Bisimila!

August 2, 2009

Wow, today was such a high-low day! I started off the day with a bad case of stomach cramps, but Pepto saved the day. What a great medicine. But THEN Eliza and I went to lunch with one of her professors from SIT. He is originally from Mali, but has worked in the US for a while. We ate at his brother's house in Bamako, which was nice by Western standards. It was made of stone, 4 stories tall, air-conditioned, no flies, super nice furniture, and a real toilet!! It was incredible. Lunch was delicious. We had fried rice, fish from the Niger, eggplant, onion, cabbage, and potatoes. For dessert there were mangoes - oh, so good! After the meal, he let us relax on the couches for a bit. He was so kind. It is rare to meet a Malian who understands the culture shock and adjustment, and he did perfectly.

On the way to lunch, he gave us a bit of a mini-tour of Bamako. The University is on one of the hills, and is called the Hill of Knowledge. ATT's (the President) house is directly across from it on another hill, the Hill of Power. Protests often happen at one of those two hills, which he said are traditionally in conflict with each other. Makes sense, n'est pas? I had a great conversation with him about women and power in West Africa, which he is co-writing a book on right now. After lunch, we saw part of an amiiri (village chief) inauguration. It was so interesting - they had a 21-gun salute, lots of dancing, and I think we may have ended up on Malian TV. We also met one of his friends, who taught at IU for a while! He knew was Noblesville was! It was so funny to meet someone that knew I was from (well, almost). What a small world moment.

I was completely overwhelmed by the hospitality shown to us by Eliza's professor, though. It is true what they say about Malians - that they are the most hospitable people in the world. By the end of the day he told us we were family. This sense of hospitality just doesn't exist in the US. Or perhaps more accurately, it exists, but it is very rare for it to be genuine. In Mali, though, it's the norm. Everyone is so warm and welcoming.

As for the low of the day - when we were driving back to my homestay village, we passed a boy who had just been hit by a car. He was maybe 10 years old, and completely unconscious, just lying on the road. We saw a man pull him up by his right arm, and there was absolutely no response. If he wasn't dead before, he certainly would have been soon because of how that man picked him up. So sad. But no one could have called an ambulance. It was too late. I know I will see death a lot more frequently here than in the States, as 20% of children die before age 18. But it is still hard to see.

Despite that though, when I got back home, it turned out that there was a wedding while I was gone! (Language barrier: 1 million points. Jenny: 0 points.) I got there just as the bride was being carried out the room, completely covered in black fabric, and then thrown into a car to be driven to wherever her "wedding night" is taking place. So funny to see--lots of shouting and dancing and running around! Weddings are a big deal here, so my entire extended family was in for the night. We had lot of fun talking and chatting after dinner.

Transition what what

July 31, 2009

I talked to some people from home today, and for whatever reason, their lifestyles just seemed so foreign to me. Things like going out on the weekend, grabbing a couple drinks with friends, living maybe a bit excessively in general - I just feel so far removed from that lifestyle. It's just so incredibly different from what I am experiencing day-to-day. And the weird thing is, I know that I would be living that same lifestyle if I was in the US. Or I would want to be living that lifestyle, at least. It seems like a part of the past to me. But it's a lot of my friends' present. The transition and culture shock I went through in the past month has been rough at times, but I can tell that transitioning back to life in the States is going to be so much harder.

There is just an overall change in what brings me joy. It's odd to think that in just one month in Mali, I'm questioning things that once made me happy. Something as simple as sharing a joke with my host family, or having a good discussion with my host brother in French, now makes my day. A good rain makes me smile for the rest of the day. I've always valued the simple things in life, but after living with the rural poor of Mali for a month, I feel that they have even more meaning.

A Day In The Life

Jam nyelli! That's good afternoon in Fulfulde, the language that I'm learning here. I've had a couple requests for the description of an average day, so I thought I would give y'all a brief description of what I do here most days. Tomorrow I go back to my village, and will be there for the next twelve days. Most of my days will be almost exactly like this, with the occassionally variation and French fry goodness surprise.

Around 4am, the call to prayer at the mosque across the street sounds. Now I sleep through it, and barely notice it even during the day. At 5am, the rooster starts crowing and the donkey in my family's concession starts hee-hawing. I had no idea donkeys could be so loud! The pigeons that live in the coop beside my room also wake up around this time and start dancing through the roof. I also sleep through all of this. Finally at 6:30am, my alarm goes off, and I get out of bed to give my bucket to my host mom to fill for my morning bucket bath. So I take my bucket to the nyegen (hole in the ground bathroom, like an outhouse but with no roof) and "shower." You can't greet anyone until after you bathe in the morning, so after I get dressed and everything, I walk around my concession and greet my family members individually, starting with my host dad. Then I eat some bread and cirre (rice cereal/porridge) and drink some powdered milk with chocolate added in (yummy!).

Around 7:30am, my friend Eliza comes by to pick me up for our walk to language class - it's a twenty minute walk, and one of my favorite parts of the day. They're kind of my rock. It's a nice time to just be quiet, but more often it's our chance to laugh and forget about whatever is stressing us at the moment. Eliza's going to be a really good friend of mine here - we are in the same sector, and both going to the Mopti region. She's from Ohio, went to OSU, and just finished her first year of grad school at SIT in Vermont. I'm glad we ended up in the same homestay village.

Anyway, I then have language class from 8am-12:30pm. Then we walk home for lunch, which is usually toh and fish sauce. So I eat some fruit, and my family brings me a soda, which is really nice of them. Afterwards, it's back to language and/or culture class from 2:30pm-6 or 6:30pm. Then we return home and I take another bucket bath - it's really hot here, so it's usually necessary! Then I play with my host sisters and brothers for a while, until the totally awesome French soap opera comes on TV at 7pm. It's the corniest, most ridiculous thing. Naturally, I'm totally addicted. Then I eat some rice and sauce for dinner with my host brother, who is one of the only ones who speaks French in my family. He's about 16 and really into soccer. By the time I finish thanking my three host mothers for dinner, it's about 8pm. I go read, study, or listen to some tunes for a while, and am usually asleep by 9pm at the latest. I know, I live such a wild life! But by 9pm I am out for the day. My family watches a DVD of Bob Marley in concert every night though after dinner, which is pretty sweet.

So that's basically my day here! Sorry if it was excessive detail, if you have any questions or want me to write about anything in particular let me know and I'll do my best when I return to the internet in 12 days. Photos are a no-go for right now, sadly, because I don't have a laptop and I can't use the PC comps to upload them. I'll figure something out though for the future. Miss y'all :)

Back at Tubaniso!

I just got back from my homestay village and am back at Tubaniso for a couple days! It is absolutely wonderful to be back here - eating yummy food, hanging out with people, no donkeys and roosters waking you up at 5 am...haha! First round of homestay...complete! I'm at Tubaniso for two more days, than back in village for another 12. So if you want to reach me via email and get a close-to-immediate response, then now is the time.

Below are two entries from when I was in village that let you know a little more about my life there. I will update a little more with some more blog-ish entries if I have time, but there are 66 of us and two computers for three days, so we'll see what happens.

The letters, package, and huge amount of emails from home have been great though! I love hearing stories from home, no matter how random they are. Know that you all are in my thoughts every single day. :)

"I'm not settlin, for anything less than everything"

July 19, 2009
After four days at homestay, I am feeling more and more like Mali is home. The routine helps, as does the little bit of language I've learned. We have language class eight hours a day - very intense! Some days we have environment training as well, and we have a practice garden at one of the other PCT's houses in our village. The garden is coming along very well for the moment. We made five raised beds to plant veggies in, and one pallpaniere (which I'm not spelling correctly, but it's like a nursery for our lettuce and cabbage). So that's exciting, hopefully it will work out and the chickens won't eat everything. We start our tree nursery on Tuesday, which I'm WAY excited about - that's what I'll be doing for the next two years! Yeah reforestation! :)

Communication is getting a bit better - my family is so funny. Every night, a guy comes over who speaks French. And every night, he says I should learn both Bambara and Fulfulde. "It's easy!" he says, but it's not at all. Relearning French, learning Fulfulde, and Bambara on top of that? Nope, too much. So I tell him that my brain is too small to learn both at the same time, and he dies laughing every time. It's like our nightly ritual - he checks to make sure that my brain hasn't grown, and then laughs his head off when I tell him it has not. Pretty funny.

My host sister, Sali, is pretty much the cutest kid ever though. She's probably a little less than a year old, and just learning how to walk. So everyday we walk around the concession together until she gets tired, and then we sit and I talk to her in English about my day. I've started singing her Sugarland songs too, which her mom is greatly amused by. Settlin is her absolute fave - she always starts giggling during the chorus, and it's adorable. I probably sing it at least ten times a day. We have a dance and everything to go with it. The kids here are so great, and we've been having fun coloring and looking at pictures together. I showed them a picture of the White House, and said "Barack Obama lives here" - and they love Barack Obama here - and they were floored. That huge house is Obama's? Crazy!! I couldn't communicate that every president lives there, but they understood the general concept. Language success!

Gift registries and dancing

July 16, 2009
Well, I moved in with my host family yesterday! I am officially a part of the Coulibaly family, and was named Sitan after my host mother. My host dad has at least three wives and many many children. He is a traditional healer, and it's really neat to observe his work. Women bring their sick babies to him, and he says a blessing over some herbs, and then gives them to the woman, who will make tea for her baby out of them, or bathe her baby in them. I really want to know what the herbs are. I think they are more for peace of mind and mental health than an actual medical solution, but any little bit helps here. People go to him instead of a medical center because he doesn't charge them if they can't afford it. I think he refers bad cases to the medical center though. Either way, he's a pretty cool guy.

I have my own room with a bed, screened-in window, screened-in door with a lock (and metal door on the outside - hot!), PC trunk, and...wait for it....electricity! My family lives right by the main road, so in addition to having light and a plug in my room, there is also the light from the street lamps in our concession (courtyard). It's very nice. My host family are incredibly nice and do a great job of taking care of me. Despite that, though, they speak Bambara, and I'm learning Fulfulde. And only one person, my host brother, speaks French. So it is a pretty extreme language barrier, which can be pretty isolating at times. I like to call it confusion immersion instead of language immersion. It really makes you realize how fundamental language is in our lives. How many things a day do I say just to say them? You don't realize that until you can't talk at all. But I go over to my friend Eliza's house a lot - her family speaks Fulfulde, so I get a chance to practice, and she lives right across the street.

Last night there was a huge dance on the village's soccer field. My host sister grabbed me after dinner and we ran down to the field. We had a great time dancing to what seemed like Malian rap music. They had certain groups of people stand up and perform this one dance - about 200 people were seated aruond them in a circle watching. About five girls in one line, then 5 guys across from them a little while away in another line. When the music started, they would dance across one by one and trade places. My host sister convinced me to dance once, and now everyone in the village knows my name and starts dancing when I walk by. It's pretty comical.

One more quick story - today at cross-culture training, we were discussing American and Malian practices of gift-giving. And Eliza, Emily, and I literally laughed until we cried - about the idea of gift registries! Try explaining a gift registry to someone from another country - and the third poorest country in the world at that. It still makes me laugh. Think about it - could Americans be any more lazy AND efficient at the same time? Lazy - the gift-giver has to do nothing, you can just order it online if you want to. You don't have to leave your couch. Efficient - the gift-receiver gets exactly what they need/want in an orderly fashion, and doesn't get more than one of the same gift. It's great, in the most ridiculous fashion. Maybe you had to be there. :)

We made it!

Hello all! I made it to Mali two days ago after goodness knows how many hours traveling...the highlight was that almost the entire group of 66 PCTs (Peace Corps Trainees - what I am right now) slept for eight hours on the floor of the Paris airport! It was pretty hilarious to see, I'm sure the French were appalled. We did see the Eiffel Tower from a distance though just as we were leaving, after we ate our last Ben & Jerry's ice cream for the next 27 months (I had cookie dough and phish food, if you were curious).

In Mali, we are at the PC training center, called Tubaniso. It is a beautiful place, and very green!! I have two fabulous roommates in my hut, and it is actually pretty cool in the evenings. Yesterday morning we woke up to a rainstorm so it was cool all day. So lovely! We have classes all day, every day - in technical aspects (that's environment for me), language, cross-cultural, and health. Today in my environment sector classes we learned how to conduct a Farmer Field School (FFS), where we would act as facilitators to a farmers group - it turns the farmers' fields into classrooms. Instead of the old top-down approach of development, the FFS acknowledges the knowledge that people already have and the skills they bring to the table. Hopefully I'll be able to implement a group like that in my village. We also learned about gathering seeds and creating plant nurseries.

Speaking of my village, I have a very very tentative site placement! I will potentially be in the Mopti region of Mali in a small village 20 km outside of a city. I will be working with a NGO worker in the areas of reforestation and agricultural ecotourism. It sounds really cool, so I hope that it works out! I would speak Fefeulde (I'm not sure if I'm spelling that right, sorry). Apparently it's a little harder to learn than Bambara, but the language teachers are great, so hopefully I won't have too much of a problem.

In other news, I saw a monkey today!! And I bought my first pagne (like a skirt) yesterday and love it, I plan on wearing it when I go to my host family on Wednesday. I will be there for a week, and am very excited to meet them and hopefully speak a little bit!

To answer some questions I've got via email:
- The time difference is 4 hours
- I am not sick (yet)
- I am not sunburned
- Only 2 mosquito bites! The bug zapper thing that my Uncle Ron gave me really works - they don't itch at all!

Hope you are all doing well, the emails and fbook posts from home have been great. I know I've only been here three days, but with all the things we've been doing, that feels like a long time! So thanks for all the support :)