Change is in the air

Well, things began to go terribly wrong in Mali, and I am writing now from Colorado Springs. Well, things went wrong for me, anyway. I went to our doctor with what I thought was a cold, which I still think was a cold, and was subsequently diagnosed with a condition that is incompatible with PC service. Well, the condition I was diagnosed with is incompatible with life, but luckily that was a bogus diagnosis. And I'd like to congratulate my brother, the newly minted Dr. Jones, for being the first to make the correct diagnosis, and for making sure that diagnosis was one (a) compatible with life in the short term and (b) completely curable.

So after the initial diagnosis, I had the opportunity to go down and spend a couple weeks in the new Regional Medical Office in South Africa, and that was fantastic, and I'll tell you about that later. And then I came straight home. Do not pass go, do not collect $200. It was a shock. A very unexpected shock, especially for a healthy 27-year old. But so it was.

I've been home for almost a month now, and I haven't updated my blog, even though I keep fielding veiled hints and outright questions. There are a couple reasons for this. Making the adjustment has been hard, in different ways than I expected it to be, even in the few days I had to consider coming home under these circumstances before I actually flew. I expected to be cold; I expected to miss the thrill of misspeaking languages all day long. I expected to be shocked by the over-consumerism, by the waste and by ignorance. But I haven't been. They say that will come, but for now, I appreciate so much of America, and I am appreciating the base that leads to these issues: that people are always striving for better, that people are free to express an opinion. And when I woke up to a dusting of snow the other day, I was nothing but excited. What I didn't originally expect was that I would come back here without that extra year to think about my plan, to start making connections and sending out letters and resumes and have an idea about what I would do. I didn't expect to be living in my parents basement because I have no money and am rejected from three jobs a day. I simply wasn't expecting to jump into this with no warning. Its kind of depressing, but I know that just means I haven't figured out what my new opportunities are, that in ten years I'll be able to look back and say, well, at least it meant I was able to do this...

But it is the other reason I have put off writing that is the really tough one. It is because I want so badly to be able to write one of those flowery, tear-filled, heart-wrenching celebrations of my time in the Peace Corps. But I can't. I just don't have those kinds of good things to say about Mali, and I really don't have those kinds of good things to say about the Peace Corps. The Peace Corps is a great idea. And it has so many good people that have been and are involved in it. But I just feel that JFK, Sarge Schriver and the crew would be saddened to see the ego of the Peace Corps, to see how badly their five-year-plan has failed, to see the support that could be that isn't, to see that forty years in Mali without us having learned how to communicate our message is celebrated as a great accomplishment. There were obviously some great things about my service. I learned so much and met so many people and saw something I never would have seen otherwise and will never see again. There are things about the last year I would change in the blink of an eye, there are other things I don't think I'd want to change at all, and that the price might have been worth it. I hope that with time and the perspective I will gain in that time I will be able to articulate those ideas fully, but for right now, I can't say what I wish I could, and therefore have not said anything at all.

But so, yes, now I am back, no longer in the Peace Corps, and it has been nothing but thrills and giggles since I've been here. My immediate future is filling up nicely. Next week I'll start a yoga teacher training program with my old teacher at my old studio, which I am very excited about. I apply for dozens of jobs a week, and even though I'm not getting them, it is interesting and inspiring to see all the possibilities out there. It's great to be back with my friends here, and I miss my friends there, but you know what this means? It means I don't have to miss a single Christmas Cookie season (I had put last year's in the freezer before I left)! So you Mali PCVs expect a box sometime soon! And I've already written the 2012 winning Pillsbury Bake-Off recipe (unfortunately I missed the entry deadline for the 2010 Bake-Off - I am learning patience). So maybe I have already found my opportunities, and I now my job is just to watch them unfold.

And for those interested, I have included an important educational video, which will hopefully help to eliminate some of the confusion. Provided I can make the link work. I don't know how to embed this in my blog, so I just put in the link, and also there is no sound, so just watch, and you will learn what you need to know. Very educational, if I do say so, myself!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUO0JyTjSSA

And once my stuff gets here from Mali, I have some other things to share, so hopefully (fingers crossed) in the next couple months I will be able to post some other interesting things.

Peace Corps

I believe my mother read Monique and the Mango Rains, which happens to take place pretty close to my site. I have not read it, however rumor has it that it is a pretty inaccurate description of life in Mali. So much so that I don't know anybody who has actually been able to finish it, it is so bad. I have here, though, two titles of other books that come very highly recommended. They may not be as geographically proximal to my experience, but it sounds like they are much more realistic to what Peace Corps in West Africa is really like. There is another one about fish farming, something to do with River in the title, but we can't remember that one. NB: I have read neither of these.

Village of Waiting by George Parker/Packer (we didn't have this one and the last name is questionable)

Nine Hills of Nambonhaha by Sarah Erdman (the last name is right on this one, but I couldn't read my own handwriting, so the name of the village might be wrong. Whoops.)

Look, it's me and Heath. We so pretty. This isn't my picture, it is Caitlin's.

So, yes, the new stage has been here for almost a month! I can't believe it, and I'm sure they can't either. They are really great - a lot of fun to be around. They are working hard and learning Bambara, French, Fulfulde, Dogoloso and Tomokan like its their job. Which it is. Because we're the most fun sector, we are also growing gardens. Their gardens are doing really well. We planted rice sack gardens a week or so ago, and they are doing sort of well. One or two of them are doing really well. Mine are doing great! Except we seem to be having a tomato rot thing going on, and a caterpillar problem. Boo caterpillars. But I'm growing container potatoes, which is fantastic, and they are really starting to come up now! I'll describe the process in detail sometime, because it is amazing. But I feel it deserves some pictures, and it is raining outside right now, so I'm not going to go out and take them. Later, though.

That's not me, it's Moussa and Audrey. But apparently all the other old pictures of the rice sack gardens are in my camera, which is in my hut, which is not only through the rain, but on the other side of the mudroad that in the dry season is the driveway into Tubaniso. Moussa is a great gardener, exect that he keeps burning all our little lettuce seedlings with rabbit manure. But see the little bag? I planted lettuce in that and we are letting it go to seed, but it is huge!

Hippos (=Mali in Bambara)

This is one of the Hippos we saw in Manantali.

You can't really tell, maybe, but she has two wee bebes behind her. We kept our distance.

And have I mentioned that, yet? That "mali" is the Bambara word for "hippopotamous?" And "bamako" means "crocodile river."

Long time coming

I see it has been a couple months since the last time I posted on this blog. In fact, I was chatting with Ryan the other day, and he very pointedly said, I see you haven't posted anything new on your blog... Well, I've been meaning to sit down and write a really nice entry, but it's been a busy time, and now it's been so long since I've written anything that I lose my momentum after just a little while. So instead of writing you a really nice entry, I'm just going to give you a really quick overview. But there is good, good news. My mother tried to teach me how to resize photos a little while ago, and I didn't really learn, but then necessity forced me to really learn it afterall. So now I know how to resize photos, and that will make it much easier to upload them. So I will do that sometime.

I did, indeed, go to America, and it was fantastic. America really is a great country. And I'm not only talking about the concrete and the steel, though that is a good thing, too. It was really crazy while I was home - had to graduate people, marry other people off, and drive all around the country and then the state. And I had to go to Kennywood. Which was fantastic. I went on almost every single rollercoaster and didn't even cry once!

But now I've been back in Mali for over a month. Wow, I didn't even realize that. Good for me. And I've been busy here, too, even though some of you think, yeah right, all you do these days is be online. Well, yeah, there's been a lot of being online, but that is because I have set up shop at Tubaniso. You see, our new trainees are coming in tonight. Alyssa said this morning "I couldn't sleep last night. It was like the night before Christmas and all I could think was 'Santa is bringing me friends!'" So we are excited about them getting here, but it turns out that organizing and preparing for a training like this is a HUGE ordeal, and we have been working our little fingers and other things off since I got back from America. Hopefully we are ready for them. And if we aren't, hopefully they are forgiving.

I did get to go back to my site for about a week during all this, and it was nice to be back. It actually wasn't great, because our well ran dry. A manye dat! There was still water in town, just not in our concession. I went with Adissi and Abi to go get water, because we had to go to the neighbors and pull it out of their well and put it on our heads and bring it back and put it in a big barrel in our concession. So they carried these giant twenty gallon jugs on their heads. I, on the otherhand, carried a salad bowl half full of water on my head. I tried to convince Addisi that I could carry a salad bowl entirely full of water on my head, but the one time she let me try I spilled three-quarters of it and ended up with less water on my head than when I started. So she went back to only letting me carry half a bowl full. Despite the fact that I was useless more than helpful, everybody seems to have been quite impressed and very appreciative. Hmm.

And then, as you know, we had the dual occurance of the death of Michael Jackson and the Fourth of July, so I got another weekend off for that. Michael Jackson dying was pretty funny in Mali, (sorry, that sounds harsh now that its out there), because while it didn't really affect us volunteers all that much, it seems to have devastated a lot of Malians that it didn't devastate us. They are curious folk. So we went to a place in Mali that isn't really very much like Mali for the Fourth of July. It is called Manantali, and the thing that sets it apart is that it has a nice, large, German-built hydroelectric dam. The electricity, of course, is sold out of country. But it was beautiful. And downstream of the river is the frequent haunt of hippos! So I saw some hippos. Hippos, if you don't know, are extremely dangerous and could kill you if they cross you and are very, very fast runners, but actually prefer cabbage to people. I know all this because I read Congo. We played cards, dressed in red white and blue, looked at the hippos, and roasted and then ate a pig. It was a lovely celebration of independence.

Independence Day was interesting here, because the Malians were shocked that we had to have one, too. They were shocked, but I think they were impressed. I think it made them feel like I had a little more legitimacy. So those were some interesting conversations.

Oh, and we got lucky enough to go to Manantali from Bamako in a Peace Corps vehicle, so it took us about five hours or so. We had to take public transport back, though, and it was a more than ten hour journey. Aahh, Mali!

Scary, scary

One of my last days in village before going "en vacance" to, Inshallah, Ameriki, Inshallah, I was caught in a little miniature cattle stampede. Little and miniature because it was just me and one cow. But still. Now I was taking a - shall we say "creative"? - path home, mainly because I have yet to make it all the way from the garden to my house by the back channels without getting lost. But every time I am more adept at getting myself un-lost, so at least there is progress. Anyway, there I am on my bike, and its very sandy, which is very hard to ride in, and this cow, with no provocation, just starts chasing me! I figure he must have someplace to go in a hurry, so I take a quick (slow, wobbly, and slidey) turn and continue on, assuming my troubles are over. But when I look behind me (just to make extra-special sure) he's followed me around the corner! So the race is on, with me, panicked, pedaling as fast as I can without risking losing control in the sand - because if I do lose control and fall off, he'll come up and trample all over me, pop both my kidneys and my gallbladder, and then I'll really be goners - and he's chasing behind me, snorting and shaking his great big curly horns. Even at this point I still think maybe I am just extraordinarily unlucky and I just happen to still be on his pre-chosen path of rage, but then I double back around somebody's house (to the great delight of the family on the other side of the low wall) and he's still there so I know that for whatever reason it really is me he's after. So I'm looking around for anything familiar, thinking to myself that if it comes down to it, I can probably pull one of those jump over really tall wall moves that rodeo clowns sometimes do, when they don't just get gored, instead. But it doesn't come down to it and eventually I do know where I am and I turn into out courtyard, leap off my bike, and slam the gate shut. And my host family is curious and I say "there's a great big beast out there trying to kill me," but panic Bambara not construct good and all I really say is "Cow Is!" And their eyes say to me, "sometimes we're not sure how your country got to be so powerful," but all I can think is, "if one cow with crooked horns is that frightening, how scary must it be to be caught in an elephant stampede?"

Koutiala shea formation

This last week my teammate Maridee and I hosted an improved shea butter training in Koutiala that was both successful and inspiring. It had been a frustrating journey up to the launch - we didn't feel PC gave us the support we needed and our host service had visions of aid money piled on their tables. So, instead, we pulled it off on our own and had an incredible learning experience, and we explained in a way that I think was understood about the rules of this game preventing over-inflated budgets. Maybe. But regardless, half-way through this project I swore I would never do anything like this again, but my community just approached me with a valid need and a genuine interest, and armed with these lessons I'm ready to start again.

It was an interesting group of women we had in town for the training. We had originally budgeted for 15 women from Koutiala and 15 from the brusse. This is interesting in itself: half the city women who were slated to come failed to show up. Their slots, however, were filled by the plethora of brusse women who just appeared. The first day they were nervous around each other; the city mice dress, hold themselves, and speak differently than their country mouse counterparts. Maridee and I despaired a little that 5 loud and bossy voices would monopolize the whole training and the shyer ladies weren't going to get their bit out of it. But luckily, by the afternoon, a couple of boisterous country voices had prod their sisters into participation and there was a good dynamic in the room.

The morning of the second day, which does involve a bit of standing around as water is boiled out of the butter, I overheard a conversation that went something like this: We have a lot of nuts but we don't really process them; if you give me your phone number, I'll be in touch and we can arrange for your village to buy our nuts to process. Warms my little heart.

Oh, yeah, and I got a boyfriend. His name is Mamidou and he's probably about 3 and he sat on my lap and wore my sunglasses and didn't even pee on me. He thinks I'm awesome and isn't even afraid of my skin. We have a lot in common, and his mom offered to give him to me, but I 'm afraid the timing might just not be right, what with him being only 3 and all. Oh, well, its good to see that quality men are, in fact, still out there.

Malian trainers - well, this is just another one of these lessons from this that I am in the process of learning. I know that I'm from a different culture, but if I were treated like that by a trainer, I would stand up and leave. Maridee assures me that it is appropriate, and that the women like being yelled at and belittled. They don't look unhappy, so I guess its just another one of those things that I'm not sure I'm going to learn to understand.

After the end of the formation, it was incredible. I had at least three different people come up to me and say, hey, I want to have a formation on this, or I want to teach a formation on that. I love to see them interested in learning new skills. I would love even more to see them interested in applying the new skills they've learned to better the lives of themselves and their children. But that, I believe, is something that people have a lot of trouble with in the States, too, so if anybody has any ideas, I'm all ears.

If you're in the Peace Corps, I can't emphasise enough that the most important lesson I learned doing this is: Do it with a partner your first time!

Rain Gardens

This is one of the coolest things I've seen in nine months. Wouldn't work in Mali, and might not work in Colorado, but would be a great project to try.
http://www.kidsgardening.com/Dig/DigDetail.taf?ID=2140&Type=Art

Lots doing!

We did accidentally hit three cows on the way into town. Actually, we only hit one, then that one hit another, and the second hit the third. However the hitting happened, at the end there were three cows down, but only a teensy little dent in the bumper. So, alls well that ends well?

Been a busy time in Koury. As busy as it seems to get in the Peace Corps, anyway. My homologue and I (read, Kelly with Ami Sanou watching) built a mud stove. Mud stoves are great, actually, because if they are done correctly, they use less cooking wood. Less cooking wood is great because women either have to spend less money buying it, or they have to spend less time out in the bush cutting it and then carrying it back on top of their heads. Less cooking wood is also great because we must always be ware of the encraoching sands of the Sahara. Ooooh. Imagine scary haunted house music here. But it is for real. Ooooh. This one looks great, and works well, too. It works especially well as a drying rack. Who knew that mud stoves were the African equivalent to excercise bikes? Well, the deal was, we build a mud stove in her concession and then she is responsible for pointing it out to women who come over, and if they are interested in building one for themselves they get sent over to me. So far, no takers. Except Ismael (little Ismael my host brother) who wants to do everything I do. He said (brace yourself, this was actually enough to make a Peace Corps Volunteer go into her house and cry because she felt like maybe she wasn't wasting her time afterall) "I want to learn everything that you are doing, because then when you leave, if people have questions, then they can still come here, and they can keep building them even if you are gone." So we are going to build one in our gabugu.

But first, Ismael and I have many other projects going on. I gave a demonstration about natural pesticides in the garden the other day. It was because some of those poor ladies' gardens are getting the snot eaten out of them. And when I say poor I mean it twice. The women who can afford chemical pesticides have beautiful plants, nary a bug in sight. So this will hopefully turn into an interesting efficacy experiment - if there are no untreated plots, which will the bugs preferrentially destroy, chemical or natural? I fear the answer may not be what I want it to be. Cross your fingers that the bugs will simply move on to bigger and better things - flowering trees, cow poop, things like that. Anyway, Ismael was my sounding board, and directed me to some very important Bambara phrases (a ka nafa ka bon - that means it is very important) and helped me practice my speech, and then we applied the extra pesticide to our own nursery. Which, by the way, is growing EXCELLENTLY! We have trees that are almost a foot high, and only one looks like it is suffering tremendously. But that is not the only garden project we have going on. We are in the process of trying to build a "keyhole" garden. Which is really cool, and you all should go on the Send a Cow website and look at them, because you can build one at your own house even if your house is in America, and it would be a really good thing, especially if you learned a little about companion planting and planted correctly - you will be amazed at how much vegetable matter you can cultivate in a tiny little space and how easy it will be. Ismael is taking the most pro-active role in this endeavor I have ever seen out of a Malian. Of course, Malian pro-active means we've been working on it for two weeks and have nothing to show for it, but we do have inquiries out to the community about the availability of some of the material we need. So hopefully soon, we will have a keyhole garden. And Ismael also really wants to build a garden with a trellis, because he saw a picture of a climbing pumpkin plant, and I think he thinks that'll attract the ladies!

Speaking of attracting the ladies, I think my dear cousin Marie may be suddenly without a suitor. I told Ismael the other day that American men cook for themselves, and if he goes to America he can't just assume that some woman is going to cook for him. And I think that was the final straw, and he has decided he is going to stay in Africa. Except when he thought about taking a Malian woman with him, because she'll have to cook for him even if she is in America, which just made me mad, so I don't know how that line of thought ended up. But what started this process of the disenchantment with America was an innocent disaster initiated by me.

It was my birthday a week or so ago, and for my birthday I made American lunch. I made spaghetti with tomato sauce. The cooking was funny, because they kept coming around, looking at my pots, and for the spaghetti boiling in water, they wanted me to add oil, and for the sauce, they thought I used an aweful lot of tomatoes. In fact, for the next couple of days, random Malian ladies would stop me in the street and say, "Did you really use bisegin of logo?" (approximately eighty cents worth of tomato paste) And I would say yes, and they would reel away from me like drunks due to the shock. Well, anyway, I had bought onions, garlic, tomatoes, and - these just happened to appear in the market that day - a zucchini, and so I had them in the sauce, and I'll tell you what! I made one fine sauce! Well, I put it all together, and we sat down to eat. Two of them seemed to enjoy it. Another choked it down - it was tough, but he overcame. Two of them refused to eat more than one bite. One spit it right out on the ground, and one other refused to even touch it. Which worked out for me, because then I had delicious Ameriki spaghetti for lunch AND dinner! But so that led to the discussion about how if this is what American food is like, they were absolutely not going to go to America. "Are you sure there isn't to in America?" "Nope, no to in America." America may have money, but they sure have lousy food!

Speaking of money, I don't know if I already mentioned this one, but it was really funny, so I'm going to go ahead and write it again. We were talking about poverty. Good, solid PC conversation. "There is no poverty in America," they said, "everybody there is richer than all of Africa combined!" "No, that's not actually the case, there are poor people in America, too." "Really?" - I heard - "Is there Fanta in America?" Fanta, of course, is orange flavored soda. Funny conversation, but, you know, these things happen. "No," - I later found out I was mistaken about that, anyway, and we do have Fanta in the US - "we don't have Fanta, but we do have Coca-Cola and Sprite." Coca-Cola and Sprite are the other American drinks we have here. They looked at me funny. I looked at them funny. "You have Coca-Cola?" "Yes, many people drink Coca-Cola." "What about Fanta?" "No, we don't have Fanta." So now my host mother breaks in, "Umm, I think you think we said is there Fanta in the US." "Yes, that's what I think you said, is that not what you said?" "No, we said is there fantanya in the US." "Fantanya, what's fantanya?" Fantanya is poverty. Now, all of a sudden, that conversation makes a lot more sense.

Back to Ismael coming to America. He is also disheartened because he thinks I am trying to limit his prospects. Although there is MUCH confusion about whether there are actually black people in the United States, there is also much discussion about Barack Obama. For instance, every morning I get greeted, Good morning, how are you? How's your family? How are your children? How is your husband? Do you have a husband? Will you take me as a husband? Why not? Well, will you give me your watch instead? No? How about your bike? No? Well, how is your family? How is your mother? How is Barack Obama? So the lesson that any child can become the president has sunk in here in a big way. Ismael says to me one day, "I think, maybe, I'm going to be the president of the United States." "You can't be, you aren't American." "But Barack Obama is, and he is black." "Yeah he's black, but he's also American." "Well, no matter, I can still be the president." "No, because the president of America has to be American." "No, he doesn't." "Yes, he does." (I wonder what would have happened if we had elected a woman president. I wonder if they would have simply expelled the Peace Corps from the country as an organization run by an irresponsible country.) "No, he doesn't. ATT isn't Malian, and he is the president." "But he's the president of Mali, and not the president of the United States. And the laws are different in the United States." "But ATT did it." "But that's different." We didn't get anywhere with that line of reasoning, and Ismael got mad.

So, Ismael is not coming to America. Which is good, because he's going to have my work to finish when I leave. My other project that I've been working on is one that is near and dear to my own heart. My Tante Charlotte makes this delicious stuff called Morgenbeere, or something like that, jam. It is wonderful. What I make doesn't even come close to comparing, but I am now the crazy white woman who walks around town with a jar and a spoon trying to trick people into eating something. I've been making jam. Jam, though it has a high sugar content, I believe is a good vehicle for nutrients. And nutrients or not, it is a good use of excess fruit that this town has lying around during the mango season, and if done correctly, could be a good source of income as there are indeed parts of Mali where mango trees do not grow. So, papaya jam was a huge hit. I ran out in two days and was afraid to venture out in the open for the angry Kourians who wanted more jam that I was withholding from them. Banana jam, on the other hand, seems to have the look of the devil about it, and few souls are brave enough to try it, and they quickly warn the others off. If I were a baseball player 500 would be a good average, right? And mango season is about to commence, so cross your fingers and hope and pray for me that this one will be delicious. Personally, I liked the banana jam, too!

A photo collage in honor of Kelly's birthday!

Kelly - the best of sisters!

Kelly - an athelete!
(she was heart broken when she learned that her team was not the "oreo's")

Kelly - the wildlife enthusiast!

Kelly - down & dirty!

Picture of a goat that I just realized there's a baby in

Baby goats are funny. Kind of like little rattlesnakes. They just go up between any two legs - usually they get the mama part right, but even that is touch and go sometimes, and they only really have about a fifty percent success rate with front and back legs - and then they just strike around until they happen to land a nipple in their mouth. I'm not sure how they haven't died out yet.

These are my friends!

This is what my friends look like!


But I make funny faces here, too.

For Dave

A long, long time ago, I promised David a picture of this great beautiful waterfall we went to go see. So finally, here are some pictures. NB: Mali does not typically look like this.
That little tiny person up there in blue is me. To which Liza would say, of course. Turns out that before you leave for the Peace Corps you should have someone else check your wardrobe to make sure that more than one color is represented, because if you get to country and only then discover that every item of clothing you own is blue, everyone will make a lot of fun of you. All the time.

This one's for Heather

Heather never got to see my bike, because I didn't post any pictures of it before hand. So you probably didn't even know how well my awesome new water bottle would match! If you look really closely and remember really hard, you'll be able to. I tell you what, I'm probably the cutest thing on two wheels out here!

Lots of Pictures

This was Koury community fishing day.

My fancy host mama in her fancy outfit. I loved this one, and she was tickled that I wanted to photograph her in it. Notice the two lights in the background. One is hooked up to the town electric lines, which run most of the evenings, and one is solar. There is a solar panel on the roof. I guess its a hold over from when there was no electricity in town. I have never seen it on, but once my host father was around, and they watched soap operas off of the solar all day.

Our beautiful garden!

This is my home. If you look really closely you can see my bike and my door behind the tree. The mango is where we sit, because it is the only shade we have that is not on concrete. We have a concrete porch! But concrete gets really, really hot. We usually have lunch under the mango, too. Except right now the harmeton is blowing, which is wind from the Sahara, so we try to shelter ourselves from the sandy wind a little.

I love this old man, and I love his hats! I love this one best. When I asked him if I could take his hat's picture, he laughed until he left.

This is Ismael's papaya. He is very conscientious about watering. He really likes growing things. Things that he can eat and things that he can sell.

Ismael (left), Zumana (right) at our house. This is kind of how they are!

They used to sleep all snuggled up together like this most of the time. This was pretty funny, because they kept sliding down, or one would slide down and pull the other with it, and then they'd sleepily clamber back up.
The cats are angry, angry, angry in this picture, because they just got a bath.

This is my favorite billboard in Mali. Maybe we need some of these in America.

In Memorium

Well, bad news Burkina Fasofe. Little Hal seems to have eaten a poison frog and succumbed. I think its a bad day when your cat dies anyway, but maybe its a worse day when your cat dies in Mali. And he made horrible dying noises, and there was zero sympathy for him or me, and the only thing that people said is, why are you so upset, there are lots of other cats? Quick body removal, and I think the little girl cat doesn’t know he’s dead and is looking for him. She keeps climbing up on me and howling really loudly in my face. Poor baby.

By the way, that's not him dead, that's him when he was waking up from a nap and rolling off of my bed.

On being back in Koury

2.21.09
We just got a brand new baby goat. For clarity’s, lets call him New Dinosaur Face. He wasn’t really very interesting his first few days. Except that while kittens seem to be born with full-grown eyes, which makes them look like little aliens, goats seem to be born with full-grown knees. Except they definitely don’t have fully-developed stabilization muscles, so they weeble and wobble and bend in all directions. So if you’re a little newborn goat and trying to get to your mother by walking straight towards her, if you’re not careful you might just end up going some other which way. And goats don’t really end up all that smart, and they start off much less so, so that gets confusing.
Anyway, about day three New Dinosaur Face discovers that, indeed, ITS FUN TO BE ALIVE! and he decides that he wants to play. Now, a three-day-old goat about splits the difference in size between adolescent and adult chickens. When you’re young you evaluate play-mate potential based on size. Bigger is always better, but bigger rarely wants to play. And NDF looks around the yard and sees dozens of potential playmate options. So the young man starts weeble-wobbling around after all the chickens. Now adult chickens may not be big, but they also don’t want to play. And chickens, I’ve found, are teh most irritable animals I’ve ever encountered. And they’re not shy about expressing their displeasure. And baby goats are easily frightened but quick to forget. So its been noisy and rather comical lately.
And then I think the kittens must have staged a hunt with poor New Dinosaur Face as prey, because everybody used to live in peace all together, but now my cats are terrified of his mama, slink around all the time and five her such a wide berth that if she’s anywhere near my door they won’t even risk coming inside to eat. The just howl at me angrily from the other side of the yard. This could have happened, I think, because I’ve seen those two looking thoughtfully at the chickens. And the goat is about the same size, but obviously less fierce. But its good that they were put in their place, because I’m terrified of whats going to happen if they take it into their heads to actually start hunting chickens. Once little Hal stepped on a baby chick’s head with his claws out and it flapped its tiny ineffective wings and squeaked a lot, but that was about food, and he does that to his sister, sometimes, too. It might have been little Naani who later died, but I hope not. By the way, only one of the batch survived through IST, but I think he’s finally out of the danger zone. And we haven’t had any more chicken babies, since.
It was nice coming back to Koury. I hate traveling in this country, and the motoritigis on the way in made me super-angry, so I was hating life when I arrived, but everyone was so welcoming and I’ve been keeping busy (busy in the PC-Mali sense of the word) ever since. I think maybe its the dying season, which I find surpriseing, because I would have expected more people to die during the rainy season. Maybe they did die then, too, and I was just too clueless at the time to notice. But Malians are dropping like flies and there’s always some funeral or other to go to or people are going to some other place to go to funerals. I got to go to a traditional masked funeral dance, which was actually a lot more scary than I thought it would be. While it may be tragic that people’s friends and relations are dying, it has led to a great deal of information exchange, and I have had many opportunities to witness women discussing how much vegetables are going for in other markets right now. And if we learned nothing else from the Lion King, we learned that the Circle of Life is continuous, and deaths notwithstanding, it is also the birthing season, and there are babies popping up like weeks. Both of these things make for logistical complications at meetings, because women are housebound both after the birth of a child and after the death of a husband for a proscribed about of time. So after the meeting for the people who could attend is over, the whole lot goes trooping all around town to the homes of the members who couldn’t come, to greet and bless and chit-chat. And on certain unpleasant occasions, to make me hold the brand new baby. Which I do not like doing. But the fact that I obviously don’t like it just makes it that much more fun to watch. And once i think I might have eaten dog-head rice. But only the rice, because my host mom forbid them from giving me any meat. For which I was grateful.
NB: I found out that indeed, it IS the dying season. They call February the bad month, or the doctor’s month, because so many people die then. It is a lot better now than it used to be. The guy I was talking to said that it used to be – only twenty years ago – that a medium sized village would regularly bury ten kids in a day in February. It is because the wind blows off of the Sahara, and it is dusty which is bad for breathing, and maybe it brings along diseases. Because it is since the introduction of vaccines and Western medicine that people have stopped dying so much. But, of course they are still reproducing as if they were still dying so much, but that is a different issue. So there you have it, good observation, Kelly.

Happy Valentines Day, Kelly!

We love you!      Mom & Dad