Back once again...

So perhaps you may be wondering where I wandered off to; whether the hippos or snakes got to me, or perhaps Malian transport finally finished me off, like I am waiting for it too. Fear not, I am still alive and well. I have just been rather lazy about writing the past several months, for different reasons.

In April, I went to Paris and Italy for 2 weeks to celebrate Easter with my family. Strangely enough, Malian schools and organizations recognize Easter break too, although the country is majority Muslim. But whatever, a break is a break. I was expecting to have a little trouble re-adjusting to hot showers and electronics and streets with crosswalks and cars, but strangely enough, the big stuff was no problem at all. Even after 9 months away from my old familiar lifestyle, I didn’t have a problem remembering how things worked. The smaller cultural changes, however, did get to me a little bit. When needing to speak in a foreign language, Bambara automatically came out of my mouth, and I had to remind myself that I was not allowed to tell other people’s annoying children to behave. Sadly, two weeks with good food and good company passed by way too quickly, and I came back to Mali in the midst of hot season.

After a few days, again, in Manantali, where the hippos finally appeared this round, I came back to site where everyone was happy to see me. And so the past few weeks I’ve been back in site, trying to get some projects rolling while people have lots of free time on their hands. I can’t tell you the exact temperature; I am unsure as to whether the only thing that has a thermometer, my alarm clock, is actually correct. But it is pretty hot, I assure you, and the majority of people’s time in village is spent doing the bare minimum of activities for the day, and then lying around the rest of the time. This is especially true after lunch, from around noon to about 3pm. I take it as the perfect excuse to go lay in my hut for a couple of hours reading; hence the three books read in the last two weeks. Unfortunately, the mangos are not as plentiful as they were before, which was one upside of hot season. But relief is in sight, sort of. It has started raining sporadically in the last week, and rainy season begins next month, whereas everyone will be heading out to their fields, and I will be doing my best to avoid people who want to teach me how to farm.

“Killer Rabbits”



As an anniversary gift, I was given two little bunnies by my significant other here in Mali, with the intent that I raise them and hopefully they’ll start producing more little bunnies. However, they had the unintended side effect of bringing everyone and anyone to my stick door, as apparently rabbits are not seen in my village very often. Somehow my house as been turned into something of a zoo, since every day I will receive several or more visitors coming to see the animals. Maybe it’s because I’m used to seeing similar looking creatures in petshops across America, but I’m not quite sure why everyone is so fascinated. In some people’s cases, I’m not sure why they’re terrified either. That’s right, various people who come to see my bunnies are downright scared of the little things- I’ve seen little kids scream in terror and grown adults back away when the bunnies hop too closely. I can’t really find out why they are so afraid; do they think my miniscule little pet is going to somehow take down and eat a 150lb Malian? Have they seen Monty Python’s the Holy Grail, is that it? I can’t quite figure it out.

Coming to America (You Wish)

One of my least favorite topics of conversations, that also happens to be one of the most popular with Malians, is about how they want me to take them (i.e. current person I am speaking with at said time) to America when I go back. I will get this comment from everyone and anyone; people I’ve known for a while, and people I’ve just met. Some people are more proactive about it, like, “Why don’t you give me the money so I can buy a visa so we can go back to America together” or just “We should get married so I can go back to America with you”. I try telling them that 1) good luck getting a job right now, because there are none; 2) you wouldn’t know what to do with yourself once you got there anyway. I try explaining that, as I have no real-life skills that help me adapt to a Malian village (i.e. pounding millet, carrying water on my head, etc) they have no real-life skills to deal with a teeming, bustling city. I think they think I’m just being difficult.

It also intrigues/ amuses me that although the “coming to America” comments come up with almost everyone, they are not always talking about themselves. More specifically, I’ve noticed that when men (and its mostly men that say this, by the way) ask to come back with me, they are talking about themselves, and only themselves. However, when I get this comment from women, they hardly EVER ask me to take them; they tell me to take their babies back with me. Maybe they know that they probably wouldn’t do as well beyond the confines of their little village, but want a better life for their children? Maybe its not self-preservation on the men’s part, but an honest desire to make a good living to send back to their family? I don’t know, I am not a sociologist of any sort, but I do find this little social interaction interesting.

Voting, or the Party that gives more…

A few days after I got back to village from Paris, communal elections were held in Mali. Essentially, Malians were voting for a new mayor in what is like their district (since the leader in my village, like all villages, is the chief, nobody’s voting for anyone new anytime soon there). Having been a politics major at one point, I found the leading up to and voting pretty interesting. There actually seemed to be quite a bit of interest in what was going on before I left for vacation, even if I couldn’t seem to understand all of it. I missed all the campaigning while I was gone on vacation, however; unlike the US, candidates don’t really get out until about a month before the actual vote. So although there was a lot of talk before I left, I didn’t actually know who was running. However, a few people from the government did come down to my village for a few days to register all eligible citizens to vote. It was interesting to see this very educated, young workers working their laptops and cameras in the middle of my little mud village, surrounded by excited but confused villagers. It also highlighted one of the problems the government has: there is a lack of registering, of any kind, of citizens with the government. Although its getting a little better as people recognize the importance of government documents, there is no such thing as birth certificates. People have no idea when they were born, or any other kind of relevant information. There were several times that, looking at people’s paperwork, I saw the same person have different information on different papers, including different years of birth! Often, there is no individual paperwork, but simply a list of family members, written out by someone in the mayor’s office and given to the head of family. The said head of family would show up during registration with eligible citizens and show the government worker’s their family list. So although I was excited to see a good turn-out from my village during registration, there is a lot to be done otherwise.

The actual voting process was another matter entirely. I think (obviously keep in mind that I still only understand 50% of what is being said around me) that a lot of the decisions regarding who people are going to vote for is based a lot of gifts from said parties to villagers. It was curious to see a friend of my host father’s show up the night before election to my host family’s house, with a small box of Maggi cubes (like chicken boyen cubes). Although I didn’t understand everything that went on, it seems like they were being handed out to members of the family compound from a certain party. The other part that dismayed me a bit was the fact that family compounds all vote the same; i.e. members of the family vote as the head of family does, and not individually. So although everyone was participating in the voting process, most were not actually making their own choice.

The next day was the elections, and everyone filed over to the schoolhouse. I was happy to see they gave preference to the women first, since they knew the ladies had to hurry back home and get back to their various chores, the men could wait. I was invited to sit down and observe the proceedings, which mostly involved people signing off on their name on the list, taking the ballot to the corner of the room (there was some cloth surrounding it) and putting a mark next to the party image. Pretty straightforward, I think. And a few days later we found out who the winner was, and as of the 1st of June, a local from my village will be the new major of my district. Already he wants me to help him do things too.

Malian Weddings

I attended two weddings in the past couple of weeks at site. Or more accurately, I attended parts of two weddings. A typical Malian wedding seems to go on for 2 or more days, with different parts happening different days. The first day mostly involves showing the bride off, who is covered in a large white cloth, around the village. People cheer and there was even an antique shotgun going off at both events. After the family shows the bride off, the women gather around the bride and sing and dance. This usually happens in the afternoon, and after a while the celebrating stops, and then resumes again after dinner. This time however, the bride is not present for the celebration, but people are out and about celebrating anyway. When I mean celebrating here, and this goes for various different types of gatherings involving dancing, is that there are usually a few musicians or a large boombox playing tapes in a large clearing; people form a large circle and a few of the bravest people dance in the middle of said circle while the spectators clap their hands and cheer them on. In a way, its like those middle school dances back in the day, where everyone was too shy to just dance, but stood on the edges looking on as braver classmates dared to be the center of attention. Anyway, both men and women get together that night to dance, although the couple is not there to join in. The next day, there is more dancing in the afternoon, although this time the bride (I don’t know what men do; during the day the sexes celebrate separately) is sitting in a room on her own, looking shy or aloof or whatnot (I couldn’t figure it out, exactly) while women dance outside. This ends again sometime in the midafternoon, and after dinner that night the same thing goes on as before, although this time the groom and bride may attend. The next day, people go to the couple (men to groom, women to bride) and give their blessings. This is mostly what I understood of what goes on. To be completely honest, I did not go to the festivities every day for either ceremony, for various reasons including my dislike of being out late at night and of dancing in front of crowds (which people consistently try to make me do, because they want to see the foreigner dance), so I can’t give a very accurate description of what goes on all day and what the appropriate wedding formalities are. I am not really that impressed with Malian celebrations, but then again, I come from a country where people like to throw a really good party.