Sidenote...

I was not thrilled with the other photo website I was using, so I'm trying Google's. There are new pictures, but I set the privacy high so I believe you might need to sign in. Comments/problems/questions: please let me know!

"Where the hell is my camera?"....

is a thought I often have here in Mali. At times I wish there was some way I could just automatically remember images and then transfer them to a hard-drive, like a computer, because it is impossible sometimes to know when you really want to take that picture. Like when my friends and I are crammed into a tiny little van with 10 Malians and countless pieces of luggage, curled into little balls (my poor friend, all 6'5" of him, also trying to make himself as small as possible). Or when this same friend and I go into town to get Christmas dinner, and pick up 5 very much alive guinea fowl, hang them from our handle bars, and bike the kilometer back to the house (thankfully, we did not have to kill them and cook them up ourselves). It is moments like these that I shake my head and think, "I really am in Mali. And how does one explain things like this to people back at home?" Because I've come to realize that the things we've come to take as granted or normal here in Mali would never happen back in the States, or Mexico. Anyone back at home would be furious to find larvae in their flour (we sifted them out) and despite the terrible alcohol many of us drank in college, no one went so far as to drink home-made palm wine out of a 20-liter plastic jug, much less on Christmas day. At the very least, it gives me a new appreciation for the small things I had forgotten to appreciate when I had them, while also making my new life all that more interesting.

Anyway, despite all of us volunteers being very aware that we were in the middle of the holiday season, far away from friends and family, we came to realize that we were all in it together. For me, Christmas was not nearly as painful as I thought it might be. True, I was cranky at the beginning of December, when realizing that I would not be at home this Christmas, but when the day finally came... it felt like any other day in Mali. There was no big tree with presents underneath, nobody wishing each other a Merry Christmas except for our small group of Americans in Manantali, no Christmas movies playing in the background. In a way, it was a greater relief that way, because no one was sad or crying, and we didn't sit around and mope. Instead, we cooked and shared stories and laughed at the craziness that is Mali and our new lives, and at least for me, I will remember it as the strangest Christmas I have every had.

Its beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

So it has been a long time since I last wrote, partly because I have been in my village for the past month and haven’t been back in Kita since before Thanksgiving. A lot has happened since then; some good and some bad. I am thrilled to be back in town though, especially for the holidays. I will be celebrating Christmas with some friends in a town near Kita called Manantali, which I’ve been to before (there are pictures of said place in my photo album) but is definitely worth going back to because it is so relaxing. I hope to see hippos this time, because last time I was promised more wildlife but they failed to appear… jerks. New Years will be spent in Bamako, because although there is a nightlife scene in any large town in Mali, the capital has the most variety (including alcohol choices). I will eventually be back in my village after the holidays, but will spend some quality time with my fellow Americans in the meantime.
And since it has been such a long time since I last wrote, I wanted to post about various different topics. Don’t worry, they are separated into chapters for your reading leisure.

My Life in Mali
I believe there may be some confusion and questions as to my living situation in village. I live on my own, in my own little compound. There are three round little mud huts, about 7 or 8 feet long each way, with a thatch roof, like you would see at beach houses. I have a little cement block “nyegen” which is basically just a 4 foot by 2 foot block with a little hole I go the bathroom in and a space to take my bucket baths. There is a 5 foot stick fence surrounding everything, which keeps out the wandering goats, sheep, chickens and children. My schedule goes something like this:
Get up around 5:30 or 6, depending on how loud the call to prayer that morning is and whether the donkeys are braying outside my window. I eat all of my meals with my host family, which is convenient for me but gets kinda old, since most of my meals involve rice or corn mush balls with some kind of sauce. Although the meals are very heavy on the carbs, there is some nutrition involved in the sauces because they are made with different veggies (the lack of protein is a slight problem sometimes, however). I usually hang out with “family” for a little while after breakfast (which is usually some type of porridge made with millet or rice or corn) and then head to the clinic to check in on whats going on and what I can help with. Sometimes I wander off to other families’ houses to hang out or I head back to my own house to read or relax or wash clothes (I wash my own clothes by hand, in a large bucket of water. Its gives me a new appreciation for washing machines I never had before). I head back to the families’ house for lunch around noon, and then either do the same thing again: go home or hang out at the clinic or other peoples’ houses. I’m often invited to have tea, since Malians usually have tea after each meal. In the late afternoon I try to go out for an hour long bike ride, and after my ride I get water from the pump. The pump is about a hundred yards from my house, and so I tie a 20 liter jug to the back of my bike and bike over, and bike back. I surprisingly am able to get through my day with this amount of water, unless I’m doing laundry. I heat up my bath water (I only use a few liters. It is also surprising how little water one actually needs to get clean) and listen to the radio while I use a cup to rinse and wash myself. Get dressed, relax, and then head back for dinner. After dinner I sometimes hang around for tea, sometimes head home early and study a little while listening to more BBC. Because life is so exhausting, partly because I get up so early, partly because the environment is so different, partly because its just Mali, I’m in bed by 9, asleep or getting there. Most of my days are like this, with a few variations if I bike to another village to help out with baby vaccinations or head up north to meet with friends. Sometimes I head into the fields to help my family with their fields of peanuts, since it is harvesting time, but more often I spend my time floating around the village, trying to find something to do while practicing my Bambara. The days go by extremely slowly, and yet, one finds it hard to believe that its already been 3 months since we swore in as volunteers and over 5 months since we first arrived in country.

Thanksgiving in rural Mali
I chose to spend Thanksgiving near my village and not go off too far, partly because I spent the previous week away from site in Bamako. Thankfully my two girlfriends were planning a small Thanksgiving dinner at one of their villages, and invited me to come join. Between my mother (thank you Mom!) and my friend’s family, we had plenty of “Thanksgiving” food: sweet potatoes, stuffing, veggies and mashed potatoes. Since there are not many turkeys wandering around Mali, we bought two guinea fowl instead, which were freshly killed, plucked and cleaned for us that very afternoon (I did not watch). It was surprisingly delicious, better than real turkey, actually, and we had gravy to along with it. Luckily one of my friends’ also has a solar oven, which involves a large ceramic bowl in another ceramic bowl, which sits inside the metallic panels. It works extremely well, and for dessert we had brownies. Sadly, there was so much food at dinner that we could only finish half the brownies, and the next day they were too hard to eat. However, the leftovers from Thanksgiving dinner were just as delicious, and we had guinea fowl and potatoes and stuffing for both lunch and dinner on Friday. After Thanksgiving dinner we watched the Little Mermaid on a little DVD player, and for an hour and half we forgot we were celebrating an American holiday in Africa.

Biking
A quick update on biking in the Malian bush. I bike every other day now, sometimes only 5-10k, sometimes more. Thankfully the road linking my village to my two girlfriends is pretty straightforward and easy to maneuver; no large hills, or rocky paths. I finally made the long trip to my friends a few weekends ago, biking about 35k to one friend, spending the night, and biking back the next day. Although it was extremely tiring, I was actually surprised at my endurance, and it gives me hope that maybe one day, near the end of my service, I really can bike all the way from Goro to Kita. Or maybe at least from my friend’s villages; they’re a lot closer.

Tabaski, or as I like to think…. the slaughter
Two weeks after Thanksgiving, Muslims celebrated Tabaski, or the big party that comes two months after the end of Ramadan. I’m not sure still what the special significance is of having a big parties two moons after the last party, but who can say no to a party? I believe it is probably one of the largest Muslim holidays, because everyone in village was very excited and getting ready for days before. Women did their hair, got new outfits for themselves and their families, splurged on coffee and candies and other goodies.
Part of the special tradition of Tabaski (or Saliba, as its known in Bambara) is slaughtering lots of farm animals to eat, specifically goats, sheep and cows. So walking around my village greeting families I was more often than not met with people slitting some animal’s throat or starting to carve it up to cook. So there were goats and sheep heads everywhere, in other words, greeting me with vacant eyes (not that sheep don’t have pretty vacant looks to them when they’re alive). Most Malians, especially kids, found the whole process rather fascinating, but even though I have a pretty high threshold for these types of things, I chose not to watch most of the going-ons. I myself bought a few kilos of meat from a cow that had been slaughtered for the occasion for my family to eat, and it turned out to be enough for six meals (that’s right: I even ate cow for breakfast) over the two days we were celebrating. I can’t call it “beef” because our idea of what is edible and Malian’s version is a little different, and I’m honestly not sure what part of the cow I was eating at any point. However, this comes after I biked 70km in a two day period, so I was not about to get picky about protein. Even though chances are I was eating part of the liver or heart or other such organ, it was actually pretty good and extremely satisfying after two weeks of nothing but rice and corn. In all honesty, a filet mignon sounds great, but I’ve forgotten what it tastes like.
There was more to the day than slaughtering stupid farm animals, rest assured. In the morning the older men and women of the village went to a large open air space on the outskirts of the village, to pray and hear the Imam preach, Muslim version of going to church for the holiday. I went along, and sat with the women in the back of the crowd with my head covered. Although I couldn’t understand a word of what the sermon was about (in Bambara, not Arabic) it was interesting to experience and made my villagers very happy that I attended. After the prayer people headed home to eat and relax and wander to other people’s houses to greet and bestow blessings. It was a pretty relaxing day for everyone in village, as there was no school and no one went out to their fields; it was pretty much the same as every other day for me, except I got to eat meat. I feel like its very similar to Christmas, but a lot more simplified, with less presents.

Transport in West Africa
An inducement to my being able to bike from village to town is that transport here can be unreliable, uncomfortable and sometimes scary. Little vans leave my village three times a week, although sometimes some of those don’t show up. These vans are also extremely, extremely old, and extremely beat up; every time I am amazed when I reach the end of my voyage without some major breakdown. I must have some kind of transport luck, because only twice have I been on transport that had a major breakdown. The first was during site visit, and fortunately it was in the middle of the day on my way to Kita, and was resolved in a half hour. The second time I was on my way back to village with my friend Dave (whom I think responsible for the bad luck), four hours late, when the tire blew out and we were stranded for over an hour while they looked for a new one. At least it was a full moon that night, and I had brought along snacks.
More likely than not, traveling involves quite a bit of discomfort. My village is often the starting-point for the beginning of the voyage to Kita, and I am lucky enough to be able to choose where I want to sit for the trip. However, there are many more villages the van stops at, with many more people jumping on. They usually over crowd these things, because there is more fare that way, so an aisle that should sit 4 normally now has 5 or 6. Most likely someone has a baby or a chicken with them, and both will be in your face at some point, sooner or later. The baby will be trying to grab onto you (or pee on you) and the chicken will be trying to get through you to escape. And that’s on a good day. In reality, I know there is far worse to come, and that many of my fellow volunteers have far greater horror stories than mine, so rest assure d that there will only be more tales of traveling in Mali to come.

My most prized possession
Probably the most valuable item (s) I brought with me to Mali is my little radio and my music. I listen to my Ipod every morning, because it helps me get out of bed and face the world, and before I go to bed at night, as it helps me go to sleep (especially when there are donkeys or goats or children making lots of noise outside of my hut).
The other item that helps keep me from leaving Mali early and killing people is my little radio. There is no FM frequency where I am, so instead I tune into the shortwave frequencies. It is always interesting seeing what international channels I can get; some nights I’ve gotten programs from as far away as Venezuela and Asia (I couldn’t tell what country specifically). But I listen to the BBC and the VOA (Voice of America) every night, which helps my mental sanity and keeps me in touch with what’s going on in the rest of the world. I had never really heard of VOA before I came to Mali, but I am guessing that it is the national broadcasting station for the US, and what George Bush uses for his weekly radio addresses. They have a wide variety of programs, from the regular news to talking about some American landmark or city to playing American pop music. It is often harder to find than the BBC though, so most nights I tune in to hear what is going on in Africa, the daily rugby, football (that’s soccer to some of you) and cricket scores, and the latest disaster to hit the rest of the world, all in a charming British accent. I sometimes get a strange sense of a connection to the past, listening to these two stations. I think of how soldiers fighting in WWII would listen to the BBC or the VOA for news of home, when they were far, far away, and think of myself, so far away from home too.
Sometimes I can’t find either of these stations, and am left trying to find another English-speaking station that’ll give me the news, or at least some sense of comfort that comes from hearing your own language. Now, I don’t know why, but when going through these searches I can ALWAYS find a religious station or two. There has never been a time that I have not found a signal from Texas, or the southern United States, or maybe some random city in Europe or Africa, talking about God. Personally, I think there is some sort of conspiracy, but my friends have their own theories. At least its comforting to know, that even in the middle of the Malian bush, Jesus is looking out for me.

“Cold Season”
They tell us that it’s now wintertime in Mali, and just in time for Christmas. It is actually cold; however it is only cold at night. During the day it is still plenty warm, which only makes the cold feel that much colder. In reality, when I say cold, it’s probably only in the 60’s or 50’s, which is not very cold to many of you dealing with the freezing rain and snow. However, when you have been used to living in 90, 100o heat, one actually needs to wear long sleeves and socks to bed, and cuddle up with a wool blanket. We are all very thrilled with the change though, because we know the humid heat that was rainy season, and that it will get unbearably hot in another few months, and we love the relief the season brings. The other perk we’ve found is that there are less bugs, especially mosquitoes and flies, which I find to be an absolute blessing, seeing as how badly I am usually bitten. Unfortunately, the cold doesn’t seem to be everywhere, because here in Kita it is still warm, even in the middle of the night, and the mosquitoes are still breeding.

A List of Things that Keep Me Going
Long bike rides, listening to my music
English radio (God bless the British)
Little babies running to my arms
Pictures and cards from loved ones
Reading lots of books
Eating an American snack and a Mexican candy, one each every night
Seeing my fellow volunteers in the middle of a stint in village

Life and Death in Mali
Birth and death is a lot closer here in Mali than it is in the States; there is always someone giving birth in the small radius of my community, and just as often there is someone dying. For that reason, I feel like it is all the more celebrated, and all the less felt. I was painfully made aware of both, the happiness of a new baby and the suddenness of death, last week. A woman I knew from the village chief’s family had been pregnant since I arrived in village, and I was just waiting for the day she’d finally burst. We weren’t particularly friends, but I saw her every day on my way to greet the village chief and breakfast. I teased her about how big she was getting and how many babies she was having; she told me she was having twins. Although she was only 26, this was her 5th pregnancy, and her second set of twins. She went into labor last Friday around midnight, and when I came to the clinic that morning she had had a boy and a girl. Unfortunately, she was having problems expelling the placenta, and nothing the midwife and the trainee did helped. Eventually, the ambulance in Kita was called, which got to my village around mid-afternoon. She was loaded into the car with her husband and newborns, and the van sped away. By that time however, it was too late, and she had bled to death before she reached the hospital.
This isn’t my first experience with birth, or death, here in Mali, but it’s hit the closest to home. I knew her, I know her family, and if her babies survive I will know them, and watch them as they try to survive in this harsh environment. And I know it won’t be the last time someone I know dies while I’m here, and I know I’ll have to find a way to cope with being this close death, and birth, if I want to make it.

I’m sorry to end the posting on such a downer note, but I hope that everyone is at home getting ready to celebrate the holidays and enjoy time with loved ones. I’m thinking of everyone, and hope you have a wonderful Christmas and a Happy New Year!

The Vacation is over...

I am back in Kita again, although I said I would be at site. After coming back to Kita on Thursday from visiting my friend in another town, I decided to stay an extra two days here in town instead of rushing back to my village. Which at the time seemed to be a good decision, since some other friends were here and I caught up with them. However, after transportation left us yesterday and we are here stuck waiting for another bus to go through, I’m not sure if I should have put off getting back to village for so long. I assume I’ll get back to my village eventually, if Malian transport ever decides to come through. However, at least I know (I think) that my villagers will be happy to see me, and that everyone will be super excited to talk about Obama winning the Presidency. It is a nice feeling to be loved by the rest of the world again, and to feel proud of America once more. Here in Kita people are overjoyed, and keep talking to us about it in the market, and in the internet café the owners have printed out pictures and pictures of Barack and put them up everywhere. I feel terribly sorry for him however; although he’s starting out with a great mandate he has been given a shitty situation. No matter what he does, things are going to go wrong and people are going to be angry. I just hope that people remember to be patient and understanding, at least for the first year or two.

Anyway, despite the crazy Malian transport situation, it has been a really great week. I was thrilled to get out of town for a couple of days, and go up to Manantali, northwest of Kita. It is really beautiful up there, and the Peace Corps house up there and my friend’s house are right on the river, where monkeys come to play and hippos wander by sometimes (I saw the monkeys, but unfortunately no hippos ever materialized while I was there). So we spent our afternoons sitting on the porch drinking lemonade and watching the sunset. Because Manantali has a dam that provides hydro-electric power and my friend lives in an old contractor’s house, there was also running hot water, which doesn’t sound like much but is amazing after cold bucket baths for 4 months. So I spent my days riding around Manantali, exploring the town and the surrounding wilderness and relaxing in the coolness (both literal and figurative) of my friend’s house. There was no sitting around watching movies or hanging on the couch for hours on end, which is what I usually end up doing in Kita. So it was a great break from the stage house and from my village, although it was really hard to leave that relative paradise. Although we weren’t able to watch the election as it was happening, we were able to catch the speeches on French TV the day after, and we were both terribly impressed with both of them. Which brings me back to how happy everyone here is about Obama, volunteers and Malians both. We can only hope that he makes good decisions the next couple of years and that there is nothing too bad that trips him up, and makes him hated by the rest of the world.

P.S. I have added more pictures of homestay and Swear-in, so check them out! Its me in a Malian outfit. Hot.

Of Bikes and Barack...

Greetings from the land of peanuts! In my spare time (which there is a lot of) I’ve been going out with my host family to farm peanuts, harvest peanuts, shell peanuts. I’m pretty sure I’ve eaten my weight in peanuts the past two weeks. Strangely enough, for someone who never used to like peanuts, I am really starting to enjoy them here. Even stranger, for those of you who knew my culinary tastes, I HATE peanut butter; yet my favorite meal here is a rice dish made with a peanut type sauce. I can’t decide if it’s because the sauce is so good, or it’s just the best of the 5 sauces I eat on a regular basis in village. How times have changed.

Anyway, other than peanuts, a lot of my time in village the past two weeks as been spent doing two things: bicycling and talking about Barack Obama. Last time I was in Kita I received my nice, new Peace Corps issued mountain bike, and have been logging numerous km on it since. I’ve never been particularly fond of biking, especially since I have the tendency to fall over or crash into things or something similar. However, since Peace Corps forbids us volunteers from getting on motorcycles, and I’m not about to start walking miles on end to get to other villages, I have little choice but to bike. So I have been biking to some of the other villages around my site to introduce myself and get to know the other villagers, and biking in general just to burn off some of the countless carbs and peanuts I’ve been ingesting. I have added incentive that my friends are about 25-35k north of me, and so can now get to them when I am desperately needing some American contact. I’m also hoping to start going to the 15 villages my health clinic is responsible for. The vaccinator and matron go to every village once a month to vaccinate children and examine pregnant women, and I’m hoping to be able to work in some health information sessions in these trips once I master the language. My other goal is to eventually be able to bike to my friend’s house, and from there bike to Kita- about a 85/90k distance in total. If anything, I will leave Mali with fantastic legs.

The other big deal in my village has been the American elections. I have actually been mildly impressed as to the level of interest and awareness in my village as to what’s been going on in the U.S. The fact that an African-American might be the next President of the United States of America is a big thing here (for obvious reasons). People have been listening to the news on the French BBC every day to hear how the race is going, and like to keep me updated/ask my opinion on whats going on. And everyone is obviously very thrilled that I’ve come up to Kita this week to vote for Obama. The fact that he has a white mother and black father does confuse them a little bit; there are not quite sure what that makes a person look like. I mean really, what skin color is he really? But it is a great starting point for conversations in villages about how Americans are NOT all white, but come in every shape/size/ethnicity/ what have you, and that there is a lot of intermarriage going on between ethnicities, making Americans even more diverse. Anyway, I plan on bringing lots of pictures back of Obama, so at least they know what an African-American looks like. How I do hope he wins too, because I don’t know how I can ever face my villagers if he doesn’t. Or how I’m going to explain why he didn’t.

Anyway, I know this is a fairly short post, but there isn’t too much to report that isn’t fairly repetitive or fairly depressing/hard to believe. I am trying to keep this blog uplifting and light-hearted and informative, but sometimes there is little to say about life in Mali except that it’s hard and painful and sometimes really short, and I’m not speaking as a regular volunteer going through the usual complaints about adjusting here. This past week has really made me grateful for the easy life (no, really) we have in the States, and makes me more appreciative of how people here get through life, day after day; despite the terrible things that happen, despite how much suffering they might go through.

I am here until the 6th of November for the elections, so please shoot me an email, a note, anything if you get the chance. I love hearing from everyone and everything.

And back to village I go...

I’m pretty sure the next two years will be a lot of my shuffling around between Kita and village, village and Kita, and then maybe traveling to other places in Mali once in a while. As for now though, we new volunteers are technically limited to staying in our own region for the first 3 months of training; no traveling into Bamako unless for specific reasons, and no visiting other volunteers in other regions. This will supposedly insure that we really get to know our villages and become well-integrated into our communities. That is basically the goal for us right now, since there is no other thing we can really do except learn the language and learn what kind of projects our village needs and wants, and what we can reasonably accomplish as volunteers here for two years. It’s actually a long, long drawn out process, much more than one would think. Most volunteers don’t really start doing any kind of work until January, at the earliest, because most are trying to come up with a good project that will be sustainable in the community long after the volunteer is gone; not an easy task in many Peace Corps countries. It helps that everyone is all on the same page when it comes to this, and at least in this way volunteers come together and support each other.

Anyway, I thought I’d actually explain what I do all day, because I talk a lot about how much I DON’T do and perhaps some people don’t really believe that? I get up early every morning, and walk to the water pump a hundred or so yards from my house to get water for my day. Make myself tea and heat up water so I can take a hot bucket bath (because cold water at 6:30 in the morning is nobody’s idea of fun, even if it gets to 90 or 100 later in the day). And then I go to my host family’s house, where I have a corn porridge type thing, with sugar mixed in. After that I sit around with my language instructor and some other men, sometimes with another woman (who are usually the ones doing all the work here, so not always likely). Normally we make green tea, the first batch of the day. Now let me stop and explain about green tea in this country, which is a big thing. Malians love to buy loose-leaf green tea and make it over a little wood burner. After the tea has been boiled, they had sugar to the mix, and then mix it by pouring the tea into the cup and back into the pot, repetitively. The cup is actually not like the mugs we use in the States; they more resemble shot glasses. So you know you have a person who knows how to make tea if you have a nice bit of bubbles and foam in your shot glass. Usually people only have one glass to serve with, so people are given the tea in order of importance, sex, age, etc. Normally I would be last to get the tea because of age and gender, but because I am the foreigner/guest, I get served first. And tea is made three times, until the third cup consists mostly of sugar and less of tea flavor. This whole process can take anywhere from a half to a whole hour. I mention this because this is a HUGE ritual in Mali, at least in the southern regions like Bamako and Kayes. Throughout the day I might get tea (and I mean the 3 different stages of) three or four times a day. As you all well know, I love tea, but I might never want green tea again after Mali. Anyway, after tea with my instructor, I might wander over to the clinic, or to another family’s compound, and chat. I like hanging out at the clinic because I sometimes get to work a little, such as helping with baby weighings or watching pregnant women get check-ups (although there still remains some confusion as to my role there, and how I am NOT allowed to help with births or anything that involves blood and bodily fluids). Sometimes we just sit around and chat, if there are no patients that day. Around noon I head back to my host family’s house and have lunch, which usually involves rice/corn and sauce, which I eat with my hands or a spoon, depending on how badly my host father thinks I suck at eating that day. After that, I usually hang around at my family’s compound, another compound or the clinic again and pretend to chat. With harvest time almost upon us, I can sometimes help shelling peanuts or corn while we sit around talking and drinking tea. Sometimes they worry about me hurting my hands and won’t let me do anything except sit there. This usually continues until about dinnertime, around 7, when I eat corn to, a dough like substance, and sauce, and sometimes fish balls (ground up fish fried into little balls, which sounds disgusting but is actually pretty good). After dinnertime I’m usually fed up with trying to speak Bambara and eating carbs and sugar all day, and do my best to explain that I want to go home and rest, and no, I don’t want to chat anymore, thank you, and no, I’m not weird because I want to be alone, I’m just American. They are slowly getting used to the idea of me being alone in my little hut for a few hours a day, because in truth Malians have no such thing as private or quiet time. People are always visiting each other, and always wandering in and out of each other’s houses. Which is another thing that is hard for most volunteers to adjust to, because even the most outgoing American likes to have an hour or two to themselves in a place they can call their own. But eventually they understand that I’m tired and want to go home, and my host father insists on walking me home the couple hundred yards from his compound to mine, because God knows what could happen to me in my little village of 2000 that hasn’t already happened after living in Mexico City and Los Angeles my entire life. And then I get my quiet time, where I listen to the BBC (in English, and not one of their other numerous languages) and read my book or study language. That’s my day in a nutshell; that’s what I’ve been doing since I got to Mali. Eventually I will be working, (I promise) and not sitting around using Americans’ precious tax dollars, after I learn how to.

In Kita Once More.....

So I realized that I had written a nice little description of the swear-in ceremony and the preparing in Kita for site drop-off, but when I arrived at the internet café to post it, I had forgotten to save the post on my USB drive. Hence, there has been no blog post since August, I know. A very long time to have no news. But here is my swear-in update, and an update on what has happened since I was dropped off at site…

The swear-in ceremony was held Friday morning, September 12th at the American embassy, and was everything a ceremony should be: short and simple. The country director spoke, as did the American representative to Mali and a few of my fellow volunteers. And then we took the oath to uphold the American constitution and defend America from all enemies, and to do our best as Peace Corps volunteers. Unfortunately we didn’t know the oath, and weren’t very good at repeating after the American official, so it came out sorta like: “I promise to defend America, uhh, from all enemies foreign and domestic, uhhhh….the end.” At least she made sure we said our actual name, and not just “state your name.”

After the ceremony we headed to the American Club, where we got to swim in the pool and eat hamburgers and hot dogs and just chill out. I imagine that they wanted to give us a piece of American culture before we head out into the wilderness (so to speak) and can’t get such a thing as a hamburger for a while. Then we headed out on the town, where we met other serving volunteers and celebrated becoming official volunteers ourselves. We also received our group name, chosen by our volunteer trainers, in grand Peace Corps fashion: my fellow ’08 volunteers and I are now known as the Honey Bunches of Oaters (Hobos). Saturday was spent getting too little sleep and spending too much money on food. Finally we all came back to Tubaniso So again, where we said our good-byes and packed up to leave early Sunday morning. I probably won’t be seeing the rest my teammates (especially those 5 I spent the long 2 months training with) until January, when we’re back in Bamako for more in-depth training. I was the first volunteer of my group here to be installed, and hence spent the first two days in Kita doing all kinds of shopping and packing since my compound was completely empty of everything. And then Tuesday morning, September 15th, I was packed into the Peace Corps vehicle with all my stuff, driven out to bush, and deposited in my little hut amid the Malian villagers. And then the car drove away. Probably one of the biggest, “Oh shit, what have I gotten myself into?” moments of my life.

However, it has actually been a nice couple of weeks, if not slightly crazy. My village has no telephone reception, no electricity, no running water, no radio frequency and no real contact with the rest of the world except for the villages directly surrounding it, sooo I didn’t see or speak to any of my fellow teammates since leaving Kita. I spent most of my days sitting around, speaking to people, drinking tea (green tea prepared over a little charcoal burner is a big thing here), trying to learn Bambara. Thankfully everyone has been very nice, very patient, very understanding so far with my lack of skills, although after a while my patience tends to wear very thin. Of course, I can’t say that it was easy either- most nights I was definitely left wondering what I had gotten myself into, and why. I keep telling myself that with time, and understanding of the language and culture, I will feel more comfortable in my role here and stop questioning everything right now. It is pretty much the same with all the volunteers here, since things are so very different from what we know, and right now we have no purpose and no tangible goals. Which is hard for us as Americans, because we are so used to always being busy, always working hard for some reason or other. I think it is going be like that a lot for the next two years, but especially the next couple of months as we spend time just learning about our village and learning Bambara.

But enough of my internal turmoil. Since I have the time, I thought I’d give a little insight into Malian culture. I’ve written a little about Malian families, how men have more than one wife normally, lots of children, and huge numbers of relatives. It is infinitely more complicated in village. The social structure is basically the same: men have more than one wife, and numerous children, but everyone is also related to each other in my village, and there are only 8 or 9 different last names, so I am having a hard time keeping everyone’s name straight and who is related to who and how. To make things harder, girls in village actually get married and starting having children when they are still girls: around 13 or 14 years old. And they continue having children for as long as possible, which can obviously be up til 35, 40 years old. So my host mother, who I believe is in her late 30’s, not only has adult children who have babies of their own, but has babies herself. So it has been a huge shock to me over the past week, as I talk to the women who seem to be much older because they have been wives and mothers for a long time, but are really only my age. I think at least it has been as huge a shock to them to find out I am 23 and not married.

The other thing making life complicated, as I said, is the last names. Many ethnic groups in Mali live in certain regions, such as the Arabs/Tuaregs in the north, Dogon in Dogon country in the middle, etc. Most of the people in my village belong to two different ethnic groups, the Peulh and the Forgyron. Stereotypically, the Peulh were cattle herders, while the Forgyron (Numu in Bambara) were metal workers. I, Mamine (my last name has since been changed to Diallo) belong to the Peulh’, which I find rather fitting seeing as my mother’s family was in the dairy business for a long time. Among each group there are only three or four different last names, which is how people know what ethnicity you are. So, for example, among the Peulh there is the Diallo, the Diakite, the Sidibe and the Sangare. Which brings me to joking cousins, an important part of Malian culture and one of the more amusing ones. Among ethnic groups, and sometimes between, people of different last names will insult and joke with each other. There is really no limit to what people will say, but the general insults in my village between people is that they are each other’s little brothers, that they are thieves and liars, that they are not good people, that they are the other families’ slave (yes, I have told people they are my slave. No, I don’t think they got the irony). It’s a fantastic way to break the ice and get to know one another, which some people say is why Mali hasn’t had any major ethnic conflicts such as happens in other African nations. I had originally thought that many people would find it strange that the white foreigner was trying to insult them for being a Diakite or Sidibe, but actually the villagers get a huge kick out of it. Unfortunately, my insults are fairly limited right now, so I have gotten a little tired of talking about how much the other families suck compared to the Diallos’, but hopefully once I get better I can be really insulting. Because as we all know, I can be really insulting on a day to day basis.

I will actually be in Kita for the rest of the week, doing some training, so I will try to come back and post more about my life in a Malian village, and I hope to hear from you all too!

Two Days til Swear-In!!!

We will all officially be Peace Corps Volunteers in less than 48 hours! We are all very excited about it here at Tubani-So. There may be some discussion as to whether people are looking forward to the actual swear-in at the American embassy, or the massive, non-stop party following that. I leave it to you to decide.

Anyway, we have been here since Sunday, mostly in meetings (per usual here) but taking a few exams to prove we are actually ready to graduate. I had a half-hour conversation with a language trainer yesterday in Bambara, 5 minutes of which were spent explaining that I was actually born in Mexico, and no, thats Mexico the country and not New Mexico (this is the general reaction I get among Malians. I think I may be telling people I am born and raised in the US from now on. Sorry, guys). Anyway, I passed the exam after promising I would study hard and practice more, as if I had a choice. Then we had a written exam about general things involving Mali and our specific tech sectors and staying healthy in general; overall, I'm pretty sure that as a group we failed, mostly because of faulty writing on the test and poor information sessions. Most of us figure we'll pick it up as we go along; again, like we have another choice. There are more sessions today and tomorrow, but generally we are just drifting through until Friday. I will be wearing a beautiful Malian complet for the ceremony; wait for pictures. Saturday is my last day at Tubani So, and on Sunday morning I depart early with the rest of Team Kita for the Peace Corps stage house. We will be traveling public transportation, but, thank goodness, the Peace Corps is taking all of our luggage ahead for us, because I could definitely not handle 2 bags, a trunk, a mat and a couple buckets on my own. And yes, I've only been here 2 months. Monday is spent shopping for my compound, because right now it consists of 3 empty mud huts and I will be the very first person installed Tuesday morning. After that, the little Peace Corps SUV will drive off without me and I'll be left alone in my little village. If that sounds scary, well, welcome to my world. I am looking forward to getting to site, but also starting to get intimidated at the thought of being out on my own with little language skills, no direction and zero cell reception. However, I'll be back in Kita every few weeks, where I'll see my fellow volunteers and get in touch with the rest of the world, and that'll suffice. I will try to post again with all the details about the swear-in sometime this weekend though.

Homestay Update!

That’s what we are all excited about over here, anyway. And after that its another week before our swearing-in party, where we promise to defend and uphold the United States Constitution, and then go actually party. Don’t get me wrong, I will miss my home-stay family, because they have been great with me and we have finally reached that point where we all feel comfortable together. I’ve also finally gotten all the little kids to stop being afraid and to play with me instead, a challenge I’m sad to have to start over again at site. And I will especially miss my home-stay brother, who’s become my best friend here and who’s helped me out more than words can describe. I will definitely work hard to keep that relationship alive, despite the relative isolation I’m going into for the next couple of months. However, all of us volunteers feel ready (as ready as you can get, anyway) to move on to the next stage and start the real part of Peace Corps service.

I think most of us have retained our sanity pretty well, speaking of which… yes, I did lose it one day when we had to practice stabbing ourselves with a needle to make malaria blood smear kits (to check whether you have malaria) but otherwise, everyone is holding up fairly well. The schedule of our lives every day is starting to wear everyone’s patience thin, but it helps that we have been able to go into Bamako on our day off every week and play a little. Last Sunday I was able to get some good Lebanese food and go fabric shopping in the main market (Malians buy fabric and then take it to their local tailor to have it custom made into an outfit. Pretty neat). This past Sunday, Peace Corps actually took us to a hotel to go swimming (yes, I wore a bikini) and then into town again for a food binge. Let me tell you, it is amazing how much one can eat when one mostly eats rice and beans all week. Which brings us back to the last six days here before heading back to Tubani So this Sunday.

Safe and Sound again!.... more or less

I am back at homestay once again! I bet a bunch of you thought I was dead, huh? Or at least lost somewhere in the Malian wilderness… And you wouldn’t be too far off.

Well, here we are in the last stretch of training. It has been a crazy couple of weeks since I last wrote, so this is going to be a long one. After training day at Tubani So, I actually stayed behind an extra day with some other volunteers who will be in the Kayes region with me and we hung out in Bamako. I actually got a pizza (!) and ice cream, which was amazing. And the next day we headed out, boarded an antiquey Greyhound-like bus, and headed to Kita. The scenery was actually really beautiful, all green hills and little villages along the way. I am also pretty lucky in that the trip is only 3-4 hours long, so we got to the city mid-day and not too tired. Also lucky for us is the fact that there is a stage house in Kita, owned by Peace Corps and run by volunteers. Its honestly like a little piece of America, and I love it to death already. There is an actual bathroom with flush toilet and a shower, a tv with a VCR and an some kind of old-school game console, a kitchen with a fridge and stove, and some other general amenities that we take for granted in the US. Its official purpose is to be used as a stopping place for volunteers when they are traveling between site and other places, as well somewhere the Kita volunteers can stay when they come in every once in a while to pick up mail and money. I think its going to be used a lot by us, because everyone was really relieved to be able to cook some familiar food and watch some familiar American movies (I totally sang along to Beauty and the Beast) and we are just going to need a break, both mentally and physically, from our villages once in a while. Well, after getting to know the current Kita volunteers and hanging out at the house, we all left the next day for our villages. There is a large dirt road connecting the larger villages to each other; my village happens to be the furthest. However, we did not know that my village WAS on the road, and myself and a current volunteer biked about 5 miles to get there. And I lied before… I’m not that close to a large city; actually, I’m in Guinea. Noooo, but really, I am- I’m only 25k away from the border, and so might be heading over there to escape as much as heading into town. I am actually pretty amused, although there is the problem that there is no cellphone reception where I am, and pretty much in the whole area south of Kita. So, I am rather unable to contact my other volunteers at all. A little worrisome, but I’ll figure it out.

Well, got into village and was welcomed handsomely (even got a chicken for dinner) and was led to my OWN little concession, consisting of 3 little mud and thatch huts and a nyegen (bathroom), all surrounded by a little wood-stick wall. And its all brand new, just for me. They are really happy to have me, which makes me very happy, and a lot more motivated. I’m also extremely happy that the other volunteer was with me, because my Bambara is clearly not far enough along to make myself understood, and so needed a lot of help translating stuff. Sadly, she left the next day, so I was turned over to my new host-family’s care. Now this is where the language immersion comes in, because my new family speaks NO French, so the conversations mostly consisted of them speaking to me, and me going, “Yes. No. I don’t understand. Repeat again?” We can only hope that I will eventually pick up the language.

I was in village for 3 days, which I mostly spent at the village clinic hanging out with the doctor and other health workers. My counterpart never came back while I was there (still training in Kita) which was very sad, but I really enjoyed getting to know my colleagues. The clinic is brand new, so its pretty well stocked and is actually run fairly efficiently, which sounds mean but can be a huge problem here in Mali. The doctor and head of staff is rather young, too, only 30 and the rest of the staff (except for my counterpart) are men, so it should be interesting working with all men on a regular basis. I did get to see a few interesting incidents; unfortunately, the message that I am a health EDUCATOR and NOT a doctor was not passed along, because they were asking me to vaccinate children and deliver babies while I was there. Definitely not happening. Eventually we got that all cleared up and I plan on trying to stay away from certain activities in the future. But I am really excited again to become fluent in Bambara and do all kinds of awesome health activities for the next two years.

So on my fourth day I boarded the little bachee that is public transport between villages here, to head back to Kita. Have I explained public transport yet? Basically, a bachee is an old, old, old minivan that is kinda falling apart, has some seats stuck in the back and painted green. Really, its hard to give you an idea of the antiquity of these things, but they are old, and they are crazy. For the most part, however, they work. I say for the most part because they do tend to break down a lot, which is what happened to me on my way back. I was hoping to meet up with other volunteers living farther down the road and closer to Kita, but I guess there are more bachees coming and going then I thought, and I made the journey by myself. Halfway through, my little transport broke down and we had to stop for a little while while they took out the engine or some similar part and put it back in again. Well, it took a while (nearly 5 hours) but I made it to Kita safe and sound, only to realize my bike had broken when it was tied to the top of the bus, and I needed to find someone to repair it. Which I found someone to do, eventually… Well, long story short I finally made it back to the Kita stage house, to the great relief of my fellow volunteers, who really did think I was dead.

After another day or so at the stage house, where I watched numerous movies and even got to eat a Malian version of tortillas, us trainees, along with a few other volunteers, headed back into Bamako (where I had more ice cream) and back to Tubani So. And back to homestay, where we will be for the next few weeks, trying to complete language training and retain our sanity (I still have, approximately, 85% of mine). And so ends the little adventure that was site visit, and a taste of the next two years. Be warned that I will be able to check email and such every few days until mid-September, and after that it’ll be every few weeks… so if you would like letters instead, send me your mailing address! I think I’m going to have lots of free time.