So I wrote this journal entry back in the first week of May, but thought it would shed some light on the process of doing my project. So, voila!
The past two weeks have been spent buying project supplies for our community garden. I went down to Bamako (yay cheeseburgers and air conditioning!) to buy the fencing because it's cheaper there. I went with my friend Eliza - she is also doing a garden project at her site. Once there, I got my project money from Peace Corps out of the bank (every walked around the capital of a developing country with $2000 in your pocket? yikes!) and met up with Samba, a guy from my village who has a second wife in Bamako. We went together to the Marche Dibida, a huge market that is basically chaos central. Samba talked to a couple people he knew and then told me that only bad fence was sold there. Soooo we took a cab out to Samba's neighborhood and met up with a friend of his who took us to a 'good' fence-seller. The following two hours were a horrific and headache-inducing blend of French, Fulfulde, and Bambara. I speak French, pretend to speak good Fulfulde, and only know how to greet, bargain, and give directions to a cab driver in Bambara (I have to know enough Bambara to get around because the language I speak at site, Fulfulde, is a minority language. Most of Mali speaks Bambara.) It was a mess. But eventually we bought the fence - yay! After, the fence salesman and Samba got in a car and told me to get in too. I ask where we're going in French, Fulfulde, and Bambara. No response. Now I trust Samba, so I wasn't too freaked out, but after an hour of driving I got a little concerned. Eventually we stop - the salesman had driven us out to his garden in a village outside of Bamako to teach Samba the basics of how to build the fence. Which was sweet, but it would have been nice if they had explained. After we got back, I was super stressed about the whole day so I went to eat a chicken sandwich at a lovely establishment called West African Fried Chicken (not kidding. It's a chain based in Ghana) followed by some soft serve ice cream at a machine located right beside an open sewer. While eating the ice cream on my walk back to the PC house (and ignoring the smell of raw sewage) it dawned on me: after months of feeling like I wasn't doing anything, I finally did something productive! Good day. :)
