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!