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.