Bicycles!!!

Well, the Peace Corps really came through with the bicycles. These things are so cute, they’re almost enough to make a girl sign up to stay in Africa forever. White with pink and grey. The grey is like regular bicycle paint and the pink is done in flowery tendrils all over the place. My frame is teeny tiny, so much so that my complementary water bottle (International Procurement Agency, Inc.: Proudly Serving the Peace Corps for over 25 Years – over half of Mali’s uninterrupted PC experience) doesn’t actually go all the way into the holder, and then it sticks out and sometimes I kick it off while I pedal, but it fits me remarkably well. And then my mother came through for me with my bike shorts. On a side note, if you ever join the PC, brink bike shorts. Because even though you have baggage restrictions and you may end up in a situation where you don’t need them, if you do you’ll be happier to have them than sad not to have something else. Except protein bars. Pack them over bike shorts. That’s the order: protein bars, bike shorts, sandals that don’t make your feet bleed, Gatorade. Everything else is inconsequential. And then my sister-in-law came through for me with this thing called a Cool Tie. Its not cool like the adjective that comes to mind whenever you think of me, but rather cool like the opposite of warm. Its this thing you tie around your neck with little balls in it that you put in water and they swell up and become gelatinous globs (a lot less gross than it sounds when I describe it) and then you put it around your neck and its not wet, and its not cold, but it keeps you cool. Amazing. And then the other pair came through with the Gatorade. I just have the best family ever.
But so, its about 60 km from Kita, my banking town/rainy season market town (PC really didn’t come through with that one), to my village. And doing this ride has done nothing but increase my respect for century riders. Because 60 km is what, 35 miles? I could figure it out for exact if I wanted to. I can still remember the day – 8th grade, Mrs. Daniels’ class – when we learned the Rule of Three, as our book called it. It was like magic, finding the missing fourth term in a pair of equivalent ratios. Right up there with the 9X finger trick. Now I wasn’t the most gigantic fan of Mrs. Daniels – she didn’t like David, and if nothing else we have family loyalty on our side – but that may have been the moment I fell in love with mathematics. I didn’t know it until years later, of course, but unfortunately, I think that’s how love sometimes works. But anyway, 35 miles. And after 35 miles I am SO tired! I can’t imagine wanting to ride another twice that far again. And then I think of certain people I know who do it on foot, and I am even more struck with awe. I think maybe PC is teaching me that I was put on this earth to be a couch potato. I also learned that I’ve just been breezing through police checkpoints with a good morning and a smile, which is a little bit of a no-no, but not enough of a no-no that the gendarmes ever got up from their tea to do anything about it. I thought that if you were on a bike you didn’t have to stop, but I’ve since been informed that everyone is supposed to stop. I guess that’s one way to avoid paying bribes in Mali.
I think that possible the rainy season may be over. It hasn’t rained in a while here and it has gotten ungodly hot. The timing is about right, and there is supposed to be a couple week long “mini hot season” before it turns cold. I’m hoping this is going to be the worse of the hot seasons because it is still so humid out in addition to being ungodly hot. And all the bugs are still alive. And there are no mangoes.
Well, I would like to apologize for misinforming my reading public about the nature of Ramadan. Turns out when you live in a Muslim country you still don’t necessarily learn anything true about Islam. (And this one came from a native English speaker, so I can’t even blame the translation) But I will tell you that the festival at the end, which we here in Bambara-speaking Mali call Seli, is one useful religious observance. I have never witnessed so much iron/protein intake in one day in my life. Even American Thanksgiving. Well, maybe American Thanksgiving. It’s really exhausting, to eat all day long. And this is fun. In the village, you not only eat all day long, but you burn with righteous indignation all day long. Because village people have one day of Seli, while town folk have two days, and Bamako fold have three days. And we village people be ANGRY about it! But not too, too angry, because we also all wear new clothes and don’t go to the fields for a day. I didn’t actually notice any praying or religious observances of any sort, but this host family is much less devout than the last one – as in not at all. So they might just put their energy into the eating and the new clothes, you know, a where’s the Christ in Christmas kind of thing. But I don’t know much else, I’m a well of information that was sunk in the wrong place and isn’t filling properly.
And finally, bless the Mines Geology Department. I have made the most beautiful map of my village and its water sources, and while its entirely possible that nobody in this country will appreciate it, gosh darn I’m proud of myself! (My other moment of great pride since I’ve been in Mali was crushed when the malaria smear that I labored to make a few weeks ago in the throws of the sweats was simply re-done as soon as I got to the clinic. I was crushed!)

Back in time

You know how when you go driving through small-town American on your way into town next to the nice welcome to wherever sign there is another one that says, we have Rotary International and the Lions Club and the Boy Scouts and whatever other organizations are active in town? Well, they have those signs in small-town Mali, too. Except instead of Rotary International and the Lions Club (actually, Rotary is represented) it is which countries and international aid organizations are keeping the village alive. Germans built our schools and Canadians put in out pumps and Norwegians are teaching in our schools and UNICEF is providing nutritional supplements. Because Mali sure isn’t building Mali.

10.15.2008

Well, I like to sew, and my host family knows that, so I regularly sew two scraps of cloth back into shirts or shorts or skirts for them. Well, I guess you take your mending to the tailor, right? And the tailor has the sharp scissors, right? And you’d want the person with the sharpest scissors for delicate cutting, right? Well, I know all that so maybe this shouldn’t have surprised me quite so much. But my host-mother came up to me the other day as I was sewing something up with her baby (2 months) and asked if I would circumcise him. I said no.

Moving Backwards - 9.14.08

We swore in as PCVs on September 12. It was a nice ceremony. The Charge d’Affairs, who is currently running the US Embassy in Mali has a wonderful French accent and I understood a lot of what she said. Malian French, still not so much understanding. After the ceremony we went to the American Club and swam in the pool for our Peace Corps party, and then after that we went out for the party the current volunteers organized for us. We decided it was a party for them, and we were just the excuse. Which was fine. We tore up the dance floor and then stayed in an air conditioned hotel and watched CNN. Which was great.

So now I am in Kita waiting to be installed. There is, of course, protocol to go through with every volunteer at every village, and then there is so much stuff that we all have, that they only can do a couple a day (in each region), and my teammate and I are being installed on Friday. So we have a few days to get our shopping done, catch up on our several month old copies of People and US Weekly, and get prepared for site. I bought a solar oven, which I’m particularly excited about, and I am going to see what kind of wonderful things I can concoct in it. I was thinking originally just along Dutch oven lines, but my APCD recommended going for more crock-potty recipes, which I hadn’t even thought of. So if anybody has any experience with a solar oven or any great ideas, just let me know, and I’ll tell you if it works or not.

I did almost miss the bus to Kita this morning. No, I almost missed the bus to the bus station this morning. I set my alarm wrong last night (because I don’t know why, but when you get before five or six o’clock in the morning it things get really confusing. So I set it an hour late), and was having weird dreams this morning that woke me up and I realized I was supposed to be up and breakfasted already. Butt luckily for me, I wasn’t the only one who slept through his or her wake up time. So we made it. And my bus, at least, didn’t leave for many many hours after we got there, so we got to watch French cartoons. I’ll tell you what, I didn’t know I was going to come to Mali and eat so much ice cream, swim in so many pools, and watch so many cartoons.

Bamako!

Guess who got a free (sort of) trip to Bamako this week? Yeah, that's right, this girl. It started out pretty bad and now is turning out pretty boring, but bad and boring took a turn for the better this morning when I bought a GIANT BOX OF CHEERIOS at the supermarket, the likes of which I believe only exist in Bamako. And I got some bananas at the corner and it was like eating a little bowl of heaven. Cheerios, believe it or not, and Chex are the two foods I have dreamed of the most since I've come to Mali.
Well, I've actually written out several blog entries that I am hoping to post at some point, about my arrival to site and my adventures there and in Kita. But as I mentioned, I am in Bamako right now, and they are all in Kita. So I"ll have to do that later.
So you know how they (at least used to) say that if you are going to have a heart attack, you'd be well-advised to do it in Seattle? Well, I think I'm still going to choose Seattle for my heart attack, but for just general passing out, I would highly recommend Mali. They take extremely good care of you if you suddenly go belly-up in the streets of Bamako. Help you to a chair, sit you down, bring you some water, put the fan on you - very, very attentive. Of course, then you don't want to go back there, because you are embarrassed about being the girl that fainted on their sidewalk, and they may have the best ice cream in all of Bamako, so sometimes you just have to suck in up and do the hard thing, don't you?
Well, besides all that excitement, we've finally found some French tutors in Kita that speak real Frenchy-French that I can understand (all teeth present and accounted for) and they want to do an exchange, learn a little English, learn a little French. Very excited about that.
Well, actually, my i-pod is all charged up now, and quite honestly, that's why I came in here, so I'm going to go back to bed now. Have great day, everybody, and I'll post some other more interesting stuff some other time. (Like, for instance, my young girl cousin, Seli, which was very confusing to me because it also means just plain old pray, is the feast at the end of Ramadan, and it took place while I was in Behon (my village) and so I will share what I learned about that.) So until then, au revoir (a phrase which my host family will swear up and down a stack of Bibles, or rather, Korans, is English - absolutely refuse to believe it's French, think I'm dumb for thinking so. Of course they think I"m dumb for innumerable reasons, so what's one more in the great scheme of things?).

Pre-Swearing In

Well, today is the big day, when I promise to be a PCV for two years. I told myAPCD I am probably going to have a heart attack because the idea is stressing me out, but that's just how I am. We are going to the Embassy in a couple hours for the ceremony, and then we have a day of festivities ahead of us. I should rightfully still be in bed right now, but sometimes when you live in Africa your body says "GET UP!" even if you don't really want to. So,I'll have a little time next week (I'm predicting) and I'll let you know all about it. Wish me luck! Thanks for the e-mails and stuff, they make me day!

Good luck publishing this...

Well, homestay is finally over and training is coming to an end. Crazy to think I’ve been in Africa two months already. Crazier to think I have two years yet ahead of me. I can’t even begin to imagine the things I’ll see and learn. This morning I saw an old man in a violet booboo on a pink scooter with racing stripes and an old football helmet. I got up late my last full day of homestay and went out running. I was running straight into this big orange circle hanging in the sky that I couldn’t figure out what it was. It looked like the cover of my copy of Tai Pan. It couldn’t be the moon because that’s the side the sun comes up on and the bright side would be the wrong side, and Ramadan is only 5 days old, anyway. (I’ll get back to Ramadan) But it couldn’t be the sun, either, because I was staring right at it with no sunglasses and no problem, and it was such a calm orange, and so clearly delineated. Well, it turned out it was the sun, after all. But then I had to think about what the heck was going on with the atmosphere that made it look like that. I don’t know if it looks like that every day because I am usually turned around and headed back the other direction (into the breeze) by the time the sun breaks the horizon, but I kind of don’t think so. Then I thought, maybe the world was just preparing for being sucked into a black hole on Wednesday when CERN turns on the LHC. We do get the BBC here, you know. And I tune in religiously to Science Weekly. Because I’m that kind of girl. Aaah, the mysteries of the African sun.

But speaking of religion, Ramadan started either Monday or Tuesday. There is some confusion about that. For me, at least. So I come from a pretty religious host family, but I’m confused about that, too. My host father prays more than any of the other men in my concession (all five times, every day) but he never goes to the mosque. And he leads family prayer. I don’t know if that means he’s in “Imam himself or just knows how to do it. He did spend six years in Cote d’Ivoire, so maybe he learned a different tradition of Islam there. All the other men and two of the boys go to the mosque. All the ladies, the rest of the children, some of the neighbor ladies, and me all pray at home with the chickens and the cows. That right, I participate in Ramadan prayers. I think its okay, because they are really happy when I do and I’m pretty good at patterns, so I don’t embarrass Ameriki too much. It’s pretty easy. You put your hand by your head, you bend on over, you stand back up, you put your forehead on to the ground, you sit back, you put your forehead to the ground again, you stand up without putting your hands up, and you repeat. And you repeat, and repeat, and repeat. It goes on for a really long time. And you don’t get to eat until afterwards. I’m not really sure what we’re praying for, but I just suppose that we’re praying for peace. So, a couple observations: 1. You have to tie your headscarf (musoro) on super tight or it’ll just fall right off, and that’s really a hassle when you are trying to be inconspicuous. 2. Children at prayer in Mali are just like children at church in America. There’s a lot of whispering and giggling and pushing and shoving. We had a puker one night. That might be more of a Malian specialty. 3. Mine are the only knees that crack every single time we get down loudly enough that the other ladies all look at me funny. Which leads me right to 4. I don’t know how to tie my headscarf correctly, because I can’t look either direction without moving my entire torso. Maybe they like it that way. 5. Malian women seem to have super long legs and super short torsos, or maybe I just have super short legs and a super long torso, because when we all sit back on our feet I stick up a good six inches taller than all the rest, but we’re about even, standing. 6. It gets really freaking hot inside a musoro by the time you are done with all the praying.

Ramadan. Megan, this one’s for you. Ramadan is one of the five pillars of Islam. I believe the others are making the Haj, praying five times a day, giving alms to the poor – hmm... that makes four. I’ll get back to you on the last. Ramadan is also called (here at least) the month of fasting. It is WHEN it is because that was when the Koran was revealed to the prophet. But it doesn’t commemorate anything like the way we are used to in a more Judeo-Christian tradition. The purpose is more to remind one both that other people don’t have the food they need all the time, and that we are all people and we are alive by Allah’s will alone and that our needs and what we have to fulfill those needs are gifts from Allah. That’s how I understand it, anyway.

You know how a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing (say, roommate in first semester abnormal psychology, for example)? Well, a little language can be, too. I was having a (stilted and cursory) discussion with my host father about the upcoming American election, and I told him that in a few months, George Bush is going to die. Obviously I meant to say that in a few months his presidency would come to an end, but the look of horror that came over my host father’s face told me I had failed at that. But it did make me feel good about political stability in Mali, I had to ask my LCF to step in and fix that mess. But here’s something nice: it turns out that after I said George Bush would die I explained what I really meant well enough that he understood what I was trying to say. So here’s Dauda’s take on the election: Barack is very handsome, but we should vote for McCain because he’s older. There you have it – straight from the Malian village.

Have I mentioned material yet? Malian fabric is wild. Today, one of my host moms is wearing that thing at the fair that you hit with a mallet and the ball goes up and dings the bell on a lime green background. Sometimes you have toothpaste tubes or keys. Of course, there’s lots of the Virgin Mary in Kita, because she made an appearance there once. (I don’t think that’s the right expression – “made an appearance” makes me feel like I’m talking about Cher) My friend Therese has a complet of an advertisement for Senegal Air. It says: Twenty years ain’t nothing. In French. Anyway, last week we went to the national museum which had an exhibit on the textiles of Mali, which my mother might have found interesting, but I liked the archaeology part. And then we ate ice cream. That was the part I really, really liked. I had caramel and vanilla. In a waffle cone. For 1000 fcfa. I think, maybe, when I’m done with the Peace Corps, I’m only going to live places where they have ice cream.

So there are a lot of things about Mali already that are very frustrating and I’m learning how to deal with them. Audrey and I were talking about her host family and she said “They never hit the children.” Which is great, but its sad for me that that is said as something that sets her family apart from the others, like, say, mine. My menfolk don’t hit the children; they leave the smacking to the women. And the other children. Children are vicious. And Malians love medicine. Love, love, love it. But they don’t seem to be very good at moderation, nor at giving it only to whom it was prescribed to. I’m giggling right now thinking about what my host family would do to a bottle of Flintstones vitamins. Heck I think if PC started giving out Flintstones vitamins they’d have a much healthier volunteer staff. At least one day a month. PS Dad: I take my vitamins every day. Except last Sunday when I forgot.

Maybe only my Mom and maybe Ryan will appreciate this, but I saw a girl the other day in a Bibi Blocksberg t-shirt and I almost stole it right off her body. But I didn’t. For a lot of reasons.

I think often in the US about how hard it would be just to get through each day without the ability to read. I think about it a lot here, too. Of course, in Mali, it would be a completely different kind of hard. Everything is a different kind of hard here. It seems to me that basic functioning in America would require reading. Mali, in part because of its appallingly high percentage of functionally illiterate adults and partly with that as the result, is structured in such a way that a large chunk of the population can get through the day with no need to read. But then that raises, for me, at least, a whole host of other question. Now, don’t get me wrong, Malians spend a lot of their time working, but they also spend a lot of their time not working. How do they fill their time? How do they occupy their minds? I have to remember that I’m coming at this question as the daughter of a librarian, and an avid reader myself, but I still, after two months, can’t come up with an answer. I hope to learn