Written November 9, 2011
So I would love to say that the reason I haven't updated my blog in so long is that I have been really busy studying for the GRE which I am taking in Bamako on the 19th. This however is not the case. I'm lucky if I spend more than 2 hours a day studying. It's really hard to make yourself do something (i.e. study) when you've gotten use to doing a whole lot of nothing (i.e. sitting in my hammock reading romance novels...) Anyway here is what I have been up to:
So my Tippy Tap project has actually taken up a lot of my time. I have spent the past couple of weeks painting a bunch , 30, of old cooking oil jugs white and then drawing the Peace Corps symbol on them. These jugs are what hold the water that you control with a foot pedal attatched to the top of the jug with rope. Pressing down on the foot pedal makes water come out in a stream which you wash your hands with soap under. My homologue and I then took all of the jugs. rope and soap and set them up on their wooden frames in all of the public areas (the market, by the public latrines, at the schools, etc) in my village. In Bambara we call the tippy taps Tege ko yoro (hand washing place); everyone was super excited to test out their tege ko yoro! The Chief of the Village even filmed some children washing their hands with his cell phone! Along with the 30 tippy taps, I also painted two murals that depict hands being washed with soap and that say "Wash hands with soap!" in French with the help of 3 other PCVs. I really am glad that I was able to carry out this project and that my village actually appreciates the work done because washing hands with soap is probably one of the most important messages that Peace Corps Volunteers can get across and I think my villagers get that. In America we think of soap use as second nature, but here it really is something that Malians aren't use to. Little by little people are understanding that handwashing is good for their health because it prevents disease.
At the beginning of October I met up with Melissa and Meredith in Bamako so that we could act as tour guides around Mali for 3 volunteers on their COS (close of service) trip from Cape Verde. We met Jon and Elyse back in February at WAIST and then again when we vacationed in Cape Verde, and we met Brendan upon his arrival in Mali. Their first night in country we took them out for a night of dancing in Bamako and then the next day took a Peace Corps shuttle up to Sevare. We spent that night in Mopti and then spent the next day walking around Mopti's riverside market and then later taking a boat ride. We then made our way to Bandiagara where we started a 3 day Dogon Hike the next day. Each day we walked through 3 or so Dogon villages. This hike was really awesome because we got to see all of the ancient cliff dwellings and even got to hike up and down the cliff which was actually pretty scary for me. After the hike our next destination was Djenne to see the world famous mud mosque. I was actually pretty disappointed with Djenne because the city itself is super dirty with open sewers everywhere and you are constantly berated by incredibley annoying guides who won't take no for an answer. After Djenne we made our way back to Bamako where we said bye to the Cape Verde kids. Jon, Brendan, Elyse: I had so much fun with you guys and we really miss you!!
Seli Ba, a big Muslim holiday that I don't know the name for in English (it's Tabaski in French), was just a few days ago. For two days we ate a ridiculous amount of sheep in goat meat because practically every family slaughters an animal for the holiday. I actually got kind of sick because my body just isn't use to animal protein anymore because I can go several months having only eaten a morcel or two of beef or chicken. Everyone got super dressed up in their new Seli Ba clothes, but I didn't have an outfit made because my homologue is Christian and I felt it would be odd if I walked around in fancy clothes next to him in plain clothes. I spent both days of the holiday going around visiting people and having tea at their houses, and like I said earlier, eating lots of meat. The evening of the second day was the Balofone dance party. I love going to these just to watch people dance, but I never actually dance myself because I hate being the center of attention, well no more than I already am as the visibly lighter skinned foreigner amongst everyone. This dance party was particularly eventful because there was a drunk 20-something guy who kept tapping on the different instruments, jumping in the middle of random dance circles, and then in the end throwing punches at people and even pushing a woman with a baby in her arm! It was so crazy and actually kind of scary! Everyone started screaming while this dude was throwing punches and fighting with the crowd. I hid behind my giant of a homologue the whole time; I was not trying to get caught in the crossfire! I have no idea why this guy was even allowed to come to the party in the first place. I found out later that he had had 3 liters of wine to drink before the party! It always surprises me that people can get drunk like this with Mali being a predominantly Muslim country and all.
A little over a week ago I went to Bougouni for a Peace Corps Halloween Party. My friends, Melissa, Meredith and I had planned on going as the Three Little Pigs, but it turned out that Melissa and I were the Two Little Pigs because Meredith got medevacted out of Mali a couple weeks before Halloween. I think there were close to 50 volunteers that came down for the party. It was all really fun, and I always enjoy every chance I get to see volunteers from other regions. Unfortunately I passed out pretty early so I missed a lot of the party so Melissa got to claim the position of the Pig who built the brick house since she was the last one standing!
Up next for me: Well of course there is the GRE which I will continue to force myself to study for, but almost immediately after that is Thanksgiving. This year it is the Team America volunteers of the Sikasso region's turn to plan Thanksgiving. Helen and I took on the main planning roles, and it has really been a lot of work, but luckily we have lots of help from the other Sikasso volunteers! We had to find venues for Thanksgiving dinner itself and for a Mexican themed pool day the day after. We also had to find turkeys and ingredients for all of the side dishes, enough to feed at least 70 people, lodging for 3 nights for all of those people, and then clubs that we can go to at night. So I think we've done a pretty good job getting everything together, so here's to hoping it all comes together well and that all the Peace Corps Mali Volunteers who come truly enjoy Thanksgiving in Sikasso!
Thursday, November 17, 2011
Friday, September 16, 2011
Pierced Nose!
Written September 12, 2011
If you couldn't tell already, I'm a big fan of the mini story blog post, so here we go again!
Language:
I don't know what exactly changed in village, but recently I have been able to communicate a hell of a lot better than I ever have, in Bambara that is. I'm not sure if it is that my Bambara has gotten better or if people just feel more comfortable talking to me now that they have known me for a year. My host mom, for example, will now have full conversations with me when before we just talked about food, "come eat", "I'm full" and so on. Before for communication beyond food topics she would say what she wanted to say in Senufo to her husband or my homologue and they would translate it into French for me. Now she sees no need for a middle man! My homologue also now tells people "A be se ka caman caman fo Bamanankan na!" which means "she can say a lot in Bambara!" when before he told people I could only say a little. It feels really good to have people compliment me with my language!
Nose Piercing:
I have wanted to get my nose pierced since probably middle school, if not before then! I was never able to because my Dad basically threatened to disown me if I ever did it! Well, so sorry Dad, I finally did it! I figure now that I'm officially on my own and independent (well except for the packages that my mom sends me that I really appreciate!!!) that I can do whatever I want, so I did. A lot of women in my village have their noses pierced so I figured it would be a cool thing to do integration wise as well as accomplishing something I've wanted to do for a long time, a sort of "killing two birds with one stone." Thankfully Helen, the volunteer closest to me, and I decided to get our noses pierced together because I'm not sure if I would've been brave enough to do it on my own. I asked the girl who normally braids my hair where she got her nose pierced and if she knew someone who could pierce mine. She told me that she pierced her own nose and that she has pierced a bunch of other girls noses too and that she would be more than happy to pierce mine! It was as easy as that! So Helen and I went by the girl's house one afternoon a couple of weeks ago and both sat down ready to just get it over with. The girl used gold stud earrings that were super pointy and sharp at the end and just pushed them through our noses. I heard the earring pierce through the cartilage, but besides that, it wasn't too bad! A couple of tears dripped down my face, but I couldn't have been happier! It looks so good! Helen's too! I've been cleaning it with anti-bacterial soap and Betadine, and so far no infection!
Cat:
If you've been keeping up with my blog, you'd know that I previously had a cat, but was only able to keep it for a few days out of extreme annoyance. Well... I did it again, I got another cat. This is gonna sound bad, but I have no desire to own a cat, I just really need one because I have a serious mice problem. There have been 2 mice terrorizing my house. Every single night they run all over crashing into things making it very hard for me to sleep. They also eat anything and everything! They ate half a pack of spaghetti, half a clove of garlic, 2 onions, chewed holes in 4 bell peppers, chewed through a basket, chewed through the top of a bottle of hot sauce, and they got into several of my pasta sides bags! It was getting ridiculous, so I needed a mouses worst nightmare. I got my cat yesterday, and so far so good. I didn't hear anything mouse-wise last night, so here's to hoping that continues! Oh and I haven't named the cat yet, I have to judge her personality first.
First SPA Update:
My SPA was approved!! I now have to wait for the 230 some odd dollars to be deposited in my account and then I can begin! My SPA was for 30 Tippy Taps to be placed all over my village and for 2 hand washing murals to be painted at both of the schools! I'm very excited to start this project and it seems like my villagers are too!
Host Sister:
My little host sister, who is a month away from her second birthday, finally likes me! When I first got to my village and met my host family my host sister would scream any time I appeared. It took probably 2 or 3 months for her to quit screaming but still not want to have anything to do with me. A few months ago she just began to let me pick her up, but now she actually comes up to me with her arms held up!! She sits in my lap and tries to touch my face while laughing, it's super cute! I'm so happy she finally likes me because I saw her take her first steps and say her first words so I've always felt this connection with her but haven't even been able to hold her. All is good now!
Hot Priest:
Blegh. I really don't like this guy. It had been several months since I last saw him (thank God!) but good ole Hot Priest decided to stop by for a visit a few days ago. I heard a moto drive up to my concession and I figured it was my homologue or someone else I like, but then that person kept knocking on my gate door, something my homologue or his family members never do, so I figured this might be someone I don't want to see. I was in the process of making popcorn on my gas stove so I was also annoyed that I would have to leave that and run to open the gate. As I opened the gate the only thought going through my mind was "You've got to be kidding me!" It was Hot Priest! He also brought his sister and her kid along with him so I felt obligated to be cordial. He saw that I had laundry hanging up and could tell that I was occupied with something in my house, but he still decided to sit down. I ran back inside to save my popcorn, which burned a little!, and then came back out to sit with him. he kept talking about how it had been so long since we'd seen each other, but I just kept looking at the ground and giving him one word responses, I was quite cold towards him. After about 5 minutes I think he got the picture and got up and said his good byes and then left. This visit wasn't nearly as annoying as past visits, but still! Besides the fact that Hot Priest is beyond annoying, I also hear that he is always talking to my homologue about me and Helen and how we don't come by the church. First of all, as Peace Corps volunteers we're not really supposed to associate ourselves with churches (we can go to services and so on and practice our religious freedoms) because we don't want our villages thinking we're missionaries, and second of all I'm not even Catholic! so I wouldn't be going to his Church anyway! My homologue thinks it's funny that I don't like Hot Priest, he doesn't like him much either, so he always tells me about Hot Priest bringing my name up just to see my reaction. Blegh.
If you couldn't tell already, I'm a big fan of the mini story blog post, so here we go again!
Language:
I don't know what exactly changed in village, but recently I have been able to communicate a hell of a lot better than I ever have, in Bambara that is. I'm not sure if it is that my Bambara has gotten better or if people just feel more comfortable talking to me now that they have known me for a year. My host mom, for example, will now have full conversations with me when before we just talked about food, "come eat", "I'm full" and so on. Before for communication beyond food topics she would say what she wanted to say in Senufo to her husband or my homologue and they would translate it into French for me. Now she sees no need for a middle man! My homologue also now tells people "A be se ka caman caman fo Bamanankan na!" which means "she can say a lot in Bambara!" when before he told people I could only say a little. It feels really good to have people compliment me with my language!
Nose Piercing:
I have wanted to get my nose pierced since probably middle school, if not before then! I was never able to because my Dad basically threatened to disown me if I ever did it! Well, so sorry Dad, I finally did it! I figure now that I'm officially on my own and independent (well except for the packages that my mom sends me that I really appreciate!!!) that I can do whatever I want, so I did. A lot of women in my village have their noses pierced so I figured it would be a cool thing to do integration wise as well as accomplishing something I've wanted to do for a long time, a sort of "killing two birds with one stone." Thankfully Helen, the volunteer closest to me, and I decided to get our noses pierced together because I'm not sure if I would've been brave enough to do it on my own. I asked the girl who normally braids my hair where she got her nose pierced and if she knew someone who could pierce mine. She told me that she pierced her own nose and that she has pierced a bunch of other girls noses too and that she would be more than happy to pierce mine! It was as easy as that! So Helen and I went by the girl's house one afternoon a couple of weeks ago and both sat down ready to just get it over with. The girl used gold stud earrings that were super pointy and sharp at the end and just pushed them through our noses. I heard the earring pierce through the cartilage, but besides that, it wasn't too bad! A couple of tears dripped down my face, but I couldn't have been happier! It looks so good! Helen's too! I've been cleaning it with anti-bacterial soap and Betadine, and so far no infection!
Cat:
If you've been keeping up with my blog, you'd know that I previously had a cat, but was only able to keep it for a few days out of extreme annoyance. Well... I did it again, I got another cat. This is gonna sound bad, but I have no desire to own a cat, I just really need one because I have a serious mice problem. There have been 2 mice terrorizing my house. Every single night they run all over crashing into things making it very hard for me to sleep. They also eat anything and everything! They ate half a pack of spaghetti, half a clove of garlic, 2 onions, chewed holes in 4 bell peppers, chewed through a basket, chewed through the top of a bottle of hot sauce, and they got into several of my pasta sides bags! It was getting ridiculous, so I needed a mouses worst nightmare. I got my cat yesterday, and so far so good. I didn't hear anything mouse-wise last night, so here's to hoping that continues! Oh and I haven't named the cat yet, I have to judge her personality first.
First SPA Update:
My SPA was approved!! I now have to wait for the 230 some odd dollars to be deposited in my account and then I can begin! My SPA was for 30 Tippy Taps to be placed all over my village and for 2 hand washing murals to be painted at both of the schools! I'm very excited to start this project and it seems like my villagers are too!
Host Sister:
My little host sister, who is a month away from her second birthday, finally likes me! When I first got to my village and met my host family my host sister would scream any time I appeared. It took probably 2 or 3 months for her to quit screaming but still not want to have anything to do with me. A few months ago she just began to let me pick her up, but now she actually comes up to me with her arms held up!! She sits in my lap and tries to touch my face while laughing, it's super cute! I'm so happy she finally likes me because I saw her take her first steps and say her first words so I've always felt this connection with her but haven't even been able to hold her. All is good now!
Hot Priest:
Blegh. I really don't like this guy. It had been several months since I last saw him (thank God!) but good ole Hot Priest decided to stop by for a visit a few days ago. I heard a moto drive up to my concession and I figured it was my homologue or someone else I like, but then that person kept knocking on my gate door, something my homologue or his family members never do, so I figured this might be someone I don't want to see. I was in the process of making popcorn on my gas stove so I was also annoyed that I would have to leave that and run to open the gate. As I opened the gate the only thought going through my mind was "You've got to be kidding me!" It was Hot Priest! He also brought his sister and her kid along with him so I felt obligated to be cordial. He saw that I had laundry hanging up and could tell that I was occupied with something in my house, but he still decided to sit down. I ran back inside to save my popcorn, which burned a little!, and then came back out to sit with him. he kept talking about how it had been so long since we'd seen each other, but I just kept looking at the ground and giving him one word responses, I was quite cold towards him. After about 5 minutes I think he got the picture and got up and said his good byes and then left. This visit wasn't nearly as annoying as past visits, but still! Besides the fact that Hot Priest is beyond annoying, I also hear that he is always talking to my homologue about me and Helen and how we don't come by the church. First of all, as Peace Corps volunteers we're not really supposed to associate ourselves with churches (we can go to services and so on and practice our religious freedoms) because we don't want our villages thinking we're missionaries, and second of all I'm not even Catholic! so I wouldn't be going to his Church anyway! My homologue thinks it's funny that I don't like Hot Priest, he doesn't like him much either, so he always tells me about Hot Priest bringing my name up just to see my reaction. Blegh.
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Animist Funeral and a Mask that kills women!
Since my last blog post quite a bit has happened:
1. New Volunteers sworn in
2. Trip to Bandiagara/Mopti
3. Animist Funeral
4. The Mask comes out
5. My First SPA
1. It seems like we just had a bunch of new volunteers, the Kennedys, sworn in just yesterday but turns out that was all the way in April! The new-new volunteers were sworn in on August 5th at the US Embassy in Bamako. I felt as if I had already done the whole "Swear-in thing" so I slept through their ceremony, but of course there was no way I was gonna miss their Party! This time around the party was held at Espace Bouna in Bamako. Bouna is a super chill outdoor bar with a huge open dance floor. I really love partying at Bouna but a lot of volunteers think that it's starting to get overdone because majority of our volunteer parties are held there. I could care less though because I just want to dance and as long as there is a dance floor I am happy! Anyway, at the party the new stage was given the name Goodfellas, I'm not really sure why, and we all had a really good time dancing the night away together!
2. Literally the next morning after the swear-in party I got on the Peace Corps Shuttle to Sevare. Every month, and sometimes multiple times a month, Peace Corps cars (Land Cruisers) drive to every region to pick up and deliver stuff to and from all of the regional houses. One of our awesome volunteer priviledges is that we can sign up to be on these shuttles! This means that we don't have to take public transport, and if we're lucky enough to sign up for one of the 8 spots in the car then we get an airconditioned and much faster trip to whichever regional capital that shuttle is going to. So the morning after swear in I was lucky enough to get one of the spots on the shuttle going up north. This was pretty much an all day trip so I was really glad that I got to ride in the comfort of a Peace Corps car and not on a smelly, hot bus that is probably inches from falling apart. The reason for going up north was to go to a party in Bandiagara and then to also hang out in Mopti and Sevare for a few days. The party in Bandiagara was pretty fun, but the best part of the trip was going to Mopti! We got to hang out at these two really cool restaurants and take a boat ride on the river! Also in Mopti I had a guy come up to me and ask if I wanted to trade my watch for one of the necklaces he was selling. My watch was actually broken (the band that holds the strap had ripped off) and I was waiting to go back to Sikasso to just throw it away and put on a new watch my mom had sent me. I explained to the guy that it was broken but he didn't care about that, he only cared that it was water proof. He told me that he wanted to give the watch to his father who I guess was a fisherman and could benefit from a waterproof watch. Seeing as I was planning on throwing away the watch anyway, this was quite an opportunity! I ended up picking out this really cool camel's tooth necklace with brown accent beads. Cool huh?
3. I recently attended my second funeral in village. This one was different though because it was an animist funeral! Basically this entailed women being present at the funeral, lots of balafone playing, lots of dancing, and the body being present. Not only was the body present though, the body was being danced with!! This was seriously the craziest thing I've ever seen in my life!! The men at the funeral took turns rocking the body back and forth to the music, and as that was going on women were throwing candy in the air and kids were diving down to retrieve it. They paraded around village with the body stopping every once and a while to conduct parts of the animist ceremony. There was also a bunch of guns going off since the deceased had been a hunter. Everytime a gun was shot it would make a noise so loud that I would get scared and jump every single time, which everyone thought was hilarious. One woman came up to me during the parade and asked if I would come hold/dance with the body with her. I shouted out NOoooo! There was no way I was gonna touch let alone dance with a dead body! At one point in the parade/ceremony the music stopped and everyone stood around as an old man sat in front of the body and waved a knife around in the air. After about 30 seconds of this the old man got up and a group of men rushed up to grab the body and the dashed off with the body heading toward the grave. When I say dashed, I mean it! They were speedwalking, nearly running, to this grave that was about a mile away. I nearly had to run to catch up to them to see the body go into the ground! After attending this funeral I can say that this was seriously one of the coolest things I have ever seen but it definitely gave me the creeps and made it extremely hard to fall asleep that night!
4. That night of the funeral was also the first night that I had been in village at the same time that The Mask had come out. The Mask is a mask that a secret society of men from my village carry around at night every once in a while to the accompaniement of drums and singing as a sort of animist ritual. I'm not sure the purpose of the mask, but I've been told that women can not participate and are forbiden from seeing the mask. In fact the belief is that if a woman sees the mask she will die. All of the women in my village are deathly afraid of the mask, so when ever they hear the singing and drums they drop whatever they are doing to go inside and hide. Every other time that the mask had come out in my village I had for some reason or other been in Sikasso. Because this was my first time being present with the mask out my homologue decided to wait out side my door to make sure I stayed inside and I guess out of sight from the mask to protect me from dying. The whole time the mask was passing my house and I could hear the music I really wanted to take just a peek at the men and their mask. I decided not to though because even though I seriously doubt a mask could kill you, you never know...
5. So...I just filled out my very first SPA!! A SPA is small project funding from the Peace Corps. I originally wanted to fill out a SPA for my library, but at the moment there isn't enough money in the Peace Corps Mali budget to pay for it. My Library is going to require about $10,000 to build, and I will most likely have to wait for the next fiscal year to do this... oh well. In the meantime I decided to do a much smaller project instead. So the SPA funding that I asked for is to put up 30 hand washing stations, or "Tippy Taps", throughout my village and also to paint two handwashing murals. The reason I want to do this is because very few people in my village wash their hands with both soap and water, most just swish their hands around in a bucket of water before eating and often times it is the same water that one or more people have already used! I'm sure that this is the reason that so many people have diarrhea in my village and also the reason I'm sick all of the time (I've gotten Ameobas twice!!). I'm hoping that with Tippy Taps being visible and accessible all over the village, people will no longer not have a reason to wash their hands without soap! This project is pretty small so it shouldn't be too difficult to see through and it will be a good way to keep me busy while I wait until I am able to build my Library.
Besides all that, everything has been pretty chill in village. I have been doing a lot of work on my garden lately. I have a pretty legit crop of cilantro growing right now! I seriously can't wait to make some homemade salsa and guac with my cilantro!! I also have a papaya tree that is growing strong; it's almost my height now! I also have 5 okra plants shooting up, some wildflowers and 2 tomato plants! I've never gardened before in my life, so I'd say that things are going pretty well!
1. New Volunteers sworn in
2. Trip to Bandiagara/Mopti
3. Animist Funeral
4. The Mask comes out
5. My First SPA
1. It seems like we just had a bunch of new volunteers, the Kennedys, sworn in just yesterday but turns out that was all the way in April! The new-new volunteers were sworn in on August 5th at the US Embassy in Bamako. I felt as if I had already done the whole "Swear-in thing" so I slept through their ceremony, but of course there was no way I was gonna miss their Party! This time around the party was held at Espace Bouna in Bamako. Bouna is a super chill outdoor bar with a huge open dance floor. I really love partying at Bouna but a lot of volunteers think that it's starting to get overdone because majority of our volunteer parties are held there. I could care less though because I just want to dance and as long as there is a dance floor I am happy! Anyway, at the party the new stage was given the name Goodfellas, I'm not really sure why, and we all had a really good time dancing the night away together!
2. Literally the next morning after the swear-in party I got on the Peace Corps Shuttle to Sevare. Every month, and sometimes multiple times a month, Peace Corps cars (Land Cruisers) drive to every region to pick up and deliver stuff to and from all of the regional houses. One of our awesome volunteer priviledges is that we can sign up to be on these shuttles! This means that we don't have to take public transport, and if we're lucky enough to sign up for one of the 8 spots in the car then we get an airconditioned and much faster trip to whichever regional capital that shuttle is going to. So the morning after swear in I was lucky enough to get one of the spots on the shuttle going up north. This was pretty much an all day trip so I was really glad that I got to ride in the comfort of a Peace Corps car and not on a smelly, hot bus that is probably inches from falling apart. The reason for going up north was to go to a party in Bandiagara and then to also hang out in Mopti and Sevare for a few days. The party in Bandiagara was pretty fun, but the best part of the trip was going to Mopti! We got to hang out at these two really cool restaurants and take a boat ride on the river! Also in Mopti I had a guy come up to me and ask if I wanted to trade my watch for one of the necklaces he was selling. My watch was actually broken (the band that holds the strap had ripped off) and I was waiting to go back to Sikasso to just throw it away and put on a new watch my mom had sent me. I explained to the guy that it was broken but he didn't care about that, he only cared that it was water proof. He told me that he wanted to give the watch to his father who I guess was a fisherman and could benefit from a waterproof watch. Seeing as I was planning on throwing away the watch anyway, this was quite an opportunity! I ended up picking out this really cool camel's tooth necklace with brown accent beads. Cool huh?
3. I recently attended my second funeral in village. This one was different though because it was an animist funeral! Basically this entailed women being present at the funeral, lots of balafone playing, lots of dancing, and the body being present. Not only was the body present though, the body was being danced with!! This was seriously the craziest thing I've ever seen in my life!! The men at the funeral took turns rocking the body back and forth to the music, and as that was going on women were throwing candy in the air and kids were diving down to retrieve it. They paraded around village with the body stopping every once and a while to conduct parts of the animist ceremony. There was also a bunch of guns going off since the deceased had been a hunter. Everytime a gun was shot it would make a noise so loud that I would get scared and jump every single time, which everyone thought was hilarious. One woman came up to me during the parade and asked if I would come hold/dance with the body with her. I shouted out NOoooo! There was no way I was gonna touch let alone dance with a dead body! At one point in the parade/ceremony the music stopped and everyone stood around as an old man sat in front of the body and waved a knife around in the air. After about 30 seconds of this the old man got up and a group of men rushed up to grab the body and the dashed off with the body heading toward the grave. When I say dashed, I mean it! They were speedwalking, nearly running, to this grave that was about a mile away. I nearly had to run to catch up to them to see the body go into the ground! After attending this funeral I can say that this was seriously one of the coolest things I have ever seen but it definitely gave me the creeps and made it extremely hard to fall asleep that night!
4. That night of the funeral was also the first night that I had been in village at the same time that The Mask had come out. The Mask is a mask that a secret society of men from my village carry around at night every once in a while to the accompaniement of drums and singing as a sort of animist ritual. I'm not sure the purpose of the mask, but I've been told that women can not participate and are forbiden from seeing the mask. In fact the belief is that if a woman sees the mask she will die. All of the women in my village are deathly afraid of the mask, so when ever they hear the singing and drums they drop whatever they are doing to go inside and hide. Every other time that the mask had come out in my village I had for some reason or other been in Sikasso. Because this was my first time being present with the mask out my homologue decided to wait out side my door to make sure I stayed inside and I guess out of sight from the mask to protect me from dying. The whole time the mask was passing my house and I could hear the music I really wanted to take just a peek at the men and their mask. I decided not to though because even though I seriously doubt a mask could kill you, you never know...
5. So...I just filled out my very first SPA!! A SPA is small project funding from the Peace Corps. I originally wanted to fill out a SPA for my library, but at the moment there isn't enough money in the Peace Corps Mali budget to pay for it. My Library is going to require about $10,000 to build, and I will most likely have to wait for the next fiscal year to do this... oh well. In the meantime I decided to do a much smaller project instead. So the SPA funding that I asked for is to put up 30 hand washing stations, or "Tippy Taps", throughout my village and also to paint two handwashing murals. The reason I want to do this is because very few people in my village wash their hands with both soap and water, most just swish their hands around in a bucket of water before eating and often times it is the same water that one or more people have already used! I'm sure that this is the reason that so many people have diarrhea in my village and also the reason I'm sick all of the time (I've gotten Ameobas twice!!). I'm hoping that with Tippy Taps being visible and accessible all over the village, people will no longer not have a reason to wash their hands without soap! This project is pretty small so it shouldn't be too difficult to see through and it will be a good way to keep me busy while I wait until I am able to build my Library.
Besides all that, everything has been pretty chill in village. I have been doing a lot of work on my garden lately. I have a pretty legit crop of cilantro growing right now! I seriously can't wait to make some homemade salsa and guac with my cilantro!! I also have a papaya tree that is growing strong; it's almost my height now! I also have 5 okra plants shooting up, some wildflowers and 2 tomato plants! I've never gardened before in my life, so I'd say that things are going pretty well!
Saturday, July 30, 2011
My very sick Birthday
Written July 27, 2011
So I'm 23 now... This was my second birthday in country (July 18th) and I have to say it wasn't too bad. I did happen to be quite sick but overall it was a better birthday than last year where I spent the day getting my hair done all alone with none of my friends to celebrate with me. Three days before my birthday (the 15th) I woke up feeling like I was going to throw up. All I wanted to do was stay in bed, but I had to go to Sikasso that day because we were having a Site Visit party for the PCTs (Peace Corps Trainees) new to the Sikasso Region. I didn't actually throw up until halfway into my 8k bike ride out of village, and then from then on I pretty much couldn't stop throwing up. I never really stopped biking either, I just kept pedalling and whenever I felt a heave coming on I just stuck my head over my arm and let it all out. It was probably my most miserable bike ride ever. I managed to hold off throwing up again until after the bus ride to Sikasso where about 30 minutes after arriving I threw up all the water I had just tried to drink. From that point on I threw up on average about once an hour. The really unfortunate thing was that we were having a Mexican food night complete with guacamole, mango salsa, taco meat and velveeta for the new kids. The thought of missing out on that was completely unacceptable to me so of course I forced myself to eat a giant burrito. I'm sure you can guess what happened abouit 2 minutes after I shoved the last bite in my mouth... I stayed sick for the next 4 days (the 16th, the 17th, my birthday, and the 19th) but as those days passed I got progressively better- On my birthday I only threw up twice! Besides my sickness my birthday was actually really fun. Several of my friends in country left their sites to come down to Sikasso to celebrate with me. On the night of the 17th we made loaded nachos (salsa, guac, spicy cheese sauce, and taco meat) and then went out to a bar that had a dance floor. We danced and danced to an awesome playlist that myfriend had previously made and that the DJ let us play for most of the night. At midnight I kept hearing this little jingle go off and I thought it was someone else's phone because it wasn't my ringtone, but then it turned out that the sound was coming from my bag. I took my phone out and then noticed that it was a set notification that was making my phone sound. The message, "Happy BIrthday to me!", literally made me laugh out loud because I have no memory of ever entering that in my phone. Overall it was a great night and I especially enjoyed singing "Go girl it's your birthday!" along with Trey Songz to his song "Say Ahh." The next morning we woke up early to get ready to go to the Woroni Waterfalls. After a quick vom in the bathroom I was ready to go. Before heading to the falls we picked up schwarmas for lunch and then began the long drive (2 hours) to Woroni. I had yet to go to the waterfalls, so when I finally saw them I found them to be quite breathtaking, seriously one of the coolest things I've ever seen. After fully taking in the falls we all took out pagnes to spread out on the ground to take naps (we were all still very tired from the night before). I got about 2 hours of sleep in waterside before it started to rain. We had planned on staying at the falls all day, but the weather cut this trip quite short. Suprisingly we were all okay with this and were all ready to leave. We all just wanted to crash on a comfy matress. Once we returned to Sikasso and once we all took even longer naps, we cooked pancakes, bacon and eggs for dinner ( Thanks to my mom for sending all the essential items of this dinner!) and then red velvet cake for dessert!! It was DELICIOUS!! All in all this was a pretty decent birthday.
As for village life things have been going pretty well lately. My homologue and I are making progress on the library plans (we just completed our 2nd try at coming up with an acceptable and affordable building plan) as well as on my garden (we've planted mint, cilantro, basil, okra, tomatoes and bell peppers). When it comes to my homologue I feel genuinely blessed to have gotten him selected to help me in my village. My homologue is always willing and ready to do anything I need him to do, and he usually goes above and beyond my expectations. He is incredibley motivated to improve his village and to learn just about anything. He also has the most infectious laugh ( I call it a cartoon laugh because it seriously sounds fake and something that could only come from an animated animal).Besides his laugh, the thing I like best about my homologue are his story telling skills. He always has some story to tell me, whether it be about his childhood or something that happened in the fields, and it always comes complete with sound effects and hand gestures! There is almost never a story telling moment where he doesn't have me cracking up and where he isn't laughing himself! My homologue is a key factor in my enjoying my time in village.
Here are two random mini-stories:
1.The other day I went to see an English teacher who is back in my village for vacation and who has offered to tutor some of the 7th graders. I sat in on his tutoring session where he asked me to look over all of his writing and then proceeded to have one of the longest conversations I've ever had with a non-Peace Corps staff Malian. One of the things he told me was that he wants to practice his English with me so I told him that he can come over to my house any time to chat and to that he gave me a confused look and then explained that he had been warned to never go to my house. He told me that people in my village had told him that no one is to go to my house because an American lives there and they don't like when people bother them. I was shocked to hear this! I honestly have no idea where he heard this. I made sure to ask around and find out if other people had heard the same warning. No one confirmed what the English teacher said, so my homologue and I figure that he must've just imagined the whole thing out of some misconception he has about white people (he kept calling me white regardless of how many times I pointed to my skin to prove I'm not white).
2. Today has been a day of gifts. This morning my homologue and his son came over with a chicken for me. He said that his mother had given it to him to give to me. I was pretty confused by this because normally chickens are given to newcomers and strangers to the village, and since I've lived here for an entire year, I have no idea why I was presented with this gift. I didn't however question it and had no problem graciously accepting this large source of protein! My next gift of the day was money to go buy a soda in market from the Mayor. Again this was another unprecedented gift that I had no problem accepting. My final gift of the day was one of my few female friends in village asked me to go with her to the photo studio to have a picture taken with her baby. She originally wanted just me and her son in the picture, but then I convinced her and her older daughter to sit next to me and the baby. She is going to have a copy of this picture printed out for me. People really are incredible nice in my village and I feel so grateful that I am able to live with these people during my time in Mali.
So I'm 23 now... This was my second birthday in country (July 18th) and I have to say it wasn't too bad. I did happen to be quite sick but overall it was a better birthday than last year where I spent the day getting my hair done all alone with none of my friends to celebrate with me. Three days before my birthday (the 15th) I woke up feeling like I was going to throw up. All I wanted to do was stay in bed, but I had to go to Sikasso that day because we were having a Site Visit party for the PCTs (Peace Corps Trainees) new to the Sikasso Region. I didn't actually throw up until halfway into my 8k bike ride out of village, and then from then on I pretty much couldn't stop throwing up. I never really stopped biking either, I just kept pedalling and whenever I felt a heave coming on I just stuck my head over my arm and let it all out. It was probably my most miserable bike ride ever. I managed to hold off throwing up again until after the bus ride to Sikasso where about 30 minutes after arriving I threw up all the water I had just tried to drink. From that point on I threw up on average about once an hour. The really unfortunate thing was that we were having a Mexican food night complete with guacamole, mango salsa, taco meat and velveeta for the new kids. The thought of missing out on that was completely unacceptable to me so of course I forced myself to eat a giant burrito. I'm sure you can guess what happened abouit 2 minutes after I shoved the last bite in my mouth... I stayed sick for the next 4 days (the 16th, the 17th, my birthday, and the 19th) but as those days passed I got progressively better- On my birthday I only threw up twice! Besides my sickness my birthday was actually really fun. Several of my friends in country left their sites to come down to Sikasso to celebrate with me. On the night of the 17th we made loaded nachos (salsa, guac, spicy cheese sauce, and taco meat) and then went out to a bar that had a dance floor. We danced and danced to an awesome playlist that myfriend had previously made and that the DJ let us play for most of the night. At midnight I kept hearing this little jingle go off and I thought it was someone else's phone because it wasn't my ringtone, but then it turned out that the sound was coming from my bag. I took my phone out and then noticed that it was a set notification that was making my phone sound. The message, "Happy BIrthday to me!", literally made me laugh out loud because I have no memory of ever entering that in my phone. Overall it was a great night and I especially enjoyed singing "Go girl it's your birthday!" along with Trey Songz to his song "Say Ahh." The next morning we woke up early to get ready to go to the Woroni Waterfalls. After a quick vom in the bathroom I was ready to go. Before heading to the falls we picked up schwarmas for lunch and then began the long drive (2 hours) to Woroni. I had yet to go to the waterfalls, so when I finally saw them I found them to be quite breathtaking, seriously one of the coolest things I've ever seen. After fully taking in the falls we all took out pagnes to spread out on the ground to take naps (we were all still very tired from the night before). I got about 2 hours of sleep in waterside before it started to rain. We had planned on staying at the falls all day, but the weather cut this trip quite short. Suprisingly we were all okay with this and were all ready to leave. We all just wanted to crash on a comfy matress. Once we returned to Sikasso and once we all took even longer naps, we cooked pancakes, bacon and eggs for dinner ( Thanks to my mom for sending all the essential items of this dinner!) and then red velvet cake for dessert!! It was DELICIOUS!! All in all this was a pretty decent birthday.
As for village life things have been going pretty well lately. My homologue and I are making progress on the library plans (we just completed our 2nd try at coming up with an acceptable and affordable building plan) as well as on my garden (we've planted mint, cilantro, basil, okra, tomatoes and bell peppers). When it comes to my homologue I feel genuinely blessed to have gotten him selected to help me in my village. My homologue is always willing and ready to do anything I need him to do, and he usually goes above and beyond my expectations. He is incredibley motivated to improve his village and to learn just about anything. He also has the most infectious laugh ( I call it a cartoon laugh because it seriously sounds fake and something that could only come from an animated animal).Besides his laugh, the thing I like best about my homologue are his story telling skills. He always has some story to tell me, whether it be about his childhood or something that happened in the fields, and it always comes complete with sound effects and hand gestures! There is almost never a story telling moment where he doesn't have me cracking up and where he isn't laughing himself! My homologue is a key factor in my enjoying my time in village.
Here are two random mini-stories:
1.The other day I went to see an English teacher who is back in my village for vacation and who has offered to tutor some of the 7th graders. I sat in on his tutoring session where he asked me to look over all of his writing and then proceeded to have one of the longest conversations I've ever had with a non-Peace Corps staff Malian. One of the things he told me was that he wants to practice his English with me so I told him that he can come over to my house any time to chat and to that he gave me a confused look and then explained that he had been warned to never go to my house. He told me that people in my village had told him that no one is to go to my house because an American lives there and they don't like when people bother them. I was shocked to hear this! I honestly have no idea where he heard this. I made sure to ask around and find out if other people had heard the same warning. No one confirmed what the English teacher said, so my homologue and I figure that he must've just imagined the whole thing out of some misconception he has about white people (he kept calling me white regardless of how many times I pointed to my skin to prove I'm not white).
2. Today has been a day of gifts. This morning my homologue and his son came over with a chicken for me. He said that his mother had given it to him to give to me. I was pretty confused by this because normally chickens are given to newcomers and strangers to the village, and since I've lived here for an entire year, I have no idea why I was presented with this gift. I didn't however question it and had no problem graciously accepting this large source of protein! My next gift of the day was money to go buy a soda in market from the Mayor. Again this was another unprecedented gift that I had no problem accepting. My final gift of the day was one of my few female friends in village asked me to go with her to the photo studio to have a picture taken with her baby. She originally wanted just me and her son in the picture, but then I convinced her and her older daughter to sit next to me and the baby. She is going to have a copy of this picture printed out for me. People really are incredible nice in my village and I feel so grateful that I am able to live with these people during my time in Mali.
Friday, July 15, 2011
Cabo Verde!
Written July 10, 2011
Whoa! It has basically been forever since I last wrote a blog post... sorry. So I'm gonna use this post to catch you guys up on everything that has happened over the past month and a half.
World Map:
Before leaving for my vacation I wanted to do something for my village that I knew they would really appreciate, and to be quite honest, something that would be so visible to them that they wouldn't forget me while I was gone. So I decided to paint a 2 meter by 4 meter world map at the primary school. Helen and Chelsea, the two closest volunteers to my site, came to help me paint my map. It took us about 3 days to complete the map. It was pretty miserable standing outside for at least 10 hours everyday gridding, then drawing and then finally painting. I'm so happy we finished and I'm very glad we did it, but I honestly never want to do another world map again!
Vacation:
So I've actually been away from site for quite some time. On June 8th Melissa, Meredith and I flew to Cape Verde by way of Dakar. We spent two days in Dakar awaiting our flight to Praia, CV. While in Dakar we ate tons of Nice Cream (Dakar's delicious Ice Cream Parlor), did tons of shopping and even got to jump on the oceanside trampolines! Meredith called jumping on the trampolines the most fun 15 minutes she's had in Africa! On our flight to Praia we decided that we were going to make the most of our super expensive tickets by asking for as much food as we could possibly get. I think I ate 3 sandwiches and who knows how many little cakes. Melissa's family is from Cape Verde and she still has several family members living there, so they are the ones who met us at the airport and opened their house to us. We spent about 7 days on the island of Santiago dividing our time between Melissa's family and Peace Corps Cape Verde volunteers that we had met back in February at WAIST. The CV Volunteers basically showed us all over the island. They first took us to Tarrafal which is this gorgeous cove on the north side of the island. We had to drive up and down the mountains to get there, and I was scared out of my mind the entire time (I have a slight fear of heights...). Tarrafal has some of the clearest water I've ever seen, and it seemed so secluded. It would definitely be an ideal place to live! The CV volunteers next took us to Cidade Veija (I can't spell in Portugese, so I'm pretty sure that is misspelled but it means Old City). It was so quaint there because it is a World Heritage Site, so it looks just like a little colorful town out of the 1800s. This was the original city on Santiago and was a major slave trading post. The final place we were shown was the black sand beach on Santiago. This was probably one of the coolest things I'd ever seen in my life. The sand was so black that it looked like mud, but it felt just like white sand! The waves at this beach were also perfect for body surfing. Meredith, Melissa and I had so much fun catching waves. Although the absolute most fun that I had in Cape Verde was at a Rave on the Beach. A company called I Love House Music (I think...) set up this huge tent on the beach with wood floor boards. The music was so loud and pumping that you could feel it move through your body! The best part about it though was that since the floor boards were made of wood they would bounce with everyone dancing on them and it made this kind of clapping sound (kind of like Riverdance!). I was having so much fun that I couldn't stop laughing and I even yelled out "This is the most fun I've ever had in my life!!!" to Meredith. Cape Verde is one of the best vacations I've ever taken in my life and I am so greatful to Melissa's family and the Peace Corps Cape Verde Volunteers for showing us a good time and letting us stay at their houses.
One Year Anniversary:
I've officially been in Mali for an entire year!! It feels so crazy to be able to say that! It seriously feels like I've only been here for about 3 months or so. Before coming to Mali I was told by Returned volunteers that your first year will feel like forever and then your second year will speed by. If this is the case I guess my second year is going to feel like just one month!
4th of July:
This year we spent 4th of July in Manantali, the same place I spent Christmas and probably my favorite little corner of Mali. Meredith and I got to Manantali about a week before the rush of people coming for the 4th and we were all by ourselves at the Manantali transit house. It was incredibly relaxing. We spent our days down by the river and our nights marathoning TV shows (Freaks and Geeks for me and True Blood for Meredith). Once everyone else arrived for the 4th, some 40 volunteers, we spent all of our time hanging out and spending a ton of time at the river. Some volunteers had fireworks to set off and we even had a "hoodrat" game tournament. We played horseshoes, hill billy golf, beer pong ( I didn't play this one, not a big fan of this game) and we even had a 3 legged race as well as a baloon toss. The 4th was really great, and kind of worked as a detox from my vacation to get me prepared to head back to site after having been away for so long.
Back to Site:
I'm surprisingly content being back at site, I say this because I honestly wasn't looking forward to coming back and being all alone (alone in the sense that I'm the only American in my village and that I basically go days without speaking English). I guess I had forgotten how tranquil it is at site and how much I cherished this. I got back to site in the evening, ate dinner and then basically passed out for 12 hours straight! I think my body was very happy to no longer be on the move. 2 new additions came back with me to site which could potentially be life changers for me: a camping egg crate and a shortwave radio. The egg crate is a life changer because this means that I will have a way to bring eggs back to my site which means a huge addition to the protein in my diet. Tonight I even had the best egg sandwich I've ever tasted (2 eggs scrambled with bell pepper, onion, basil, maggi, and salt on bread with mayo and ketchup... insanely good!) thanks to my egg crate! The radio is a life changer because now I actually will know what is going on in the world, whereas before I only got to know the news of the world when I would go into Sikasso and when I would maybe go to Cnn.com. Now I can listen to the BBC all day everyday! I already feel more informed and worldly after just one day!
Whoa! It has basically been forever since I last wrote a blog post... sorry. So I'm gonna use this post to catch you guys up on everything that has happened over the past month and a half.
World Map:
Before leaving for my vacation I wanted to do something for my village that I knew they would really appreciate, and to be quite honest, something that would be so visible to them that they wouldn't forget me while I was gone. So I decided to paint a 2 meter by 4 meter world map at the primary school. Helen and Chelsea, the two closest volunteers to my site, came to help me paint my map. It took us about 3 days to complete the map. It was pretty miserable standing outside for at least 10 hours everyday gridding, then drawing and then finally painting. I'm so happy we finished and I'm very glad we did it, but I honestly never want to do another world map again!
Vacation:
So I've actually been away from site for quite some time. On June 8th Melissa, Meredith and I flew to Cape Verde by way of Dakar. We spent two days in Dakar awaiting our flight to Praia, CV. While in Dakar we ate tons of Nice Cream (Dakar's delicious Ice Cream Parlor), did tons of shopping and even got to jump on the oceanside trampolines! Meredith called jumping on the trampolines the most fun 15 minutes she's had in Africa! On our flight to Praia we decided that we were going to make the most of our super expensive tickets by asking for as much food as we could possibly get. I think I ate 3 sandwiches and who knows how many little cakes. Melissa's family is from Cape Verde and she still has several family members living there, so they are the ones who met us at the airport and opened their house to us. We spent about 7 days on the island of Santiago dividing our time between Melissa's family and Peace Corps Cape Verde volunteers that we had met back in February at WAIST. The CV Volunteers basically showed us all over the island. They first took us to Tarrafal which is this gorgeous cove on the north side of the island. We had to drive up and down the mountains to get there, and I was scared out of my mind the entire time (I have a slight fear of heights...). Tarrafal has some of the clearest water I've ever seen, and it seemed so secluded. It would definitely be an ideal place to live! The CV volunteers next took us to Cidade Veija (I can't spell in Portugese, so I'm pretty sure that is misspelled but it means Old City). It was so quaint there because it is a World Heritage Site, so it looks just like a little colorful town out of the 1800s. This was the original city on Santiago and was a major slave trading post. The final place we were shown was the black sand beach on Santiago. This was probably one of the coolest things I'd ever seen in my life. The sand was so black that it looked like mud, but it felt just like white sand! The waves at this beach were also perfect for body surfing. Meredith, Melissa and I had so much fun catching waves. Although the absolute most fun that I had in Cape Verde was at a Rave on the Beach. A company called I Love House Music (I think...) set up this huge tent on the beach with wood floor boards. The music was so loud and pumping that you could feel it move through your body! The best part about it though was that since the floor boards were made of wood they would bounce with everyone dancing on them and it made this kind of clapping sound (kind of like Riverdance!). I was having so much fun that I couldn't stop laughing and I even yelled out "This is the most fun I've ever had in my life!!!" to Meredith. Cape Verde is one of the best vacations I've ever taken in my life and I am so greatful to Melissa's family and the Peace Corps Cape Verde Volunteers for showing us a good time and letting us stay at their houses.
One Year Anniversary:
I've officially been in Mali for an entire year!! It feels so crazy to be able to say that! It seriously feels like I've only been here for about 3 months or so. Before coming to Mali I was told by Returned volunteers that your first year will feel like forever and then your second year will speed by. If this is the case I guess my second year is going to feel like just one month!
4th of July:
This year we spent 4th of July in Manantali, the same place I spent Christmas and probably my favorite little corner of Mali. Meredith and I got to Manantali about a week before the rush of people coming for the 4th and we were all by ourselves at the Manantali transit house. It was incredibly relaxing. We spent our days down by the river and our nights marathoning TV shows (Freaks and Geeks for me and True Blood for Meredith). Once everyone else arrived for the 4th, some 40 volunteers, we spent all of our time hanging out and spending a ton of time at the river. Some volunteers had fireworks to set off and we even had a "hoodrat" game tournament. We played horseshoes, hill billy golf, beer pong ( I didn't play this one, not a big fan of this game) and we even had a 3 legged race as well as a baloon toss. The 4th was really great, and kind of worked as a detox from my vacation to get me prepared to head back to site after having been away for so long.
Back to Site:
I'm surprisingly content being back at site, I say this because I honestly wasn't looking forward to coming back and being all alone (alone in the sense that I'm the only American in my village and that I basically go days without speaking English). I guess I had forgotten how tranquil it is at site and how much I cherished this. I got back to site in the evening, ate dinner and then basically passed out for 12 hours straight! I think my body was very happy to no longer be on the move. 2 new additions came back with me to site which could potentially be life changers for me: a camping egg crate and a shortwave radio. The egg crate is a life changer because this means that I will have a way to bring eggs back to my site which means a huge addition to the protein in my diet. Tonight I even had the best egg sandwich I've ever tasted (2 eggs scrambled with bell pepper, onion, basil, maggi, and salt on bread with mayo and ketchup... insanely good!) thanks to my egg crate! The radio is a life changer because now I actually will know what is going on in the world, whereas before I only got to know the news of the world when I would go into Sikasso and when I would maybe go to Cnn.com. Now I can listen to the BBC all day everyday! I already feel more informed and worldly after just one day!
Monday, May 30, 2011
Lovin' the New House!
Written May 27, 2011
I am writing this blog entry on my bed which is located in my beautiful new room in my amazing new house!! I LOVE IT HERE! Tonight is going to be my second night by myself. The first night was great. It was almost as if I had no idea what to do with all the privacy! I spent most of the day unpacking, then I read for a couple hours in my hammock, then cooked a delicious meal (Knorr Pasta Sides, Stroganoff), and then set up my Bug Hut tent to sleep outside. I was outside in my tent for a good 4 hours before my fear completely engulfed me and I had to go inside. It's unfortunate, but I have been afraid of the dark for since I can remember. In college I even slept with a night light! I'm totally cool when I have someone in the room with me, but when I'm all alone I need some kind of light source, sad I know. Back at my homologue's house I had a tiny flourescent light wired into my room that was powered by his solar panel. It was almost as if my homologue knew about my fear and prepared for it even before meeting me! Unfortunately for me I don't have enough money to buy a solar panel, and thus there will be no tiny flourescent light for my new room. To make up for this I left my head lamp on for the entire night, well until dawn when I woke up and switched off the light and then went back to sleep. I'm sure you're thinking that this is going to get ridiculous after a while, but no worries! I have rechargeable batteries and a solar charger!!
Anyway, besides my nighttime darkness issue, I'm seriously obsessed with my new house. This morning I was able to walk to the bathroom in just shorts and a sports bra! (My house is completely surrounded by a very high wall) Back at my old house I basically had to follow all the conservative clothing rules at all times, but now that no one can see me, anything goes!! Today I also spent some quality time with my garden, tilling the soil and so on. I can't wait to see what my green thumb is capable of! I was also able to do my laundry outside! This is big because for the past 9 months I had been doing my laundry in my room because I didn't want people watching me wash my clothes and then critiquing what I was doing (when it comes to manual labor Malians won't let you do the work on your own, they will either take over completely or constantly critique what you are doing and tell you that you should be doing it this way or that way). It feels so good to be able to do anything and everything without always having eyes on me!
Oh and cute story: I think my homologue and his family miss me living with them. I have barely been gone for 24 hours and they have already visited me like 20 times. My homologue keeps coming to check in on me. He's like a mother bird who's experiencing empty nest syndrome. Oh and tonight his son and Brehma (the boy that lives with them and helps out with the chores) walked all the way to my new house to bring me tea! Too cute!
I am writing this blog entry on my bed which is located in my beautiful new room in my amazing new house!! I LOVE IT HERE! Tonight is going to be my second night by myself. The first night was great. It was almost as if I had no idea what to do with all the privacy! I spent most of the day unpacking, then I read for a couple hours in my hammock, then cooked a delicious meal (Knorr Pasta Sides, Stroganoff), and then set up my Bug Hut tent to sleep outside. I was outside in my tent for a good 4 hours before my fear completely engulfed me and I had to go inside. It's unfortunate, but I have been afraid of the dark for since I can remember. In college I even slept with a night light! I'm totally cool when I have someone in the room with me, but when I'm all alone I need some kind of light source, sad I know. Back at my homologue's house I had a tiny flourescent light wired into my room that was powered by his solar panel. It was almost as if my homologue knew about my fear and prepared for it even before meeting me! Unfortunately for me I don't have enough money to buy a solar panel, and thus there will be no tiny flourescent light for my new room. To make up for this I left my head lamp on for the entire night, well until dawn when I woke up and switched off the light and then went back to sleep. I'm sure you're thinking that this is going to get ridiculous after a while, but no worries! I have rechargeable batteries and a solar charger!!
Anyway, besides my nighttime darkness issue, I'm seriously obsessed with my new house. This morning I was able to walk to the bathroom in just shorts and a sports bra! (My house is completely surrounded by a very high wall) Back at my old house I basically had to follow all the conservative clothing rules at all times, but now that no one can see me, anything goes!! Today I also spent some quality time with my garden, tilling the soil and so on. I can't wait to see what my green thumb is capable of! I was also able to do my laundry outside! This is big because for the past 9 months I had been doing my laundry in my room because I didn't want people watching me wash my clothes and then critiquing what I was doing (when it comes to manual labor Malians won't let you do the work on your own, they will either take over completely or constantly critique what you are doing and tell you that you should be doing it this way or that way). It feels so good to be able to do anything and everything without always having eyes on me!
Oh and cute story: I think my homologue and his family miss me living with them. I have barely been gone for 24 hours and they have already visited me like 20 times. My homologue keeps coming to check in on me. He's like a mother bird who's experiencing empty nest syndrome. Oh and tonight his son and Brehma (the boy that lives with them and helps out with the chores) walked all the way to my new house to bring me tea! Too cute!
Lovin' the New House!
Written May 27, 2011
I am writing this blog entry on my bed which is located in my beautiful new room in my amazing new house!! I LOVE IT HERE! Tonight is going to be my second night by myself. The first night was great. It was almost as if I had no idea what to do with all the privacy! I spent most of the day unpacking, then I read for a couple hours in my hammock, then cooked a delicious meal (Knorr Pasta Sides, Stroganoff), and then set up my Bug Hut tent to sleep outside. I was outside in my tent for a good 4 hours before my fear completely engulfed me and I had to go inside. It's unfortunate, but I have been afraid of the dark for since I can remember. In college I even slept with a night light! I'm totally cool when I have someone in the room with me, but when I'm all alone I need some kind of light source, sad I know. Back at my homologue's house I had a tiny flourescent light wired into my room that was powered by his solar panel. It was almost as if my homologue knew about my fear and prepared for it even before meeting me! Unfortunately for me I don't have enough money to buy a solar panel, and thus there will be no tiny flourescent light for my new room. To make up for this I left my head lamp on for the entire night, well until dawn when I woke up and switched off the light and then went back to sleep. I'm sure you're thinking that this is going to get ridiculous after a while, but no worries! I have rechargeable batteries and a solar charger!!
Anyway, besides my nighttime darkness issue, I'm seriously obsessed with my new house. This morning I was able to walk to the bathroom in just shorts and a sports bra! (My house is completely surrounded by a very high wall) Back at my old house I basically had to follow all the conservative clothing rules at all times, but now that no one can see me, anything goes!! Today I also spent some quality time with my garden, tilling the soil and so on. I can't wait to see what my green thumb is capable of! I was also able to do my laundry outside! This is big because for the past 9 months I had been doing my laundry in my room because I didn't want people watching me wash my clothes and then critiquing what I was doing (when it comes to manual labor Malians won't let you do the work on your own, they will either take over completely or constantly critique what you are doing and tell you that you should be doing it this way or that way). It feels so good to be able to do anything and everything without always having eyes on me!
Oh and cute story: I think my homologue and his family miss me living with them. I have barely been gone for 24 hours and they have already visited me like 20 times. My homologue keeps coming to check in on me. He's like a mother bird who's experiencing empty nest syndrome. Oh and tonight his son and Brehma (the boy that lives with them and helps out with the chores) walked all the way to my new house to bring me tea! Too cute!
I am writing this blog entry on my bed which is located in my beautiful new room in my amazing new house!! I LOVE IT HERE! Tonight is going to be my second night by myself. The first night was great. It was almost as if I had no idea what to do with all the privacy! I spent most of the day unpacking, then I read for a couple hours in my hammock, then cooked a delicious meal (Knorr Pasta Sides, Stroganoff), and then set up my Bug Hut tent to sleep outside. I was outside in my tent for a good 4 hours before my fear completely engulfed me and I had to go inside. It's unfortunate, but I have been afraid of the dark for since I can remember. In college I even slept with a night light! I'm totally cool when I have someone in the room with me, but when I'm all alone I need some kind of light source, sad I know. Back at my homologue's house I had a tiny flourescent light wired into my room that was powered by his solar panel. It was almost as if my homologue knew about my fear and prepared for it even before meeting me! Unfortunately for me I don't have enough money to buy a solar panel, and thus there will be no tiny flourescent light for my new room. To make up for this I left my head lamp on for the entire night, well until dawn when I woke up and switched off the light and then went back to sleep. I'm sure you're thinking that this is going to get ridiculous after a while, but no worries! I have rechargeable batteries and a solar charger!!
Anyway, besides my nighttime darkness issue, I'm seriously obsessed with my new house. This morning I was able to walk to the bathroom in just shorts and a sports bra! (My house is completely surrounded by a very high wall) Back at my old house I basically had to follow all the conservative clothing rules at all times, but now that no one can see me, anything goes!! Today I also spent some quality time with my garden, tilling the soil and so on. I can't wait to see what my green thumb is capable of! I was also able to do my laundry outside! This is big because for the past 9 months I had been doing my laundry in my room because I didn't want people watching me wash my clothes and then critiquing what I was doing (when it comes to manual labor Malians won't let you do the work on your own, they will either take over completely or constantly critique what you are doing and tell you that you should be doing it this way or that way). It feels so good to be able to do anything and everything without always having eyes on me!
Oh and cute story: I think my homologue and his family miss me living with them. I have barely been gone for 24 hours and they have already visited me like 20 times. My homologue keeps coming to check in on me. He's like a mother bird who's experiencing empty nest syndrome. Oh and tonight his son and Brehma (the boy that lives with them and helps out with the chores) walked all the way to my new house to bring me tea! Too cute!
Monday, May 23, 2011
I'm the proud new owner of a BRAND NEW HOUSE
Written May 19, 2011
It's mini story time again!
New House:
My windows and doors were delivered to my village today!!!! You have no idea how happy I am! It was slightly over 2 months ago that my APCD agreed to have my doors and windows paid for with Peace Corps money. It has been such a long and frustrating wait, but I'm happy to say that I am now that much closer to moving into my new house! The doors and windows are all the remains in the construction of the house, so once my homologue installs them I will be good to go! I seriously cannot wait!! I have major plans for my new house! I'm going to start a garden as well as hang up flower pots (well oatmeal tins, basically like small coffee cans) all around my gwa. Also I am going to cover my walls with glow in the dark stars as well as display my Gator Pennant, oh and maybe even paint a Gator head on my wall! The possibilities are endless! But most of all I can't wait for my PRIVACY.
Wedding Season:
Weddings, weddings, weddings! It seems like there is one every single day in village! This week alone I attended 2 weddings and heard of 3 others. There have also been quite a few civil marriages at the Mayor's office in the past few weeks (Malians have to have a civil ceremony, which is basically like getting a marriage license back home, where they swear to a bunch of stuff and have witnesses and have someone from the Mayor's office as the officiant. It's not obligatory, and many Malians can't afford to do this or often times they wait several years before they do this, but a wedding party is thrown after the bride and groom return from the Mayor's office. This, I guess, could be compared to the reception after a wedding back in America. Basically at these parties all the men sit together at one side of the family's concession and all the women sit together on the other side. Or actually the women are usually not sitting, but cooking and cleaning and getting things for the men; even the female guests are put to work! The men spend the whole party conversing, eating, and playing cards. At some point a main meal is served, usually Zame (sort of like fried rice or jollof rice), by the women, the men eat and then the women eat and then dancing starts or people (men) go back to their conversations or card games (women start to clean up). Attending weddings is something I definitely like to do here because it means lots of free food! Although weddings can also be kind of sad because arranged marriages are something quite common here, and often times a very sad bride gets paired up with an old man. One of the marriages I attended had a bride that looked like she was near tears, she could barely answer the questions asked of her at the Mayor's office. I feel really bad for these women, but to be honest, it's times like these that I'm so happy to be an American where I have free will!
Food!!:
I would have to say that Malian cuisine is definitely no where near the top of my favorite foods list, but there are a couple of dishes that are working their way up there! One of these is Moni. I'm not really sure how to describe it, but it is basically a porridge that is made with little balls of millet flour that has lait caille (kind of like yogurt) and lots of sugar mixed in. I thought Moni was disgusting the first time I had it back during PST, but now I can't stop craving it. I use to say no thanks everytime it was presented to me, but about a month ago I decided 'oh what the hell, why not give it another chance,' so I did, and it was AWESOME!!! Now I eat it every chance I get!
My other new found Malian food favorite is Cabbage! I know there is cabbage back home, but this is different. Malians came up with the brilliant idea to add cabbage to their sauces to be eaten over rice. Cabbage in Tige Dege Na (Peanut Sauce) is legit one of my favorite things to eat, and it's good for me!
All Alone:
Well this isn't really true, but it is kind of a sad time in village because several of my friends have left. My friends were Stagiers, or teachers in training, who were here to be student teachers, and their school-year long program has come to an end. The stagiers were from a bunch of different regions of Mali, so they basically all went back to their hometowns to take their final exams and become real teachers. These were the guys I would play Uno for hours with. They also were the only ones besides my homologue that I could have a legitimate conversation with because they are fluent in French. I will miss them greatly, and I hope the stagiers next year are as cool as these guys were.
Things people call me:
So I found out the other day that kids in my village have been calling me Toubaboo Nyera which means Red Toubab! I find this to be incredibly amusing and also very interesting! Back in America people of my skin tone are often called "redbones" and Native Americans who share my skin tone were also called red. It's kind of cool that I'm all the way across the world and similarities like this can be found.
I also found out that Secondary school students have developed an odd fascination with my real name, Elizabeth Coomber. They love to repeat it over and over. They also try to spell it out loud to each other to see who can get it right. I found this to be amusing at first, but then it started to really annoy me. The reason I find it so annoying is because they are so terrible at pronouncing my name. They say Eh-liz-a-bette Cum-bear. The other day I got fed up and tried to correct them, I announced that it's Coooom- bur not Cum- bear. After this one of the boys had the nerve to tell me that the English teacher told them that it's Cum-bear, implying that I must be wrong. Um no! I think I'm the authority when it comes to pronouncing my own last name kid!
It's mini story time again!
New House:
My windows and doors were delivered to my village today!!!! You have no idea how happy I am! It was slightly over 2 months ago that my APCD agreed to have my doors and windows paid for with Peace Corps money. It has been such a long and frustrating wait, but I'm happy to say that I am now that much closer to moving into my new house! The doors and windows are all the remains in the construction of the house, so once my homologue installs them I will be good to go! I seriously cannot wait!! I have major plans for my new house! I'm going to start a garden as well as hang up flower pots (well oatmeal tins, basically like small coffee cans) all around my gwa. Also I am going to cover my walls with glow in the dark stars as well as display my Gator Pennant, oh and maybe even paint a Gator head on my wall! The possibilities are endless! But most of all I can't wait for my PRIVACY.
Wedding Season:
Weddings, weddings, weddings! It seems like there is one every single day in village! This week alone I attended 2 weddings and heard of 3 others. There have also been quite a few civil marriages at the Mayor's office in the past few weeks (Malians have to have a civil ceremony, which is basically like getting a marriage license back home, where they swear to a bunch of stuff and have witnesses and have someone from the Mayor's office as the officiant. It's not obligatory, and many Malians can't afford to do this or often times they wait several years before they do this, but a wedding party is thrown after the bride and groom return from the Mayor's office. This, I guess, could be compared to the reception after a wedding back in America. Basically at these parties all the men sit together at one side of the family's concession and all the women sit together on the other side. Or actually the women are usually not sitting, but cooking and cleaning and getting things for the men; even the female guests are put to work! The men spend the whole party conversing, eating, and playing cards. At some point a main meal is served, usually Zame (sort of like fried rice or jollof rice), by the women, the men eat and then the women eat and then dancing starts or people (men) go back to their conversations or card games (women start to clean up). Attending weddings is something I definitely like to do here because it means lots of free food! Although weddings can also be kind of sad because arranged marriages are something quite common here, and often times a very sad bride gets paired up with an old man. One of the marriages I attended had a bride that looked like she was near tears, she could barely answer the questions asked of her at the Mayor's office. I feel really bad for these women, but to be honest, it's times like these that I'm so happy to be an American where I have free will!
Food!!:
I would have to say that Malian cuisine is definitely no where near the top of my favorite foods list, but there are a couple of dishes that are working their way up there! One of these is Moni. I'm not really sure how to describe it, but it is basically a porridge that is made with little balls of millet flour that has lait caille (kind of like yogurt) and lots of sugar mixed in. I thought Moni was disgusting the first time I had it back during PST, but now I can't stop craving it. I use to say no thanks everytime it was presented to me, but about a month ago I decided 'oh what the hell, why not give it another chance,' so I did, and it was AWESOME!!! Now I eat it every chance I get!
My other new found Malian food favorite is Cabbage! I know there is cabbage back home, but this is different. Malians came up with the brilliant idea to add cabbage to their sauces to be eaten over rice. Cabbage in Tige Dege Na (Peanut Sauce) is legit one of my favorite things to eat, and it's good for me!
All Alone:
Well this isn't really true, but it is kind of a sad time in village because several of my friends have left. My friends were Stagiers, or teachers in training, who were here to be student teachers, and their school-year long program has come to an end. The stagiers were from a bunch of different regions of Mali, so they basically all went back to their hometowns to take their final exams and become real teachers. These were the guys I would play Uno for hours with. They also were the only ones besides my homologue that I could have a legitimate conversation with because they are fluent in French. I will miss them greatly, and I hope the stagiers next year are as cool as these guys were.
Things people call me:
So I found out the other day that kids in my village have been calling me Toubaboo Nyera which means Red Toubab! I find this to be incredibly amusing and also very interesting! Back in America people of my skin tone are often called "redbones" and Native Americans who share my skin tone were also called red. It's kind of cool that I'm all the way across the world and similarities like this can be found.
I also found out that Secondary school students have developed an odd fascination with my real name, Elizabeth Coomber. They love to repeat it over and over. They also try to spell it out loud to each other to see who can get it right. I found this to be amusing at first, but then it started to really annoy me. The reason I find it so annoying is because they are so terrible at pronouncing my name. They say Eh-liz-a-bette Cum-bear. The other day I got fed up and tried to correct them, I announced that it's Coooom- bur not Cum- bear. After this one of the boys had the nerve to tell me that the English teacher told them that it's Cum-bear, implying that I must be wrong. Um no! I think I'm the authority when it comes to pronouncing my own last name kid!
Friday, May 13, 2011
Osama
Written May 5, 2011
I was in the middle of teaching my Adult English class when one of my students asked me if I was going to have a party. I had no clue what he was talking about so I asked him 'What for?' He replied to this by laughing and then saying "Osama is dead. All the Americans are happy!!" I was taken aback by this and had no idea how to respond so I just gave a small smile, looked down, and then continued with the lesson. Three days earlier I received a text message from Peace Corps saying that Osama Bin Laden had been killed by the US Military and that we should be aware of the public reaction and for us to keep a low profile. When I got this message I had been in mid-conversation walking through a market in Segou with Melissa and she actually told me to shut up and look at my phone because she had looked at the message before I was able to. We both stopped in our tracks completely shocked. I couldn't believe that the day had finally come, 10 years! this man had been hiding and evading capture all the while still being the venerated leader of a terrorist group that has caused so much pain in the world, and on top of all of that I am receiving this news in Muslim West Africa! As Melissa and I continued to walk my emotion of shock jumped to fear. There are quite a few people in this country who held Bin Laden in very high esteem, as well as a group in the north of Mali who call themselves Al Queda. You could go to almost any market and find Bin Laden stickers to plaster on to your moto. I was very worried that I would be singled out as an American and forced to pay for the death of Osama. Unfortunately for me I was in Segou and had to make my way back to Sikasso that day (a 6 hour bus ride). I didn't know how I would be able to keep a low profile with a whole day of travelling ahead of me. Before heading to the bus station I got my fill of the news from the internet and figured that I should be okay because most Malians don't have access to the same kind of quick info as I do. I was banking on the fact that the news of Osama's death wouldn't hit Mali until several hours after I found out. I was so wrong. I got to the bus station and news of Bin Laden's death was plastered ALL OVER the TV and the Radio! It wasn't just news that he was dead either, they had to throw in the fact that he was dead at the hands of Americans and the Americans everywhere were celebrating. Here I was trying to keep a low profile, and the TV and Radio were making it all the more hard for me. Before heading to the bus station I made the decision to not speak English for the rest of the day, and to basically hide my American-ness. I was so worried that someone would ask me where I was from, as often is the case when I am travelling and someone sits down next to me, but lucky for me no one did. I got away with using only French and Bambara and no one trying to speak to me in English. The only remote give-away I encountered was when I had finally reached Sikasso and I was walking to the Stage House and a little boy shouted out "Toubaboo!" ( what Malians call the French, but what also basically means white person or foreigner) at me. Normally I would yell back "Toubaboo te! Americaine!" (Not a French person, an American!), but this time I just kept on walking and ignored the kid. Once I reached the Stage House all my worries left me and I felt safe again. As surprising as it sounds I pretty much had forgotten about Osama's death until it was brought up in my class; I guess this is proof that life goes on.
In order to stick to Peace Corps' recommendation of keeping a low profile, I had decided that I would speak to no one about Bin Laden's death, just like I choose to not ever bring up politics. It's just easier and less messy when topics like this aren't brought up. However, after Osama was mentioned in class, my homologue kept dancing around the topic. While we were walking home after class, my homologue turned to me and said "That Osama was very good at hiding!" and I just thought 'Oh what the hell' and said "yea, for 10 years!" My homologue seemed shocked by this and I could tell he probably didn't have much knowledge on the subject. I asked him if he knew why Americans were so angry at Osama and why they are happy he is dead and he said that he didn't know the story of Osama. In explaining I tried to keep it as unbiased as possible and said that there is a very grave date in American History, September 11, 2001. I said that on that day Osama had planes fly into two sky skrapers and this killed thousands of people (had to keep my explanation very simple because my French skills aren't all that advanced!). I told him that the war with the Arab states was started after this event. He then asked me if Osama was a Muslim. This is where I had to tread very lightly because my homologue is a devout Christian whom I expect would jump on any opportunity to say that Islam is bad and Christianity is better. I told him that yes, Bin Laden was Muslim, but that he was a bad man, but that that doesn't mean that Islam is a bad religion. He seemed to get what I was saying, and I figured that was as far as I should go into the topic. As of now I haven't heard of any backlash against Americans here in Mali, so here's to hoping it stays that way!
I was in the middle of teaching my Adult English class when one of my students asked me if I was going to have a party. I had no clue what he was talking about so I asked him 'What for?' He replied to this by laughing and then saying "Osama is dead. All the Americans are happy!!" I was taken aback by this and had no idea how to respond so I just gave a small smile, looked down, and then continued with the lesson. Three days earlier I received a text message from Peace Corps saying that Osama Bin Laden had been killed by the US Military and that we should be aware of the public reaction and for us to keep a low profile. When I got this message I had been in mid-conversation walking through a market in Segou with Melissa and she actually told me to shut up and look at my phone because she had looked at the message before I was able to. We both stopped in our tracks completely shocked. I couldn't believe that the day had finally come, 10 years! this man had been hiding and evading capture all the while still being the venerated leader of a terrorist group that has caused so much pain in the world, and on top of all of that I am receiving this news in Muslim West Africa! As Melissa and I continued to walk my emotion of shock jumped to fear. There are quite a few people in this country who held Bin Laden in very high esteem, as well as a group in the north of Mali who call themselves Al Queda. You could go to almost any market and find Bin Laden stickers to plaster on to your moto. I was very worried that I would be singled out as an American and forced to pay for the death of Osama. Unfortunately for me I was in Segou and had to make my way back to Sikasso that day (a 6 hour bus ride). I didn't know how I would be able to keep a low profile with a whole day of travelling ahead of me. Before heading to the bus station I got my fill of the news from the internet and figured that I should be okay because most Malians don't have access to the same kind of quick info as I do. I was banking on the fact that the news of Osama's death wouldn't hit Mali until several hours after I found out. I was so wrong. I got to the bus station and news of Bin Laden's death was plastered ALL OVER the TV and the Radio! It wasn't just news that he was dead either, they had to throw in the fact that he was dead at the hands of Americans and the Americans everywhere were celebrating. Here I was trying to keep a low profile, and the TV and Radio were making it all the more hard for me. Before heading to the bus station I made the decision to not speak English for the rest of the day, and to basically hide my American-ness. I was so worried that someone would ask me where I was from, as often is the case when I am travelling and someone sits down next to me, but lucky for me no one did. I got away with using only French and Bambara and no one trying to speak to me in English. The only remote give-away I encountered was when I had finally reached Sikasso and I was walking to the Stage House and a little boy shouted out "Toubaboo!" ( what Malians call the French, but what also basically means white person or foreigner) at me. Normally I would yell back "Toubaboo te! Americaine!" (Not a French person, an American!), but this time I just kept on walking and ignored the kid. Once I reached the Stage House all my worries left me and I felt safe again. As surprising as it sounds I pretty much had forgotten about Osama's death until it was brought up in my class; I guess this is proof that life goes on.
In order to stick to Peace Corps' recommendation of keeping a low profile, I had decided that I would speak to no one about Bin Laden's death, just like I choose to not ever bring up politics. It's just easier and less messy when topics like this aren't brought up. However, after Osama was mentioned in class, my homologue kept dancing around the topic. While we were walking home after class, my homologue turned to me and said "That Osama was very good at hiding!" and I just thought 'Oh what the hell' and said "yea, for 10 years!" My homologue seemed shocked by this and I could tell he probably didn't have much knowledge on the subject. I asked him if he knew why Americans were so angry at Osama and why they are happy he is dead and he said that he didn't know the story of Osama. In explaining I tried to keep it as unbiased as possible and said that there is a very grave date in American History, September 11, 2001. I said that on that day Osama had planes fly into two sky skrapers and this killed thousands of people (had to keep my explanation very simple because my French skills aren't all that advanced!). I told him that the war with the Arab states was started after this event. He then asked me if Osama was a Muslim. This is where I had to tread very lightly because my homologue is a devout Christian whom I expect would jump on any opportunity to say that Islam is bad and Christianity is better. I told him that yes, Bin Laden was Muslim, but that he was a bad man, but that that doesn't mean that Islam is a bad religion. He seemed to get what I was saying, and I figured that was as far as I should go into the topic. As of now I haven't heard of any backlash against Americans here in Mali, so here's to hoping it stays that way!
Monday, May 2, 2011
Easter
Written April 24, 2011
Today is Easter and I got to eat pork!!! This is huge because since Mali is a predominantly Muslim country (people who practice Islam are not allowed to eat pork), very few people eat pork here. Christians are really the only ones who eat pork, and they really only do it on big holidays. My homologue is one of the few Catholics in my village, so he along with 6 other people bought a pig for the Easter feast. God it was good!! I miss pork so much. I miss bacon. I miss pork chops. I miss pork tenderloin. I miss hot dogs... You get the idea. Anyway I basically shoved my face full of pork today. I ate and ate until my stomach hurt. I figured I should probably eat a ton because it could be another year before I get pork again! Besides our yummy pork feast, we attended a short Mass in the Village's tiny Catholic Church with my homologue as the Celebrant. My homologue is not an ordained priest, so we didn't get to have Communion. The church service was held in Senufo, so i just zoned out the whole time but also tried to pay attention to when people got up to stand and when they went to sit back down. At one point during the service, I guess I zoned out too far, I hadn't noticed that I was the only one standing and my homologue, mid-sermon and from behind the alter, says aloud "Gnire, you can sit down now." It was pretty embarrassing, but oh well. After the service was over, we all walked back home and sat under a big tree to drink tea. My homologue asked me to bring out my Uno cards so that we could play Uno with his friends. We ended up playing Uno for the rest of the day, and I mean all day; we started playing at 10:30 am and continued to play until I left to go take my bucket bath at 6:10pm! They are seriously obsessed with Uno here! Overall it was a pretty nice holiday. I wish I could've been home where I could've participated in the egg hunt and received a well stocked Easter basket, but since I couldn't be there, this was a nice replacement
Today is Easter and I got to eat pork!!! This is huge because since Mali is a predominantly Muslim country (people who practice Islam are not allowed to eat pork), very few people eat pork here. Christians are really the only ones who eat pork, and they really only do it on big holidays. My homologue is one of the few Catholics in my village, so he along with 6 other people bought a pig for the Easter feast. God it was good!! I miss pork so much. I miss bacon. I miss pork chops. I miss pork tenderloin. I miss hot dogs... You get the idea. Anyway I basically shoved my face full of pork today. I ate and ate until my stomach hurt. I figured I should probably eat a ton because it could be another year before I get pork again! Besides our yummy pork feast, we attended a short Mass in the Village's tiny Catholic Church with my homologue as the Celebrant. My homologue is not an ordained priest, so we didn't get to have Communion. The church service was held in Senufo, so i just zoned out the whole time but also tried to pay attention to when people got up to stand and when they went to sit back down. At one point during the service, I guess I zoned out too far, I hadn't noticed that I was the only one standing and my homologue, mid-sermon and from behind the alter, says aloud "Gnire, you can sit down now." It was pretty embarrassing, but oh well. After the service was over, we all walked back home and sat under a big tree to drink tea. My homologue asked me to bring out my Uno cards so that we could play Uno with his friends. We ended up playing Uno for the rest of the day, and I mean all day; we started playing at 10:30 am and continued to play until I left to go take my bucket bath at 6:10pm! They are seriously obsessed with Uno here! Overall it was a pretty nice holiday. I wish I could've been home where I could've participated in the egg hunt and received a well stocked Easter basket, but since I couldn't be there, this was a nice replacement
ATT
Written April 19, 2011
I've been in village now for almost a week since I got back from Bamako where I attended the New Stage's Swearing In Ceremony. This bunch of new kids, I think there are 60-something of them, has been lucky from the beginning. Their Staging was held in Washington DC where they got to meet Aaron Williams, the Director of the Peace Corps, and their Swearing In Ceremony was held at the President of Mali's house with the President himself giving one of the speeches! I am supremely jealous of the new kids and all of their luck! Anyway... the ceremony itself was awesome! The President's mansion, called Kouluba (big hill in Bambara), is this huge compound on the top of the big hill in the middle of Bamako. Kouluba is the prettiest place in Bamako for sure! The ceremony was held in the banquet hall and after the ceremony the were refreshments served at the front of the palace. Amadou Toumani Toure (ATT), the President of Mali, is surprisingly nice! In his speech he made several jokes and talked about how much he appreciates the Peace Corps. After the ceremony and on his way to the refreshments table, ATT shook my hand and asked me "Ca va?"!! It was great! I think I probably said 'ca va' back, but who knows! I got to meet the President!! A few minutes later everyone and their mother was trying to get a picture with ATT. This all started after one of my best friends here, Melissa, was brave enough to be the first to ask his Excellency for a picture! Because I get really nervous around famous people (the reason I was never able to get an autograph from Tim Tebow even though I saw him almost everyday on the University of Florida campus!), I decided to stay away from the crowd. I reallllllyyyy wanted a picture with ATT, especially after Melissa was able to do it, but I couldn't bring myself out of my state of nervousness long enough to ask for one. Lucky for me ATT asked me for one instead! Well sort of... Amadou Toumani Toure, the President of Mali, saw me standing near him and waved me over to come and get in a picture with him and some other people! How many of you can say a President waved them into a picture??
So that's probably the most exciting thing that has happened to me in Mali and probably the most exciting thing that will ever happen to me while I'm here. Besides that my life has been slow and uneventful, as usual. One thing that has severely disappointed me is that my house is still not done yet. It is completely built and pretty much ready to be used, except that it has no doors and windows. Because Peace Corps promised to pay for and deliver the doors and windows, there is nothing my homologue or I can do except for wait. To pass the time my homologue dug out and bordered a garden plot for me within my enclosed yard and he also put up my hammock. For the past couple of days I have been going to my new house in the afternoons to hangout by myself. I figure that since my house is basically done, why shouldn't I make use of it? It is super breezy and shaded over there, so I really enjoy laying in my hammock with a good book for a couple hours. Someone else has noticed how comfortable it is at my new house and has decided to hangout there in the afternoons as well, a big fat pig! I find this stupid pig right under my hammock every time I enter my yard! Luckily it listens to me when I yell GET OUT! because I have no desire to spend the afternoons with him. My homologue tells me we will be eating him for Easter, so I guess I will only be having this unwanted house guest for a short while longer...
Today was a nice day because after hanging out with my homologue and some of his friends, my homologue and I explored the hill behind my new house. This is going to sound dumb, but I had no idea that there was even a hill there! My excuse is that it is sort of hidden by tall trees, but I guess I never really looked close enough. Anyway it is basically awesome up there. You can see all of my village and all of the fields, hills and plateaus past it. This hill behind my new house is actually a plateau as well. As we climbed up, my homologue pointed out all of these different fruits I had never seen before in my life. Most of them tasted gross, but it was really cool to discover new things! The top of the plateau was really cool looking. There were all of these boulders everywhere, and it was fairly barren which was a cool contrast to all of the trees and shrubs that populate the sides of the plateau. The landscape of my village is so diverse and beautiful, I really love it here and can't wait to go exploring some more!
I've been in village now for almost a week since I got back from Bamako where I attended the New Stage's Swearing In Ceremony. This bunch of new kids, I think there are 60-something of them, has been lucky from the beginning. Their Staging was held in Washington DC where they got to meet Aaron Williams, the Director of the Peace Corps, and their Swearing In Ceremony was held at the President of Mali's house with the President himself giving one of the speeches! I am supremely jealous of the new kids and all of their luck! Anyway... the ceremony itself was awesome! The President's mansion, called Kouluba (big hill in Bambara), is this huge compound on the top of the big hill in the middle of Bamako. Kouluba is the prettiest place in Bamako for sure! The ceremony was held in the banquet hall and after the ceremony the were refreshments served at the front of the palace. Amadou Toumani Toure (ATT), the President of Mali, is surprisingly nice! In his speech he made several jokes and talked about how much he appreciates the Peace Corps. After the ceremony and on his way to the refreshments table, ATT shook my hand and asked me "Ca va?"!! It was great! I think I probably said 'ca va' back, but who knows! I got to meet the President!! A few minutes later everyone and their mother was trying to get a picture with ATT. This all started after one of my best friends here, Melissa, was brave enough to be the first to ask his Excellency for a picture! Because I get really nervous around famous people (the reason I was never able to get an autograph from Tim Tebow even though I saw him almost everyday on the University of Florida campus!), I decided to stay away from the crowd. I reallllllyyyy wanted a picture with ATT, especially after Melissa was able to do it, but I couldn't bring myself out of my state of nervousness long enough to ask for one. Lucky for me ATT asked me for one instead! Well sort of... Amadou Toumani Toure, the President of Mali, saw me standing near him and waved me over to come and get in a picture with him and some other people! How many of you can say a President waved them into a picture??
So that's probably the most exciting thing that has happened to me in Mali and probably the most exciting thing that will ever happen to me while I'm here. Besides that my life has been slow and uneventful, as usual. One thing that has severely disappointed me is that my house is still not done yet. It is completely built and pretty much ready to be used, except that it has no doors and windows. Because Peace Corps promised to pay for and deliver the doors and windows, there is nothing my homologue or I can do except for wait. To pass the time my homologue dug out and bordered a garden plot for me within my enclosed yard and he also put up my hammock. For the past couple of days I have been going to my new house in the afternoons to hangout by myself. I figure that since my house is basically done, why shouldn't I make use of it? It is super breezy and shaded over there, so I really enjoy laying in my hammock with a good book for a couple hours. Someone else has noticed how comfortable it is at my new house and has decided to hangout there in the afternoons as well, a big fat pig! I find this stupid pig right under my hammock every time I enter my yard! Luckily it listens to me when I yell GET OUT! because I have no desire to spend the afternoons with him. My homologue tells me we will be eating him for Easter, so I guess I will only be having this unwanted house guest for a short while longer...
Today was a nice day because after hanging out with my homologue and some of his friends, my homologue and I explored the hill behind my new house. This is going to sound dumb, but I had no idea that there was even a hill there! My excuse is that it is sort of hidden by tall trees, but I guess I never really looked close enough. Anyway it is basically awesome up there. You can see all of my village and all of the fields, hills and plateaus past it. This hill behind my new house is actually a plateau as well. As we climbed up, my homologue pointed out all of these different fruits I had never seen before in my life. Most of them tasted gross, but it was really cool to discover new things! The top of the plateau was really cool looking. There were all of these boulders everywhere, and it was fairly barren which was a cool contrast to all of the trees and shrubs that populate the sides of the plateau. The landscape of my village is so diverse and beautiful, I really love it here and can't wait to go exploring some more!
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
Chet Chet
Written March 27, 2011
So I'm just gonna lay down a few random stories from the past few days.
Adult Learning:
This past Thursday I had my first Adult English Class. It was interesting... Out of a projected 17 participants only 6 showed up. I wasn't too disappointed because that Thursday was the first day of a school vacation so a lot of people had left the village. My class of 6 was however relatively high-profile! I had the 2nd in charge under the Mayor, the 3rd in charge, The President of the APE (basically the PTO/PTA), The Chief of the Village (well the administrative chief. My village has 2 chiefs, one a super old guy that has Chiefdom in his lineage and the other a young Gov't/village appointed Chief. The young one is the one that does all the administrative stuff for the village, the old one is kind of just there for show), and 2 women. Once the vacation is over I will also have the Mayor and the Director of the Secondary School as well as some teachers in my class. The first lesson we did was on basic greetings like How are you, I'm fine and you? etc. We spent almost 2 hours going over about a half a page of material. It is going to be very difficult teaching these people conversational English. The hardest to teach are the women because they are too shy to speak in front of the men, and thus won't repeat after me which is crucial for them to get the pronunciation right. It was actually very annoying when the women wouldn't participate. The Chief of the Village tried to explain that women are different from men and they are too shy to speak in front of groups. To that I was like "Um no... I am a woman and I am speaking in front of you just fine. If I can do it, they can do it." That didn't go very far. In the end I decided to give up on trying to get the women to speak because I can't make someone do something they don't want to do.
Hot New Shoe Fad:
So remember the Jellies I wrote about in older posts? Well forget about em! When it comes to Malian footwear, Jellies are the shoes of yesterday. Today everyone is wearing a bright new neon pair of Abibis! These are just plain hard plastic flip flops that come in a variety of neon colors: hot pink, lime green, bright blue, etc. Men are the ones who have really taken on this fad, and surprisingly the most popular color is hot pink! Dudes will cuff their jeans so you can see their bright new Abibis. One of my PCV friends recently bought a pair so he could be up on the fad, and he has informed me that they are more expensive than your regular pair of flip flops (1000 cfa, about $2, instead of 500-750 cfa, around $1) and that they are not even comfortable. I have no idea where this fad came from, it seems as if it hopped out of nowhere. I'm considering buying a lime green pair myself.
New House:
Well my new house is practically finished! The wall is halfway done and I am only waiting for Peace Corps to deliver the windows and doors! I am beyond excited to move into it! I have a huge hangar that I can't wait to sleep under and even a small area where I'm gonna plant a garden. This small area was something I had to fight for though! My homologue was gonna try and build me this little tiny wall that really only gave me the space under the hangar as my enclosed front yard. Totally not cool. The house is already tiny and I really didn't think it was fair for him to give me a small yard too especially since I have spent nearly 8 months now waiting for a house that was supposed to be finished in 3 months at the latest. To get a more spacious yard I basically had to throw a hissy fit. My homologue had already laid the stone foundation for the tiny wall he wanted when I walked upon the building site. He asked me if it looked nice, and that's when I laid down the law. I told him it was small and then tried the whole pouty face- I'm really sad routine. He was like 'fine then where do yo want it?' I showed him a spot about a meter away from where the stones were already laid and he started to laugh. He said there was no way the 500 bricks they already made would be enough to fit what I wanted. To that I was like 'Can't you just make more?'... a bunch of stuff was said in Senufo amongst my homologue and his friends who were helping him and it sounded like they were arguing, but then my homologue took out his measuring tape and said 'Where do you want it?'... So yea I got my way. While they were changing the foundation I was trying to hide the smug smile on my face. I even helped move a few of the stones to try and not seem like a total spoiled brat.
Bike Trip:
This past Friday my homologue and I took a little day trip to a nearby village. The village is only 6k from mine and the ride was super picturesque. I had no idea that there were so many hills behind my village and all kinds of different flora. This village was like the quaint version of my. Life seemed a little slower there and all the house were a lot closer together. There was even an old town and a new town. The old part of the village is gradually being abandoned for the new part which is a couple hundred meters away. The old part looks like an ancient city with runes. It was pretty cool. While I was in this village I also got to see a man give out Polio vaccinations. It was comparable to a mail man going door to door with letters in a big sac, but in this case they're weren't letters but instead little bottles of clear liquid. All the small children lined up in front of the man and stuck their tongues out ( I assume they'd done this before because the children got right up without being told what to do). All it took was 2 drops of the vaccination on each tongue and that was it. I really liked this village and I was excited to find out that they might be putting a PC volunteer there in the near future!
Noises:
So There are a ton of different and very distinct noises Malians make. My favorite noise has to be the ehh eh? It is used in instances of shocked surprise. For example Aminata is pregnant and we don't know who the father is, response: Ehh eh!? A very close second favorite of mine are all of the animal calls ,or rather noises to shoo animals away. I've been told that everyone makes the same noises for each particular animal, but I'm not sure if this is all over Mali or just the noises Senufo people make. For chickens it is a sort of Shhhh shhh which is sort of like shushing but more choppy. For donkeys it's Tru tru and for sheep it's chet chet. There is also a very loud kissing sound that is often used after making any one of those noises. When Malians make these noises they look and sound like they are having a Tourette's induced fit. It took me quite some time to get use to all of this.
So I'm just gonna lay down a few random stories from the past few days.
Adult Learning:
This past Thursday I had my first Adult English Class. It was interesting... Out of a projected 17 participants only 6 showed up. I wasn't too disappointed because that Thursday was the first day of a school vacation so a lot of people had left the village. My class of 6 was however relatively high-profile! I had the 2nd in charge under the Mayor, the 3rd in charge, The President of the APE (basically the PTO/PTA), The Chief of the Village (well the administrative chief. My village has 2 chiefs, one a super old guy that has Chiefdom in his lineage and the other a young Gov't/village appointed Chief. The young one is the one that does all the administrative stuff for the village, the old one is kind of just there for show), and 2 women. Once the vacation is over I will also have the Mayor and the Director of the Secondary School as well as some teachers in my class. The first lesson we did was on basic greetings like How are you, I'm fine and you? etc. We spent almost 2 hours going over about a half a page of material. It is going to be very difficult teaching these people conversational English. The hardest to teach are the women because they are too shy to speak in front of the men, and thus won't repeat after me which is crucial for them to get the pronunciation right. It was actually very annoying when the women wouldn't participate. The Chief of the Village tried to explain that women are different from men and they are too shy to speak in front of groups. To that I was like "Um no... I am a woman and I am speaking in front of you just fine. If I can do it, they can do it." That didn't go very far. In the end I decided to give up on trying to get the women to speak because I can't make someone do something they don't want to do.
Hot New Shoe Fad:
So remember the Jellies I wrote about in older posts? Well forget about em! When it comes to Malian footwear, Jellies are the shoes of yesterday. Today everyone is wearing a bright new neon pair of Abibis! These are just plain hard plastic flip flops that come in a variety of neon colors: hot pink, lime green, bright blue, etc. Men are the ones who have really taken on this fad, and surprisingly the most popular color is hot pink! Dudes will cuff their jeans so you can see their bright new Abibis. One of my PCV friends recently bought a pair so he could be up on the fad, and he has informed me that they are more expensive than your regular pair of flip flops (1000 cfa, about $2, instead of 500-750 cfa, around $1) and that they are not even comfortable. I have no idea where this fad came from, it seems as if it hopped out of nowhere. I'm considering buying a lime green pair myself.
New House:
Well my new house is practically finished! The wall is halfway done and I am only waiting for Peace Corps to deliver the windows and doors! I am beyond excited to move into it! I have a huge hangar that I can't wait to sleep under and even a small area where I'm gonna plant a garden. This small area was something I had to fight for though! My homologue was gonna try and build me this little tiny wall that really only gave me the space under the hangar as my enclosed front yard. Totally not cool. The house is already tiny and I really didn't think it was fair for him to give me a small yard too especially since I have spent nearly 8 months now waiting for a house that was supposed to be finished in 3 months at the latest. To get a more spacious yard I basically had to throw a hissy fit. My homologue had already laid the stone foundation for the tiny wall he wanted when I walked upon the building site. He asked me if it looked nice, and that's when I laid down the law. I told him it was small and then tried the whole pouty face- I'm really sad routine. He was like 'fine then where do yo want it?' I showed him a spot about a meter away from where the stones were already laid and he started to laugh. He said there was no way the 500 bricks they already made would be enough to fit what I wanted. To that I was like 'Can't you just make more?'... a bunch of stuff was said in Senufo amongst my homologue and his friends who were helping him and it sounded like they were arguing, but then my homologue took out his measuring tape and said 'Where do you want it?'... So yea I got my way. While they were changing the foundation I was trying to hide the smug smile on my face. I even helped move a few of the stones to try and not seem like a total spoiled brat.
Bike Trip:
This past Friday my homologue and I took a little day trip to a nearby village. The village is only 6k from mine and the ride was super picturesque. I had no idea that there were so many hills behind my village and all kinds of different flora. This village was like the quaint version of my. Life seemed a little slower there and all the house were a lot closer together. There was even an old town and a new town. The old part of the village is gradually being abandoned for the new part which is a couple hundred meters away. The old part looks like an ancient city with runes. It was pretty cool. While I was in this village I also got to see a man give out Polio vaccinations. It was comparable to a mail man going door to door with letters in a big sac, but in this case they're weren't letters but instead little bottles of clear liquid. All the small children lined up in front of the man and stuck their tongues out ( I assume they'd done this before because the children got right up without being told what to do). All it took was 2 drops of the vaccination on each tongue and that was it. I really liked this village and I was excited to find out that they might be putting a PC volunteer there in the near future!
Noises:
So There are a ton of different and very distinct noises Malians make. My favorite noise has to be the ehh eh? It is used in instances of shocked surprise. For example Aminata is pregnant and we don't know who the father is, response: Ehh eh!? A very close second favorite of mine are all of the animal calls ,or rather noises to shoo animals away. I've been told that everyone makes the same noises for each particular animal, but I'm not sure if this is all over Mali or just the noises Senufo people make. For chickens it is a sort of Shhhh shhh which is sort of like shushing but more choppy. For donkeys it's Tru tru and for sheep it's chet chet. There is also a very loud kissing sound that is often used after making any one of those noises. When Malians make these noises they look and sound like they are having a Tourette's induced fit. It took me quite some time to get use to all of this.
Camel!
Written March 23, 2011
So there was a camel in my village today... very strange. I live in the south of Mali where it is semi-tropical, so being a desert animal a camel isn't something you would expect to see here. I was biking home from drinking tea in the market with my homologue and his friends when I passed by the camel. I left my homologue and his friends after only round two of a typically three round tea session because I had already been sitting with them in the market for two hours; another round would've probably meant another round of me sitting bored out of my mind. So anyway I decided to say that I was tired and I that I was going to go home and rest as a way to get out of staying for the third round. This is basically something I do every Wednesday. Every Wednesday is market day, and every Wednesday my homologue likes to bring me to the market with him to have tea with his "Grein." A Grein is a group of friends who have grown up together, hang out together, dress alike for Fetes (special occasions or holidays), and drink tea together. My homologue's grein is made up of a very tall man that they have nicknamed Dangereux, a Fulani man, a guy that has teeth that are really spaced out, and a really sweet woman named Abi, although Abi isn't so much apart of the grein as much as she is the grein's mother (i.e. servant who does everything while all the men sit around doing nothing). Anyway... back to the camel. So I was leaving the grein when I saw in a distance a camel with a turbaned man on top. I got kind of scared at first and stopped my bike because I saw a black thing in the man's hands (the reins) and thought it was a gun. Why this was my first thought I have no idea. I guess I just got scared because I was seeing something out of the ordinary. Once I got over my fear I kept on biking towards the man on the camel and once I got to him I said I ni ce (basically hi in Bambara) and kept on going. I did notice that all the villagers surrounding the man and his camel did not look the least bit surprised. It was as if seeing a camel was no big deal to them. It was a huge deal to me! Once I got back to my house I thought 'Damn it! I should've asked for a ride!'
Things have been pretty good in village. I am spending a lot less time at home and way more time out and about with my homologue. We spend a ridiculous amount of time playing cards (uno), but it's all good because I'm getting to know more and more people. Yesterday was one of the few times I've ever truly been upset in village. It wasn't because of anything anyone had done to me in village, but rather a phone call from my APCD (my Peace Corps supervisor). He called to say that he was upset about something I did, it all turned out to be a misunderstanding, but it upset me nonetheless. I then went from being upset about that phone call to having to sit through a meeting that took literally all day. I believe I wrote in a previous blog post how much a HATE meetings here. I honestly don't understand why my homologue keeps bringing me to them when I've told him more than once that I don't like them because I understand nothing that is going on. This meeting just added to my frustrations of the day, but it was all alleviated when one of the guys who works at the mayor's office walked into the meeting wearing jeans that had two GIANT Nokia phones embroidered onto each pant leg! Funniest pants I've ever seen in my entire life, second only to a pair I saw a month or so ago that were embroidered with all different types of guns with "Welcome to the Hood" stitched on the bottom of the left pant leg. Oh Mali...
Yesterday may have been the first time I was really upset in village, but I wouldn't go as far as saying it was the only time I've ever been upset in Mali. I will go as far as to say that a few days ago I was the maddest I've ever been in Mali, and I mean I was furious. The way to tell when a Peace Corps volunteer is so incredibly mad is when they revert to yelling in English because they are so mad that they can only express themselves in their maternal tongue. I reached exactly that point. It all began when I was already somewhat annoyed because I had been waiting for a bus to take me back to village for an hour before I actually caught one. This bus was particularly crappy by Mali standards, but I decided to take it anyway because it was past 5pm and I needed to get to Helen's village before 6:30pm when the sun went down and it would be too late to bike my 8k back to my village. It normally only takes 45 minutes to get from Sikasso to Helen's village, but lately it has been taking an hour plus because the road is being repaired. Knowing this I figured I would still be able to make it in time, so I got on the bus and handed the Prentigi (the driver's apprentice; there are usually 3 of these guys on every bus and they are usually the ones who collect your money and give you a ticket) 5 mille (about $10). My ticket was only 1 mille ($2) so I asked the prentigi for my 4 mille in change ($8), to which he said it was coming. I didn't want to annoy the prentigi to make him do something like pretend to not notice my stop or even to make me get out way before I'm supposed to, so I patiently waited for him to bring me my change. Except he didn't. This prentigi got off the bus when we reached the Sikasso check point (about 25 minutes later) and never got back on. I immediately thought 'aw crap, did I seriously just lose 4 mille???' This may not sound like a big deal, but 4 mille is a HUGE amount of money to me, and I am currently trying to save up to go on a big vacation so it would do me no good to lose any amount of money. Anyway I sulked for a bit and then decided that I wasn't going to give up on my change. I then called another prentigi and told him that I was owed 4 mille. This prentigi called up to the front of the bus a couple of times to ask about my change, but I suspect he was just doing this to shut me up because no 4 mille came of this. I continued to sit patiently hoping that my change would come eventually, but also thinking that I wouldn't get off the bus without my 4 mille. The bus also kept making a bunch of stupid and very long stops, so by the time they reached the village before Helen's and decided to take a 5 minute prayer break it was already dark. This mad me even more annoyed because not only did I not have my change, but now I was going to have to spend the night in Helen's village. Once everyone got back on the bus after the prayer break I asked the prentigi again for my change and told him that I needed it now because I was getting off at the next village. He did the whole yelling up to the front thing again, and again nothing came of it. By the time the bus stopped in Helen's village I still didn't have my change. This was when I started to yell. I screamed out I WANT MY CHANGE (up to this point every verbal exchange had been in Bambara), to which several prentigis told me in French that I should just get off the bus and my change would be given to me. I replied : NO I CAN NOT GET OFF THE BUS, GIVE ME MY 4 MILLE (in Bambara) I NEED MY MONEY, I NEED 4 MILLE (in French). IF I GET OFF THE BUS YOU WILL JUST LEAVE (French). GIVE ME MY MONEY NOW!! A woman sitting in front of me turned to the person next to her and said "This girl can scream!" I continued to yell for them to give me my money and several other people on the bus yelled out "Just give her her money!" All the while all of the prentigis had gotten off of the bus and were all laughing hysterically at me. I was finally handed my 4 mille by a prentigi who said "is this how much you need?" with a big smile on his face. I snatched the money and climbed down the stairs relieved that I got my money but also very distraught by the whole situation. I was so distraught that the only thing that I could think of to say was THIS IS BAD (Bambara) over and over again and then THIEF (Bambara) while pointing to each of the prentigis. I also unfortunately tripped as the last Zon (Bambara for thief) was coming out of my mouth. This made them laugh even harder. A prentigi then came up to me and asked me in French, "Madame are you finished?" This was what set me off. I was beyond furious when I yelled SHUT THE *$&^ UP! at him. As you can see I could only express my true extreme anger in English and with a expletive (I almost never curse, so me cursing is another indication of how truly angry I was). The bus pulled away and I could still hear the laughter in the distance. I was fuming as I walked to Helen's house, but then some kids came up to me and offered to take my bags. By the time I made it to her house I was fairly calmed down because of the kindness of the villagers around me. I realized that those prentigis were jerks and that village Malians are nothing like them, and that I was just glad to be back in village.
So there was a camel in my village today... very strange. I live in the south of Mali where it is semi-tropical, so being a desert animal a camel isn't something you would expect to see here. I was biking home from drinking tea in the market with my homologue and his friends when I passed by the camel. I left my homologue and his friends after only round two of a typically three round tea session because I had already been sitting with them in the market for two hours; another round would've probably meant another round of me sitting bored out of my mind. So anyway I decided to say that I was tired and I that I was going to go home and rest as a way to get out of staying for the third round. This is basically something I do every Wednesday. Every Wednesday is market day, and every Wednesday my homologue likes to bring me to the market with him to have tea with his "Grein." A Grein is a group of friends who have grown up together, hang out together, dress alike for Fetes (special occasions or holidays), and drink tea together. My homologue's grein is made up of a very tall man that they have nicknamed Dangereux, a Fulani man, a guy that has teeth that are really spaced out, and a really sweet woman named Abi, although Abi isn't so much apart of the grein as much as she is the grein's mother (i.e. servant who does everything while all the men sit around doing nothing). Anyway... back to the camel. So I was leaving the grein when I saw in a distance a camel with a turbaned man on top. I got kind of scared at first and stopped my bike because I saw a black thing in the man's hands (the reins) and thought it was a gun. Why this was my first thought I have no idea. I guess I just got scared because I was seeing something out of the ordinary. Once I got over my fear I kept on biking towards the man on the camel and once I got to him I said I ni ce (basically hi in Bambara) and kept on going. I did notice that all the villagers surrounding the man and his camel did not look the least bit surprised. It was as if seeing a camel was no big deal to them. It was a huge deal to me! Once I got back to my house I thought 'Damn it! I should've asked for a ride!'
Things have been pretty good in village. I am spending a lot less time at home and way more time out and about with my homologue. We spend a ridiculous amount of time playing cards (uno), but it's all good because I'm getting to know more and more people. Yesterday was one of the few times I've ever truly been upset in village. It wasn't because of anything anyone had done to me in village, but rather a phone call from my APCD (my Peace Corps supervisor). He called to say that he was upset about something I did, it all turned out to be a misunderstanding, but it upset me nonetheless. I then went from being upset about that phone call to having to sit through a meeting that took literally all day. I believe I wrote in a previous blog post how much a HATE meetings here. I honestly don't understand why my homologue keeps bringing me to them when I've told him more than once that I don't like them because I understand nothing that is going on. This meeting just added to my frustrations of the day, but it was all alleviated when one of the guys who works at the mayor's office walked into the meeting wearing jeans that had two GIANT Nokia phones embroidered onto each pant leg! Funniest pants I've ever seen in my entire life, second only to a pair I saw a month or so ago that were embroidered with all different types of guns with "Welcome to the Hood" stitched on the bottom of the left pant leg. Oh Mali...
Yesterday may have been the first time I was really upset in village, but I wouldn't go as far as saying it was the only time I've ever been upset in Mali. I will go as far as to say that a few days ago I was the maddest I've ever been in Mali, and I mean I was furious. The way to tell when a Peace Corps volunteer is so incredibly mad is when they revert to yelling in English because they are so mad that they can only express themselves in their maternal tongue. I reached exactly that point. It all began when I was already somewhat annoyed because I had been waiting for a bus to take me back to village for an hour before I actually caught one. This bus was particularly crappy by Mali standards, but I decided to take it anyway because it was past 5pm and I needed to get to Helen's village before 6:30pm when the sun went down and it would be too late to bike my 8k back to my village. It normally only takes 45 minutes to get from Sikasso to Helen's village, but lately it has been taking an hour plus because the road is being repaired. Knowing this I figured I would still be able to make it in time, so I got on the bus and handed the Prentigi (the driver's apprentice; there are usually 3 of these guys on every bus and they are usually the ones who collect your money and give you a ticket) 5 mille (about $10). My ticket was only 1 mille ($2) so I asked the prentigi for my 4 mille in change ($8), to which he said it was coming. I didn't want to annoy the prentigi to make him do something like pretend to not notice my stop or even to make me get out way before I'm supposed to, so I patiently waited for him to bring me my change. Except he didn't. This prentigi got off the bus when we reached the Sikasso check point (about 25 minutes later) and never got back on. I immediately thought 'aw crap, did I seriously just lose 4 mille???' This may not sound like a big deal, but 4 mille is a HUGE amount of money to me, and I am currently trying to save up to go on a big vacation so it would do me no good to lose any amount of money. Anyway I sulked for a bit and then decided that I wasn't going to give up on my change. I then called another prentigi and told him that I was owed 4 mille. This prentigi called up to the front of the bus a couple of times to ask about my change, but I suspect he was just doing this to shut me up because no 4 mille came of this. I continued to sit patiently hoping that my change would come eventually, but also thinking that I wouldn't get off the bus without my 4 mille. The bus also kept making a bunch of stupid and very long stops, so by the time they reached the village before Helen's and decided to take a 5 minute prayer break it was already dark. This mad me even more annoyed because not only did I not have my change, but now I was going to have to spend the night in Helen's village. Once everyone got back on the bus after the prayer break I asked the prentigi again for my change and told him that I needed it now because I was getting off at the next village. He did the whole yelling up to the front thing again, and again nothing came of it. By the time the bus stopped in Helen's village I still didn't have my change. This was when I started to yell. I screamed out I WANT MY CHANGE (up to this point every verbal exchange had been in Bambara), to which several prentigis told me in French that I should just get off the bus and my change would be given to me. I replied : NO I CAN NOT GET OFF THE BUS, GIVE ME MY 4 MILLE (in Bambara) I NEED MY MONEY, I NEED 4 MILLE (in French). IF I GET OFF THE BUS YOU WILL JUST LEAVE (French). GIVE ME MY MONEY NOW!! A woman sitting in front of me turned to the person next to her and said "This girl can scream!" I continued to yell for them to give me my money and several other people on the bus yelled out "Just give her her money!" All the while all of the prentigis had gotten off of the bus and were all laughing hysterically at me. I was finally handed my 4 mille by a prentigi who said "is this how much you need?" with a big smile on his face. I snatched the money and climbed down the stairs relieved that I got my money but also very distraught by the whole situation. I was so distraught that the only thing that I could think of to say was THIS IS BAD (Bambara) over and over again and then THIEF (Bambara) while pointing to each of the prentigis. I also unfortunately tripped as the last Zon (Bambara for thief) was coming out of my mouth. This made them laugh even harder. A prentigi then came up to me and asked me in French, "Madame are you finished?" This was what set me off. I was beyond furious when I yelled SHUT THE *$&^ UP! at him. As you can see I could only express my true extreme anger in English and with a expletive (I almost never curse, so me cursing is another indication of how truly angry I was). The bus pulled away and I could still hear the laughter in the distance. I was fuming as I walked to Helen's house, but then some kids came up to me and offered to take my bags. By the time I made it to her house I was fairly calmed down because of the kindness of the villagers around me. I realized that those prentigis were jerks and that village Malians are nothing like them, and that I was just glad to be back in village.
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Curse you Hot Priest
Written March 12, 2011
Hot Priest struck again. I was having such a good day, until I was walking into my concession after spending the entire day at the secondary school and it was his face that I saw. Ugh he is so annoying!!! Every time he is around he basically forces you to spend time with him. He makes it seem disrespectful if you even try to leave his presence. This time he came for a visit and brought a few guests with him, two women and a man. Turns out they were two nuns and a priest, all Anglican. Also turns out Hot Priest told them that I was also Anglican (same thing as Episcopal, the church my family attends back home) and that I have not been attending mass (Catholic mass and an Episcopal service are basically the same thing, so I very well could be attending mass here, but I have chosen not to because it is held in Bambara and French and I have no desire to spend 2 more hours of my life a week not understanding anything, also I don't like Hot Priest, so I really don't want to spend 2 hours with him either). Because Hot Priest let that info slip, I was given a 10 minute lecture about how I am Anglican and I can go to a Catholic Church, and that it is important to go to Church and that I shouldn't lose my faith. I can't stand lectures like this (My dad, my real dad back home, knows this already). I pretty much just sat there with a blank look on my face until it was all over, oh and I couldn't help but curse Hot Priest for bringing this upon me. He ruined such a great day!
So anyway today was so great because it was the first time I had my English teacher's meeting. My homologue came up with the idea for me to meet with the 3 English teachers of the secondary school so that we could exchange ideas and so I could give them tips on how to better run their classes. This is sort of a way that I can teach all of the students of my village without actually being there in class and teaching them. The secondary school desperately needs teacher training, so I feel as if I am doing my part. I however am not a trained teacher, so I make no claims to know everything, but I do feel as if I myself was given a very good education, so I am sort of trying to replicate the classroom learning that I experienced growing up. My homologue helped me set it up so that the 3 teachers and myself will meet together every Saturday morning for two hours. I have asked that they bring their lesson plans for the week to come with them to each meeting. Today they just had their plans for just one class period next week since we only just started this weekly meeting. The two hours were first spent discussing how time in class is normally spent and then how I think it should be spent. Then we went over the class period plans for the 9th, 8th and 7th grade English classes, which basically meant me correcting all of their example sentences that were full of grammatical errors and also me explaining the need to have everything that is said or written on the board in English translated in French, and Bambara or Senufo if possible. At the end of the two hours I asked the teachers if they thought the meeting was productive, and they happily agreed that it was. I think that these meetings are really going to be beneficial to the students of my village because now English isn't just going to be spoken at them, but now it is going to be translated, broken down and explained to them, all in the hopes of their comprehension... I'm sure your thinking 'that doesn't exactly sound fun, and you said your day was so great,' well you're right, that wasn't the fun part. The fun part was spending the entire day playing very competitive Uno.
A couple of days ago I thought the teachers of the secondary school and my homologue how to play Uno. They absolutely loved it! Uno is very similar to a card game that is very popular here called Cent Cinquante et Un (151), so Uno was very simple for them to understand and pick up very quickly. The teachers her are SUPER competitive! We started keeping a tally of how many times each person won a round of Uno to then see who was the overall champion. It was so much fun making them draw four or skipping them and having them genuinely get upset and then turn vengeful on you. Who knew a simple game like Uno could make someone bloodthirsty!
Oh and if you read my last blog post I assume you are wondering how my little test for the 7th, 8th and 9th graders went. Well, it went terribly. But that was expected. I expected that the students would pretty much all fail my tests because in all honesty they don't know English. This is especially sad because English is one of their core classes, like math or science. Each grade had their own 15 question test. I graded the tests on a 30 point scale. I gave a correct response 2 points (well sort of correct, for example if the spelling was off by a letter or two I still gave them the 2 points), a response that I could sort of understand and see what they were trying to say 1 point, and then a response that was completely wrong 0 points. The tests all started out with the question What is your name, and then either Where are you from or what is the name of your village? The other 13 questions were all translation questions: 6 words given in French that they should translate into English and then 5 words given in English that they should translate into French. These words were ridiculously easy too. For example two of the words from the 9th grade test were nothing and sugar. No one knew those words. There was a ridiculous amount of scores of 0, 1 and 2 amongst all three grades. I was, however, very easily able to find the top ten students (well 11 for the 8th grade because there was a 3 way tie of the score 21) for each grade to be the members of my advanced English class which will begin as soon as my house is done.
As for my house, all the remains now is building the fence and putting up the hangar, oh and installing the doors and windows. Peace Corps decided it was going to pay for my doors and windows. My supervisor ( my APCD) came to my village a few days ago, a sort of surprise visit, to tell me that the doors and windows were going to be paid for by Peace Corps! I was so happy to hear this because he had originally told me that Peace Corps was only going to provide me with 5 bags of cement, so him coming to my village and giving me this news was great! I have no idea where the doors or windows, or rather the money to buy the doors and windows was going to come from otherwise.
Oh and as for the adult English class, we set a date for our very first class, the 24th of this month! So far we have 21 people signed up and they are all very excited to begin learning!
Hot Priest struck again. I was having such a good day, until I was walking into my concession after spending the entire day at the secondary school and it was his face that I saw. Ugh he is so annoying!!! Every time he is around he basically forces you to spend time with him. He makes it seem disrespectful if you even try to leave his presence. This time he came for a visit and brought a few guests with him, two women and a man. Turns out they were two nuns and a priest, all Anglican. Also turns out Hot Priest told them that I was also Anglican (same thing as Episcopal, the church my family attends back home) and that I have not been attending mass (Catholic mass and an Episcopal service are basically the same thing, so I very well could be attending mass here, but I have chosen not to because it is held in Bambara and French and I have no desire to spend 2 more hours of my life a week not understanding anything, also I don't like Hot Priest, so I really don't want to spend 2 hours with him either). Because Hot Priest let that info slip, I was given a 10 minute lecture about how I am Anglican and I can go to a Catholic Church, and that it is important to go to Church and that I shouldn't lose my faith. I can't stand lectures like this (My dad, my real dad back home, knows this already). I pretty much just sat there with a blank look on my face until it was all over, oh and I couldn't help but curse Hot Priest for bringing this upon me. He ruined such a great day!
So anyway today was so great because it was the first time I had my English teacher's meeting. My homologue came up with the idea for me to meet with the 3 English teachers of the secondary school so that we could exchange ideas and so I could give them tips on how to better run their classes. This is sort of a way that I can teach all of the students of my village without actually being there in class and teaching them. The secondary school desperately needs teacher training, so I feel as if I am doing my part. I however am not a trained teacher, so I make no claims to know everything, but I do feel as if I myself was given a very good education, so I am sort of trying to replicate the classroom learning that I experienced growing up. My homologue helped me set it up so that the 3 teachers and myself will meet together every Saturday morning for two hours. I have asked that they bring their lesson plans for the week to come with them to each meeting. Today they just had their plans for just one class period next week since we only just started this weekly meeting. The two hours were first spent discussing how time in class is normally spent and then how I think it should be spent. Then we went over the class period plans for the 9th, 8th and 7th grade English classes, which basically meant me correcting all of their example sentences that were full of grammatical errors and also me explaining the need to have everything that is said or written on the board in English translated in French, and Bambara or Senufo if possible. At the end of the two hours I asked the teachers if they thought the meeting was productive, and they happily agreed that it was. I think that these meetings are really going to be beneficial to the students of my village because now English isn't just going to be spoken at them, but now it is going to be translated, broken down and explained to them, all in the hopes of their comprehension... I'm sure your thinking 'that doesn't exactly sound fun, and you said your day was so great,' well you're right, that wasn't the fun part. The fun part was spending the entire day playing very competitive Uno.
A couple of days ago I thought the teachers of the secondary school and my homologue how to play Uno. They absolutely loved it! Uno is very similar to a card game that is very popular here called Cent Cinquante et Un (151), so Uno was very simple for them to understand and pick up very quickly. The teachers her are SUPER competitive! We started keeping a tally of how many times each person won a round of Uno to then see who was the overall champion. It was so much fun making them draw four or skipping them and having them genuinely get upset and then turn vengeful on you. Who knew a simple game like Uno could make someone bloodthirsty!
Oh and if you read my last blog post I assume you are wondering how my little test for the 7th, 8th and 9th graders went. Well, it went terribly. But that was expected. I expected that the students would pretty much all fail my tests because in all honesty they don't know English. This is especially sad because English is one of their core classes, like math or science. Each grade had their own 15 question test. I graded the tests on a 30 point scale. I gave a correct response 2 points (well sort of correct, for example if the spelling was off by a letter or two I still gave them the 2 points), a response that I could sort of understand and see what they were trying to say 1 point, and then a response that was completely wrong 0 points. The tests all started out with the question What is your name, and then either Where are you from or what is the name of your village? The other 13 questions were all translation questions: 6 words given in French that they should translate into English and then 5 words given in English that they should translate into French. These words were ridiculously easy too. For example two of the words from the 9th grade test were nothing and sugar. No one knew those words. There was a ridiculous amount of scores of 0, 1 and 2 amongst all three grades. I was, however, very easily able to find the top ten students (well 11 for the 8th grade because there was a 3 way tie of the score 21) for each grade to be the members of my advanced English class which will begin as soon as my house is done.
As for my house, all the remains now is building the fence and putting up the hangar, oh and installing the doors and windows. Peace Corps decided it was going to pay for my doors and windows. My supervisor ( my APCD) came to my village a few days ago, a sort of surprise visit, to tell me that the doors and windows were going to be paid for by Peace Corps! I was so happy to hear this because he had originally told me that Peace Corps was only going to provide me with 5 bags of cement, so him coming to my village and giving me this news was great! I have no idea where the doors or windows, or rather the money to buy the doors and windows was going to come from otherwise.
Oh and as for the adult English class, we set a date for our very first class, the 24th of this month! So far we have 21 people signed up and they are all very excited to begin learning!
Ants in my Sallidaga
written March 2, 2011
There really are ants in my Salidaga and I have no idea why. First off I'm not sure if I've ever explained what a Salidaga even is, so let me go ahead and do that: A Salidaga is a sort of large plastic kettle that holds water that Malians bring into the bathroom with them to use instead of toilet paper. I however ONLY use my salidaga as a part of my hand washing station. I still have, to this day, NEVER had to go without toilet paper (knock-on-wood)! Okay, back to the ants. So yea, for some reason ants love to commit suicide in my salidaga. Everyday I find hundreds if not thousands of dead sugar ants floating in my salidaga, it's really very gross. The first time I discovered this I almost died. I was attempting to wash my hands when these large black clumps were poured over my hands. At first I thought they we clumps of dust, like cobwebs or something, but then upon closer look I realized they were tiny ants! Ridiculously disgusting! Anyway I'm now back in village after having been gone for about 2 weeks in SENEGAL!!! Amazing trip! but I will get to that later. When I first got back to village on Monday I was really really really annoyed. I came back expecting for my house to be entirely finished since on the day I left all that was left to be done was cement the floors, add the doors and windows, dig the hole for the negen, put on the tin roof and build the fence, all of which could be done in less than a week. Turns out only the roof was put on and the hole dug! I was so pissed. Now I won't be able to move into my house for at least another week if not more. I just want my privacy!! I want to be able to walk to my bathroom without having to greet anyone, I want to be able to chill in my house without hearing my homologue's TV, and I want to be able to do my chores without having everyone watch me. I honestly can't wait for my new house, and I'm going to bring it up everyday to try and annoy my homologue so that maybe the process will be expedited.
Today in village we had another meeting with this Malian education NGO that comes and kind of does a diagnostic of all your education problems. I'm not sure yet if they actually plan on doing something about the problems or if they are just here to point them out. Anyway, this is the fourth time they have held a meeting in my village. I've ...(If this was a live journal writing you would know that I was just called away by some dude, I have no idea who it was because it is dark outside, but he yelled out my name twice, once I got to my door and stepped outside we said the normal greetings and then he started to say something in Senufo to which I had to tell him that I didn't understand and he then translated and said that he came to greet me. Sooooo annoying!! If I had my own house this wouldn't happen... well actually it probably would, but on a more controlled basis because this dude really came to see my homologue and not me, but just also decided to call me outside too) where was I... oh yea, I've always hated attending meetings in village just because I never understand anything until it is translated in French for me and they are always really long and boring. I especially hate these meetings though. The people who work for this NGO, one woman in particular, are always very condescending towards me. I like to be a silent observer in meetings and not have all the attention placed on me, but on whatever everyone came to meet about. The people of this NGO always like to draw me to the center of attention by pointing out something dumb like me not understanding or something. One time the woman saw me writing in my journal (I was particularly bored that meeting and decided to pull out my journal and write) and she came and stood over my shoulder and said "So you're writing in English."
Me:Yes
Annoying NGO Lady: What are you writing about?
Me: My life, my experiences
Her: Why don't you write in French?
Me: English is my national language, it's what I speak so I write in that
Her: Is it because French is hard to write in?
Me: No. I write in English because that's what I speak.
Her: So you can write in French, you just don't want to.
Me:Yep.
So basically this woman just wanted to be nosy and read what I was writing, but can you see how condescending she was being? Another thing that made me really dislike this woman was that she took the one and only Youki, my favorite soda here (it's fruit cocktail flavor), and only drank half of it while I drank nothing because all that was left were cokes and I hate coke. I'm not saying it's a good reason to dislike someone, but it's a reason nonetheless, especially since the only thing that keeps me going through these meetings is knowing that I'm going to have a yummy lunch (i.e. something besides Toh) and boissons (soda) provided, and that particular day I felt like I was shafted. Today's meeting however was relatively okay. I was able to steer clear of the annoying lady, and was actually able to meet two really cool women from a village that's like 45 minutes from mine. There was this man from their village who was hitting on me hard-core (he was saying thing like I am sooo beautiful and charming and nice, and that he was going to come to my village everyday to chat with me), and the two women kept saying that he had no chance with me, and kept joking with him to help alleviate the awkwardness that he was creating. It was really funny because after I would tell him no for something, for example I told him I was only interested in American men, they would shout out DISQUALIFIED!! There was also a point where he found out how much I loved mangoes and one of the woman pointed out how his village has no mangoes and then burst out into laughter. It was really a fun afternoon with those women, and I hope to meet them again.
SENEGAL- So my vacation in Senegal was AWESOME! I loved every moment of it. Being in Dakar, the capitol, was basically like being in America. There were high rise apartments, city buses, and garbage trucks!!! There were also legit grocery stores, Aldos (the shoe store), and I even saw a Curves!!! (the exercise place for women). Not only is Dakar like a mini-America, it also has the beach!!! I hadn't seen the ocean in 8 months, and God did I miss it! We got to go to two Islands while in Dakar, Goree and Ngor. Goree was really cool because it use to be a slave hub, so it wa scool to see all of the historical things, and Ngor was cool because it is a beautiful Island right off of Dakar where Akon, or so we were told, has a house! We also got to eat some amazing food while in Dakar. They have an ice cream shop called N'ice Cream that is honestly comparable to if not better than Coldstone back in America! I had a flavor called Obama that was rich chocolate ice cream with hazelnut fudge mixed in and little crunchy chocolate pieces as well. SOOOO GOOD! We also had amazing Cape Verdian food that my friend Melissa, who is from Cape Verde, got us for free just because she could speak their language with the owner. I also had yummy pizza and Mexican food!! All in all it was a great trip! Oh and as I mentioned in the previous blog how I wasn't going to play softball, I stuck to that and didn't swing a single bat.
I'm really excited right now because tomorrow I am going to test all three grades of the Secondary school. My host dad, the director of the school, came up with this idea when I came to him and told him I was ready to begin teaching his students English. I already give informal lessons everyday when I go to have lunch with my host family, but now I want to give legit structured classes. However, I am aware that it would be impossible to teach all 300 something students, so I have decided that I want to give advanced classes to the top 10 students in each grade. I originally just went to my host dad to have him pick the 10 kids, but he felt like the village parents would accuse him and my homologue of just choosing kids that they wanted, and would accuse him of not being fair. So he came up with the idea for me to create a small test for all of the students and for me to correct them and then select the 10 highest scorers, and for those to be the members of my advanced English class. I haven't quite decided what I am going to put on the tests yet, but I'm thinking of just having them translate a bunch of vocabulary words from French/Bambara to English and vice versa. I'm going to continue having the informal classes everyday at lunch for the other students, but I am really excited to start up this Advanced class. I am also going to start, sometime very soon, a Adult English class. I am going to teach them conversational English one evening every week. The adults of my village are very excited for this to begin, especially my homologue, and so am I.
There really are ants in my Salidaga and I have no idea why. First off I'm not sure if I've ever explained what a Salidaga even is, so let me go ahead and do that: A Salidaga is a sort of large plastic kettle that holds water that Malians bring into the bathroom with them to use instead of toilet paper. I however ONLY use my salidaga as a part of my hand washing station. I still have, to this day, NEVER had to go without toilet paper (knock-on-wood)! Okay, back to the ants. So yea, for some reason ants love to commit suicide in my salidaga. Everyday I find hundreds if not thousands of dead sugar ants floating in my salidaga, it's really very gross. The first time I discovered this I almost died. I was attempting to wash my hands when these large black clumps were poured over my hands. At first I thought they we clumps of dust, like cobwebs or something, but then upon closer look I realized they were tiny ants! Ridiculously disgusting! Anyway I'm now back in village after having been gone for about 2 weeks in SENEGAL!!! Amazing trip! but I will get to that later. When I first got back to village on Monday I was really really really annoyed. I came back expecting for my house to be entirely finished since on the day I left all that was left to be done was cement the floors, add the doors and windows, dig the hole for the negen, put on the tin roof and build the fence, all of which could be done in less than a week. Turns out only the roof was put on and the hole dug! I was so pissed. Now I won't be able to move into my house for at least another week if not more. I just want my privacy!! I want to be able to walk to my bathroom without having to greet anyone, I want to be able to chill in my house without hearing my homologue's TV, and I want to be able to do my chores without having everyone watch me. I honestly can't wait for my new house, and I'm going to bring it up everyday to try and annoy my homologue so that maybe the process will be expedited.
Today in village we had another meeting with this Malian education NGO that comes and kind of does a diagnostic of all your education problems. I'm not sure yet if they actually plan on doing something about the problems or if they are just here to point them out. Anyway, this is the fourth time they have held a meeting in my village. I've ...(If this was a live journal writing you would know that I was just called away by some dude, I have no idea who it was because it is dark outside, but he yelled out my name twice, once I got to my door and stepped outside we said the normal greetings and then he started to say something in Senufo to which I had to tell him that I didn't understand and he then translated and said that he came to greet me. Sooooo annoying!! If I had my own house this wouldn't happen... well actually it probably would, but on a more controlled basis because this dude really came to see my homologue and not me, but just also decided to call me outside too) where was I... oh yea, I've always hated attending meetings in village just because I never understand anything until it is translated in French for me and they are always really long and boring. I especially hate these meetings though. The people who work for this NGO, one woman in particular, are always very condescending towards me. I like to be a silent observer in meetings and not have all the attention placed on me, but on whatever everyone came to meet about. The people of this NGO always like to draw me to the center of attention by pointing out something dumb like me not understanding or something. One time the woman saw me writing in my journal (I was particularly bored that meeting and decided to pull out my journal and write) and she came and stood over my shoulder and said "So you're writing in English."
Me:Yes
Annoying NGO Lady: What are you writing about?
Me: My life, my experiences
Her: Why don't you write in French?
Me: English is my national language, it's what I speak so I write in that
Her: Is it because French is hard to write in?
Me: No. I write in English because that's what I speak.
Her: So you can write in French, you just don't want to.
Me:Yep.
So basically this woman just wanted to be nosy and read what I was writing, but can you see how condescending she was being? Another thing that made me really dislike this woman was that she took the one and only Youki, my favorite soda here (it's fruit cocktail flavor), and only drank half of it while I drank nothing because all that was left were cokes and I hate coke. I'm not saying it's a good reason to dislike someone, but it's a reason nonetheless, especially since the only thing that keeps me going through these meetings is knowing that I'm going to have a yummy lunch (i.e. something besides Toh) and boissons (soda) provided, and that particular day I felt like I was shafted. Today's meeting however was relatively okay. I was able to steer clear of the annoying lady, and was actually able to meet two really cool women from a village that's like 45 minutes from mine. There was this man from their village who was hitting on me hard-core (he was saying thing like I am sooo beautiful and charming and nice, and that he was going to come to my village everyday to chat with me), and the two women kept saying that he had no chance with me, and kept joking with him to help alleviate the awkwardness that he was creating. It was really funny because after I would tell him no for something, for example I told him I was only interested in American men, they would shout out DISQUALIFIED!! There was also a point where he found out how much I loved mangoes and one of the woman pointed out how his village has no mangoes and then burst out into laughter. It was really a fun afternoon with those women, and I hope to meet them again.
SENEGAL- So my vacation in Senegal was AWESOME! I loved every moment of it. Being in Dakar, the capitol, was basically like being in America. There were high rise apartments, city buses, and garbage trucks!!! There were also legit grocery stores, Aldos (the shoe store), and I even saw a Curves!!! (the exercise place for women). Not only is Dakar like a mini-America, it also has the beach!!! I hadn't seen the ocean in 8 months, and God did I miss it! We got to go to two Islands while in Dakar, Goree and Ngor. Goree was really cool because it use to be a slave hub, so it wa scool to see all of the historical things, and Ngor was cool because it is a beautiful Island right off of Dakar where Akon, or so we were told, has a house! We also got to eat some amazing food while in Dakar. They have an ice cream shop called N'ice Cream that is honestly comparable to if not better than Coldstone back in America! I had a flavor called Obama that was rich chocolate ice cream with hazelnut fudge mixed in and little crunchy chocolate pieces as well. SOOOO GOOD! We also had amazing Cape Verdian food that my friend Melissa, who is from Cape Verde, got us for free just because she could speak their language with the owner. I also had yummy pizza and Mexican food!! All in all it was a great trip! Oh and as I mentioned in the previous blog how I wasn't going to play softball, I stuck to that and didn't swing a single bat.
I'm really excited right now because tomorrow I am going to test all three grades of the Secondary school. My host dad, the director of the school, came up with this idea when I came to him and told him I was ready to begin teaching his students English. I already give informal lessons everyday when I go to have lunch with my host family, but now I want to give legit structured classes. However, I am aware that it would be impossible to teach all 300 something students, so I have decided that I want to give advanced classes to the top 10 students in each grade. I originally just went to my host dad to have him pick the 10 kids, but he felt like the village parents would accuse him and my homologue of just choosing kids that they wanted, and would accuse him of not being fair. So he came up with the idea for me to create a small test for all of the students and for me to correct them and then select the 10 highest scorers, and for those to be the members of my advanced English class. I haven't quite decided what I am going to put on the tests yet, but I'm thinking of just having them translate a bunch of vocabulary words from French/Bambara to English and vice versa. I'm going to continue having the informal classes everyday at lunch for the other students, but I am really excited to start up this Advanced class. I am also going to start, sometime very soon, a Adult English class. I am going to teach them conversational English one evening every week. The adults of my village are very excited for this to begin, especially my homologue, and so am I.
Sunday, February 13, 2011
It's impossible to be a germophobe in Mali
written February 11, 2011
Today I was handed an unopened Fanta that had stuff floating in it. I drank it. All of it. This is how far I have come. If you can believe it I once use to be a bit of a germophobe and I had to give that up real quick once I arrived in Mali. Back in the States my opinion of people would often be based on how sanitary they were. For example my freshman year of college I was taking a French class and there was this really cool girl who sat next to me. We had some pretty interesting conversations, and I was pretty sure a friendship was developing. Well, one day I was in the bathroom washing my hands after doing my business when I heard a toilet flush and then saw my friend come out of the stall. She waved hi to me and then walked right out of the bathroom. Just walked right out! I was floored, and disgusted. Who doesn't wash their hands with soap and water after using the bathroom?? From that moment on I knew we couldn't be friends, and I'm pretty sure I never spoke to her again. Anyway now that I am living in Mali I can't afford to judge people like that. I would literally have no friends since very few people in my village wash their hands with soap and water.
I am constantly dirty in this country. There is red dust everywhere now that the rains have stopped and we've entered dry season. Every day the water I pour over myself during my bucket bath runs red from all the dirt caked on my body. It's pretty gross. My clothes always have dirt stains on them, and I guess I've just gotten use to it. I actually had an issue with this in my village recently. Every day I walk around with my green backpack, so inevitably it got pretty dirty from all the clouds of dust I have to walk through on a daily basis. The light grey patches on it were basically red. I got a lot of flack for this in village. Everyone would stare at my bag and would then whisper some stuff in Senufo while still looking at the bag. I'm sure they were talking about how dirty it was. I could've cared less about what they thought because there was no way I was gonna spend like an hour scrubbing that bag when it would only take a day for it to be filthy again. I guess the diapproval of my dirty backpack reached its boiling point because the other day my homologue came to my door and told me that he told his wife that she should wash my bag the next day and that first thing when I woke I should hand it over to her. I don't know why, but at that moment I was incredibley embarassed. My bag had never embarassed me before, but I guess it was the fact that everyone thought I was incapable of cleaning it that got to me. I tried to say no like a million times and I tried to explain that I could do it, to which my homologue said no that he already explained to his wife that she had to do it and that it was okay because I probably just wasn't use to washing things like that (I wanted to be like "Um I'm not use to washing anything because we have washing machines in America and as you can see my clothes are always clean, when I begin my day anyway, so I think I have the whole washing by hand thing figured out and I'm sure I can figure out how to clean a bag, I just haven't done it yet... of course I didn't say all that though). I eventually just gave in, and the next morning I handed my bag over. When she returned it at the end of the day man it was clean!!
So since my last blog quite a bit has changed when it comes to the plans for my new house. A few weeks ago my homologue walked me out past the mango trees to this open space and explained to me that the house I thought I would be moving into wasn't the best option. He explained that the house was owned by the Catholic Church in my village and that there is a possibility that they might want to reclaim it sometime in the future. He told me that he believed it was best that they just build an entirely new house for me, and that it could be a house that the village could continue to use for guests, like other Peace Corps volunteers, in the future after I'm long and gone. I told him that that was definitely a better option, but that I wanted to move into my house sisan sisan (bambara for right now). He told me that it only takes a few days to build a house, and that I would be able to move into it very soon. I told him that that was all good and well, but where would the money come from? Peace Corps was only willing to donate 5 bags of cement to my cause since they already dumped a bunch of money into the unacceptable house I am currently living in. My homologue told me that there had been a meeting the day before with the APE and the CGS (APE= the Malian equivalent of the PTO and the CGS= the school board) and they agreed to pay for everything. I was super happy to hear this because the open space where we were standing would be my new yard, and there was a water spicket just a few steps away! (with the Catholic house I would've had to walk to a well and draw my water, which would suck because even my unacceptable house has a water spicket and I've gotten very spoiled by it). Also I have several bars of reseau where my new house will be!!! (Reseau is French for cell phone service) No more walking around searching for bars of service for me!! Anyway that all happened about a month ago, so it didn't quite happen in just a few days like my homologue said it would. Two weeks ago all of the 7th and 8th grade students in my village came to move the 2000 bricks my homologue made to the open space, and about a week after that the students moved rocks that would be used for the foundation. It was really a sight to see! The Director of the Secondary School, my host dad, just ordered all of the kids to come do the manual labor as if it were classwork. I felt kind of bad that the kids had to do all of this for me under the hot sun, but I reallllllyyyy want my new house. Over the past few days some of the men in my village have been building my house, and they pretty much finished the construction of the house today. All that is left is putting on the tin roof and putting in the windows and the door, all of which can be done in less than a day. Also they have to build a wall and put up a gwa (basically a hangar, or a shaded awning type thing). The house is super small, but I guess I can't really complain though because at least now I will have privacy. Unfotunately everything won't be finished before I leave for Senegal on the 16th, but oh well. I'm hoping it will be done by the time I come back.
So yea, I'm going to Senegal!!! On the 16th a huge group of us Mali volunteers ( I think around 53 of us) will be getting on a 25-hour long bus ride to Dakar. I can't wait!! We're all going to Senegal for WAIST ( I think this stands for West African Invitational Softball Tournament). Basically it will be 3 days of Softball that I will not be participating in (I know, you're not surprised at all since I have never been much of a sports player). I'm probably going to explore Dakar and relax on the beach! After the tournament my friends an I plan on exploring other parts of Senegal for 3 days and then we plan on going to The Gambia (a tiny country right in the middle of Senegal)for another 3 days. This is gonna be a much needed vacation, and I can't wait to see all of my friends that I haven't seen since New Years!!
Today I was handed an unopened Fanta that had stuff floating in it. I drank it. All of it. This is how far I have come. If you can believe it I once use to be a bit of a germophobe and I had to give that up real quick once I arrived in Mali. Back in the States my opinion of people would often be based on how sanitary they were. For example my freshman year of college I was taking a French class and there was this really cool girl who sat next to me. We had some pretty interesting conversations, and I was pretty sure a friendship was developing. Well, one day I was in the bathroom washing my hands after doing my business when I heard a toilet flush and then saw my friend come out of the stall. She waved hi to me and then walked right out of the bathroom. Just walked right out! I was floored, and disgusted. Who doesn't wash their hands with soap and water after using the bathroom?? From that moment on I knew we couldn't be friends, and I'm pretty sure I never spoke to her again. Anyway now that I am living in Mali I can't afford to judge people like that. I would literally have no friends since very few people in my village wash their hands with soap and water.
I am constantly dirty in this country. There is red dust everywhere now that the rains have stopped and we've entered dry season. Every day the water I pour over myself during my bucket bath runs red from all the dirt caked on my body. It's pretty gross. My clothes always have dirt stains on them, and I guess I've just gotten use to it. I actually had an issue with this in my village recently. Every day I walk around with my green backpack, so inevitably it got pretty dirty from all the clouds of dust I have to walk through on a daily basis. The light grey patches on it were basically red. I got a lot of flack for this in village. Everyone would stare at my bag and would then whisper some stuff in Senufo while still looking at the bag. I'm sure they were talking about how dirty it was. I could've cared less about what they thought because there was no way I was gonna spend like an hour scrubbing that bag when it would only take a day for it to be filthy again. I guess the diapproval of my dirty backpack reached its boiling point because the other day my homologue came to my door and told me that he told his wife that she should wash my bag the next day and that first thing when I woke I should hand it over to her. I don't know why, but at that moment I was incredibley embarassed. My bag had never embarassed me before, but I guess it was the fact that everyone thought I was incapable of cleaning it that got to me. I tried to say no like a million times and I tried to explain that I could do it, to which my homologue said no that he already explained to his wife that she had to do it and that it was okay because I probably just wasn't use to washing things like that (I wanted to be like "Um I'm not use to washing anything because we have washing machines in America and as you can see my clothes are always clean, when I begin my day anyway, so I think I have the whole washing by hand thing figured out and I'm sure I can figure out how to clean a bag, I just haven't done it yet... of course I didn't say all that though). I eventually just gave in, and the next morning I handed my bag over. When she returned it at the end of the day man it was clean!!
So since my last blog quite a bit has changed when it comes to the plans for my new house. A few weeks ago my homologue walked me out past the mango trees to this open space and explained to me that the house I thought I would be moving into wasn't the best option. He explained that the house was owned by the Catholic Church in my village and that there is a possibility that they might want to reclaim it sometime in the future. He told me that he believed it was best that they just build an entirely new house for me, and that it could be a house that the village could continue to use for guests, like other Peace Corps volunteers, in the future after I'm long and gone. I told him that that was definitely a better option, but that I wanted to move into my house sisan sisan (bambara for right now). He told me that it only takes a few days to build a house, and that I would be able to move into it very soon. I told him that that was all good and well, but where would the money come from? Peace Corps was only willing to donate 5 bags of cement to my cause since they already dumped a bunch of money into the unacceptable house I am currently living in. My homologue told me that there had been a meeting the day before with the APE and the CGS (APE= the Malian equivalent of the PTO and the CGS= the school board) and they agreed to pay for everything. I was super happy to hear this because the open space where we were standing would be my new yard, and there was a water spicket just a few steps away! (with the Catholic house I would've had to walk to a well and draw my water, which would suck because even my unacceptable house has a water spicket and I've gotten very spoiled by it). Also I have several bars of reseau where my new house will be!!! (Reseau is French for cell phone service) No more walking around searching for bars of service for me!! Anyway that all happened about a month ago, so it didn't quite happen in just a few days like my homologue said it would. Two weeks ago all of the 7th and 8th grade students in my village came to move the 2000 bricks my homologue made to the open space, and about a week after that the students moved rocks that would be used for the foundation. It was really a sight to see! The Director of the Secondary School, my host dad, just ordered all of the kids to come do the manual labor as if it were classwork. I felt kind of bad that the kids had to do all of this for me under the hot sun, but I reallllllyyyy want my new house. Over the past few days some of the men in my village have been building my house, and they pretty much finished the construction of the house today. All that is left is putting on the tin roof and putting in the windows and the door, all of which can be done in less than a day. Also they have to build a wall and put up a gwa (basically a hangar, or a shaded awning type thing). The house is super small, but I guess I can't really complain though because at least now I will have privacy. Unfotunately everything won't be finished before I leave for Senegal on the 16th, but oh well. I'm hoping it will be done by the time I come back.
So yea, I'm going to Senegal!!! On the 16th a huge group of us Mali volunteers ( I think around 53 of us) will be getting on a 25-hour long bus ride to Dakar. I can't wait!! We're all going to Senegal for WAIST ( I think this stands for West African Invitational Softball Tournament). Basically it will be 3 days of Softball that I will not be participating in (I know, you're not surprised at all since I have never been much of a sports player). I'm probably going to explore Dakar and relax on the beach! After the tournament my friends an I plan on exploring other parts of Senegal for 3 days and then we plan on going to The Gambia (a tiny country right in the middle of Senegal)for another 3 days. This is gonna be a much needed vacation, and I can't wait to see all of my friends that I haven't seen since New Years!!
Monday, January 17, 2011
Been a while...
written January 11, 2011
It has been an incredibley long time since I last blog, and for that I apologize. I was never in the mood to sit down and type. This past month was pretty crazy. The first two weeks of December were IST (In-service training) at Tubaniso. It was so awesome seeing everyone again after our 3-month in-village lock-down. I spent basically all of my time with Melissa and Meredith. We went out in Bamako so many times that I feel like I've got that city down-pack. After IST we spent a few nights at the Bamako Stage House which is basically this big, super nice house with a bunch of bunk beds for PCVs to use whenever we're in Bamako; a transit house. A few days before Christmas we made our way to Manantali. Manantali is the most beautiful place I have seen thus far in Mali. It is right on the Bafing River, and there are hippos and monkeys (although I saw neither, but have been told that they are usually there). Christmas was very chill. I basically forgot it was Christmas since we didn't really do anything special except for relax and hang with friends. For New Years we headed back to Bamako where we attended a house party hosted by some Lebanese dude. It was a lot of fun except for that fact that I managed to get hit by roman candles and I now have a disgusting burn on my left leg and a HUGE bruise on my right. After New Years we spent a few more days in Bamako, and then it was back to Sikasso.
I've now been in village for about 5 days and it hasn't been bad at all, well for the most part. Several people in village have really gotten on my nerves, but overall I'm glad to be back. Life was pretty hectic and very expensive in Bamako, so it's nice to be back in my slow-paced village life. The main thing that has occupied my time since being back is trying to get the ball rolling on the fixing up of my new house. Absolutely nothing has been done since the day I stepped foot in this village, and that is very disheartening. All that they have to do is build me a wall, dig a latrine, slab some cement on the ground, build me a hangar (shaded place), and place screens on the windows. It sounds like a lot, but it's really not. All of that could be done in less than a week, but for some reason my homologue is dragging his feet. I'm starting to get the feeling that he doesn't want me to move at all, and because of this he is one of the people that I mentioned earlier who are getting on my nerves. The other person who is really annoying me is my host dad. Yesterday I heard him mention my name in a conversation he was having in Senufo, so I looked over at him hoping he would clue me in on what he was talking about. He then told me in Bambara that I don't talk, and from there he switched to French and said the 2nd year volunteer who lives a few villages away from me talks a lot. He also said that not talking isn't a good way of intergrating. This really made me mad because 1. I feel pretty well integrated in my village, 2. I can't talk with them if they are speaking Senufo, which he was, so if he really wants me to join the conversation then maybe he should pick Bambara or French, 3. We had just had a long conversation about our vacations, so how much more does he want me to talk, and 4. The volunteer he mentioned has been here a lot longer than me so her language skills are better and I highly doubt he's ever had more than a 10 minute conversation with her which we actually have had on several occassions. My host-dad is the only person in village I don't like, and it sucks because he is my host-dad, but it's alright because he is almost always out so I rarely see him.
My days in village are usually very uneventful, but today was kind of crazy, or rather late afternoon was kind of crazy. Around 4 or so I got a surprise visit from Helen (she's 8k from me and I have to go through her village to get to mine). It was really great to see her because she is one of my favorite people in Peace Corps. Helen and I chatted it up a bit and then she left about an hour later. About 15 minutes after saying goodbye to Helen, a Peace Corps vehicle pulled up and PCMO (PC Med Officer) Michelle got out. She came to do my medical site visit where she looked around to see if my house was in good repair, to see what my water source was, and so on. She stayed for about 20 minutes and then left. About 30 minutes after her leaving another Peace Corps vehicle pulled up! I thought it was Michelle coming back because she forgot something, but turns out it was Mama, our regional coordinator. Turns out today Peace Corps was testing their Emergency Action Plan, and they had been trying to reach me all day, but because I only have phone service if I got out to this one spot, they were unable to reach me. So because of this Mama drove all the way out to my village to see if I was alright! That's pretty awesome, huh? The fact that he came all the way out here makes me feel very safe, and if there ever is an emergency I know I won;t be forgotten.
It has been an incredibley long time since I last blog, and for that I apologize. I was never in the mood to sit down and type. This past month was pretty crazy. The first two weeks of December were IST (In-service training) at Tubaniso. It was so awesome seeing everyone again after our 3-month in-village lock-down. I spent basically all of my time with Melissa and Meredith. We went out in Bamako so many times that I feel like I've got that city down-pack. After IST we spent a few nights at the Bamako Stage House which is basically this big, super nice house with a bunch of bunk beds for PCVs to use whenever we're in Bamako; a transit house. A few days before Christmas we made our way to Manantali. Manantali is the most beautiful place I have seen thus far in Mali. It is right on the Bafing River, and there are hippos and monkeys (although I saw neither, but have been told that they are usually there). Christmas was very chill. I basically forgot it was Christmas since we didn't really do anything special except for relax and hang with friends. For New Years we headed back to Bamako where we attended a house party hosted by some Lebanese dude. It was a lot of fun except for that fact that I managed to get hit by roman candles and I now have a disgusting burn on my left leg and a HUGE bruise on my right. After New Years we spent a few more days in Bamako, and then it was back to Sikasso.
I've now been in village for about 5 days and it hasn't been bad at all, well for the most part. Several people in village have really gotten on my nerves, but overall I'm glad to be back. Life was pretty hectic and very expensive in Bamako, so it's nice to be back in my slow-paced village life. The main thing that has occupied my time since being back is trying to get the ball rolling on the fixing up of my new house. Absolutely nothing has been done since the day I stepped foot in this village, and that is very disheartening. All that they have to do is build me a wall, dig a latrine, slab some cement on the ground, build me a hangar (shaded place), and place screens on the windows. It sounds like a lot, but it's really not. All of that could be done in less than a week, but for some reason my homologue is dragging his feet. I'm starting to get the feeling that he doesn't want me to move at all, and because of this he is one of the people that I mentioned earlier who are getting on my nerves. The other person who is really annoying me is my host dad. Yesterday I heard him mention my name in a conversation he was having in Senufo, so I looked over at him hoping he would clue me in on what he was talking about. He then told me in Bambara that I don't talk, and from there he switched to French and said the 2nd year volunteer who lives a few villages away from me talks a lot. He also said that not talking isn't a good way of intergrating. This really made me mad because 1. I feel pretty well integrated in my village, 2. I can't talk with them if they are speaking Senufo, which he was, so if he really wants me to join the conversation then maybe he should pick Bambara or French, 3. We had just had a long conversation about our vacations, so how much more does he want me to talk, and 4. The volunteer he mentioned has been here a lot longer than me so her language skills are better and I highly doubt he's ever had more than a 10 minute conversation with her which we actually have had on several occassions. My host-dad is the only person in village I don't like, and it sucks because he is my host-dad, but it's alright because he is almost always out so I rarely see him.
My days in village are usually very uneventful, but today was kind of crazy, or rather late afternoon was kind of crazy. Around 4 or so I got a surprise visit from Helen (she's 8k from me and I have to go through her village to get to mine). It was really great to see her because she is one of my favorite people in Peace Corps. Helen and I chatted it up a bit and then she left about an hour later. About 15 minutes after saying goodbye to Helen, a Peace Corps vehicle pulled up and PCMO (PC Med Officer) Michelle got out. She came to do my medical site visit where she looked around to see if my house was in good repair, to see what my water source was, and so on. She stayed for about 20 minutes and then left. About 30 minutes after her leaving another Peace Corps vehicle pulled up! I thought it was Michelle coming back because she forgot something, but turns out it was Mama, our regional coordinator. Turns out today Peace Corps was testing their Emergency Action Plan, and they had been trying to reach me all day, but because I only have phone service if I got out to this one spot, they were unable to reach me. So because of this Mama drove all the way out to my village to see if I was alright! That's pretty awesome, huh? The fact that he came all the way out here makes me feel very safe, and if there ever is an emergency I know I won;t be forgotten.
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