bamako for the swim project, which begins in less than two weeks. I hope to keep regular postings on it for the duration, but wish I had my camera (it was waterproof among other things) to document it.

Hope to update soon

Dogon with the fam, work trouble at site

2009-01-20T11:07:00.007Z

Dad in Dogon at the bottom of the cliffs Climbing up into the cliffs of Dogon. Those are Baobab trees Monkey skull up in the dwellings on the cliffs Back down at the bottom, a mud mosque There's that freakin kid with his turban again The fam climbing along the top of the cliffs Our second Dogon guide, Oumar, hanging out on the edge of the cliffs

A very colorful traffic jam climbing between villages on the cliff-top

A rickety wooden ladder spanning a chasm and a drop of a couple hundred feet on the climb down
Did anyone order Tabaski sheep in a bag?Or perhaps some sheep on the roof?Danger, Dao, and I at Tabaski morning prayers She affectionately calls me Tubabu, so I affectionatly call her Old Woman. She's one of my favorite people in village Different old woman, no relation My new host mother Salimata in her Tabaski best

First off I must apologize for being so long in posting a new entry - I hope I still have someone to apologize to! A lot has been going on - Thanksgiving, my family came to visit for two weeks, Christmas and the new year, Tabaski, etc. so I've been spending most of my time running around rather than sitting and reflecting. Really though, I just haven't been inspired to write since I've been experiencing what I hope has been the nadir of all the ups and downs of my service. More on that later.

Secondly, and this is also long overdue, I want to say thank you to all that donated to my swim project - we reached our funding goal in full and have received the money, and are in the planning/preparing/purchasing stage of the project; which we intend to run from March 16th to May 9th. During this time I will be living in Bamako and shall have regular access to the internet, so I'll be able to update here as the project goes along.

Warning: there's nothing about Africa in this paragraph, so if you want to skip my ramblings feel free to - you won't miss anything particularly insightful. I've been under a lot of stress lately about life after Peace Corps - after all, my "months remaining until home" countdown has finally hit the single digits, yet I don't feel much closer to figuring out what I want to do, how to go about doing it, where I want to be, or how to pay for any of the above than I was when I flew out of Philadelphia some 18 months ago. I've crossed a number of things off the list (like med school) but added just as many if not more, and none of them will be easy - they pretty much all involve some time in grad school, and all in programs for which I don't have the necessary pre-requisites - never mind funds. If I find any fault with my choice of NYU for undergrad, it's that perhaps a smaller school would have provided me with more individual counseling as to what I want to do and how to get there rather than letting me blunder into a History major despite the fact that I have no interest in the study of history (or little more than average, anyway). It is now one of my great regrets in life that I just coasted along in undergrad, doing only what was required to get a degree (any degree!) without much thought for life after college. That's fine if you're not planning on a further degree, but failing to develop relationships with professors who could then write recommendations and failing to take the most basic pre-requisite courses (say, ANY science, math, statistics, or economics courses at all) can make grad-school application difficult to say the least.

But back to Africa. When joining the Peace Corps you are often told that many volunteers say after their service that they got more out of it than their village did. Without further analysis you are left thinking "wow, surely their village got a lot of out of it so they must have had a really incredible experience!" While I don't deny that I have in fact had an incredible experience and have learned and grown much, the statement would be true even if I hadn't. That is to say, I'm not at all sure my village has gotten anything from my experience beyond cultural exchange. Fortunately two of the three goals of Peace Corps are cultural (to have other cultures learn about Americans and to have Americans learn about other cultures) while only one actually has to do with getting work done. Fortunately I feel I've at least made progress culturally, and we all know what Meatloaf said about "two out of three"... If I'm a meatloaf fan when I return to the states someone shoot me. I blame the Lebanese owners of our favorite bar in Bamako, who have an inexplicable penchant for playing bad American '80s music. Speaking of cultural exchange.

Actually I'm not even sure how much progress I've made on the cultural front either - most of my villagers still seem to think that all American white males are somewhere between Kiefer Sutherland as Agent Jack Bauer in "24" and Chuck Norris as seen in "Delta Force" (are my pop-culture references out of date?).

My work in village seems to have reached somewhat of an impasse - the matrones have realized that I'm not going to give them large amounts (or small for that matter) of money to do things they should be doing anyway, and I've realized that they're not going to do anything I don't give them large amounts of money to do. This might eventually have resulted in a compromise - them doing things beyond the bare-minimum required to keep their jobs and me doing things I knew they'd discontinue as soon as I left, but the South Korean chapter of Save The Children has stepped in and is building us a new maternity building, so they've found someone else to pin their hopes of buying out of the village's problems on. This statement may seem a bit harsh, but when speaking with my homologue a little while ago about how discouraged I was with work she replied that the matrones were also discouraged. We were talking about the strange fact that the matrones don't do animations (10-minute health talks on topics such as nutrition, clean drinking water, and the importance of pre-natal consultations) despite the fact that A) they know the info; B) being native Bambara speakers they would have no trouble conveying the info; C) unquestionably have the time (most of their time is spent knitting and chatting); D) most animations cost nothing at all to do; and E) the information is very much needed by the community. I asked her why the matrones were discouraged, and she replied "because the toubab (that is, me) didn't come with lots of money."

If I sound discouraged I am, but don't let my individual experience color your picture of third-world development too much. Many people are very hard working and dedicated, it just so happens that my particular matrones are either not or are victims of systemic issues like the lack of proper incentives and such - I won't go into that, but if you're interested please read "The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good" by William Easterly, which is a brilliant counterpoint to the Jeffrey Sachs' infuriating "The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time."

Timbuktu at last

2008-11-21T16:45:00.008Z

Thursday Nov 13^th

I’ve heard a lot of places accused of being the middle of nowhere, and Mali contains more than a few of them. None, however, quite compare to that most Middle of Nowheres, Timbuktu. In fact many people assume that the legendary Timbuktu is just that – a legend. Like Atlantis, if it ever existed it is surely long gone; existing only as an idea, a metaphor for the very essence of middle of nowhere.

It wasn’t until I learned that I’d be coming to Mali that I discovered that not only is Timbuktu a real place, it even has an airport. Why anyone should think it needs an airport I don’t know, but it has one all the same. This allows some people (I met a couple of them) to fly in from Morocco, meander around for two hours and fly back, just to say they’ve been there. This seems self-defeating to me: if the attraction of the place is that it’s impossible to get to then flying there and back in the same day would seem to defeat the reason for going in the first place.

If we ignore the airport, then, and the silly people who use it for tourism, then the city can re-establish itself as the Middle of Nowhere. There are no roads to Timbuktu. That is to say you can leave it on a road, go to the ferry crossing the Niger at Koriomé, and end up on the road on the other side, but somewhere in the shifting sands of the 200-some-odd kilometers between there and Douentza (on the main Northern road in Mali connecting Bamako and Gao), the road disappears out from under you and you’re left with a maze of 4x4 tracks through the sand and scrub, hoping your driver knows where he’s going.

But I’m getting ahead of myself! My story starts in Bamako at a bar with many other volunteers including L and her father J, who’d just arrived for a visit. It was early in the morning on November 5^th – about 4am actually – and we’d just watched our country elect the first presidential candidate I’ve ever been proud of. We stayed (L, J, and I) just long enough to hear the victory address, then had to rush back to our hotel and out to the bus station by 6am as the bus company assured us was necessary to get on the bus to Sevaré at 7am. We arrived at the bus station at 6:15, bleary eyed but still wearing our Obama pins and too happy to care when the ticket official said the bus wasn’t even scheduled to leave until 7:30.

It's 4am, do you know where your new president is?

When the bus finally showed up at 8am we went to stand in the crowd gathering around it, which had gotten fairly packed and antsy by 8:30 when the guy standing behind me suddenly yelled “hey there’s a thief – this guy just tried to take my wallet!” I turned around to see the thief, who had just enough time to point lamely to the old man standing next to him and say “no, it was-“ before ending up on the wrong end of the fists of at least seven angry Malian men. There’s no justice quite like angry mob justice, and we were glad when the bus finally left at 9:30.

After sleeping in Sevaré we got up the next morning and made the short cab hop to Mopti to get a boat to Timbuktu. We had planned on taking the ComNav boat – a big passenger boat with a cabin for J, a restaurant, and a space on the upper deck for L and I – but were informed that due to engine trouble it was already running a day and a half late and wouldn’t be leaving until the following night. Since J had a plane to catch and lots of Mali to see we decided we couldn’t wait, and ended up getting places on a traditional cargo boat called a pinasse. We arranged for transport and food for the three of us, and they promised the boat would leave by 1pm. We were slightly worried about the bathroom situation – there was only one (a hole cut in the floor behind the engine with straw mats for screens) and access to it had already been blocked by a large pile of cargo, but they assured us that they would clear a path once the rest of the cargo was loaded. We only had to buy water for the trip and straw mats to sleep on.

Not our boat, but not entirely unlike it either

By 1pm we were on board, with our mats spread out on top of 100kg bags of peanuts; while not exactly cotton, the peanuts had a bit of give to them and weren’t as bad as bedding as you might expect. The roof, which the boat guys had suggested we might be able to sleep on, was by now stacked high with bags of coal and it was looking like the boat might be completely loaded and ready to go.

Our sleeping arangements

The trouble started two hours later, still at the dock, when they started loading bags of sorghum on top of the bags of peanuts. We held out hope as they started loading from the other end of the boat but before long, sure enough, they asked us to move so they could place bags under us. Sorghum, being much smaller than peanuts and hence much more densely packed, has no give at all – we might as well have been sleeping on large concrete tubes thrown haphazardly aboard so that large crevasses between them at odd angles made any attempt to find a comfortable position futile. With the extra layer of bags we were now raised up over the lip of the boat, and the roof was now between three and four feet from the sorghum – enough room to sit up, but not enough room to kneel and certainly not enough to stand. Why we didn’t get off the boat and walk around more I don’t know, but by the time it left at just after 6pm we’d already been sitting on those sorghum blocks for five hours.

Our boat, with sacks of coal stacked on top

When dinner time rolled around L and I went back to the cooking lady and asked when it would be served. She informed us that it would not be served, not to us, until we paid her for it. Arguing that we’d paid the ticket guy extra for it didn’t help – he wasn’t on the boat, she didn’t know him, and he hadn’t given her any money or instructions to feed us. She didn’t work for the boat company, she was just on this one trip and collects her money from the passengers. While we could see her point, we were still a bit overtired from not sleeping all Tuesday night (this was Thursday), and the argument that followed was probably more heated than she deserved. Getting nowhere, we went to the front of the boat to talk to one of the boat guys and were pleasantly surprised when showing him our ticket (clearly marked with “food included”) resulted in a quick apology, a promise to take care of it, and the prompt arrival of a bowl of rice with oil. As you will see, this pattern (of someone taking responsibility and delivering on a negotiated agreement) was not to be repeated again on our trip. While we’d overpaid for food (rice with oil three times a day for the next two days), at least we got it as promised.

Soon after dinner came the next problem: I had to go to the bathroom. That a path hadn’t been cleared through the cargo turned out not to be the problem – behind it was the open engine compartment, a grinding mass of gears, smoke and axle grease. The only way to get to the back of the boat was a white-knuckle climb along the outside of the boat, with no hand-holds and covered in charcoal sifting down from the bags on top. I managed it a few times during the trip, but mostly we just did as the Malian passengers did – peeing in a cup as discreetly as possible within such close quarters and throwing it over the side. This turned out to be particularly difficult for L, as everything we toubabs did seemed extremely interesting to the other passengers. It seemed like every time L crawled over to the other side of the boat (a couple feet) to go, every eye on the boat immediately fixated on her. J and I were lucky in that we could go over the side, wind permitting, much more easily.

I had been hoping to get an even better view of the stars from the boat than I do at site, but this was not to be because it was approaching full moon so the moon was out until early morning. This wouldn’t have been such a problem – with sorghum sacks for bedding I spent more time each night trying to coax sleeping limbs back to life than sleeping my self – except that it was much colder on the river than we expected. Neither L nor I had brought a blanket or even long sleeves, so the only thing we could do was wrap up in the five meters of turbin fabric we had between us and any heat we managed to retain was too precious to be wasted on a trip to the side of the boat that wasn’t urgent.

The Niger Inland Delta is a cool thing to see – the river can’t be that deep, but it’s very wide and often has a false shoreline of water grasses that stretches far into the distance to the actual shoreline. For the duration of the trip we were continually passing tiny little sandbars just big enough to hold up a few mud houses – usually less than 5 – and often with the river flowing through the front door of at least one in each cluster. The houses themselves were often uninhabited, but just as often contained a family complete with chickens, sheep, and a dog, all completely cut off from the distant shore except for one small pirogue. I hate to think what would happen if the pirogue washed away one day.

A group of houses on a sandbar in the middle of the Niger

River dwellers who'd rowed out to meet us

The last unpleasant surprise of the boat ride, though by then it was hardly surprising, was that despite the ticket-seller’s assurances that we would reach Koriomé before sunrise on Saturday morning, we didn’t get there until after sunset that evening. We stepped off the boat at 7pm after lying on those sorghum sacks for the 49 hour journey plus 5 in port in Mopti content with the knowledge that whatever else happened on the journey, we wouldn’t have to spend another night freezing on those sacks. Standing strait up for the first time in two days was also quite satisfying, to say nothing of the shower, toilet, and bed (with mattress!) that greeted us at our hotel in Timbuktu a short while later.

We were already making plans to leave when we woke the next morning, having heard that it would be hard to do so quickly. Our facilitator Ali Baba (yes that was his real name, as far as I can tell), who’d intercepted us before we even reached the hotel the previous night, showed us a newish Toyota Land Cruiser he said would be exactly like the one we would be on for the drive out on Monday. We opted to buy all four places in the middle seats (behind the driver but not in the way back) to conserve some modicum of comfort on the trip. Those of you who are familiar with the layout of a Land Cruiser might quickly point out that there are only three middle seats, but when the seatbelts are removed and Malian logic applied, those three become four.

Ali Baba also helped us arrange a guide for the day and a camel trip into the Sahara to spend the night. We figured we didn’t want to freeze during our night in the desert, so we made sure to confirm with our Touareg camel guide that he’d have plenty of blankets for us

We spent the day walking with our guide, who showed us around the city – the old mosque, the old explorer’s houses, the market, etc. – it’s not hard to see the whole town in a couple hours. Our first goal was to go to the tourism office to get our passports stamped, but the guy who works there had gone out (this was Sunday after all) and said he’d be back in the evening before we left for our desert trip. I quite enjoyed the walk around after being confined to a few feet of space on the boat , and didn’t even start being annoyed at the Touareg craft vendors until after lunch. There’s a ton of them and despite all claiming to have something unique, they all sell the same things. That said, on the whole Timbuktu was far more peaceful and hassle-free than any other touristy place I’ve been in Africa.The old grand mosque of Timbuktu The city scape with Sahara in the background

After a late lunch it was approaching time to meet our camel guide but our city guide, who had disappeared for an hour to go check on the tourism office, returned to tell us that the guy couldn’t come in but promised to ride out to our hotel on a moto the next morning, between when we got back from the desert at 9am and when our car left at 10.

We were somewhat disconcerted when we met our camel guide and he remarked that we were going to be cold that night without blankets or anything. When we inquired about where the blankets he’d promised us were he didn’t know what we were talking about, but said we’d figure something out. We resigned ourselves to another cold night – whatever the temperature it couldn’t be as bad as the boat – but it wasn’t until the next day that we figured out that the guide who took us was only the cousin of the guy we’d made the arrangements with, and apparently hadn’t been informed about the blankets.Our three camels

Blanket frustrations aside, the camel ride was a lot of fun. I’d been told by multiple people that riding a camel is the most uncomfortable thing you’ll ever do, and can now say with conviction that it’s not even close – try sleeping on sorghum sacks. When I came to Mali I had fantasies of living in the desert, owning a camel, and wearing a turban, and this was probably as close as I’ll ever come. We rode out during my favorite time of day (setting sun, as I’ve already mentioned), and the desert was gorgeous in the elongated shadows and dusk.Our Touareg guide

We spent the night at our guide’s compound, composed of three tents with straw mats for roofs and an open fourth wall. Dinner consisted of more rice with oil, only this time we got to eat with big wooden spoons instead of our hands. The guide gave us hi family’s only two blankets, which we felt bad about taking but then again not too bad; after all we’d made our blanket need perfectly clear from the outset, and since the 52,000 CFA we were paying for the night is about half of the average Malian’s yearly earnings we figured that if he didn’t want to run out and buy an extra blanket before leaving Timbuktu then that was his fault not ours.The view from inside our tent The view from outside our tent

Early next morning, after a breakfast of dates and peanuts, we hopped back on our camels and went off at a good trot in order to make it back in time for our passport stamping and car. Our guide gave me the reigns and hopped on the back of my camel (the reigns of the others were tied to the back of mine), and while my camel didn’t really require much steering I was psyched about it anyway. At it turns out camels are much more comfortable at a trot than walking – their stride evens out so you go from big, slow lurches to quick shrugs, which are much easier on the backside.Moody's Diner!These beetles were everywhere in the morning, and their tracks crisscrossed over the sand making cool patterns everywhere we looked L and J The donkey carcass on the outskirts of the city was a bit foreboding, but by then our desert journey was over

Arriving at the hotel at 9am as planned (punctuality is another cultural difference between the Touaregs and the Bambaras, besides cutlery), we were informed that the tourism office guy was busy and couldn’t leave the office, so we sent J with our passports on a moto. He got back for our ride, which was late and significantly more well worn than the one we’d been shown, but Ali Baba promised that the engine was what mattered and that it had a good one. We finally left the city, with a French woman and Touareg sitting up front plus four Bambara Malians in the back at 11:15, arriving at Kouriomé to take the ferry across the river just before noon.

The thing about the ferry is that they charge 15,000 CFA per car to go across, but they won’t go until they’ve collected at least 30,000 CFA so if you’re the only one there you either have to wait or pay double. There was no one else there when we arrived so we opted to wait. Between us and the French lady (we didn’t expect the Malians to pay – Malians have a lot of time but very little money, while Westerners generally have a lot of money but little time) we could easily have paid, but refused to out of principle because A) the driver was already making a killing off of us four so if anyone should have paid it should have been him to deliver on the promise of a quick journey we’d paid for; and B) after days and days of getting raw deals, we weren’t about to get suckered into paying extra again. Ali Baba had promised that the extra money was worth it since we’d make the journey in seven or eight hours, but hadn’t said anything about having to wait for a ferry. Looking back now, we should have paid.

At around 2pm the next ferry passengers showed up: the Malian Civil Engineers, with a few large dump trucks and other heavy equipment. The first dump truck did a three-point turn and backed down the embankment onto the ferry, but the second was attached to a third by a steel I-shaped tow bar since the third apparently had no breaks. He drove a little ways down the embankment and stopped, at which point the truck he was towing crashed into him, bending the steel tow bar like a pipe cleaner. Now they were both stuck there and had blocked our Land Cruiser so we couldn’t get on the ferry. A fourth dump truck drove behind them, crushing a stairwell and scraping against truck #3, but successfully boarding the ferry which then took off. We’d have gone ballistic, having waited over two hours, except that by then a second, bigger ferry had arrived. It took another hour and a quarter to get the trucks moved and everyone loaded onto the second ferry, during which I had to jump in front of a newly arrived UN Land Cruiser that was trying to cut us in line. L flicked him off, which made us all laugh since the gesture doesn’t mean anything to Malians (it may have been a UN vehicle, but its occupants were Malian). By the time we crossed the river it was after 4pm we’d traveled a grand total of about 20 km and still had over 200 of desert to cross to Douentza, plus 167 from there to Sevaré. I tried to shut out the tales I’ve heard from other travelers of breaking down and having to spend the night in the desert (scheduled is fine, but unscheduled and without camels isn’t so cool).

The start of the road to Douentza is a (comparatively) wide, (comparatively) well-established dirt road with enough room for two vehicles to pass going in opposite directions, which was good considering the speed with which drivers barrel down it, plus seemingly random 4x4 tracks in the sand on either side of the road. Our driver either knew the road very well or was good at pretending he did, cutting off now and again into the sand tracks on either side to avoid a particular section of road that looked exactly like the rest. He only skid out and ended up traveling sideways in the sandy tracks once, and only for a little ways.

At around sunset we reached the half-way point town of Bambara-Maoundé, where we stopped for a pee break – no nyegens in the town, just go find a cow to use as a screen and go behind it. It wasn’t until everyone had peed and bought a snack of peanuts or a Coke that our driver sat down at the only restaurant there with a plate of food. Other than the breakfast of dates and peanuts plus some peanuts as a snack we hadn’t eaten anything all day, but were eager to get back on the road. After all we’d paid extra for a seven to eight hour journey, it had been eight hours, and yet here we still sat in the middle of the desert. The French lady agreed, but when she pointed this out to the driver he replied “that’s too bad, I’m the driver and I’m not in a hurry. I don’t have to be anywhere and I want to eat so you’ll have to wait whether you like it or not.”

I managed to nod off shortly after leaving Bambara-Maoundé despite the bumpy road (after all I’d only really slept one night in the previous four), and when next I looked we had left the dirt road and were bouncing along in the middle of the desert, following nothing more than faint wheel tracks in the darkness, which split off in different directions now and again. After a while a huge shape loomed out of the horizon off to the left, stretching as far as the eye could see. At first I thought it must be a storm front, but puzzled at this since we just don’t have clouds this time of year, never mind storms. We were getting steadily closer until finally it resolved in the light of the almost-full moon into a giant cliff face pushing up foothills covered in scrub brush. I thought it quite pretty in the moonlight and would have liked to see it in the day; at site we don’t have any topography at all, and except for the rolling dunes Timbuktu wasn’t any less flat.

Just then our headlights started flickering on and off. I was afraid for a second that they were going out, except that it was obvious that the driver was doing it. He turned them off completely, and kept rolling down the dirt road we’d suddenly found ourselves on just long enough for me to open my mouth to ask if he was crazy, then pulled over and got out. Wondering what was going on, I got out too just as the four guys I’d suspected were on our roof climbed down. I was still wondering what was up when the driver growled something along the lines of “what the hell are you doing? Get in the car, hurry up damnit!” at me.

I climbed back in, he flicked the lights back on, and after another 200 meters or so we were at a Gendarmes stop – like a police checkpoint. Why they had one way out here in the middle of nowhere, I can’t guess. By now I’d figured out that we weren’t allowed to have people on the roof, so we’d let them down and they were now walking around to the other side. The gendarmes checked our papers and waved us through, and after another couple hundred meters the driver pulled over again, flicked the lights on and off another ten or fifteen times, then shut them off. Subtlety was clearly not this guy’s forte and sure enough he was rewarded when a Gendarme drove up behind us on a moto and told him to get a move on. This put him in an even more foul mood than he’d been in already, no less because he was clearly looking for another place to pull over but couldn’t because the Gendarme was following us to make sure we didn’t.

After another hour or so we arrived at Douentza and the main road at last. It was just after 8pm at this point, and we were told it would be another three hours to Sevaré. We were not pleased when the driver pulled over again and said it was time to eat. When we protested that he’d just eaten two hours ago he threw a temper tantrum and stomped off.

At this point, as I have found myself doing many times here, I seriously considered climbing into the driver’s seat and driving off. It wouldn’t even require any McGiver hotwiring skills, since like all Malians do the driver had left the keys in the ignition. Also, one of the benefits of there being only one paved road is that it’s impossible to get lost – there’s simply no place to turn off. The only thing that stopped me was that I don’t know what kind of papers to show at the Gendarmes stop outside Sevaré and I figured I’d probably get kicked out of Peace Corps for grand theft auto. Still, it was tempting.

About half an hour later the driver returned from wherever it was he’d gone and plopped himself down moodily at a nearby restaurant. At this point J suggested calling Ali Baba. I wasn’t too hopeful – the last time I did something like that the guy said he’d be right over then shut off his phone and proceeded to ignore us for another four hours. Still, apart from commandeering the vehicle we didn’t really have any other options so we called. Ali Baba asked us to pass the phone to the driver. Another temper tantrum ensued, only this time with the French lady and I yelling back – hey, I was low on sleep, and it felt good. I haven’t yelled like that in a very long time, though I would exceed it the following day. After handing us back the phone it appeared that we were actually going to get going, but not before the driver stomped around some more yelling about not being a slave. Another passenger, a Malian, tried to placate us by telling us that the reason we’d stopped was to wait for the guys we’d left at the Gendarmes, and that they’d just arrived so we could go now.

By the time we reached Sevaré it was midnight. The driver pulled over in the middle of town and announced that anyone going to Sevaré would have to get out here as they were heading on to Mopti (they’re twin cities about 12km apart). We pointed out that we’d been promised a ride to our hotel which was on the outskirts of town a couple miles away – too far to walk and at this hour a taxi would be hideously expensive. This, of course, led to refusal. We called Ali Baba again, which resulted in another temper tantrum from the driver. He agreed to take us, but when we said we didn’t know exactly where it was he refused again. Ali Baba call number three of the night led to the driver agreeing to seek directions from one of the locals standing around (we were at a sort of unofficial bus stop) but when the taxi driver he asked told him it was far he refused again (so far he should leave us to take the taxi). This was of course supremely stupid – Sevaré is not NYC, nothing is far away from anything else. In the time we’d already spent arguing we could have driven there and back a couple times already. After Ali Baba call number four of the night we finally got directions and five minutes later were there. The French lady, who was going on to Mopti, decided she’d better get Ali Baba’s number from us.

Despite all the undelivered promises I have to give Ali Baba a lot of credit for not just turning off his phone and ignoring us, which he very easily could have done. We’d ordered dinner from the hotel that morning, stupidly thinking we might really arrive before 7pm, and they’d left it out for us – Moroccan couscous, which was delicious and unlike any other ethnic cuisine I’ve ever had, though it probably didn’t hurt that it was the first thing we’d eaten other than peanuts all day. The shower, cold though it was, was also sorely needed. After bumping along that dirt road all day I looked like Two-Face from the Batman comics, having sat on the driver’s side and so caught the brunt of the blast from cars passing the opposite direction.

I won’t describe our last day of travel here, except to say that despite it being on regular public transport it was no easier, involved more lies, more yelling, and even L crying. Through it all I was more than impressed with J’s patience and fortitude; both were well beyond what I would have expected from anyone, much less someone not used to the way things work in Mali.

I had a lot of fun in Timbuktu and am glad I went, though the difficulty of getting there and back certainly lived up to expectations and I’m not in a hurry to go again. In a way though, that was the whole point – what makes this most Middle of Nowheres so special.

wedding and Halloween pics

2008-11-12T13:32:00.002Z

The wedding ceremony in front of the mosque, bride and groom not included

My new host mom Sally with her (female as it turns out) child, whose name I'm still confused about
Halloween - no watermelon carving this year, *sigh*

Next entry will be about Timbuktu, hopefully next weekend

a couple firsts, and a new mom

2008-11-01T12:13:00.001Z

**pics to be added soon**

Saturday, Oct 18
So I’ll soon have a new host mom – Danger’s getting married again! I haven’t yet met the new girl, but I hear she’s at least 20 years old and already has a kid. Not sure about much else – Mamu (our resident housecleaner, cook, etc.) knows less about it than I do, and I don’t see Danger much anymore. He’s gone all day and comes back in the evening when I’m cooking dinner and then reading. His habits haven’t changed, mine have – it used to be that I would go to sit on his porch as soon as the sun went down, where Awa would feed me and at 7:00 everyone’s favorite TV show came on, a Brazilian soap opera dubbed in French called “Au Coeur du Pêché” – “In the Heart of Sin.” This soap started on Malian TV just a couple of weeks before I arrived in country last year, so I got to watch it from the beginning and I must admit I got hooked. It starred a guy named Paco who always had a 5 o’clock shadow, and since the TV’s the only source for what most Malians know about the outside world, they now call any white male with facial hair “Paco.” Indeed, I’ve had a group of kids following me down the street yelling “Paco! Paco!” Not that I’m complaining – it’s not often that I get confused for a gorgeous Brazilian soap opera star! It’s much better than “toubabu,” anyway.

Anyway I mention ACdP because it finally ended just before Ramadan (if you’re interested, and why would you be, Barbara (the conflicted villain) shot Tony (the purely evil villain) and then jumped off a cliff. Paco and his true love got married finally, and Paco’s long lost brother Apollo showed up (who Paco had earlier impersonated, not knowing they were related, after everyone thought they were both dead). As it turned out, Apollo just had amnesia.). During Ramadan it was replaced with “Rencontre avec les Ulemas” – “Meeting with the Qur’anic Scholars” – which was deathly boring, and then by a new soap – which isn’t nearly as good as ACdP and I’m determined not to get addicted to. I now have to cook if I want to eat anyway.

Back to Danger’s new muso. Because of the way Malians typically marry, I’ve no idea how well he knows her or for how long he’s known her. It’s entirely possible he’s “known” her for quite a while (in polygamous societies it’s not called “adultery” it’s called “dating”), though from what I know of Danger I don’t think this is the case. I suspect she’s just someone in village who “needed” a husband and was having a difficult time finding one due to her illegitimate child. Speaking of whom, I’m also not sure what will happen with… him? I’ll assume for now that it’s a him. Anyway after M’ba’s wedding she of course went to live with her new husband – and her two sons stayed with her family. When I asked if they were going to live with M’ba and husband later I was told that would be decided later. Illegitimate children, then, don’t really have a proper place, and I assume it’d the same with Danger’s new wife (although I think Danger will let him come and live with us). Awa had had a child with her first husband, but he was unambiguously the property of his (legitimate) father so he stayed behind when she left that family and married Danger.

I guess some of these questions should be answered next Thursday, when the wedding is supposed to happen (he’d told me it would happen “next week” three weeks ago, then “this coming Thursday” two weeks ago, “Friday next week” two days ago, and “Thursday” today – apparently all the various gift exchanges weren’t complete before, but presumably are now.

Sunday October 19
Well I had two firsts last week: first time making pumpkin bread on my now improved brousse oven, and the first time watching a woman give birth. The later may come as a bit of a surprise, since I work at a Maternity ward, and perhaps I should have had this experience a long time ago. It’s a bit different though, being a guy – I mean the Malians all think I’m a doctor , no matter how many times I’ve told them I’m not, so they wouldn’t think it was weird if I was standing there watching – it’s just me that thought it would be weird. Still I was curious, so I decided a couple weeks ago to gather my courage and walk in then next time the opportunity presented itself.

I mention these two firsts – pumpkin bread and birth – together, though they may seem incomparable, for two reasons: a) they happened on the same day; and b) contrary to what you might expect, the pumpkin bread was more amazing. Now I can picture a couple people recoiling after reading that, so before you go accusing me of being an inhuman monster, keep in mind that a) I did not know the woman at all and in fact have never seen her before or since; b) I walked in right in the middle of the process, literally two minutes before the baby popped out; c) pop out is exactly what happened – it was out before I realized it had started emerging; d) the Malian birthing environment, at my clinic anyway, is quite impersonal and doesn’t foster cute mother-baby interaction – after it came out, the matrones didn’t give it to the mother to hold, didn’t exclaim “it’s a girl!” and there weren’t even any other family members around for the mother to share the moment with – they just weighed it, wiped it off a bit, wrapped it in some fabric and laid it on a table. Oh and finally, e) you didn’t taste my pumpkin bread.

Yes, the whole “miracle of birth” as I experienced it for the first (well, second) was fairly anticlimactic.

Friday October 24th

Well Danger’s long-awaited wedding happened yesterday, at least the religious ceremony. I’d never seen a Malian religious wedding, just the official government one – well it was something else entirely. His new wife, Salimata (Sally), isfrom a village out in brousse – how she and D got hooked up I don’t know, though I think it was just word of mouth – D needed a wife, and she (being an unwed 20-something with an illegitimate child) needed needed a husband. Danger’s uncle lives in the same village, so that was probably the connection – as for why he didn’t get someone from here in town, I can’t say.

Anyway I told Danger I wasnted to go, and since it was to be out in brousse and I’m not allowed to ride a moto that meant I had to bike it. Clearly I had to leave before the main procession of motos in order to arrive in town, but luckily there was another guy who was biking who knew the way – actually come to think of it, he was probably biking just to show me the way – everyone else moto’d it. It turned out to be 18km away – 6km to where we left the road and another 12 on a small path through fields of milled, sorghum, and cotton. It was quite a pleasant ride, though it was the middle of the day so by the time I arrived I was quite salty – luckily I’d thought to bring my nice outfit in my bag. Before long the moto caravan started arriving – all of Danger’s (male) friends and male relatives. We sat around waiting for the others, and after a while I asked where the bride was – after all this was her village. I was told she was off in a different concession with her (female) attendants, so I figured we’d all meet at the ceremony.

When it came time to tie the knot (the Bambara verb for “to marry” translates literally as “to tie the marriage”) we all went to the mosque. The ceremony was held outside in front of the mosque, with everyone involved (imam included) sitting on straw mats, with a few goats and sheep wandering around in the grass behind us. When I say everyone involved I mean about 50 men aged from twenty to ancient. No women were there, not even the bride, and neither was the groom. Danger didn’t even leave home! I was somewhat annoyed that I’d ridden all that way, and everyone had failed to point out that neither D nor my new mother were involved in the ceremony!

The ceremony itself went like this: with everyone seated, the imam talked first to a guy who was evidently the griot hired by Danger, saying something along the lines of “did you agree to seek Salimata Touré on behalf of Zoumana (Danger) Baro?” – “Yes!” Then he turned to the old man sitting next to me, evidently Sally’s father, and continued: “Old man! Did this guy come seeking Sally? What did you say?” After another shout of “HEY! OLD MAN!” to get his attention and a repetition of the questions, to a round of giggling from the crowd, the response came: “yes and I agreed and gave her to him.” A whole stream of benedictions followed, punctuated by a chorus of “Amina (Amen)” after each. Then the whole thing was repeated – questions, answers, blessings, and Aminas – two more times. Then it was over, and they started handing out a fistful of party favors to each person there, consisting a mix of Kola nuts, little quarter-sized biscuit/cookies, dried figs, and menthol cough drops (which the Malians use for candy). It was getting late and I wanted to make it back home before sunset, but they wouldn’t let me leave before serving everyone rice with sheep meat and sauce. By the time my escort and I hit the road I was quite thirsty – I’d left with only one liter of water for the whole trip – and we had to race the sun, but it was even more pleasant than the ride out anyway. Just before sunset is my favorite time of day here, when it cools off a bit, the sunlight isn’t so blindingly bright, and everything casts improbably long shadows, throwing the normally boring shades-of-sandy brown landscape into stark contrast.

I arrived home before anyone else who’d been to the wedding, and told Danger all about it. It was a bit strange having to confirm for my host-father that he was in fact now married again, but I suppose he had to set up the real party, which was already going strong in our concession. The wedding night works like this: the bride is attended by a delegation of her female relatives and (female) friends, and shortly after sunset a delegation of men from the groom’s side is sent to go fetch her. The bride’s delegation must resist giving her up, and they then commence bargaining for her. This is after and apart from the bride price (after all they’re already married at this point), and once it’s agreed on they put the bride (who’s wearing a shroud by the way) on the back of a moto and bring her to the groom’s house, where the party is now going in earnest. They stash her away in the groom’s bedroom and there she remains, still shrouded, for the duration of the party with a group of women attending her. The following seven days (less if she’s not the first wife) are spent in a kind of honeymoon at home – the bride doesn’t leave the bedroom, more or less, except to go to the bathroom and bathe. The husband is allowed to go out, where his male relatives and friends will be hanging out chatting and playing cards and his female relatives will be preparing food for everyone.

The strange part for me, then, is that I attended both the wedding and reception, and live at the groom’s house, and I’ve still never seen my host mom! I saw her briefly last night, but shrouded and among a large group of overexcited people yelling various things at me, including (from the only other boy in the room, who was in his mid-teens) “hey you see this? I’m going to make your Bintou (Laura) my new wife! Ha ha!”

The rest of the part – loud music (annoying techno and Afro-pop from a DJ, not good live Malian music), shouting, stamping around, and all – lasted for the remainder of the night. Thank goodness I saved those earplugs I got from my Air France flight 15 months ago!

the Thirty Day Famine

2008-10-05T10:11:00.005Z

Lake Tangriela, Banfora, Burkina Faso
Lake Tangriela
Water Lilies, Lake Tangriela
End of Ramadan morning prayer service at site

The fam, hanging out for Selifitini (end of Ramadan)Adjara and Bathama (sp?), who I have a lot of pictures of but then they're just too cute!

So my project is almost funded! To all those who gave, I'd like to say thank you for your generous donation to my swim project here in Mali! I am very excited about getting the project started, and the Malians with whom I will be working are also very excited to get over their fear of water and learn life-skills that will not only help themselves, but will provide invaluable aid to their fellow countrymen. This project is something that is easy for us here at Peace Corps to provide, but something that the Malians could not have done for themselves. Further, the people we train will be able to provide assistance and training to their co-workers in the future, meaning that the good done by your donation will spread far beyond the assistance that my co-workers and I are able to provide during our brief time here. We talk a lot in Peace Corps about Sustainable Development - that is, doing development work that builds local capacity and confidence rather than simply "throwing money at the problem," which is often ineffective both because it does not last once the outside funds dry up and because it teaches locals dependence on outside aid and lowers their confidence, rendering the community unable to help itself. This project will help build such local capacity and confidence, and allow the Malian rescue workers - members of the Protection Civile and Gendarmes - to change lives in their daily work that might have been lost without this training. In short, thank you very much - from both myself and my fellow Peace Corps Volunteers and from the Malian community.

Tuesday Sept 23
So this month is Ramadan, which just happened to start on the 1st and goes 30 days to the 30th. It's on the lunar calendar so it's starting on the first was purely coincidence - someone told me it moves about 10 days earlier every year, and we didn't even know whether it would start on the first or 2nd until the night before. If you're fasting, you can't eat after it starts to get light, so some people who didn't hear that Ramadan had started ate breakfast as normal and then started, some (like Danger) decided that since they'd already failed to fast that day they might as well not start until the following day, and I'm sure some people just didn't eat at all so their fast was extended a whole night into the day. For any of you who may never have been Muslim before, Ramadan is the monthof fasting to attone for any sins you might have committed the preceding year. Of course you don't have to literally not eat at all for 30 days strait, it's only in effect during the daylight hours. Every day, whoever's cooking the meal (having done as much of the preparation the night before as possible) gets up at some ridiculous hour to cook so that the family can eat together at the first prayer call, about 4:30am, which is before the sky has even thought about getting lighter for the oncoming day. From then until sunset prayer call, about 6:30pm, you're not allowed to eat - or drink - anything at all. Some extra-devout people even walk around spitting all day, not wanting to cheat by swallowing their own saliva.

So for 14 hours a day, for 30 days strait, no eating or drinking. This quite beats the 30 Hour Famine we used to do in Church Youth Group, which was on single 30 hour stretch that included a night of sleep (which can hardly count) and during which we could drink anything we wanted, within reason (no hamburger smoothies, no matter how hungry we got). I should also add that whereas the 30 Hour Famine ended with a giant feast, the Ramadan day ends with a bowl of porridge and some Kinkiliba, or (lemongrass?) tea with ginger. Oh and breakfast is tho or rice with sauce.

Last year Ramadan fell right around our swear-in ceremony and moving out to village (I've now been in village for a year!), so I didn't fast, but this year I decided to give it a try. At first I told the Malians that I would fast, but would drink water (after all even though it's rainy season it's still plenty hot during the day - at the moment it's exactly 99 degrees) since as a non-native I'm not used to the heat like they are, but they dismissed that idea as stupid and pointless - if I'm going to fast, it has to be all or nothing.

I agreed to do it for real, but decided I'd cook breakfast for myself. This was to my disadvantage the first day - I cooked porridge, albeit "improved" porridge (which means it contains ground peanuts and ground beans for protein), figuring the Malians would have their normal breakfast of plain porridge. Really I could have done something more substantial- I saw them eating a real meal when I got up to start cooking, but at 4am my mind wasn't up to changing the plan. Despite the meager breakfast though, the day turned out alright - it was overcast and relatively cool for most of the day, so by sunset I was quite hungry but alright. My second day passed similarly, only with a better breakfast, and was far easier than the first.

On the third day, the sun came out. Oh, man. Laura came to visit that day, and by the end of the day we were both in an irritable mood - as it turns out, the thirst on a hot day is far worse, completely eclipsing the hunger. In the interest of not having a miserable visit, we decided to put off the fasting for the next few days.

My fourth day I was traveling to Koutiala, and drank extra extra water in preparation for being on a hot bache all day, but paradoxically that just made all the extra water come out all that much sooner. By sunset my mouth had been sticking together for hours, and after chugging a whole liter of water I wasn't even hungry.

In the end four days was enough. Though many Malians were quite impressed that I'd been fasting, many others repeatedly told me it was pointless and silly since I'm not Muslim. Mostly though, it was just getting in the way of things I wanted to do - I need to work out to get a shot of endorphines in order to keep my sanity here, and that's just not feasible while fasting. As it turns out, all the people that hang out in my concession all day aren't fasting either, so I've got company. Speaking of which, Mamu (one of Danger's relatives somehow) and Dao came back at the start of Ramadan - after all we needed a cook - and Adjara returned last week, so we've got some people in the concession again, though still no news of Awa.

trouble at home, becoming a cook

2008-09-18T12:00:00.006Z

Malian kids love Time Magazine!

Cow grazing in the traffic circle - common problem in Mali

The sheep in my concession gave birth again, this is the new lamb at less than 2 days old

Mother and Daughter #2. Daughter significantly cuter than mother...

First off, a very big THANK YOU to everyone who's donated toward my swimming project. We've come a long way towards the goal of completing funding, and the response I've gotten from those of you back home has been nothing short of amazing. In fact it's been so amazing that Peace Corps Washington has agreed to leave the project up on the website for another month, until mid-October - so if any of you out there were thinking about donating but didn't make it in by Sept 12th, there's still time! Again the link is: https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.donors.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=688-231
Thanks again, and I hope to be able to say thank you in person when I get back to the states around this time next year.

Thursday, August 28

Well it appears that Awa (host-mom) isn’t coming back. She left sometime in the last week of June, while I was away visiting L’s site and going to July 4^th in Manantali, and hasn’t returned. The reason I’ve been given for her original departure was that she went to the big hospital in San to get checked out for some kind of stomach pain. This seems a bit strange to me, since there’s a doctor in our Circle capitol, but not unreasonable since the hospital in San is far bigger. I hadn’t heard anything about the pains before she left, but then Malians can be private about such things so that’s not entirely surprising. Awa being ethnically Bobo and San being the center of Bobo Mali, she was to stay with some friends or relatives in San while being treated.

As the end of July approached and she hadn’t returned, I started questioning Danger (host-dad) about it but wasn’t too worried – at least twice since I’ve been here she’s gone to visit relatives for “a week” and stayed for three or four. Anyway Danger agreed that she’d been gone a while and should be back soon, but didn’t seem overly worried. I kept asking though, and soon he was able to provide dates – “she’ll be back on next market day!” but after missing a few of these dates with no explanation, I started pressing Danger. He allowed as how he’d heard that she’d returned from San, passed through town without stopping, and continued on to the predominantly Bobo village that she comes from, about 80km away from my site, without explanation.

Danger gave me the impression that what was now delaying her was a mere inability to find transport, so he would send one of his (half?) brothers, Amadou or Lasso, to out with a moto and bring her back. Dates were set for the trip, missed for various reasons, and after another week or two Amadou finally went. I had begun to suspect that Danger wasn’t telling me something, and asked him if he and Awa were fighting. He seemed taken aback, denied knowing about any fight, and asked me to ask her when she got back if she was mad at him for something and tell him if she was. By this time I was quite impatient for Awa’s return – apart from my dwindling supply of clean clothes, I missed Awa herself. Since she’s the woman in the family she’s home a lot more than Danger is, so I’ve gotten to hang out and get to know her far better than anyone else in village, and she feels far more like family to me than Danger does.

I was more than a bit ticked when Amadou returned empty-handed. All he would say was that she wouldn’t come, and that he’d spoken with her father who told him that Awa claims she and Danger are in a fight, and she’s not going anywhere until Danger comes out himself to deal resolve the situation. My anger turned to puzzlement when I asked Danger about it, who reported that Awa was “lying” – that they’re not in a fight, and that she’s bad for lying to her father and saying that they were in a fight. Further, since they “aren’t in a fight,” Danger refused to go out himself. He also cited some taboo about how it would be socially unacceptable for him to go and try to resolve the situation with his father-in-law. Now this second thing I can kind of see – though I wasn’t previously aware of any such taboo, Malians traditionally resolve all conflicts through a third-party intermediary (another function of a Griot besides weddings). But what he meant by “she’s lying, we’re not in a fight” I can’t possibly even begin to fathom. Even if Danger wasn’t aware of being in a fight, clearly there is one; if there wasn’t reason for them to be fighting beforehand, then this “lie” (and why she would create such a lie I also can’t fathom) would seem reason enough for them to be in a fight now.

While my mind was doing summersaults trying to work out what the heck was going on, Danger said he’d send another friend, much older and wiser than Amadou, to work it out. The next day I had to go to Koutiala to meet the new volunteers visiting their sites, and spent most of the following week running around village here with the volunteer who was to join me in site and then away in Bamako trying to figure out logistics for my swim project. When I finally got back last week, Awa was still missing. When I asked Danger if she’d be coming back any time soon, this time his response was “she’s not coming back, we’re getting divorced.” I asked him again what had happened, what wasn’t he telling me, but again he just said that nothing had happened, he wasn’t hiding anything. They’re just getting divorced, for no apparent reason. I’ve asked everyone else I can think of that might tell me something more, but the response is always either “I don’t know anything about it” or “nothing happened, Awa is a bad person.” Sometimes they generalize to say that all Bobo women are bad, though a little racial tension is to be expected – after all, of all the many ethnicities found in Mali, Bobo is the only one that is overwhelmingly and conspicuously composed of Millet-beer-drinking, pork-eating Christians.

Still the whole situation sucks, and I don’t understand a bit of it. Did Danger do something to Awa? Were these “stomach pains” really something more sinister? A certain amount of domestic violence is quite common and even accepted in Mali, but on the other hand I’ve never seen Danger hit anyone, not even his kids (Malian child-discipline is a bit more corporeal than it is in the states). The only complaint that I can ever remember Awa leveling at Danger was that he should get a second wife since she wanted help with the housework (Danger, being the exception to the rule, didn’t want another wife despite the fact that he is certainly well-off enough to acquire one).

If Danger really didn’t do anything, then is Awa just crazy? I find both of these explanations very hard to believe, but I can’t see what else it could be since and since Awa’s not here I can’t get her side of the story. As I was writing that last sentence I asked the woman (Danger’s half-cousin?) that has been here all day washing Danger’s clothes (I paid a village laundry-lady to wash mine yesterday) what happened. She used to hang out in the concession washing clothes with Awa, so I hoped she might give me a new perspective on the issue; but all she said was “nothing happened, Awa’s just a bad person.” I can’t believe that, but I don’t know what to believe.

Friday, August 29

Apart from Awa herself, I miss her cooking. She’s an excellent cook by Malian standards, and always made sure I had at least twice as much food as I could possibly eat at every meal. That’s Malian hospitality – if you’re not fatter when you leave than you were when you arrived, they weren’t a good host. A common compliment here is “look how fat you’ve become,” much to the consternation of the female volunteers. Still if I can say that anything good has come of the whole Awa-Danger situation, it’s that I’ve had to learn to cook. Danger would feed me, but for the short time I relied on him that meant that he would bring me a over-cooked spaghetti-noodles swimming in oil with Maggi and maybe a bit of onion (that’s how “macaroni” is always served in Mali), and that only whenever Danger happened to get home – maybe 3:30 for lunch, well past 8:00 for dinner.

Clearly that couldn’t last. Now I’m not saying I’ve become a gourmet chef – at the moment I only make a couple of dishes – but the change is a big one. Take my favorite new dish for example: spaghetti marinara. Doesn’t sound exciting does it? But for someone who once committed the unforgivably tactless act of telling his mother he preferred store-bought spaghetti sauce to her home-made variety, this is quite an about-face. It’s possible that it only tastes so good after eating Malian food for a year, but when I get home you can keep your Prego and your Newman’s Own ‘cause I make it much better.

I also have been putting a lot of eggplant in the sauce, which I can’t remember ever even trying before a month ago. I disliked eggplant on principle; eggplant? does that sound appetizing to anyone? Eggplant Parmesan? Why the heck not have veal or chicken parm instead, what’s this vegetable doing masquerading as a meat? Alas, Laura’s trying to turn me into an omnivore, and succeeding.

I haven’t yet really gotten baking down, but there’s reasons for that. One is that the banana bread recipe I’ve been using (from the Peace Corps Mali cookbook) doesn’t work for anyone. Got a good recipe anyone? The second reason is that I of course don’t have an oven. I use a “brousse oven,” which means I take a bigger pot and sit it on the burner, put some rocks in the bottom of it and a little water, then sit a smaller pot containing the batter inside it, and cover them both. There’s no way to regulate the temperature – stick your hand in, does that feel like 350 degrees? They say it doesn’t get very hot, but it got hot enough to melt the plastic handle on the lid of the inner pot the first time I tried it – mmm, banana bread with plastic syrup! Laura’s much better at baking – the other day she made a pumpkin bread in her own (non-melty) brousse oven, and it was absolutely delectable.

Cooking a lot and eating off my own dishes means that the dirty dishes pile up fast, so I’ve been spending a fair amount of time washing dishes. Of course every time I do the other men in the concession call me Djeneba (common girl’s name), remind me that washing dishes is women’s work, and ask me if I have, in fact, become a woman. It can be quite annoying, but then I’ll take delicious victuals with a side of gender-role confusion over soggy noodles in oil any day.

My swim project, Malian wedding

2008-08-17T20:28:00.008Z

Everyone likes pictures of cute kids!

And cute foals!

This is the drive shaft of a bache I was riding into town one day. Something's out of place...

On the brighter side, getting stuck on the side of the road for 4 hours (since you can't drive anywhere without a drive shaft) gives you plenty of opportunity to stop and appreciate the little things! Like these tiny grass flowers

And some mushrooms

And some more mushrooms

A spider in the morning, having set up camp on my veranda during the night

Okay before we get to the journal part, I want to say a little about a project I’m doing here! I don't often talk about the work I'm doing here, it’s probably time I let y’all know what I'm actually doing here in country apart from dodging scorpions. Okay so right now I’ve got a big project I’m working on with a couple other volunteers. It’s an extension and expansion of a project done last year in miniature, and the impetus for the project came from an accident that happened last year (before I arrived in country), so I’ll start with that. There were once three much-loved members of the Peace Corps community that wanted to see Mali from the river Niger. It’s a big country, but most of the population is focused around the river, which meanders through Bamako, up past Mopti and Dogon Country, through the desert sands and past Tambouctou (Timbuktu) and Gao city before crossing the border into the country Niger. Traveling on the river is therefore a great way to see the country, and these three volunteers built themselves a boat (and a rather impressive one at that) and set sail from Bamako on what promised to be a great adventure. Unfortunately there was an accident on the river, and their trip – and two of their lives – were cut tragically short. Though the third volunteer involved survived, he sustained serious injuries and had to be sent to America for treatment. To illustrate what kind of guys these three were, that third volunteer later flew himself back to Mali with his own money and before he was fully healed in order to complete a project that he had been working on in his village. In the aftermath and analysis of what had happened that day, a glaring deficiency in the Malian emergency worker service was made evident: despite the fact that most of the population is on or near the river, most of the population does not know how to swim, including the majority of the rescue worker service (equivalents of Fire Department and Police, etc).

The unfortunate truth is that swimming remains a skill practiced almost exclusively by the white ex-patriot community, while most Malians (who of course make up the vast majority of the emergency worker service) cannot swim, and may even be petrified of entering any water deeper than their thighs (understandable if you can’t swim). The only Malian exception is the ethnic Bozo community, who are the traditional fishermen and river-boaters of Mali. Since they make up only a tiny proportion of the population, they aren’t well-represented among the emergency worker population. Consequently when there is an accident and someone ends up in the river, it’s a near certainty that they don’t know how to swim. When rescue workers are called, they arrive on scene but cannot go in the water since they’d just become another victim. The rescue workers must therefore search for any fisherman that may happen to be both nearby and close enough to the shore to be hailed and get them to abandon their nets to come and do the rescue/extraction. Clearly this wastes a lot of valuable time, and many lives are lost that could otherwise have been saved with a more efficient response effort.

The project I and a few of my co-volunteers are doing addresses this need. We will train a group of emergency workers from both Mali’s Protection Civile, and the Brigade Fluviale branch of the Gendarmes. Over an eight-week program, we will introduce them to the water, teach them to swim, and teach them to perform basic water rescues, with the project culminating in staged practice-rescues on the actual Niger River. We hope to involve not only rescue workers from Bamako (where the program will take place) but also from other cities such as Koulikoro and Mopti. A smaller version of the project was done last year with 24 workers, and was by all accounts a rousing success. The trainees that attended were generally very enthusiastic about learning water safety skills, and were excited to be able to put their new skills to work in real-life situations.

This year we hope to involve 48 members of the Protection Civile and 24 from the Brigade Fluviale. Apart from the actual water safety skill training, we will also show them how to make water-rescue materials using locally available resources. Among the things being provided by the Malian government for the project are the costs of displacement of the trainees from other parts of Mali, room and board for trainees, and transportation to and from the training site for the duration of the project.

We hope to start the training in mid March 2009, progressing for eight weeks through early May. Unfortunately we need to complete funding of the project before September 12th - that is, less than a month. This is because the project proposal was submitted early this year by one of the volunteers that did the project earlier this year, but now he's reached the end of his service and is headed back to America. Peace Corps Washington wants to take down the project from the Peace Corps website, as it has sat there for a good many months without completing funding. They've agreed with us on a deadline for September 12th, at which time they will remove the project from the website and we will have to scale back the project plan in order to be able to do it with the funds that have been raised. So please! If you're interested in donating to the project, or know someone who is, go to https://www.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=resources.donors.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=688-231 or log onto http://www.peacecorps.gov/, click on "Donate Now"; then on "Donate to Volunteer Projects"; select the region of search as "Africa" and the country as "Mali" and type "water safety" in the "keywords" section. You should find project number 688-231, with "Taylor E." listed as the "volunteer coordinator." A short description of the project follows (which states that the project will train 96 members of the emergency service - we've already had to scale this back a bit).

Thursday, August 7
Well I went to my first Malian wedding, at long last! How I’ve failed to go to one for a whole year I don’t know – perhaps being a guy I don’t get invited when a female volunteer would. Also my host family at site is significantly smaller than most Malian families. But mostly it’s been my fault I suppose, as I’ve been too shy to crash one of the many wedding parties around town I’ve heard going on (these are not quiet affairs). This is another one of my leftover Western sensibilities – in Mali such things are village affairs: If you didn’t get invited it’s probably because your brother’s friend’s sister got invited and it was assumed that they’d bring you. This attitude can make it hard to plan meetings, since you have to plan for many more people showing up than you invited, but works wonderfully for keeping a sense of community in social gatherings and everyday life.

Actually, planning meetings is hard for a variety of reasons, most having to do with Malians’ relaxed sense of time. Many Malians carry no watch, phone, or anything else that could tell them the exact hour if they wanted to know it, and most of the rest think of hours as suggestions rather than obligations. Thus if you arrive for a meeting set to start at 9am at 9am, you’ll likely be the only person there. Depending on the formality of the meeting, probably about half of those invited will have shown up when it finally starts at 11am, and most of the rest will come in the middle or at the end of the meeting. This can be exasperating when you’re trying to get things done, but once you get used to the flexible pace and accept it, it also relieves you of a lot of stress (after all, Malians usually don’t expect you to keep hours that they themselves don’t keep). Unfortunately, some people never get used to it.

If the meeting is more informal, a fair fraction of the people who said they’d come won’t show up at all – not because they can’t tell time, but because they never intended to come in the first place. In Mali it’s considered more polite to agree to do something and then not follow through then it is to refuse, which is seen as combative. For me personally it may also just mean that they didn’t understand what I was asking in the first place – while learning Bambara I was amazed to find even myself simply nodding and saying “yes” quite a lot when I didn’t understand someone, since constantly asking for repetition and rephrasing of questions gets tiring.

Before I got side-tracked though, I was talking about a wedding. My host-sister from my host-family during training was finally getting married. She and Adama were the two most helpful, understanding people in the family for me, and an integral part of helping me get through training. M’bamagan is her name (another volunteer, who inherited this name from her, translates it from the Bambara as “squishy mama,” though this description doesn’t really fit either of them), and she was particularly old for a Malian girl to be married – around 22 or 23 perhaps. The wedding was also somewhat remarkable because she not only knew the guy beforehand, but wanted to marry him before the arrangements were made. The first thing (her age) likely had a lot to do with the second (choosing her husband), and both of them probably had a lot to do with the fact that she has two children already, out of wedlock and to two different fathers as I understand it, neither of whom is her new husband or is even present. Contraception isn’t widely practiced in any form in Mali, even if the man has multiple wives and children already – the larger your family, the more respect you’re given. The attitude is very much “the more the merrier.” This of course leads to all kinds of problems: apart from the many mouths to feed, the woman’s uterus gets tired after many births, which greatly increases the risk of complications during pregnancy and birthing.

Of course it’s not all bad – large, very close-knit families, most of whom share a concession, mean that any member of the family who falls on hard times (like having two kids out of wedlock) has a big support network. Indeed this is why it’s so hard to convince them of the good of contraception in the first place – it’s a problem that provides its own solution, of sorts, but only as long as everyone’s (not) practicing it equally.

Actually in this particular situation I can’t help but think that having two kids out of wedlock worked out rather well for M’ba – since this would have made her slightly less desirable as a prospective wife to older men, it is likely a major reason she escaped the fate of most Malian girls – to be married off in their mid-teens to a man they don’t know who’s likely at least 10 years older than them. Indeed my current host-brother plans exactly that – to work until he’s in his late 20s and has finally saved up enough for a bride price, and then to get himself a nice 15 or 16 year old wife. Because M’ba escaped this, and because she found a man with somewhat more modern ideas, she was able to wait until her mid-20s and marry someone of her own choosing.

I was talking to my local language tutor, Doumbia, about this today. He’d remarked that, comparatively, a lot of female volunteers end up finding a Malian husband, while male volunteers nearly never do. That’s of course because the vast majority of Malian men close in age to your average volunteer is single and has been saving up for a bride price, while the vast majority of Malian women who are anywhere near our age are married and/or have multiple children already. Doumbia also told me how he’d gone to the authorities just yesterday with a friend’s grievance against the father of his chosen bride. As part of the bride price they’d agreed on, the friend would work in the girl’s father’s fields for four rainy seasons, as well as provide the father with a gift of 25kg of fish and 10,000 CFA each of those four years, before he could finally marry the girl. Well this rainy season was the fourth and the girl, who apparently wants to marry another man and had no say in the original arrangement, ran off to another village to be with her chosen man. The father then failed to go after her and get her to accept the first suitor, who by now has spent four years and considerable expense to obtain her. Well they’ve gotten the village chief involved now, though I’ve not yet heard the outcome.

I’ve gotten side-tracked again, so now back to the wedding itself. I arrived at the concession in the morning, having traveled in to Bamako a few days earlier, and was immediately struck by how under-dressed I was. I was wearing a Malian outfit made of lower-quality “wax” fabric (all fabrics with prints on them are “wax” fabric. Lower quality means the fabric is thinner, which I prefer since it makes it breathable, quite good for the heat). This would probably have been fine at a wedding out in brousse, but I’d forgotten how much Malians, especially those close to Bamako, like to dress up for special occasions. Everyone else was wearing intricately embroidered outfits of basan (a higher-quality fabric than “wax,” it’s monotone and unprinted but woven in such a way that it has a pattern nonetheless, and is generally smooth and has a nice sheen. It’s also really hot). Well there was nothing I could do at that point but hope my being a dumb toubab afforded me some forgiveness for the oversight, and indeed nobody said anything about it.

Friday, August 8
As I was saying, I arrived to find the concession full of people, all dressed in fancy new outfits they’d had made for the occasion. I didn’t arrive alone, as M’bamagan #2, the volunteer who’d stayed with the family for her training the year before I arrived, was with me (she was properly dressed in a finely pressed basan outfit, though to be fair she’d borrowed it from a Malian friend). The new class of trainees recently arrived and we’d hoped to meet up with them but they had left earlier that morning to go back to the training center, thereby missing the party. After going through greetings with the family we were issued into M’ba’s room, where there sat the bride.

Or was it? We both hesitated – sure enough she was in a wedding gown with her hair all done up, way too much makeup, and a silvery-grey chalky stuff covering her exposed arms and face. I’d heard that sometimes Malian women put something on their skin to make it whiter because they think that whiter skin is more beautiful than darker (I disagree), and I assume this was it. It looked awful, but I have more sense than to say that to the bride on her wedding day. The trouble was this girl didn’t look anything like the M’ba we both knew, but then we’d never seen M’ba with her hair and makeup all done up or with her skin all… chalked up; and after all this was M’ba’s wedding and this was clearly the bride. So the other volunteer and I figured it had to be her, recognizable or not. It was only slightly awkward when we greeted her and she responded with “M’ba.”

As it turned out she was some (friend?) of M’ba, and was also getting married that day. The real M’ba was off somewhere else. She arrived shortly thereafter, and I was relieved to see that she’d opted not to have herself chalked for the occasion. She looked radiant – where I felt the first girl’s hair and makeup were a bit too done up, M’ba’s looked gorgeous. She entered the concession with a train of people following her, not the least remarkable of whom was a griot with a bullhorn.

“What the heck is a griot, and why does one need a bullhorn?” Glad you asked. A griot is a fixture in Malian society, a hereditary caste of people whose job it is to talk. When a young (or old) man sees a nice (young) girl he wants to marry, the first thing he does is hire a griot. The griot’s first task is to go to the girl’s father and talk up the suitor and make his intentions known. Eventually, if the father is receptive, it’s the griot’s job to negotiate the bride price with the father. They discuss the relative merits of both the individuals concerned, as well as the extended families of said individuals. The final price is thus dependant on the honor and village standing of the individuals and families involved, as well as the skill of the griot him or herself. When the celebration day finally comes, it’s the griot’s job to walk around talking and singing about everyone involved and everything that happens. For example, at a wedding involving a Traoré such as this, the griot might spend a lot of time singing about the history of the Traorés back to pre-colonial times, as well as about famous Traorés of more modern times. All the while they’re singing they are also collecting money from the crowd, and can get quite testy when money is not forthcoming (this is their livelihood after all). There was actually quite a scene later on, as apparently the one griot with the bullhorn was drowning out the others and getting all the money, which various parties were none too happy about. Still, for most Malians having an engagement and marriage without a griot would be unthinkable.

Malian wedding ceremonies generally come in three flavors. The first is the religious one – either Muslim at the mosque or Christian at the church. The second is the official wedding, held at the mayor’s office, where all the necessary papers are signed. This is officially required by the state, to ensure the inheritance and custody rights and responsibilities of all involved. However since both the religious ceremony and the official ceremony require a monetary donation to the imam/priest and mayor, respectively (more if she’s the man’s first wife, practically nothing if she’s not), some Malians can’t afford both ceremonies, and when forced to choose it’s always the official one that gets the axe, whatever legal problems this may cause down the road (legal problems may be hell figuratively, but they’re much better than actual hell). Depending on the inclinations of the families involved, there may also be the third kind of ceremony, the traditional, which may involve the sacrifice of chickens or livestock.

At about 10am, the concession being full since the arrival of the husband’s troupe, everyone piled into cars, bachés, motos, and donkey carts, and we went in a grand (and very noisy) procession to the Mayor’s office for the official wedding. We crammed as many people as would fit into the building, with the two couples to be married sitting at a fold-out table opposite the mayor’s office staff. Unfortunately the ceremony attracted a bit more attention than they might have liked, and a great group of neighborhood kids gathered outside the (glassless) windows. There was also a group standing in the back that wouldn’t be quiet, so the proceedings were punctuated occasionally by various important people at the front of the crowd yelling “shut up!” at those in the back. There was also the occasional outburst from the griot with the bullhorn, who probably needn’t have used it since we were inside.

The ceremony was remarkable for me in to ways. Firstly, nobody was smiling – least of all the husbands and brides, who looked profoundly miserable. This was strange since I’d been told that M’ba and her man wanted to marry each other (I’ve heard stories from other volunteers wherein at this point the bride is sobbing hysterically, terrified to be leaving the family she’s grown up in to be married off to a man she doesn’t know (the bride traditionally leaves her family to go live with her husband’s family, however far away that may be), while the older members of her family berate her for dishonoring the family with the scene she’s making, which of course doesn’t help). Still, the lack of smiles (comical to me in this case) wasn’t altogether unexpected. Whereas Americans tend to burst into fake over-smile whenever they see a camera pointed at them (as someone who loves photography this is frustrating, since fake over-smiles tend to make people look a little crazy, when a candid shot or half-grin would be much more flattering), Malians don’t suffer from this urge. Indeed, whip out a camera and a Malian laughing and smiling from ear to ear (who may well have just asked you to get the camera) immediately goes into awkward tense-expressionless or frowny-face mode. With the innumerable cameras and video cameras out documenting the occasion, I suppose the bridal parties could hardly have failed to look anything but miserable.

The second thing remarkable to me was the vows. The mayor would read each vow in both Bambara and French, and the pairs would then mumble their agreement. Unfortunately, with the noise in the back, attendant shouts of “shut up, damnit!” and the bullhorn ringing in my ears, I missed most of the vows. I only clearly heard two of the vows given in Bambara. Or perhaps those are just the only two I remember hearing since they were so remarkable to me. The first was “Cé yé so tigi yé!” Literally, “the man/husband (both are cé in Bambara) is the master of the house!” The second, immediately following, was “muso té so tigi yé dé!” which translates as “the woman/wife id not the master of the house!” The “dé” doesn’t mean anything, but adds emphasis to the phrase so that perhaps a better translation would be “the woman/bride is not the master of the house, seriously guys I’m totally not kidding!”

Now it’s no secret that Malian women did not enjoy the same liberation achieved by westerners in the 60s, to say the least. Still I thought that this attitude was prevalent enough in Malian society that it went without saying. At the most this is something I expected to hear at the religious ceremony since the brand of Islam practiced in Mali tacitly or explicitly accepts male domination as the status quo. I did not, however, expect to hear it at the official ceremony, written in black and white on a contract that must not only be agreed to verbally, but undersigned by all parties involved, bride included. I was a bit taken aback, and can't help wondering what cabinet minister was so afraid of his wives that he felt it necessary to write his superiority down in contract form. Then rephrased and written again, for good measure.

Rainy season and Manantali for July 4th

2008-07-29T15:37:00.006Z

Pictures!:

1) Me at Manantali for July 4th eating a giant pig's leg

2) Suruku

3) Suruku's ear wound (more on that later)

4) Amadou has since upgraded his bike to a moto, on which he can fit 150 chickens and guinea fowl

5) View from dining room of Hotel Mande, Bamako

6) Me at Mbamakan's wedding with her two sons and brother's daughtor

7) The other girl getting married that day - wearing whiting face makeup since Malians think lighter skin is more beautiful

8) Mbamakan in wedding gown with some random child

9) the wedding at the mayor's office. don't get overstimulated

10) the happy couple, with his Sonrai relatives in the background. Malians don't know how to smile for pictures...

6/27
Well it’s certainly rainy season again! Having been through all the seasons once now, I think I’ve decided that rainy season is my least favorite season here. Cold dry season is of course my favorite, closely followed by hot dry season. Hot season was certainly hot, but it wasn’t nearly so bad as I’d been led to expect. I don’t mean that it wasn’t as hot, just that the heat really didn’t bother me like I thought it would. Sure, you sweat 24 hours a day and have to dash between shady spots during the day, but once you sit yourself down in a nice shady spot there’s plenty of time to relax, chat, read, drink tea, and everyone else does the same. Plus bragging about how hot it is and who’s site is hotter never seems to get old. Though it was too hot to sleep inside at night, I rather enjoyed sleeping outside for a few months and the lack of moisture meant that I never had to worry about a midnight rainstorm disturbing my slumber. Not only that, but with the sky crystal clear every night and no light pollution, the stars are simply dazzling and grace à my star chart (left over from the Observational Astronomy course I took senior year, and much more useful in Mali than it was in New York) I have a lot of fun identifying constellations and individual stars and planets. On a clear night during cold season it’s even possible to see both the North Star and Southern Cross at the same time, which is impossible just a bit farther north or south of here.

As I was saying though, rainy season is here, and that means mud. Not just rain mud, which is everywhere, but nyegen water mud. Since there’s no sewer system of course, the water people use for washing (themselves, dishes, clothes, babies, sheep, bikes, motos, etc.) runs out of their concessions through drainage holes in the walls made for the purpose and into the streets. Whereas in dry season this would quickly disappear, now it creates perpetual muck pools filled with rotting bits of food and other miscellaneous nastiness. Some of these pools stretch from one concession wall across the road to the other concession, so that you can only avoid the mud by carefully-chosen steps. Consequently I’ve had to stop riding my bike around town, since the tires inevitably pick up this mud and fling it onto my clothing.

The solution is soak pits – that is, a covered pit filled with rocks, with PVC pipe catching the water running off the wash areas and channeling it into the pit, where it can soak into the ground without making a muddy pool in the street (the muddy pools also provide handy breeding-grounds for Malaria-carrying mosquitoes, so soak pits are important for health as well as aesthetic reasons). There are a few soak pits around town, but these are mostly uncovered and filled with sludge that prevents water from being absorbed. It seems likely to me that at some point an NGO came by and told the townspeople to dig them, but didn’t explain why or how to maintain them, so once they stopped working the townspeople lost interest. Fixing that problem will have to be one of my primary goals for the coming year.

Another problem unique to rainy season is that all the trash, animal dung, child dung (they love to greet me on my way to work while popping a squat in the field in front of my concession), etc. that’s been lying around on the ground for the past eight months without rain to carry it away suddenly becomes mobile. Inevitably a lot of it ends up in the groundwater, or washed into wells directly, which means it’s water-borne disease season. Speaking of which, I’m now being treated for amebic dysentery. After testing positive for dormant ameba cysts I’d been on the lookout for it, and decided on Tuesday that not only do I have it now (active amebas causing dysentery), but I’ve had it countless times over the past few months. It comes and goes whenever my immune system takes a hit, and I didn’t identify it before because its symptoms have thankfully been mild. Since bad cases can cause an abscess in the liver which can then drain into the lungs and cause the victim to cough up foul black fluid, I’ve gotten off pretty easily. So far.

Saturday, July 5th
Well it’s just after American Independence day, which I’ve spent here in Manantali. Getting here from Bamako on the 3rd was a bit of an adventure, involving 14 hours of travel. Someone recommended Gana Transport for the Bamako – Kita leg since they are on time and professional, at least compared to other Malian bus companies. Well that doesn’t mean much. To be fair, it didn’t leave too late once the bus arrived in the station. It was slightly hilarious when it arrived, as nobody could figure out how to open the door. For a good 20 or 30 minutes. I’m not sure how it could have been so difficult, considering the driver was inside the vehicle. Eventually they succeeded in opening the door, at which point all the waiting Malians stormed on board, despite the company’s protestations that they would call people in the order of when tickets were bought. So we had nearly last choice for seats (being much less accustomed to muscling our way through crowds than your average Malian), but we got good seats anyway. Really any bus ride like that, where the bus has windows that open and the other passengers allow you to open them, is a good ride by default. Most Malian buses are designed for air conditioning, so the windows don’t open, but I’ve never been on a bus where the a/c actually worked. If there are windows, it’s often a fight to keep them open, since most Malians think that wind gives you Malaria. Well anyway before we’d left Bamako it became apparent that something was very wrong with the bus’ transmission, but we left all the same. Sure enough the bus broke down on the road, although through some incredible stroke of luck this occurred just outside of Kita, so we were able to walk the few remaining kilometers into town. The journey from Kita to Manantali, in a bache with wooden benches instead of seats for 4 or 5 hours on a bad dirt road, was less eventful.

Monday, July 7th
Arriving at Manantali in the middle of the night is an impressive experience. After traveling for hours through the total darkness of deep-brousse Mali, you come over the peak of a mountain to look out over the small but well-lit city, walled in by mountains on two sides and the giant dam that holds back the giant lake of the Bafing reservoir and provides power to Mali, Senegal, and Guinea, and is Manantali’s raison d’être. The PC has a house there, which is unremarkable except in its location right on the Bafing River (downstream from the dam/reservoir). I’d been really looking forward to seeing hippos in the wild, which hang out in said river, often right in front of the house. Unfortunately the water level was too high, so all the hippos were off hanging out farther downstream somewhere – of the 42 of us there, only two or three managed to catch a glimpse of one, early on the 6th, before a fisherman’s boat scared it off.. This did, however, make it easy to keep our promise to the medical staff no to have any “hippo accidents” over the holiday, hippos being the second most deadly animal to humans in Africa, second only to elephants.

The other thing the house is famous for is monkeys, and they did not disappoint. During the day they would simply hang out in the trees around the house, and seemed to pay about as much attention to us as we were paying to them. At night we slept outside in our mosquito-net tents, and the monkeys seemed to get a little braver, sitting in the trees just over our heads and calling out to each other in that distinctive monkey “han! han!” Each of the three nights I slept there I woke up in the middle of the night and enjoyed laying there listening to them for a while as I slowly drifted back to sleep.

The 4th itself was fun, we spent the day hanging out, swimming in the hippo-free river, and roasting an entire pig (quartered and relieved of its head and guts) in a pit we’d dug for the purpose. One of the volunteers even produced a bottle of Tennessee Whiskey Barbecue Sauce, that had left Tennessee with his son months ago, hung out in Italy for a few months, before finally flying through Casablanca and into Bamako when the son came to visit. We even managed to restrain ourselves enough that most everyone got a taste of it. I will never take a bottle of good, authentic barbecue sauce for granted again!

Wednesday, July 9th
Now a while ago I was explaining the things that change during rainy season, and I’d like to continue that now. Apart from the mud, the other thing I really don’t like about rainy season is the bugs. During cold and hot dry seasons bugs are virtually nonexistent, the exceptions being a certain amount of flies, which are omnipresent except at night when they are replaced by the occasional scorpion. As rainy season arrives though, the bugs more than make up for all the party time they’ve missed. Flies now come in hordes all the time and for no particular reason – in dry season they only come in hordes whenever I thought the word “mango!” which, unfortunately, is hard to avoid while eating one. Any small abrasion or cut that I fail to cover up provides a focal point for their swarming, which can be quite gross. It’s worse for my dog though. Somehow all Malian dogs get wounds on their ears during rainy season. Or perhaps they get them all the time, but they’re only significant during rainy season. How they get them I don’t know; fight with another dog? Fight with a Malian? My host dad says they just appear, without cause. A small wound is harassed incessantly by flies (it’s not like the dog can go into a screened-in house for refuge), which causes the dog to scratch it incessantly. Thus a scabbed-over wound becomes an open one, and a small wound becomes a bigger one, from the dog’s own scratching. Since the lack of flies at night allows the wound to scab over, the process repeats every day.

Apart from the flies, the spiders are also back, and setting up homes everywhere, especially in mine. And not just little web-spinners, but large tarantula-style ones too. Apparently they prefer to live in holes in the ground, but once the rain fills these up they’re left with few options but indoors. The same is true of snakes, they tell me; so far I haven’t seen any. My host father tells me we don’t have to worry about snakes at site since we have a lot of pigs (thanks to the non-Muslim Bobo population) unlike the rest of Mali, and pigs love to eat snakes. At first I though this was absurd, but I watched some of “The Lonesome Dove” a couple weeks back, and they also mentioned something about pigs eating snakes, so now I’m just skeptical.

I like to complain, but really rainy season’s not all bad. For one thing the temperatures are much more moderate, and can even be cool during and after a rainstorm. Rainstorms themselves are also fun – like they were when I was a kid but more so, since there’s no real shelter (that is, lace where I can go and forget that it’s raining) so I’m forced to enjoy the entire storm. My tin roof makes sure I know the second the rain starts and stops, and provides soothing white noise for the duration. My favorite rainy season activity is sitting just inside my door and watching the rain and reading, while sipping hot hibiscus tea.

Rainy season is also gardening season. I’m no expert – my sister can tell you how close I came to starving a cactus in my apartment in Boston, and that was with the help of two roommates. I’m having much better luck here, and though I’ve only yet tried moringa trees, I hope to eventually make a herb/vegetable garden, with tomatoes, basil, mint, baobab, moringa, and maybe a cucumber or two.

A few weeks back, after the first really huge rain, we had a couple of days of biblical plague of termites. This is a strange thing to list under “reasons rainy season is cool,” I know, but I enjoyed it. It was surreal – they go into “migrate!” mode and sprout wings, flying around frantically. During the day you can’t take two steps without having to dodge a few. Eventually they land somewhere and shed their wings, going into “run around aimlessly!” mode. Consequently the chickens go nuts running around eating them, as do the lizards. Since they can’t keep up with the sheer number of the bugs, the ants also have a field day, rallying the troops and dragging termite bodies (alive or dead) off into their mounds. I’ve never seen so many critters; birds, reptiles, and insects, all running around in their own unique but equally frantic way. True, my door frame has been chewed apart, but that happened before this rainy season arrived, I think. It’s less fun at night, when they swarm toward any source of light including headlamps, which makes going to the bathroom interesting: either you do it in the dark or you multitask, constantly swatting them away with one hand. I haven’t yet seen it, but my host dad tells me that they’ll soon be available in the market by the bucketful, and when fried are quite tasty. Believe it or not I’m looking forward to that – they’re high in protein, which is otherwise hard to come by. The collection method is simple, and follows the headlamp-in-the-nyegen principle: you leave a light on with a bucket of water underneath. They fly to the light, land, shed their wings, and fall into the bucket to drown.

While on the subject of bugs and lights, there’s one thing I forgot to mention under the “things I don’t like about rainy season,” and that’s the blister beetles. I’m not sure they’re rightly called “beetles,” since they appear to be in the hymenoptera family along with wasps and ants, and they’ve got large, wasp-like wings. They’re about ¾ to an inch in length, and also like to swarm around lights, such as headlamps. They secrete an acidic substance that causes a blister to form when it comes into contact with skin. If one of these bugs lands on you, you have to gently blow it off and hope it didn’t smear its poison on you anyway, which it probably did. The blister itself contains the acidic fluid, so if you pop it the blister will just spread. They present quite a problem at dinnertime – in order to see what you’re eating when the moon isn’t out, you must use a flashlight – but that attracts them both toward your face and your food, and you definitely don’t want to actually swallow one.

What I like most about rainy season though are the clouds. Either they’re far more impressive here than they are back home, or (more likely) I just notice them more since I’m outside all the time. Huge, billowing towers of cumulus are my favorite, with solitary black/grey rain clouds in the distance, blurry grey nothingness slanting down to the ground in the wind that always accompanies these clouds, announcing their presence to even the most oblivious observer just before the rain starts.

Tuesday, July 15
Well I surprised even myself just now. Really it was a long time in the making so “surprise” is a poor description, but I certainly crossed a line anyway. I was making scrambled guinea fowl eggs for lunch – with onion, le Vache qui Rit (the Laughing Cow) cheese, and cayenne pepper – and as usual was cracking my eggs into a tea glass separately in case one of them was bad. Also as usual I found a little fetus in each of the three eggs I cracked – just a little whitish-pinkish blob floating next to the yolk. Now months ago when guinea fowl eggs first came into season, I’d have thrown out the whole thing. However since I find at least a little fetus in around four in every five guinea fowl eggs I crack, if not more, I got over this stage quickly and resorted to just picking the fetus out and discarding it, cooking the rest. However this is difficult to do without losing half the egg, since they’re embedded in it and egg whites don’t separate easily – it’s like picking bits of shell out of the egg, but harder since they’re actually embedded in the whites. Often I’d attempt to scoop the fetus out and end up losing most of the egg-white for my troubles. Well today as usual I set about picking them out, but perhaps because I was using a fork (to keep my last clean spoon for later use) it was particularly annoying, so I gave up. I scrambled them in with all the rest. After all it’s protein, and I need all I can get on my diet of starch, starch, and more starch. I feel, intellectually, that I should be disgusted with myself, but frankly I’m not. Now one might ask why I don’t use chicken eggs – they’re bigger, easier to crack, and almost never come with fetuses, and the answer is of course that they’re more expensive – more than twice the price of guinea fowl eggs, at the moment. Now the price itself doesn’t bother me so much – I can afford it – but I feel really guilty buying chicken eggs since people always ask me, frowning as if I’ve been cheated, why I didn’t buy guinea fowl eggs for cheaper (GF eggs are 5/200 CFA (about 45 cents) while chicken eggs are 2/200 CFA). I could of course reply “haha! Because I’m a rich American and I scoff at your guinea fowl eggs!” but I spend a lot of time trying to discourage this image, though admittedly with little success.

Since the concession’s emptied out over the past couple weeks, I’ve been able to perform a bit of an experiment. One of the things that took some getting used to as a man in Mali was my role in housework – to be precise, I don’t have a role. My host mother washes my clothes, cooks my food, washes my dishes, and pulls all of the well water I need for bathing, filling my salidaga, washing my bike, etc. When my host mother isn’t around or is busy, one of the kids (be they 8 years old or 22) does it. At first I tried to resist. Well, okay I was happy to let them do my laundry – washing clothes by hand is hard work, and they’re much better at it than I am. I should add that I draw the line at underwear, which I wash myself with leftover water during my bucket baths; i.e. I do it on the sly. At first I tried insisting that I was perfectly capable of pulling my own water – in fact I can pull it much faster than Adjara, the 8 year old – but to no avail. Most of the time all I have to do is start walking the twenty steps from my front door to the well with a bucket in my hand and someone will run over, take it from me, and proceed to fill it. If I tried to insist on doing it myself they would kindly but firmly take the bucket from me anyway. There were plenty of times when I would wait until nobody was around and run over to pull a bucket of water, only to be caught by Awa and scolded, literally: “You can’t tell me when you want water!? You’re not a person!” Heaven forbid there be some kids in the area who had “let” me try to pull my own water, or they’d get quite a scolding too, at the very least. When I ask why I can’t pull my own water, Awa always responds that I’ll ruin my nice toubab hands on the rope. Perhaps there’s something to this, as some of my female volunteer friends occasionally develop “water pulling” calluses on their hands, but then who said I was afraid of a little callus?

No, the real reason, I’ve figured out, is entirely different. In the Malian respect/importance hierarchy, I as a (white) male am pretty well near the top, especially because everyone thinks I’m much older than I really am – I’ll get to that in a bit. Add to that my status as an (honored) guest, even a long term one, and you can’t get much higher on the totem pole without being in government. Guests are generally treated very well in Mali, and they would never be expected to pull their own well water. As the thinking goes, what if one of the neighbors walked in and saw me – a male guest of the house! – pulling my own water? Oh that would be a shameful thing indeed! Everyone in town would think “who are these people, who make even a guest pull his own water?! How outrageous!”

I was talking about an experiment though, and here’s what I mean: Awa’s been gone to San for a couple weeks, and with the kids all gone too that just leaves my host dad and I, and occasionally Lasso. What, then, would my host dad do – let me do the work myself, or take the place of Awa (at least where water pulling is concerned – I have no reason to suspect that he’s any more adept at hand washing clothes than I am, and I know I’m a better cook)? Well it’s been thoroughly tested and: no. Apparently it’s only a shame for a guest to pull their own water and wash their own dishes (I’ve been conserving clothes so that hasn’t arisen yet – I’m hoping to ride out the storm) if there’s a woman or young person in the house (family or not – I forgot to mention that strange women and children who happen to be in the concession often insist on pulling my water) who should be doing it for them. If it’s just the men of the house, well I’m on my own. Guest status or no, the man of the house isn’t expected to stoop to the women’s work of pulling my water for me.

On being old, or at least looking it: Malians have a really hard time telling my age. I went out to visit Laura’s village just before July 4th and her host-father, who I believe is in his seventies, asked me how old I was – “sixty?” he guessed. He’d overshot by about 36 years, or 250%. Never mind what this would mean for Laura and my relationship, since he knows how old she is – this would be far from unheard of in Mali, although she’d probably have to be my third or fourth wife. I asked him what made him think I was so old, to which he replied “I cekoroba si” – literally, “your old man hair.” Now I know what you’re thinking Toby and Alex, and no, he couldn’t have meant my thinning hairline… well, balding spot as some would say. Anyway I’d been wearing a hat since I met him. No, he meant my beard – Malians don’t normally grow facial hair until middle age, if at all, and I have more than most of even the oldest men, which frequently confuses them. It’s not so bad, since I get a lot of cekoroba respect – that is, old man respect, which can be quite useful at times.

Things quiet down for rainy season

2008-06-29T09:54:00.002Z

1. the fetish stall during market day - those are a crocodile head and a hyena head, various animal horns and antlers, turtle shells, whole birds, snake heads, whole chamelions, monkey hands, and various other tidbits. Not pictured is the pile of animal skins, which include hyena skin, lion skin, hippo skin, rock python skin, and various others.

2. my dog, who I've named Suruku, warming up in the fire pit one chilly morning after a rain storm. Suruku means hyena, since he's quite fond of playfully biting just about everyone, all the time.

3. the stagnant swamp that's formed next to my concession, with approaching rainstorm

6/24

Well, things are much quieter around here. Dao and Adjara (Haidjara) have gone en brousse for the rainy season, so the face of my host family has changed yet again. As per usual, very little was said to me about it beforehand, and suddenly they just disappeared. Danger had told me weeks ago that they'd be heading off to his brother's for the rainy season some time, but nothing had been said since then; when I came back from a 2-day trip into the city they were gone. I'll miss Dao the most, it's been fun having a little 4-year-old with boundless energy for a little brother, but I suppose it'll be nice not to have to listen to him crying for a while, or to have to listen to Adjara's sinister laugh when making him cry, which is probably worse than the crying itself.

Dao's job for the rainy season will be Cow Herder. Well, "herder" is probably the wrong word - the cows are pretty much allowed to wander, in a group or not, so long as they're not eating all the growing crops. The image of Dao, who can't weigh more than 50 or 60 lbs, herding a bunch of of cows who weigh... well much more than that (besides having huge horns) with a small stick as his only weapon is frankly terrifying to me, but that has to be his job since he's too young to till the soil, and someone has to do it. I thought the other day "it's lucky cows are so dumb" but then I suppose luck really had nothing to do with it, that's how we raise them.

Overall I've been amazed at how docile the animals are in this country. Everyone knows the phrase "kicks like a mule," and while we don't really have any mules here, donkeys are everywhere and horses aren't that scarce either, and I figure the gene that says "kick!" had to come from at least one of them. It's a more or less constant fear of mine that I'll be wandering through marked one day, minding my own business, and suddenly find a hoof embedded in my right temple. Still I've never once seen, or even heard of, someone being injured by a pack animal here. I once heard back home that if you are going to touch a horse on its hindquarters for whatever reason, you have to start from the front and run your fingers along its side as you walk around back to let it know it's you, otherwise it'll get spooked and kick you. I don't know whether or not this is true of horses back home, but it certainly isn't the case here.

Actually we volunteers have a generally accepted theory about why horses and donkeys don't kick here, and that's that any tendency to kick would be evolutionarily unstable. That is, any animal that actually hurt someone would just be immediately destroyed. On the other hand if there's no gene for kicking humans (the donkey courting ritual involves the female spending a lot of time kicking the male in the head) then it's just beaten out of them at an early age.

What really worries me though, rather than horses and donkeys, are the cows. As I implied before the cows here are huge (or do they just seem bigger 'cause I get a lot closer to them than I did back at home?). Besides their bulk, they are the long-horned variety, with horns usually 1.5 - 2 feet in length, if not longer. I've never really worried about cows before- while in Ireland walking from Doolin to the cliffs of Mohr I took a shortcut through some pastures marked with signs warning of an ornery, territorial bull, and lived to tell the tale. Still it's a bit different here since cows just wander everywhere (even in the streets of Bamako, which is a Big City housing over 1.3 million people), but mostly because a friend of mine here was gored by a cow a little while back, and ended up with (among other things) a pierced uterus. Not that I worry much about my own uterus, but I've got other internal organs I'd rather keep un-pierced for the foreseeable future.

On being a toubab

2008-06-04T10:49:00.009Z

1) Sunset at site

2) Adjara, my host sister

3) Here comes the sandstorm!
4) Now it's here!

I'm in Bamako at the moment doing my mid-service health exam (hard to believe I've been here about 11 months already!). Got a clean bill of health, except that I apparently have amoebic cysts, which basically means I have amoebic dysentry except that the amoebas aren't active at the moment. Since they aren't active, and since even if we treated them I might just get more tomorrow, we've chosen not to treat them at this time. Maybe I'll give them names, my own little pet critters in my bowels.

As a side note, the format of this and pretty much every blog I've written is pretty messed up. This is due to some problem with the blogging site itself, and try as I might I've been unable to correct the problem. My appologies, and thanks for bearing with me.

Saturday, 5/24

Moving out to site is a strange experience for many reasons, not least of which for the identity problems it presents. What Americans might assume about me as a caucasian male from New England is very different from what Malians tend to assume about me as a white male de l'étranger - that is, a white male that comes from wherever it is I might come from, which obviously isn't here. I rather like the French word étranger, "foreigner," which comes from the root etrange, "strange," and might just as easily be translated literally as "stranger" as "foreigner." To alleviate some of our strangeness we volunteers take a Malian name which, besides being more familiar to the locals, is pronouncable to them. Despite this concession, however, I reman an etranger, and everyone who does not know me, along with a large fraction of those who do, refer to me simply as "toubabu."

Toubabu, a Bambara word, might roughly be translated as "white person" and this is, in fact, the way it is most commonly used. Its etymology is not, however, quite that simple. For one thing, the word for "white" in Bambara is jéman, which clearly doesn't make up any part of the word "toubabu." The word "kan" in Bambara refers to "noise" or "speach." When refering to a particular language, "kan" is added to the name of the ethnic group that speaks that language - hence "bamanankan" or "fulakan" for "speach/noise of the Bambaras (Bambara)" or "speach/noise of the Fula (Fulfulde in English, Peul in French)" respectfully. If you translate toubabu as "whites" then, toubabukan must be translated as "speach/noise of the whites." This clearly presents a problem, as though the many groups of white/causasians might sometimes be grouped together as one race, the many languages they speak cannot. Indeed they aren't in Bambara - "toubabukan" refers specifically to French. English is "anglékan."

This makes perfect sense historically since the French were, of course, the first Europeans that the Bambaras came into contact with. If toubabukan refers specifically to French, toubabu must refer specifically to the French. Thus when a Malian calls me a toubabu, they must technically be calling me a Frenchman. This I heartily object to, though not out of any dislike for the French (I am not one of those who subscribes to the general negativity in recent American sentiment toward the French). No, my objection to being called a Frenchman here is due to the well-deserved association of the French as a longstanding imperial conqueror and ruler. Americans, as I often point out, have never fought a war against the Bambaras, nor have we ever been an occupying imperial force (here). The distinction is lost on the average Malian.

Where the word "toubabu" itself comes from I don't know, and have not yet met anyone who can tell me. The genesis of a new word to describe the first radically "other" people encountered by a culture, completely independant of what the "new" peoples might call themselves, reminds me a bit of Russian. If I'm not gravely mistaken, and Toby please tell me if I am, the Russian word for the Germans can be literally translated to something along the lines of "the people who babel" or "the people who can't speak," the irony of course being that they could understand each other perfectly well; it was just those early Russians themselves who couldn't understand them.

At any rate, whether I have a name they can pronounce or not, to most Malians I am simply the toubabu. At site I'm the only white person for 100km in any direction , so being known as the white person kind of makes sense, but even in a city like Bamako or Segou (where plenty of white people can be found living, working, or passing through as tourists) I am also known as toubabu - in fact in my experience I'm much more likely to be called toubabu in these places.

Although just about everyone refers to me as toubabu, the ways in which they do are not all equal. Walking around anywhere, but especially in cities, cries of "toubabu!" follow me wherever I go. For the smallest of children, if they're not too busy running away in terror or hiding behind a reassuring adult, this is similar to small children in America who, upon seeing a fire truck drive past, will yell "fire truck!" It is not intended to get my attention, but merely an exclaimation of wonder at something interesting that they don't see every day. As such, it is said with a note of reverence and curiosity, and can be quite cute.

Kids slightly older are beyond the phase where they can be content just watching me walk past, and their cry of "toubabu!" is more insistant. It is an attempt to get my attention, just to see what I'll do. As the saying goes, "if at first you don't succeed..." and that seems to be the logic of these children. Whereas the "firetruck!" kids generally only say it once, these kids want your attention and will not be denied. "Toubabu! Toubabu! Hey! Toubabu!" is their refrain. This, being much less like being called a fire truck and much more like being called "hey whitey!" is far more annoying. Respond, and they will simply giggle maniacally, wait for me to turn my back, and resume the calls. Some even have the audacity to yell "toubabuni," adding the familiar diminutive ending, like saying "little toubabu," which in a society where age heirarchy is highly respected is very disrespectful.

Even so, that's infinitely better than waht happens a few years later. From the time they are old enough to enter school, up until about 15 or 16, the calls change drastically in tone. It seems that at this age it's only the boys that yell, though perhaps that's because girls of that age tend to be stuck at home doing housework all the time. The calls at this age can only be described as accusatory. As if I have a scarlet letter tattooed on my forehead proclaiming that I have committed the unforgivable sin of whiteness, and it's these kids' job to make sure both that I never forget my sin and that everyone in the vacinity should make no mistake about which sin I have committed. If you respond, and often even if you don't, they'll follow up (in Bambara or French) with some variant of "give me X!" where X might be 100 CFA, 1000 CFA, candy, an unspecified present (cadeau), my watch, my hat, or anything else that I might happen to be wearing or carrying.

My typical reaction to all this is, as it must be to avoid going completely insane, to ignore it as best I can. I tried many things during my first few months here in futile attempts to make them see the error of their ways, but at long last ignoring them altogether is the only viable solution. First I tried to give them a taste of their own medecine by shouting "farafin!" (Bambara for "black skin" literally, or African) back at them, but this just gave the kids precisely the kind of highly amusing reaction they were looking for. I then tried shouting (in Bambara) "where's the toubabu?!?" and looking around in mock panic as if they had shouted "tiger!" (a tiger! in Africa?!?), but they didn't have the slightest idea why I should be confused about where the toubabu was, assumed I just didn't speak Bambara well enough, and hastened to point out that I was the toubabu to which they were referring. I moved to pre-empt this by changing to "where's the toubabu, are you a toubabu? I'm not a toubabu!" but again they just assumed I didn't understand it and hastened to explain. Finally I just gave up and settled for ignoring as best as patience will allow.

Adults also mostly refer to me as toubabu, but it's slightly different with them. People don't worry too much about being politically correct in Mali, and often refer to each other by their ethnicity if the one being referred to is of a different ethnicity than the one doing the referring. The Fulani women who come to the maternity are therefore often referred to by the matrones as "fulamuso" (muso being Bambara for "woman"), as in "hey fula woman, how long have you been pregnant?" Imagine if you went into the doctor's office in the USA and the receptionist, nurses, and doctors all referred to you as "hey chinawoman/white lady/mexican woman." Conflating all peoples of certain world regions with the most conspicuous member of that region is exactly what they would do - I am often called Fulaké since people of the Fula ethnic group have lighter skin than most other Malian ethnic groups; a volunteer friend of mine whose family is from Vietnam is often accused of being Chinese, and has even been accused of being a liar when she tried to explain that she wasn't actually Chinese. Adults, then, often refer to me as either "toubabu" or "toubabuké" (ké being Bambara for man).

Now I know they're not trying to be disrespectful, but being constantly referred to as "hey Frenchie/whitey" or "hey Frenchman/white guy" just doesn't sit well with my American sensibilities. Consequently I've taken the same tack with adults that I have with children, with the same results. However since most adults are higher on the age heirarchy than I am, simply ignoring them isn't always acceptable. If the adult is someone I don't know, have no business with, and if there are other people around who I do know, I can be quite obstinate about ignoring them completely, even if they are standing right in front of me and clearly trying to get my attention. People who know me such as my host-family, co-workers, or language tutor will tell the person "he's not a toubabu," to which the inevitable response is "huh?" They'll tell the person "he's American, and his name is Demba." When the firson finally addresses me by name (or at least correct nationality) I will immediately respond as if it was the first time they'd addressed me.

Other times my response depends on my mood. If I'm in a good mood I might smile and tell them I'm not a toubab, and take everything from there by myself. If I'm in a bad mood, and/or if it's someone I don't have any interest in talking to - i.e. if they're clearly going to try to sell me something - I might just ignore them until they go away. I've also tried responding by referring to them as a race they clearly aren't (usually Sonrai, which are mostly found in the north, or Fulani, which are usually obvious by their particular style of dress and ligher skin). I've had some limited success with this approach. While some ignore it and probably thing I'm stupid, some come right back with "I'm not Fulani, I'm Minianka/Bambara/Malinké/etc.," which of course sets me up for "Aha, but I'm not a toubabu, I'm American." Sometimes a light clicks on. Sometimes it doesn't.

The irony is, of course, that all these adults are not trying to be rude. They see nothing offensive about calling me a toubabu, and are just trying to get my attention. If you asked me what I'd rather they call me, assuming that they can't tell at a glance that I'm American and my name is Demba, I couldn't tell you. Just something else. So I percieve them as being rude and am unfriendly back, and all they see is me being unfriendly. Perhaps unfriendly isn't the best word, saucy might be a bit better. I realize this, but all the same cannot consent to being referred to in this manner, even if I don end up being overly saucy to some people who don't deserve it.

There have been times, however, when I've been downright rude. Usually after I've been traveling on a sweltering, ludicrously overcrowded baché for 8 hours and all I want to do is get whever it is I'm going. In such situations - that is, getting off of transport - people assume that I'm a tourist, don't know a 50 CFA piece from a 500 CFA piece, and am an easy mark for price gouging, be it on a cab ride or a new watch. So they get insistant with the "hey! toubabu!" and I get rude. Even in this case they don't really deserve it. Price gouging is okay by Malian ethics - that is, it's assumed that since I'm a white westerner I can afford it, and since they are poor Malians they can use the extra cash, both of which are probably true. Still I know what they're trying to pull, and don't appreciate it.

As a final note on the subject, there are those, young and old, who refer to me with the French "le blanc." If I dislike being called toubabu, I absolutely loathe being called "le blanc," which carries none of the socially accepted illusion that they might be referring to a specific nationality, nor the small town charm of the Bambara word toubabu, which after all is kinda fun to say. Sure, it means "whitey" without the added implication of also meaning "Frenchie" (unless you assume that since they're speaking French to me they must think I'm French), but for whatever reason it's far more offensive to the ear. Perhaps it's that calling me toubabuké includes me on a long list of races and nationalities known to the Bambaras, even if I'm not really French, while "le blanc" sets me apart as the alien "other" - "we are all black, but you are white." I think it's more the tone of voice that it's used in, which is much closer to the tone someone might use when saying the "n" word derisively; it's more spat than spoken. Accordingly, it is almost never used by people who mean to show respect.

Burkina shea workshop, some talk of God, thief-wrestling, and the utility of Nigerian prostitutes

2008-04-25T11:11:00.010Z

1. shea nuts!
2. me doing Bogolon, or traditional mud cloth
3. Ceci une pipe. Marcel Duchamp would be proud
4. more videos by request: child happy about eating ameliorated porridge
5. some local girls sousou-ing millet to make tho

6. the Dogon crew

7. view from the village on the mountainside

8-9. view of the village on the mountainside from the village in the sahel

10. short video of the same

Oh, and I've added a few new things to my PC glossary at right ---> that should be useful for this entry, such as "homologue"; "brousse"; "formation"; etc.

3/31

Okay so a lot has happened! First off the Burkina shea field trip - we (that is, myself and Fatou, the local Malian I brought on the trip) got picked up here on the afternoon of Monday the 17th. The group, about 10 volunteers, their counterparts, a few PC head honchos and the driver, arrived in Bobo in the evening after having to backtrack about an hour to get the required border paperwork for our car. Why the car should need paperwork after everyone inside it was already set with their own paperwork I'm not sure, but by now Government inefficiency does not surprise me, especially in Burkina. In the car our boss handed me 56,000 CFA, my per-diem for the trip, and a pleasant surprise. The same amount went to Fatou, which she refused to take at first - it made her obviously nervous, and I had to get a better Bambara speaker to explain to her what it was for, that it was really hers, and that she would not be expected to return it at the end of the trip, before she would take it. Still she was obviously uncomfortable with it, and I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that that's the most money she's held in her hand at any one time in her whole life, at the very least that belonged to her. To put it in perspective, a beginning Malian doctor with a family to support makes 100,000 CFA per month, with which he supports not only his own immediate family, but likely helps support a few siblings, their families, and his parents. Here we were telling Fatou that we expected her to spend over half that just herself on just food and in 5 days time. When the boss attempted to give her an additional 9,000 CFA for the return bus trip to site once the trip was over, she insisted that I hold on to it for her.

Another awkward moment came mere seconds later when we asked Fatou to sign a sheet of paper indicating that she had received the money, for the records. It quickly became clear that she can neither read nor write in any language. I tried to explain that this didn't matter since a signature doesn't have to look like anything in particular, never mind be legible, as long as it's some kind of mark that she herself made (I couldn't help thinking of the (possibly Hollywood) image of American Indians signing treaties with an X in place of their name). Still she refused to touch pen to paper, and I ended up signing for her; a somewhat dishonest feat that would be repeated many times over the next few days (ironically now that I think about it, the way I signed for her was the only way she couldn't possibly have signed for herself, with her name written out neatly).

Another thing that made it clear that our trip was planned by toubabs and that the Malians were just along for the ride reared its head at our hotel in Bobo. The hotel itself was rather nice by West African standards, with a toilet, bidet, shower, sink, TV, and even a mini-fridge and a/c. Actually it was a palace by West African standards - there was even a seat on the toilet, toilet paper provided, and no salidaga (a watering-can like device used in the lou in lieu of toilet paper). Us Americans were delighted. If you're wondering, yes I use the salidaga at site, as toilet paper is not sold in town and would fill up my nyegen (pit latrine) with unnecessary garbage anyway. Actually I have toilet paper, but just use it for tissues, which get burned with the rest of my garbage. Yes I always wash my hands well with soap.

The nice hotel room, however, was not nearly as remarkable from our point of view as it was for some of the particularly broussey homologues we brought. Sitting at home in the US, you might think it was remarkable for them in the "wow! we're staying in a palace, this is wonderful!" sense, and you'd be mistaken. Keep in mind that these women are used to hauling all of their water out of a well, doing their business in a nyegen (which you squat over rather than sit on), and consider using toilet paper instead of a salidaga dirty in the same way we westerners might think the opposite (how can you get clean without washing with water?!?). Apart from what they're used to, some of them may never even have seen a toilet, a sink, a shower, or indeed any kind of plumbing, indoor or outdoor. Imagine yourself, then, in the place of one of these women - having sat on a bus for hours you walk into your hotel room. What looks most like a familiar nyegen to you? Is it the toilet? You haven't sat down to do your business since you were nyegen-trained as a toddler (nor have you wanted to). The bidet? Heck, I've experienced both first and third-world ideas of a bathroom, and I still don't know quite how they're supposed to work. The sink? Obviously too high. How about the shower, with its slightly lowered water-catchment area (no shower curtains) and a small drain in the middle? Well, you've heard of small nyegen holes before but this is ridiculous - still it's by far the closest thing to a nyegen you see. It's the obvious choice and after all you have to go.

It's so obvious, in fact, that it only really becomes awkward when your PCV walks in to find you squatting in the shower. I can't imagine the thoughts that would be going through both of your heads (I wasn't either party), as the PCV tries to explain why you should sit on the toilet, shows you how to use toilet paper, and how to work all the faucets and knobs - this way for hot, this for cold; up for on, down for off. Then the shower, with its own set of knobs that do the same thing as the sink ones but for some reason are designed completely differently. It's only now that I think about it that the whole thing seems to be designed not to be first-time user-friendly.

Actually I think I have an idea of what this is like - I can remember trying to take a shower at a girlfriend's house in New York where I could get the water coming out of the spigot at the right temperature and reasonable pressure, but could not for the life of me find a knob to make the flow switch to the shower head. There simply were no more knobs to turn, or plungers to pull, buttons to press, levers to switch, nothing. After puzzling over it, naked with the water running for 5 minutes or so, I finally had to turn the water off, put my clothes back on, go out and ask - ask! - how to do it. The embarrasment at being outsmarted by a shower during my senior year of college! As it turned out you had to pull a ring on the spigot right where the water comes out. Simple once you've seen it done, but not at all obvious, even to someone who's been using showers and baths for over two decades. But how about to someone who's never seen running water before? Really, how many faucet designs do we need?

The following day was spent on the road to Ouagadougou, the capitol, with a brief stop at a shea butter production association along the way. More on the actual formation later. Arrived in Ouaga in the evening, and most of the Malians were tired and decided to go strait to bed. Us Americans of course went out to a restaurant for a nice dinner - pizza and beer was the most popular choice, with ice cream for dessert (a nice break from the tho with leaf sauce that makes up most of our diets). Anyway we were walking back to the hotel and had gotten split into two groups, my group walking about 50 feet behind the first. We were in the middle of a conversation when someone in the street walked up and said something. As I was talking myself and have developed a habit of ignoring strange street people who look like they're about to: a) ask for money, b)try to sell me something, c) call me "hey whitey" (in local language or French) just to see how I'll respond, or d) ask to marry one of the women walking with me (marriage if they're of the more polite sort), I didn't really hear what he was saying. This habit of assuming that everyone outside my site fits into one of these four categories may sound harsh, but I assure you it's both hard-won and usually accurate, except in this case. As I was saying I didn't really hear him, until my brain registered the word "voleur" - thief. He was pointing toward the first group of us up ahead. At first I thought he was calling one of them a thief (insults are a less common, but not uncommon enough reaction to seeing white people in cities), but thought that was a bit harsh. Usually to be insulted you have to lose your temper and be less than polite with a too-persistent street-vendor, and even then "thief" seemed an odd insult to use. I only had to ponder for a half-second or so, however, before a girl in the front group screamed and the warning became clear for what it was.

Actually she'd screamed because the unknown man behind her was walking far too close. It wasn't until she started to apologise that he grabbed her purse. She managed to hold on to it long enough for John, the only other guy on the trip and a former high school wrestler, to put the guy on the ground. Another girl snatched the purse back, which is about when my group arrived on the scene. The would-be thief, who I'm pretty sure was drugged up, stood up slowly and for a few seconds looked like he might like to make another grab for something, despite John, myself, and Gretchen, who managed to look more threatening brandishing a large rolled-up Shakira poster she'd just bought than us guys looked (hey, it was a huge poster!). It wasn't until our boss started asking the crowd of Burkinabes that had quickly assembled for the number of the police that the thief finally decided he'd better leave. Me and a few others followed him until he turned down a dark alley into an abandoned construction site, where we thought better of following him farther. The crowd of Burkinabes failed to either stop the thief or give us the number of the police. In Bamako, Malians would have grabbed him and given him a good lesson in mob justice while waiting for the police to arrive - did I mention that Malians HATE thieves?

The following day we went to another Shea association and had a very productive visit. For those of you at home, shea is a tree that grows along a small beltway stretching from West Africa to East Africa, the nuts of which are processed by the village women into an oil that they use for everything from cooking to medicine to soap making. It is just lately being discovered by the West as a high quality Cocoa-butter substitute for use in cosmetics, soaps, but especially in chocolate production. The cocoa bean industry is a multi-billion dollar industry - the trouble is, cocoa beans are expensive. Shea nuts/butter can form a cheap but quality substitute. Also, since shea butter has a higher melting-point than cocoa butter it's good to put in chocolate because it raises the melting-curve of the chocolate - resulting in less mess in your hands. The trouble is organizing small African villages to turn out quality nuts/butter in quantities that fit onto a container ship. Since shea production is traditionally a female industry, when you can get organized you can put money directly into the hands of poor women who have little other means of getting it in an intensely male-dominated society. Burkina is about 10 years ahead of Mali in their organization. This trip did a great job of showing our (mostly female) homologues what shea work can do for them, and where we can be 10 years down the road. It got them all really excited and motivated to get the word out in their villages, which is vitally important given that it may take a couple years of work before they start seeing profits.

Still, we hadn't seen the last of those awkward cross-cultural moments. For the following day the boss arranged for the Association we were meeting to make us a rice-and-sauce meal for lunch, for 3,000 CFA a head. She made the mistake of paying up front and notifying the rest of us of the arrangement after the fact. Figuring that she'd given everyone 10,000 CFA per day for food and that the Malians were all spending much less than that, they shouldn't complain about spending 3,000 for one meal - that's what the money was for, after all. The volunteers weren't thrilled - I don't mind shelling out 5,000 CFA for a pizza once in a while, but I can get a decent rice-and-sauce meal in Sikasso for 200 CFA, and a good one (with a bit of meat!) for 300. 3,000 then was a little steep, but since it wasn't our money we couldn't complain too loudly. The Malian, however, were downright mutinous. Kris was a bit taken aback by this - we'd just handed them all this money for this very purpose! - until we pointed out that though this was true, they could likely feed their whole family for a few days on 3,000 CFA home. Eventually we reached a compromise by subsidizing the meal with money from the trip's emergency funds.

Wednesday, 4/2

During our baby weighing yesterday I weighed a particularly malnourished one. We have growth charts, comparing the baby's weight to its age in months so that any given child falls into ether the "green," healthy zone; "yellow," caution/danger zone; or "red," dire-straits zone. I could tell immediately by looking at how thin the child was that it was in the red. Its skin hung limply from its arm and leg bones, and its face, which had been made up with eye-liner, painted-on eyebrows, and even a little rouge on its lips (mothers often make up their infants in this manner here, especially when the baby i going to be seen - as when going to the maternity for a weighing), was sunken, forming a grotesque mask. Worse, whereas normally a baby should be eyes-wide, squirming around or groping for its mother's breast, this one lay still, eyes half-closed and mouth hanging slightly open, uninterested in the outside world - a sign of advanced malnutrition. Such children are oblivious to their surroundings, as if passively resigned to their fate. When a needle was inserted into its arm for its first vaccination, it barely whimpered. I found my mind screaming "why bother?!? it doesn't need a polio vaccination, it needs some breast milk! Save the vaccination for the next kid, that might live long enough to need it!" As I said I could see that he was in the red zone, but wanted to know how deeply. Intending to ask his age, my Bambara came out as "how many months is it?" to which the mother replied with a smile that said "clearly you don't know much about how big babies should be" or perhaps just "clearly you've never given birth before" and said "11 days." I was at once furious both with her and with myself - I could clearly see by its size that it was a recent birth (although this can be deceiving since badly malnourished kids can often be twice as old as they look like they should be), and my mis-phrased question had diminished my credibility in this woman's eyes. Still I was furious with her - at 1.8 kg (just under 4 lbs) this baby would have been deep in the red zone even if it were only 11 seconds old.

I wanted to yell at her for wasting her time dressing up her child before coming in when she should have been feeding him. Why, in fact, had she come in at all? I, who have only been around babies for the past couple months, didn't need a scale and a growth chart to tell me that this child was in big trouble. This woman didn't seem overly concerned - the fact is that babies born sickly here have it particularly hard. With a fertility rate of 6.6 children per mother, the attitude of a lot of Malians is that if a child's already in trouble when it's born, clearly it's God's will that the child not make it, and who are we to defy God's will? One of every 5 Malian children won't live to see its 5th birthday, that's a fact. This means that on average every single mother will lose a child during her lifetime, and every fourth or fifth will lose two. For every family I see that hasn't lost one, that means that someone else has lost three or four. Given that, is it such a stretch to believe that God has selected some from birth? If so, why prolong the inevitable, when those resources could well go into an older, healthier child (according to Richard Dawson, the older child has a higher genetic value since it has already proved that it can survive for as long as it has, whereas the newborn has not yet)? As angry as I was at the mother's seeming indifference, there's a cruel but nonetheless powerful logic to it. Perhaps, then, that's precisely why she came - perhaps she does know the child will die, but by coming to the Maternity, by getting those vaccines, she is "doing all she can," placing the outcome as squarely as she can in God's hands. Perhaps, then, she comes precisely because does care - if she didn't, it would be easy enough to let the child die quietly at home. By coming she proves that she does care, and then it's easier to take mentally when God takes the child anyway. But then again, maybe she should try feeding it.

On a lighter note once again, although perhaps a bit bittersweet, I'd like to share a joke with you. I first heard it from a fellow volunteer, written in the Mali Rag, PC Mali's internal newspaper. It goes something like this:
A villager falls into a hole he can't climb out of. Later, a missionary walks by. The villager explains his plight, and the missionary throws down a bible. "If you follow Jesus, he will show you the way."
An NGO worker walks by. The villager explains, and the NGO worker throws down a wad of money and walks away.
A PC volunteer walks by. The villager explains, and the PCV runs off. After a while, the volunteer returns with a bag and jumps into the hole. "Did you bring something to climb out with?" asks the villager. "No," says the volunteer, "I'm coming to live with you!"

Sunday, 4/20

Well I'm getting... accustomed? desensitized? to Mali more and more. I realized it twice recently, the first time when writing an email to a friend and complaining about the toilet situation here. I was remarking that the worst kind of toilet here is a toilet with no seat - far worse than a nyegen because at least a nyegen is easy to squat over. Anyway in my describing the inconveniences of the Malian bathroom I completely forgot to list the lack of toilet paper. Using a salidaga has become quite usual for me, something I would not have predicted before leaving the states. Secondly, just yesterday it was quite hot. It's quite hot everyday, hitting around 108 - 110 degrees on my thermometer (which is in the shade) every day for the past 4 to 6 weeks or longer. Anyway I was sweating quite a lot and thought maybe it had finally hit the 111 mark, but when I checked I was indignant to find that the temperature only read 106. "106!" I said to myself, "surely it can't be only 106, it feels hotter than that!" It's only recently that I've been able to consider a temperature of 106 to be "not that hot" - only a few months ago I would have thought that was quite hot enough. Before coming to Mali the hottest temp I'd ever seen on a thermometer was (Marble?) Canyon in (Arizona?), on the road just before reaching the Grand Canyon. That was on my family's Out West trip just before my 6th grade year, and stepping out of the van into the 108 degree heat I remember thinking that surely nobody could live in such a place - and I suspect the van's thermometer was in the sun, or at least superficially high because of the hot road.

Tuesday, 4/22

So after April IST, or rather on the last evening of it, Laura and I were in Bamako at the bureau, about to get on a PC bus back to Tubaniso, the training site. At that moment Mary Virginia ran up to us and said that her Aunt, who'd just been in Ghana for 2 months doing outreach work of some kind, was passing through on her way home and that they were renting a car and heading out to Dogon Country for 2 days before her plane was to depart. Dogon Country, for those at home, is the touristy thing to do in Mali. Merv's aunt had met the US Ambassador to (Burkina?) who had told her if she did one thing before leaving West Africa, she should see Dogon. Anyway they had two extra seats in the car, and wanted to know if we'd like to come. It only took a couple minutes deliberation to decide that Heck yes we did! An air-conditioned, personal transport to Dogon Country was too good to pass up, even if it meant putting off my intended visit to my first host family yet again. So bright and early the next morning (6am) we hopped into the car in Bamako, having packed and returned to Bamako that evening. As it turned out, the a/c was broken despite the patrone's earlier assurances, but hey - TIA. A personal car without a/c is still far better than a public bus or bache without a/c.

Arriving in Sevare, we went to the Farafina Tigne (African Reality/Truth) store to meet Peace Corps Baba, a very (perhaps a bit overly) friendly Malian who's been working with Peace Corps for many years and consequently speaks the best English I've heard from a Malian outside PC staff. He runs the store, as well as a smal museum on the store's loft. He's been to African cultural festivals in Chicago and Paris (he won't go to Chicago this year as the weak US dollar makes it impossible to turn a profit). Artifacts from varous Malian cultures and time are on display in the museum, from ancient, crudely fashioned amber Fulani wedding necklaces to bronze Touareg camel saddle-bag locks. The museum also has a small bookshelf stocked mostly with coffee-table books about Mali and African culture, though I was highly amused when Laura pointed out one that seemed to be trying to hide among the others, entitled "The Sights of Kansas City" - clearly a present to Baba from a past volunteer that he can't resist showing off.

A short while later, standing outside the store, we met Hassimi - a huge linebacker-sized Dogon who would be our guide for our two-day excursion. Hassimi is a favorite guide of PC volunteers, and it's easy to see why. He's friendly, speaks very good English (perhaps even better than PC Baba's), knows his stuff, and has an infectious smile. His English was what surprised me the most about him - he would whip out various American colloquialisms at unexpected times, undoubtedly gleaned from hanging out with us volunteers too much. The Malian education system emphacises rote memorization, so that many students can rattle off a whole sentence or even a scripted conversation, but haven't a clue what they're saying. My host brother frequently asks me "how does the work?" but when asked what he's trying to say so I can correct him, can only shrug. Repeat ad infinitum. A common conversation between myself and the English teachers at site goes like this:

Teacher: "Hello! How are you?"

Me: "I'm fine, how are you?"

Teacher: "I'm good, how are you?"

Me: "..."

We got the chance to ask Hassimi where he'd learned English, and he allowed as how it was from... Nigerian prostitutes. He was a Malian army-brat, and one day decided he really wanted to learn English. The only people around who spoke English were the Nigerian prostitutes, and so he spent many a night in local bars, where he'd buy a girl a drink and sit and talk in English with a notebook to write down any new words or phrases. Looking back now I wish I'd asked him exactly how long it takes to learn English in this manner, but oh well - what's important is that he learned it, and it serves him very well now.

Thursday, 4/24

I'm happier at since April IST than I have been before. For one thing, I've got a number of little projects going - I've made a pepignere (bagged, single-serving tree nursery) and planted moringa in it, just yesterday I completed the frame for a solar fruit drier, and I've bought paint for making a giant-sized baby growth-monitoring chart. Next week I think I'll ask Danger to help me make a compost pit so I can make some better pepigneres and plant lots of moringa trees (the moringa tree, an import from India, has leaves that are high in iron, vitamin A, and protein - 3 things Malians don't get enough of). I also just today finally talked to the mayor about shea production in my village. Unfortunately it turns out the whole thing has gotten highly politicized and messy due to some less than awesome interactions between the government here and the government in Bamako, but PC has taken notice and will hopefully be able to work things out before they place a volunteer here in September to do shea work (yep, I'll be getting a teammate at site with me, inch'Allah). In the mean time I can jump in on the bottom level of development, a good place to start anyway, without offending anyone.

Speaking of vitamin A, and this is a down note, it's necessary for life. A deficiency of it leads among other things to night blindness, the effects of which should be obvious. Here in Sikasso we get plenty of it during mango and carrot seasons, but virtually none the rest of the year. Consequently it's given in supplement form to children of a certain age every six months, along with their vaccinations. However, like anything, too much of it can be bad. The supplements are so concentrated that they need to be spread out, and for children two supplements should be separated by at least a few weeks, ideally. Too much at once can lead to vitamin A poisoning, which can be fatal. This normally isn't a problem - the amounts found in food are such that you couldn't give yourself vitamin A poisoning if you tried, and those children that get the supplements with their vaccinations get documented to avoid overdose. However this did become a problem back in December during the multiple-vaccination campaign, when vitamin A and mosquito nets were both being given out. Now although we were marking all the children with a "permanent" marker to avoid a mother bringing a child back multiple times, never underestimate the ingenuity of a poor mother when giving out something that could save her child's life (since children over 5 were not included in the campaign, they could not get nets). As any 19 year old that's gone to an 18+ concert where underage kids were marked so they couldn't go to the bar can tell you, permanent marker is hardly permanent. Although I don't know that it happened here (the lines were so awful that I would think it would have discouraged even the most determined mothers), elsewhere in Mali some mothers came back multiple times with the same child to get nets for his brothers and sisters. Unfortunately this resulted in a few (I've no idea at all how many) child deaths from vitamin A poisoning. Sadly, I also wonder how many of those extra nets are actually being used. A common fate of such nets after other campaigns has been resale in market (we were theoretically preventing that by opening the package of each and every net, significantly reducing their market value), fishing nets, wedding gowns, you name it. This has been exactly the argument against giving such things away for free - something acquired for nothing is worth nothing to its recipient. Here in my concessoin, Dao (at 4, the only one in the family able to get a net) doesn't use his, which has sat at the bottom of a trunk since December despite his origional elation at having received one. This just goes to prove the old adage: you can bring a horse a mosquito net, but you can't make him sleep under it. Especially in the hot season when there's no place to tie it up outside.

Mask Festival, Animation, WAIST

2008-03-02T16:26:00.006Z

1: The bus we chartered heading out to Dakar for WAIST

2: The Mali fan club - we totally had the best uniforms. Those are Dogon hunter's hats

3: Eric swinging the bat like a pro for team Mali

4: A bit of Atlantic coastline with waves. Someone told me the waves were double overhead while we were there, but unfortunately I failed to find a surfboard. Not that I would have survived double overhead anyway.

5: The crew relaxing after a game at the Club Atlantique/American Club in Dakar

6: View from the front porch of one of the houses we rented in Popenguine, Senegal, after the tournament

7: Two good-looking PC lads in Popenguine

8: The sunset over the Atlantic - quite different from the Atlantic sunrise we get at home but beautiful none-the-less

9: Our bus driver promised we'd leave Kayes at 4am, and we stupidly arrived in time to do so. This is about 10am, still at the station, when we seriously considered stealing the bus. We didn't leave until noon. TIA.

These pictures are from WAIST, or the West African Invitational Softball Tournament in Dakar. More on that later...

1/27/08

So I just learned yesterday that Heidi will be going back to her Bobo village on this coming Thursday for good. The women have spent yesterday and today putting extensions in her hair (normal for when they want to get dressed up) and I wonder - are they just doing that so she can make a good entrance, or could there be a future husband to impress? Is she going back to get married or is there some other reason? If she is going back to get married, is the husband already chosen or is she just going to make herself available to other Bobo men? It's weird, to be losing a sister (aunt, whatever), and I don't think it's quite hit me yet.

1/28

So I just had dinner with Danger, and he dropped some bombs. It all started when I remembered that Awa had told me between Xmas and New Years that Dao isn't her son, that she only has one child who's off in Boboland. I asked Danger if Awa was his first wife and he allowed as how she wasn't - his first wife, Dao's mother, died on January 15th 2005. In childbirth. Along with the unborn child. I don't know what the complication was, but she went to the Maternity in the morning, had to be rushed to the CSREF (regional hospital) for it (which took longer than it should have because the Ambulance driver there wasn't at his post when we called), and died there. Danger married Awa in October 2006, so they'd been married less than a year when I showed up here. Awa had been married in Boboland, and was the 4th wife in an otherwise entirely Minianka family. Since Minianka isn't just another ethnic group but also another language, imagine being the 4th wife (all present at the same time, if that wasn't clear) in a family where everyone else speaks a language you don't understand. Apparently things were going so badly for her that they gave her permission to find another husband, though since it's a paternal society she would have to leave her child behind. Further, Danger told me about my language tutor's first wife, who also died young and unexpectedly.

I find myself wanting to minimise all this by saying that the marriages were probably more or less arranged anyway, not like "true love" marriages in the USA, but that thought doesn't sit well. Danger was quite emotional about it (for a Malian man), even when talking about my tutor's loss. The fact that Danger's wife died in childbirth hits me particularly hard, since that's the very area I'm working in here.

1/30

Well it's weird, Heidi's leaving tomorrow and it appears she's not coming back - at least not any time soon. What's weirdest about it for me is that I miss her already. It just struck me as we had a photographer over to take pictures of us all before she leaves. The feeling is hard to describe. I've never been in a situation where someone else was leaving the house - it's always been me that leaves, being the oldest child. Even in my apartment with Dan and Toby, I left before they did. Even leaving the US to come to Mali (and to study in Paris before that) didn't feel like this - it's very different when you're the one leaving, going on to something new, than when you're the one being left behind.

2/6

Danger told me last week that the traditional Mask Festival of my village would be starting soon. Today I was riding my bike back home from language lessons as the sun was setting, and just before reaching home I passed a place where I could hear drumming and dancing on the other side of a wall, which I took to be another wedding. At home after eating, Awa put on Delta Force with Chuck Norris (dubbed in French), but as the other guys watching it were her Bobo brothers that don't speak French, it was quickly turned off and replaced with the Malian movie Sia, to my surprise and delight. A few of the younger ones mentioned going to the "dancing place," but nobody moved until a short while later when the solar batteries - and hence the movie - died. By then I had finally figured out that the drumming I could hear in the distance wasn't a wedding at all, but the start of the Mask Festival. Lasso mentioned that if I tried to go see it I'd be hit/attacked. Since he was not the first person to tell me this (my language tutor told me even he would be attacked if he tried to go, since he's Muslim and not part of the Animist crowd), when Danger if I wanted to go see the festival the following morning, I assumed it was because I wasn't allowed to go at night. Still, I asked if I couldn't go now, to which the response was "oh... okay!" Me, Lasso, Odile, and the others (who'd already headed out but been called back when it was discovered that I was interested) headed out towards the melee. Trying to be as respectful as possible I left my camera and phone behind, and didn't turn on my flashlight for most of the walk there, despite the moonless darkness that surrounded us.

As we approached the source of the cacophony, I could smell - taste even - freshly kicked-up dust in the air. The drumming was nothing short of ominous - whereas all the other drumming I've heard here has always been deliberate, measured, this drumming was dissonant, one might even say crazed, but with a dissonance that continuously fell into order and dissolved again like waves crashing on a beach - it seemed the more I tried to focus on the beat, the more obscured it became. Apart from the drums, there were also metal cow-bell type instruments, and something that gave off an otherworldly sound somewhere between a kazoo and a baby crying. Taken together it was all quite intimidating, even without the promise of being attacked. Still this was my host-family, and I reasoned that they wouldn't let me go if they thought I was in real danger.

Suddenly we rounded a corner and were facing the square - people gathered around the perimeter and two trees in the middle, each supporting a 20-watt neon tube-light that provided the only illumination, casting a strange glow into the dust-filled air. We stopped on the perimeter but in the road, and at first I couldn't see anything - the revelers were in the shadow cast over most of the square on the other side of the trees from the lights. Soon enough dancers twirled into view - covered in what I can only guess is a dried grass (millet stalk?) material that hung down and trailed behind them in the sand (we haven't had a drop of rain since October, so it's pretty dry), kicking up a cloud-trail of dust behind each dancer. The majority of the dancers (maybe 6 in all) wore a mask with a great crest on the top, like some giant bird - although I couldn't see the facial features of the mask in the eerie light. Before I could think "get out of here tubab," two dancers approached us. I was a bit unsettled to see that they both carried short whips in their long grass-clad hands. Though one kept his distance, the other walked right up to the man standing 3 feet to my right and reached around behind his head with both hands. Unsure of what was going on or what would be expected of me were I to find myself similarly embraced, I took a few steps back. Standing beside me, Lasso (who'd also taken a few steps back) said "don't run," to which my immediate thought was "why, because I've got nothing to worry about or because they'll single me out if I show fear?" Either way I stood my ground, and after a few minutes the bird-man dancer left and returned to the middle of the revelry.

Around the masked dancers came a line of young plainclothes dancers, bent at the knees and the hips so that the tube-lights created a strangely modern version of a cartoon cliche image, replacing a fire in the center of a tribal circle and casting 40-foot shadows of the dancers which radiated outward from the inner circle like spokes on a slowly turning, undulating wheel. Apart from these young dancers and the masked dancers, there was a third type - this composed of young men in plain clothes who did acrobatic, Capoeira-like spinning flying kicks, cartwheels, and spinning on their knees on the ground frantically, all the while kicking up more ghostly clouds of dust.

Trying my best to be respectful and as unobtrusive as the only white person for 100 km in any direction can be, I stood with my wrists folded at my waist, opting not to take the more aggressive stance of crossing my arms in front of my chest; nor the more passive stance of putting my hands in my pockets and slouching. Standing like this I watched in awe for who-knows-how-long, until the rest of my family and I quietly ducked out and headed home.

2/7

So I did my first Bambara animation this morning! Man what a crazy time! I arrived at 9am and there were already many women there, for the baby-weighing I assumed since we normally do that on Thursdays. I started shortly thereafter - 23 women and 2 men was the official count of participants, though that includes myself. I did a talk on the importance of colostrum and exclusive breastfeeding for the first 6 months of life, and it went really well. The women were engaged, answered correctly when asked to explain what I'd told them in their own words, and Mamu (my homologue) only interfered a little to what I said to make sure everyone understood, though I don't think that was necessary. It felt great to have finally done it, and with such good success. When I finished my armpits were sweating and my hands a little shaky - it's been quite a long time since I've done a talk of that size in front of anyone, much less a group of strange women and in Bambara - if felt good. The chaos didn't stop when I did though - with my talk over we started giving the women all their child vaccination cards back - the vaccination shipment hadn't arrived from the regional hospital. What did arrive from there a few minutes later was the ambulance, which pulled up in front of the assembled crowd, where the matrones helped a very pregnant women from inside the maternity climb into it. In all the commotion we never did do the baby weighing, not sure why.

Just before I headed off to language tutoring, the regular Animatrice showed up. I'd already gotten the feeling that she doesn't like me (I suspect she's just intimidated by me), and this was confirmed by her attitude here. When the matrones mentioned that I'd done an animation that morning, she asked disdainfully "Oh... did you translate for him?" To which they responded "No, he did it all in Bambara by himself." "Oh... did the women all laugh at him?" "No, he speaks Bambara very well as a matter of fact." "Hmm." Although I'd prefer not to fight with her, since we're on the same team after all, still it felt good to have the matrones stand up to her for me.

3/1

So I didn't so much mind chasing the occasional scorpion around inside my house - up until last night I'd seen 4 or 5 and killed them all. However last night I saw the 6th, and it escaped in a most distressing fashion. It was sitting next to the wall, so I figured I'd use my broom to sweep it outside before killing it so I wouldn't have to clean up scorpion parts from my floor. However, as soon as the broom touched it, it disappeared INTO THE WALL. Into one of the many (100?) holes that have appeared where the wall meets the floor inside and out, that I had been half assuming were ant-holes and half ignoring altogether. Looks like they're not all ant holes after all, and that's to say nothing of the two huge (2" x 4") mouse-holes that appeared while I was in Senegal. Looks like the scorpions aren't just crawling in through the space under the door, as I had assumed, but are actually living in my walls, and only come out after dark. Super. Ever since arriving I've been checking my bed for little beasties every night before lying down and tapping out my shoes the few times I've had occasion to wear shoes, and it looks like this has been a good idea even if I haven't yet found any surprises waiting. As hot season is approaching (it's hovered around 103 degrees for most of the day for the past couple weeks) and I'll be sleeping outside soon, this makes me slightly uneasy about the number of critters crawling around at night.

But I haven't yet written about WAIST. About it I can only say here that it was possibly the best overall week of my life, certainly in recent memory (sorry to all my friends at home). What is it? A giant slow-pitch softball tournament held yearly in Dakar that attracts both African teams, local private (white) high school teams, and most importantly Peace Corps teams. We from Mali brought about 55 of us, chartering a bus together from Bamako to Dakar, which took about 3 days. Still we paled in comparison to PC Mauritania, who brought 110 volunteers (to be fair, their Country Director charters the bus for them and they don't have to take vacation time for it. Mauritania is probably the toughest PC West Africa country to be in, though Mali's not far behind - for some, the unofficial slogan of PC Mali is: "PC Mali - at least it's not Mauritania"). There were also a sizable number of PCVs from Senegal, the Gambia, Guinea, and Benin. The tournament is held at the Club Atlantique/American Club in Dakar over 4 days. There are two leagues - one competitive and one social. We from Mali only had one team (we registered late), in the social league, but we did pretty well - we made it to the finals, where we were defeated by a local high school team (Dakar Academy I believe) who practice together year-round and have cleats. We found it a little strange that they should be playing in the social league, and would much rather have lost to another Peace Corps team, but we had a blast nonetheless.

A word on Dakar - it's an absolutely amazing city. Being the former capitol of all of France's African colonies (or at least it's West African colonies), the city center looks much like a European city, perhaps even a little like Paris itself. However added to that is much West African spice, in the form of a lively street-vendor and market scene, and the fact that the main means of public transportation, the "Hamdoulaye" vans, look just as old and oft-welded as your average Malian bache, only none broke down on me while I was there. Upon leaving the city center you soon find a more Bamako-like area, with street-vendors being the norm instead of store-fronts, and women everywhere balancing improbably large loads on their heads with no hands. The restaurants are many and are excellent, and the Palais Royal could have been plucked up from any European capitol anywhere and dropped here, with large marble facades and columns, and expansive lawns and gardens everywhere. As if that weren't enough to make a great city, Dakar sits on a peninsula jutting out into the Atlantic ocean, and has beautiful sandy beaches galore. The people that you find in Dakar are noticibly more cosmopolitan than is the average in Bamako - most everyone speaks French, and women wearing pants, jeans, and semi-professional attire is the norm rather than the exception.

The one thing that really takes away from the whole thing are the roving street vendors, who are far more persistant than I have encountered anywhere else in Mali or elsewhere in the world. Even after you kindly explain to the man selling Orange Senegal phone credit cards that you don't have a Senegal phone on which to use the credit, he will still hang around thrusting his wears in your face just in case you change your mind. Are you a girl? You must like beads, and you will never be able to convince the myriad bead sellers that you don't want any new necklaces right now, thankyou. Are you a guy? Surely that white girl standing next you you is your girlfriend or wife, and wouldn't you like to buy her a necklace? No? How about now? Or now? This is more or less constant if you stand in one place for more than 5 seconds, waiting for your friends or trying to admire the wears of the local artisan who isn't shoving them in your face. The best way to deal with them is to keep walking and brush off offers with a simple "non, merci," not that this will keep them from following you a couple blocks. Unfortunately this gets tiring quickly, and it's easy to lose patience and become rude, at which point you stand a good chance of being asked if you are racist. Although I realize this is just a ploy to get you to stop and talk, it can still get under the skin - that's precisely why they say it. But really, if we were racist what would we be doing volunteering to go to Africa in the first place?

Although I've just vented quite a bit about annoying street-peddlers, I think it's worth emphacising that this is only a relatively small drawback to being in Dakar, and despite it Dakar is now one of my favorite cities anywhere.

Following WAIST about 30 of us Mali volunteers went down to Popenguine, a sleepy village on the coast about 2 hours south of Dakar, where we rented a couple condos on the beach and just relaxed for a few days. It was strange to see the sun setting over the ocean, something I've witnessed only a handful of times in my life despite the number of times I've seen it rise over the ocean. Also it was good to be back to the Atlantic again after 7 months without seeing it - which was by far the longest time I've gone without seeing the Ocean, far longer than the 5 months I studied in Paris (over which I took a few trips and saw it), the only other time I've lived in a town or city that wasn't directly on the water. The water at Popenguine this time of year was comparable to warm Maine summer water, which means I was in heaven and everyone else complained constantly that it was too cold.

The ride back to Bamako was a tough one - we hadn't chartered a bus back together and were all kinda doing our own thing, so I ended up sharing the ride with 5 other volunteers which was good enough for company. The ride took 62 hours from the time we left Popenguine to the time we reached Bamako, and our ankles were all horribly swolen by the time we finally arrived. In the end I'd spent as much or more time on busses as in Dakar and Popenguine, but it was absolutely worth it and I will definitely be going back next year. For now it's time to get back to work at site! I did another Bambara animation, on child weaning, last week which didn't go over quite as well as the first one, and will be doing another this coming week.

For now cheers, take care and write me some emails! I'll be in and out over the next couple of weeks, I've got a lot to do before April IST starts, but I'll answer any emails as soon as I can.

2008-02-25T11:46:00.002Z

1: We're probably having a very serious and productive meeting on Shea Butter, not having fun
2: Me and my Turban crossing the Niger
3: Introducing the Lord of the Dance to Mali
4: Barrel-fire at In-Service-Training in January. It was cold season, which means it got down to the low 70's at night, occasionally even mid-60's - we were all freezing
5: Our transport across the Niger for the Shea Butter formation, first they have to bail out the boats and then it takes 3 boatmen to get across - 2 to row and 1 to continuously bail

I've been on bus for 62 hours traveling back from Dakar, have another day's worth of travel to get back to my site, and need to collect my thoughts and write in my journal - so I promise a huge entry next weekend, inch'allah.

2008-01-23T14:35:00.000Z

I love my new turban...

Decemberween

2008-01-04T15:31:00.000Z

1. In lieu of a Christmas tree, I hung my ornaments on my gwa. Since it's the dry season, I was able to leave them there (outside) for a month without worrying about rain

2. My girls and Dao being silly - I taught them the "Owl" eyes and they were quite impressed. Don't tell Dao he's not doing it right...

3. Vaccination campaign at my CSCOM, with hordes of impatient mothers

4. Me, sideways, giving out a mosquito net during the first day of the vaccination campaign, after we were forced inside by the demos

5. Blurry picture of me, my djatigi (host-dad) and dugutigi (village chief) during Tabaski - Malians don't seem to have a lot of success operating my camera

6. Haidiara (8 years and also sideways) and carrying local baby

7. Full grown sheep (see below)

8. Lamb vs. Chicken I (see below)

First off, someone asked about my previous entry what that man was doing with 89 fowl on a bike. I think it's worth mentioning that all 89 of those fowl (and those were only the ones he'd brought to market that day) live about 20 feet from the head of my bed, in a mud-house chicken coop in our concession. Yes, they are frequently noisy but I've finally gotten used to them (thank goodness) and can sleep at night.

Journal entry 12/3/07:

It occurred to me recently, while looking through a book entitled "Dieu t'aimes," a translation of a book published in the 60s meant as an introduction to Christianity, that there is a significant flaw in the Western view of the First Christmas, specifically with that of the manger scene. I had turned to a page describing Jesus as the "Lamb of God" in which the reader is invited to find some cotton balls and put them together to make a soft, fluffy, cotton lamb with matchsticks for legs. Whereas before coming to Mali I wouldn't have given this a second thought, it now gave me pause: I've seen plenty of lams and sheep here, and not a one of them is in the least bit fuzzy. West African sheep lack the distinctive thick woolen coat of their European counterparts - it's just too darn hot. They're short haired, bony and fat at the same time, usually filthy, and among the ugliest creatures on four legs I've ever seen, not to mention the stupidest (they are completely oblivious to all traffic - even if you're in a large truck they won't think to move out of your way until you're less than 5 feet away, and by then it's too late if your driver hasn't bothered to slow down - this is why the busses all have brush guards on the front). Case in point:

The only thing remotely cute about them is the lambs and how hopelessly awkward they are. Their legs never seem to move in the same direction at the same time, so that when it tries to run somewhere it has to hop with half of its legs to have any hope of going forward. Frequently it overcompensates, hopping its butt faster than its front, and ending up going forward but sideways - all the while bobbing its head up and down excitedly with every step. Enjoy:

Okay fine it's pretty darn cute. Anyway my point is that in all the Manger scenes that I've ever seen, the sheep next to baby Jesus are the fluffy, cute European variety. I think it much more likely that the sheep in ancient Judea were of the West African variety, given that the climate's was probably closer to the Malian climate than the Irish climate.

12/4/07

I recently got a thermometer in the mail from home - it turns out my internal thermometer has shifted about 20 degrees. I recently wrote someone that it has been freezing in the morning at probably 55 degrees F - now that I have my thermometer, it turns out that what I thought was 55 was really the low 70s. At home I think anything below 60 degrees is sweatshirt or light jacket weather, but here I run for the hoodie if the temperature dips below 80. 88 is quite comfortable, even on the cool side if you're not sitting in the sun. It's cold season now, but "cold" in Mali is relative - it still gets up into the mid 90s every day.

12/14/07

Today was the second day of the national vaccination campaign, and boy what a difference! For background, we're running a week long campaign to give every child under 5 vaccinated against Polio and the German Measles, as well as a vitamin A dose (it's particularly hard to get vitamin A here, even by Malian nutritional standards) and a dose of Albendazol. Not entirely clear on what the Albendazol is for, but I believe it has something to do with fighting stomache parasites. We're also giving every child under 5 a treated mosquito net (quite expensive here), up to 2 per family. Yesterday when I arrived at the clinic at 8am it was swarming with women and children. They were standing in a mob of well over 100 mothers, most with multiple children, and all of whom thought they should have their kids seen first. I mean everyone likes free stuff, but we were giving away things they can't buy themselves that may very well save their children's lives - and they didn't want to wait. I joined the other workers (there were about 7 of us all told), set up at our usual vaccination spot on the porch of the maternity, but we were immediately overrun with angry, yelling, pushing, grabbing mothers and couldn't continue working. After a while we managed to move everything inside the reception room of the maternity, but it was immediately stormed. Within 60 seconds it was so full of people nobody could move, much less vaccinate any kids who weren't particularly keen on the idea of getting a shot anyway. Although it was obvious to the mothers who had barged in that we couldn't work like this, they couldn't leave even if they'd wanted to thanks to the 100 other mothers outside trying to push their way in despite the amount of people in the room (think the T in Boston during rush hour, only nobody's getting anywhere). I called my language tutor, who's active and respected in local politics and also a school teacher, and therefore used to dealing with large mobs of people who don't do what they're told. He succeeded in vacating the room for us, and for the rest of the day we attempted to let in the mothers a few at a time. This was difficult, since as soon as the door was opened the mothers all tried to push in again, and more or less every time had to be pushed back, often quite forcefully. It took one of us to hold the door shut even between openings. I had tried to alleviate the situation by going around and pointing out that we'd be vaccinating for a week and that there were plenty of mosquito nets, but nobody was convinced. By the end of the day I'd spent 9 hours on my feet without a break, going on the baguette, coffee and sudafed (did I mention I have a cold?) I'd had for breakfast. That whole time was spent listening to angry mothers yelling and terrified babies and small children crying. Now crying doesn't seem so bad to someone like me who's never had young kids in the house, but this wasn't just any crying. There were three kinds, following in rapid succession throughout the day. First comes the cry of terror of needles that seems inborn in most children. Then comes the shriek of protest as they are held still (sometimes by as many as 4 people), the needle is inserted (here the shriek somehow doubles in intensity), and the vaccination is given. Finally comes the 3rd phase - much like a continuation of the second, except that it morphs into the kind of shriek where simply shrieking isn't enough for the child to convey just how upset it is about the situation, but must emphasize the point by flailing their arms wildly, jumping up and down and stomping their feet all at the same time. Since we were working in assembly-line fashion, these three phases were repeated in rapid succession all day long. I stayed to clean up the mess and tally the numbers and got home at 6:30, a 10.5 hour day. The sun was setting, and by the time I was done with my (cold) bucket bath, it was completely dark and had been 12 hours since I'd eaten anything at all. Still it was worth it - we'd given out 273 mosquito nets (it's harder to count vaccinations since not every kid gets every vaccination, depending on their age).

The second day was much better. The women were in line for most of the time, we got a lunch break, and succeeded in distributing 303 mosquito nets. By the third day we only had 50 nets left, and ran out by 9am. I guess all those women who refused to leave on the first days were right, I should have predicted that the nets would run out. After the third day the crowd was much more manageable, due I suspect more to the fact that we'd run out of nets than to the amount of kids we'd already attended to. I should also add that throughout all this we were only one of the three vaccination stations in town, although probably the busiest since we were at the CSCOM itself.

12/21/07

Well yesterday was Tabaski. Tabaski is the Muslim holy day approximately 40 days after Ramadan. As I understand it both Ramadan and Tabaski are not like Christmas or Easter, which celebrate an event. Both are celebrated as the Qur'an (Koran) dictates: Ramadan is a month of fasting to attone for all your sins of the year, and as far as I can tell Tabaski is simply a party that God said to have, and really what better reason do you need to have a party than "God said to." Everyone goes to a big prayer service in the morning, and everyone who can afford it kills and eats a sheep (meat is a luxury most of the year, but when God tells you to have a party, you'd better do it right).

Beware readers, the next paragraph is a bit graphic. Now I've always suspected that death in the movies isn't at all like death in the real world, but now I'm sure. When the British commander kills Braveheart's wife, he cuts her throat, a little blood trickles out, and she slumps over dead. Sadly for our Tabaski sheep, it was not to be like that at all. Two men held it down and pinned its legs, while a third cut its throat, except that "cut its throat" is a poor description of what happened. There's a line in the movie "Sin City" where the narrator says "... she didn't so much cut his head off as make a Pez dispensor out of him." This is a far better description of what happened to our sheep. With astonishing quickness, as I didn't think a Malian knife would be that sharp (they spend a lot of time sharpening it beforehand for exactly that reason), he cut through about 2/3 of the sheep's neck, front to back, and bent the head back on the remaining attachment in exactly the cartoonish manner of a Pez dispensor. Its legs kicked, its tail went wild, and a great torrent of bood shot out of the neck-stump, not entirely unlike something out of Monty Python or Kill Bill, except that it only lasted for a second or two. As they were still holding it it stopped struggling, and they poured some water over the neck wound (not sure why). For a moment it looked dead and they moved it to a nearby tree that they would later hang it from for skinning, and let go of it. This was when the legs started kicking again, and they continued to kick for the next five or six minutes, which was the most horrific part for me. The kicking grew weaker and weaker, until it was finally over.

12/26/07

Just got back from Christmas, which I spent in the city of Bobo-Dioulasso in Burkina Faso. Not a particularly exciting time since I was mostly by myself, except for a luncheon I had with the family of one of the Missionaries from Koutiala; easily the best meal by far I've had in the 5 months since flying out of Philly. There was a casserole of turkey, mashed potatoes, and stuffing, green beans that didn't come from a can, and homemade (cranberry?) sauce and orange sauce. The family knew the score, and insisted on heaping serving after serving on my plate, for which I was grateful. The best part was dessert though, which included a chocolate-pecan pie, an apple pie, homemade ice cream, and a plate of fancy cookies that included macarroons, fudge, etc. Both the pies were the best I've ever tasted (sorry Grandma) although this might have something to do with the fact that I've eaten nothing but rice and to for the past 5 months.

Well I'll be in Bamako for technical training for a few weeks, so I'll catch up on my emails and whatnot soon. Until then, happy 2008!

One more thing...

2007-11-27T13:37:00.000Z

Pictures:

1) How many chickens and guinea fowl (which are bigger than chickens) can YOU fit onto a standard one-speed bicycle and still ride it? He has 89 in this picture

2) Walking out to the Sikasso falls (see blog of 2 days ago)

First things first: I've added an element on the right --> that should show, in chronological order, the books I've read since arriving in Africa. This is because I've never read so much so quickly, and want to take the opportunity to brag about it. I've also added a small glossary, so I can stop worrying about explaining PC acronyms every time I write them.

So I was riding a bache (big van into which you can cram at least 20 people) back to site from Thanksgiving on Sunday, when we came across the bache that had left before us (they leave about every 2 hours). It had gotten into a head-on collision with a big cargo truck (think 18-wheeler but made by Mercedes) - usually these vehicles are square, but this one was now a triangle. Luckily my bache was only half-full, because there were a number of people lying around in various states of injury - most baches look at least 25 years old, and there aren't any seatbelts to wear even if you wanted to. The gentleman sitting behind me had a deep circular cut in his forehead and had a chunk of skin hanging off about the size of a baseball. He also had a a deep cut on the back of his head and another under his left eye, which was swelling so that his head looked a bit like one of those Halloween masks you buy in Rite Aid. We loaded up and raced off to my CSCOM. When we arrived I offered to help, thinking I could do crowd control or something since a number of people were coming up to stand around and watch. The doctor said (in French) "Yes you can help, can you do sutures?" to which my shocked response was "... well I mean I've never done them before..." (Peace Corps has forbid me from doing anything like that, but sometimes they forget). Luckily he took the hint, and rather than doing the sewing they gave me a pair of scissors and a clamp with gauze, to cut the sutures once they were tied and to mop up the blood as best I could so that we could see what we were doing. The man with the baseball cut was first - I'd say he had about 14 inches of deep cut in all, distributed between the 4 cuts on his face and head. He was given a shot of what I assume was novocaine around the cuts, and we got to it. It took us a while to get him all sewed up again, he was the worst - we also sewed up another 4 people, not nearly as extensively.

Not gonna lie to y'all, that scared me. Still, I could get into a car accident anywhere - I've just never been quite that close to one before. I suppose if I'm ever going to think about going into medecine (and I've toyed with the idea) I'd better get used to scenes like that. But please, drive safe.

Time Flies

2007-11-25T14:22:00.000Z

Pictures:

1) My smallest host-siblings, Haidiara and Daouda

2) Who needs pumpkins for Halloween when it's watermellon season?

3) My host-mother, Awa, in the hibiscus fields

4) Awa, Odile, and Heidi

5) Me, gutting a turkey for Thanksgiving
6) Cekoroba (old man) with no shoes who led us to the Sikasso Falls

So I was somewhat disconcerted 2 weeks ago, when I discovered that my eight-year-old host-sister can swing an axe better than me. The fact that at eight years old she has had years more practice than me was of little consolation, nor was the fact that she doesn't even swing it that well - she hasn't quite got the precise aiming thing down yet. Still, as she swings it with the gusto that can only come with the confidence that you're not about to cut off your own foot, it's much better than I can manage.

On my ride back to site from Halloween (which seems like yesterday) I met an old man and we got to the usual conversation about why I was here, etc. Eventually he asked me if I go to church, which is a little less usual - before I knew it I'd agreed to come to church with him on Sunday. Well Sunday rolled around and found me wandering around trying to find the church - When all the buildings in town are made of mud, a church is much less obvious than it would be in New England. The vieux found me however, having come to pick me up at home after I'd left. We arrived a bit late (by then it was easier to pick out the church from the music ringing down the dusty streets). The church itself was unassuming - no visible crosses outside, just a big "AD" design on the apex of the building (for Assemblé de Dieu). The vieux parked his bike on the side, and I was horrified when he led me through a side-door at the front of the building, and motioned for me to take a seat directly beside the podium.

Music. Three different drums, tamborines, clapping, singing, and a large instrument made from a half gourd (maybe 15 - 18 inches in diameter) with shells tied all around the outside. It was more juggled than played, thrown back and forth between the hands and slapped in time to the music - it made a sound like a room full of people clapping together, but with a slightly sharper, more mechanical sound. I didn't understand much of the singing, which I assume was in Bambara, except for the occasional "Jesu" and "Allah;" Allah, of course, being the semitic (and Bambara) word for god or gods, is not specific to Islam. The beat raced along at a frantic 192 beats per minute (I counted). There were 3 columns of benches by the doors, with children occupying the ones on stage left and center, and the men on stage right. This created two aisles on the side rather than one in the middle, not unlike the Congregationalist churches of home. Perpendicular to these on stage left were another group of benches where the women sat. Flanking the podium on either side were 2 benches for the choir (males and females mixed) who wore white button-down coats with red trimand breast pockets, so that they looked a bit like lab coats except that they had "Chorale A" and "Chorale B" written on the back. The podium supported a microphone attached to a megaphone suspended from the cieling.

Speaking of dress, I was not out of place in my latest Malian outfit: pants a mix of hunter's orange and navy blue with a design that appears to be an alkaceltzer dissolving in a glass of water, and a shirt made of brown and white fabric with a design of eggs, chicks, hens, and severed chicken heads. I was neither the most colorfully dressed person there nor the least.

The service itself was likewise lively, and done both in French and Bambara, except for the singing which seemed to be all Bambara. Then suddenly it happened - the service stopped, and everyone turned to look expectantly at me. I was momentarily horrified, but luckily they only wanted me to introduce myself, which I managed with my limited Bambara. After all was over, the older folks filed out, while the rest of the congregation went up to the front for one last good dance.

Thanksgiving was incredible - far from being a bare-bones affair, we had 6 turkeys (one of which I gutted and deep-fried myself), a vat of mashed potatoes I could have took a bath in, stuffing, gravy, fruit salad, 10 pies (5 apple, 4 pumpkin, 1 cherry), 2 no-bake cheesecakes, and other things besides, such as a local squash (we'd planned on making this into the pumpkin pies, but some people recently returned from visiting the states brought pie-filling). With 62 volunteers there, we couldn't finnish it all. It was also my birthday, and I couldn't have asked for a better one - we'd celebrated the previous nite at a dance club, with the highlite being the DJ putting on Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You" and everybody singing at me at the top of their lungs - as it turns out this is a most satisfactory substitute for the birthday song.

The day after Thanksgiving a group of us headed out to the waterfalls outside of town. Despite some schenanigans from our drivers we eventually got there and had a wonderful swim, followed by a camp-out at the foot of the falls, roasting vegetables for dinner, and playing Mafia late into the night. The moon was nearly full, and made the falls shine silver throughout the night. True, we may all have schistosomiasis now, but it was totally worth it.

The First Taste

2007-10-30T13:34:00.000Z

Alright first things first - RIP Lucy, my dog at home. You'll be missed, but then I expected this and I'm glad I said goodbye before leaving the states.

Also - GO SOX

In an unrelated development, shortly after receiving that news we got a dog here. It's of the Malian type, flea-bitten and tick-infested, but it's a puppy and it's wicked cute. When I asked my little brother Dao what it's name was (since it appeared to be his, even though it's really just a guard dog - they don't so much keep dogs as pets here as they keep them as appliances), he replied Wuludeni (translaton: "little dog child" - they don't normally name their dogs either). I insisted that he name it though, so now we have both Dao Belebeleba and Dao Fitini (Big Dao and Little Dao).

So i recieved quite a shock last week when discussing family relations with my host-father. By his reckoning, I'm older than my host-mother Awa, who's 22. I'm somewhat skeptical of this, since I had thought her in her 30s (Danger himself is 45), and Malians don't seem to pay a whole lat of attention to age - every time I ask it's something different. More shocking though, is that my two host-sisters Odile and Heidi aren't host-sisters at all. They're both 13 (or 15 depending on the time of day), and Odile is Awa's younger sister, which makes her my host-aunt. Heidi is their cousin, which makes her... well I'm not sure. Heidi apparently has been with Danger and Awa for 2 years now - both her parents are dead, and she lived with a mean aunt for 5 years (who didn't let her go to school, among other things) before an older aunt (Awa?) decided she was better off here. Because she never attended school, when she arrived here she only spoke Bobo, and had to learn Bambara (Awa, of course, speaks Bobo as well). Sinc she's a long way past the age for starting school, she hasn't.

Odile, on the other hand, is in the 7th year at school - she did the first 6 in her Bobo village, but they don't have anything beyond that so she had to come in to town to continue her studies, as of last year. Since she'd been to school she already spoke Bambara when she arrived. Lassinan also lives with us, though I'm unsure of his relation. There's an exit exam for the 7th and 9th years at school, and he's taken the 9th year exam 3 times, but hasn't been able to pass it yet.

Anyway last Saturday I went to a dance party out at site - more than a little intimidating at first, just me and a room full of dancing Malians. They had big stack concert speakers, a DJ (contemporary West African dance music, not traditional) a few strings of Christmas lights, and powered the whole thing with a generator outside. No alcohol was served - only sodas - so I couldn't have a beer or two to loosen up. Regardless, it was easily one of the most fun dance parties I've ever been to, which is saying a lot after New York. I even made a rather cute new Malian friend, but wouldn't you know it - she works for the Red Cross in Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso, and won't be able to come back to town until January, when I'll be in Bamako. Such is life!

One down and 3.6 tomorrow

2007-10-14T12:22:00.000Z

Okay short blurb on each photo:

1) Me in a 5-meter turban (taller than me even when folded in half) or me dressed as a ninja for halloween?

2) My host-brother Daouda and I being silly

3) Daouda and Adjara

4) Me after End-of-Ramadan prayer session. The fellow second from the left is my host dad, "Danger"

5) My front porch in the morning, with partially-constructed Gwa (hangar)

So anyway Friday was the end of Ramadan. Went to the early morning prayer session with Danger, which was interesting - everyone (a few hundred of us) sat in lines of prayer rugs, facing East. At first I figured there would be some kind of speaker or leading Imam in the direction we were facing, but when the prayer stared to go out over the loudspeaker behind us I realized that we were facing Mecca, not an Imam. The sun was cruelly hot, and I we were all sweating like mad. Anyway following that a smaller group of us went on a tour of the village with the Imams in front doing a song/chant, then we stopped and had Dege, listened to some more singing and chanting, the hunters fired off their flintlock rifles a few times, and then it was over. Following that we all went back home, and throughout the day neighbors would stop by for a bite to eat. What was strangest about the whole thing was the clothes on the children - everyone dresses up in nice new cloths for the holiday, which usually means traditional boubous and such things for the guys. However it is also apparently acceptable for children to wear new jeans and jeanjackets with "Nelly" and "Sean John" and "R. Kelly" logos - anything as long as it's new I guess. I tried to imagine showing up to church back home on Christmas or Easter rocking the Sean John wear, but I just laugh whenever I try.

More later hopefully, I'll be within internet range again on Tuesday and hopefully get some more done before heading back to site until Halloween.

moved to site

2007-10-03T18:38:00.000Z

Alright finally back to internet! Well what can I say... since last entry I've officially sworn in as a PCV and have moved out to my site, where I've been living for about a week now. The swear-in ceremony was grand - it was held at the Embassy for the first time in PC Mali history (here's a pic of the whole bunch of us), and after that we went to the Ambassador's house for a cook-out. No hot dogs or hamburgers, but there were delicious brochettes and free beverages. There was even chocolate cake, which in my excitement I managed to drop on the ground... Here's a pic of me in my boubou and turban, and Jared in his infinitely cooler turban (though he was just borrowing it, so I guess I still win). Swear-in night was a blast: we went into Bamako and went to the Pirate's Club, where I danced up a storm, then back to the hotel where we went swimming until prayer call.

The last pic is me in Sikasso, sousou-ing some sugar (to make powdered sugar) for a birthday cake. We stopped in Sikasso for a few days before all of the Sikassokaw (volunteers of Sikasso) went out to our respective sites. We had a birthday party for Laura and Katy, and made Mexican food - homemade tortillas, fresh avacado guacamole, melted Laughing Cow cheese, and all!

I'm at site now (well I'm in Koutiala now actually, since my site doesn't have computers) - it's been wicked hot, although yesterday it managed to cool down some after threatening to rain, and I actually got to go for a run off into the brousse. Thanks to snake-man I was pretty paranoid of running into a cobra or mamba, but I managed to complete the run without incident... this time. Alright time to get out of here and get some eats!

snake day!

2007-09-20T16:54:00.000Z

So the snake guy came to training today, to show us his pretty pets. Here's a horned sahara viper. Yes it's very poisonous, yes it lives in Mali, and no, there is no antivenom for it in Mali. Should you get bit, you'll have to fly to Morocco or Tunisia to find antivenom. Yay! Luckily they're mostly up north in the sand, so I won't have to worry about them much down south where I am. What we do have down south, however, is both Black Mambas (made famous by Kill Bill II of course) and Green Mambas (only slightly less poisonous, but like to hang out in trees. They can kill a bird mid-flight). We have antivenom, but then they can kill you in as little as 10 minutes. Oh, and the antivenom is in the capital, Bamako, and the snakes are out in the bush, where I'll be. TIA, man!

The fellow around my neck is of some kind of python or other, I believe that's the ball-python. It's wicked cute, and goes with my shirt. I very well may get one for my hut (the snake man said he could get me one for between $30 and $40), as I'd much prefer that to a cat for keeping mice away. I wonder if my new host-family will be okay with that...

Swearing in tomorrow!

Oh and for those who have been complaining that I never update my blog, again I say TIA. The internet here moves at a snail's pace on a good day, is subject to frequent power outages, and not widely available. Frankly during training I've made my priority socializing, since I'm going to be out in the brush by myself for the next two years - and when I get out to site next week I'll be 2 hours and an expensive cab ride (which for some reason leaves at 5:30am) away from the nearest place with internet. To be sure, I will keep the blog going, but don't be surprised if I go a few weeks without updating.

Tonight we play capture the flag (in the dark) and then have a dance party!

PCT ---> PCV

2007-09-18T00:09:00.000Z

Back at the PC training site, sorry I haven't written in a while, they've been keeping me quite busy.

Left my homestay site for good yesterday - we swear in as volunteers this week and then I'm off to my site proper for 3 months. Passed my language exam yesterday (in Bambara), which was the last thing standing between me and being able to swear in as a real volunteer.

Leaving homestay was weird, I will definitely miss my new family there. They bought, killed, and cooked a chicken for me, the first time I've had chicken since the first week we arrived. We stayed up late talking on Friday and Saturday nights.

Anyway we swear in Friday, spend the night in Bamako, Saturday is Malian independance day, then we split on Sunday for our regional capitals. I won't have internet available in my site (or electricity, or running water), so it might be tough to keep the blog updated regularly, but I'll try to make each update big and interesting.

More to come later, tired and going to bed

back from site visit

2007-08-28T17:14:00.000Z

So I tried to post the following entry on Aug 28th, but it seems that only certain people can see it. Here's trying again:

So last wednesday I went to my site to visit for the first time. The bus was quite an adventure - it broke down for about 45 minutes just outside of Bamako. It also stopped about every 15 or 20 minutes for the first two hours or so, usually at police checkpoints, which afforded an opportunity for a horde of people to run up and sell us such essentials as peanuts, water, little cakes, hard-boiled eggs and such, along with the occasional exotic like electrnics, manioc, or whole, raw fish (fortunately nobody on my bus was interested in the fish, although I was curious to see what they would do with them once they'd bought one). Despite the brief break-down, all in all the trip went fairly smoothly, taking about 9 hours.

My site is a fairly big town near the border with Burkina Faso, and once my homeologue and I arrived we went strait to the CSCOM (Centre de Saunte Communitaire, if I spelled that correctly) and met with the good Doctor. As my house was not yet finnished, I spent the week living at the CSCOM with the Doctor, who is incredibly nice. He fed me and kept me entertained all week, and even called me last night to make sure I'd gotten back to Bamako alright (the return trip was made alone, but more on that later). Both my homelogue and the doctor speak French, and I found that once I was out there isolated from my American teammates, my own level of French improved instantly. We are able to chat in French, and I only had to pull out my (Maddie's) dictonary twice over the five day period (thanks Maddie - don't know how I came here without that). Unfortunately I discovered that my Bambara level is as bad as I thought it was, but that was motivation enough to go find my language tutor. We were "required" to do 4 hours of language tutoring over the week, I did 12.5.

As for the town itself, what can I say? Although the site report said that the town has electricity, that isn't precisely true - the CSCOM is set up with a few solar pannels, but if it's been a cloudy day then we run out of power (and hence light) around 10:30 or 11:00pm. Since our CSCOM is pretty big and pretty busy, I think this will have to be one of my first projects. Apparently the town is going to get a generator and actually get hooked up with real electricity sometime in the vague future, although that requires a certain amount of people to sign up and give a deposit, so who knows when we'll actually make the required amount. On the other hand, that does make for some spectacularly starry nights, since there's no light pollution. I also noticed that the cloud formations around town are so incredible it's kind of silly, even for Mali (which is saying a lot).
I unfortunately didn't get to spend any time with my host-family. I did learn that my host-father's nickname is "danger," although so far I haven't been able to get anyone to tell me why they call him that.

Really my only complaint about my site is that I'm pretty far away from all the other PC volunteers, and the site is situated such that it's not on anyone's way to anywhere, except possibly for into and out of Burkina Faso. In fact I may even be closer to the nearest PC Burkina Faso volunteer than I am to the nearest PC Mali volunteer, but I have so far failed to make contact with any of the PCBF crew.

The ride back to Bamako yesterday was mostly uneventful, and luckily I arrived in time to catch a group going out for cheeseburgers and gellato. There'll be none of that when I get out to site permanently, so I'm making sure to stuff myself on every occasion while I still can.

newest member of the family

2007-08-19T18:53:00.000Z

So my host-brother Thiamogo's girlfriend just gave birth this week - it's a boy! Per Muslim custom, the baby won't be named until 7 days after his birth - I'll miss the naming ceremony since I'll be at site, but he promises we'll have a party when I get back. Ah I'm missing dinner!

worst blog ever...

2007-08-16T17:03:00.000Z

Okay okay, so I'm the worst blogger ever... I know, you needn't remind me. However please understand that it's not easy to blog here - the internet cafe I use tends to lose power every 10 minutes, which can get quite frustrating. It's working now though, so here goes!

Also, as per Peace Corps policy, I will not be posting any negative things here (so the wrong person doesn't read them) or anything about my exact location (for security's sake). Don't think that means I'm not having a great time, I love it here - but this won't be my outlet for complaining about stuff. It's probably better that way, I'm sure you don't want to read that stuff anyway.

What can I say? I've been here about a month, and (almost) everything has been awesome. The people are all ridiculously nice (both the other volunteers and the Malians themselves), and that certianly helps a lot. I've been at my homestay just North of Bamako for about 3 or 4 weeks now, and my host family has been incredible. They are all supportive in whatever way they can (only about half of them (there's like 20) speak French, and my Bambara isn't good enough to really communicate with the others, but our charade matches seem very good-natured).

The only things I can really complain about (didn't I just say I wouldn't do that?) are the food and the flies, and even those complaints come with reservations. First the food: I eat rice with various kinds of sauce (usually peanut or baobob leaf based) for lunch and dinner, plus some bread with instant-coffee for breakfast. Still I shouldn't complain, because my host-brother Adama brings me fresh fruit nearly every day, and they give me meat and potatoes often. I know I just pissed off all the volunteers who've been eating nothing but To, so let me just say that I understand I'm getting gourmet cuisine - still I have daily cravings for food from home - mostly for a cheeseburger. Also the flies - they're everywhere (and I mean EVERYWHERE) but at least they don't bite. I don't know what I'd do if they were green-head flies from home, I'd definitely have gone crazy a long time ago and ended up rocking back and forth in the fetal position in my room. As it is they're just a nuisance, nothing more.

This weekend we go back to the PC training site, and then on to our individual worksites for the first time! I'll be in the Sikasso region, which means that it will be humid and there will be mangos everywhere, the later of which I'm pretty pumped about. I'll be pretty close to the border with Burkina Faso, and may even be closer to a PCV in Burkina than I am to the next PCV (Peace Corps Volunteer) in Mali. That said, there are some very cool people here in the Sikasso region with me, and I'm pumped about that.

More to come later, I'd better post this before the power shuts off again... and by later I mean probably after the 27th, when I return to the PC training site from my worksite visit. I promise I'll try to write more often from now on though!

Ala ka su here caya,
Ben

toora si te

2007-07-25T00:19:00.000Z

I've arrived! (a few day ago)

Have been staying at the PC training site just outside Bamako, and it's been a dream. The weather here is awesome - it's the rainy season so everything is green, we actually had a decent storm a few days ago, and every night there is heat lightning (or real lightning?) off in the distance, lighting up the whole sky like fireworks.

It feels like I've been at summer camp, everyone here has been awesome, and I've made so many new friends already. It's felt especially like summer camp since we've been in the inclosed PC compound the whole time (though I did get to go down to the Niger River today), and they've had lots of learning activities and such for us to do all day - we've been quite busy. Tomorrow we head out to our training host-families, I'll be staying in another village/town outside Bamako and learning Bambara. My APCD (some sort of acronym meaning the head of the Health program) basically told me the other day that I won't be in a small village and I won't be in Gao, both of which I'm kinda disappointed about. However that means I'll get to learn Bambara, much more widely useful here than Tamashek, along with my French.

We had a Malian culture festival yesterday, and I bought a Boubou (long robe with pants to go with it) and a turban, which I'm pretty excited about. I'll wear the boubou (maybe not the turban) tomorrow when I meet my host family. Oh and I may have electricity where I'm going, so perhaps I'll be able to write again soon. Otherwise I'll be back here in 2 weeks.

Kan ben soni

2007-06-22T22:56:00.001Z

So I just gave my 2 week notice at work yesterday! Matt was really nice about it, and said I'd be welcome back which is definitely nice. I'd been worrying since my dad told me they'd probably tell me to leave on the spot, and I am definitely glad that they were as nice about it as I thought they'd be. In fact they gave me (and two others who are also leaving) a send-off gift today - a framed picture of the office, signed by everyone. It was really sweet.

Man, 3.5 weeks left! I made my flight reservations yesterday too - flying to Philly on the 17th of July, getting filled full of vaccines, then out to Bamako by way of Paris on the 20th. Well there's too much to think about right now, it's Friday after all so it's time to relax!

just joined the Peace Corps!

2007-05-23T21:20:00.000Z

So about a week and a half ago I finally got my invitation to serve in the Peace Corps! That marks about exactly 12 months since I filled out the original application, but better late than never, haha. I'm headed to Mali in mid-July (around the 17th?) and while at first I was disappointed with the assignment (I'm going to have to be away from the coast for a significant time, this will be the only time that's happened apart from my semester in Paris), I got to hang out with a bunch of RCPVs (Returned Peace Corps Volunteers) who just got back from Mali at a PC meeting that just happened to be on the same day I got my assignment, and now I'm wicked psyched. I had hoped I'd be leaving a little later in the summer, but I guess I need to arrive in Mali before the REALLY hot season.