I’ve now put my public transport woes behind me and find my time on busses and boches utterly amusing. For instance, the last one I was on, the engine caught fire and all the passengers ran off the bus in a cloud of smoke where we proceeded to stand on the side of the road for an hour while everyone emptied their water bottles onto the engine and got back on the bus, only to break down again in the next town a few kilometers away. I decided to hop in the next moving, hopefully non-combustible vehicle that went by to make it to my language lesson in village two hours late. Sometimes I have to laugh to keep from crying and just go with the flow. This is Africa.
I’ve been at site almost a month now and every day that I’m here I feel that I make a progress, if only to say that I’ve survived another day in Africa. September might have been the slowest month of my life, but it’s over now and I’m already feeling October fly by. I’m settling into the groove of my village, feeling more and more comfortable. I guess I stay in my village more than other volunteers because they're starting to call me a "site rat"... They're just jealous because I love my town more than they love theirs... It's true!!! My town is known for its watermelons and the Sunday market. Every Sunday, it explodes with people from all over the region selling their produce and some of the most random items: car parts, furniture, dried fish, prayer mats, gateaus, bread, fresh cow’s milk, sour cow’s milk, really old and nasty cow’s milk… I can find pretty much anything I need on Sundays. Sometimes it’s just too overwhelming, but I love walking around and getting lost in it. The great thing about Mali (and I've heard this about most of West Africa) is that once you’ve met someone, you are friends for life, so it’s very difficult to feel alone. I always find a friend to walk around with, or just to say hello and feel like I belong. I wander aimlessly, looking for anything in a cooler because I know there’s a slushy, icy treat in a plastic baggie. I usually go for the frozen yogurt with coconut, but there’s a ginger and hibiscus tea which I just learned how to make last week. I try to find someone new to sit with and watch them sell their items, scoping out their produce or cloths for the day and try to finesse my bargaining. I guess you could call that part of my research for “small enterprise development” but I have a hard time feeling like this is “work.” Everyone is really eager to teach me Bambara, so they’ll humor me, or ask me the basics, “Are you married? How many children do you have? How do you like Mali? Are you French or from “Ameriki.” click click… (did I mention there’s clicking in Bambara? It’s subtle, and more of a signal that they’re listening or understanding. I definitely have the click down, it makes me sound like I know what’s going on…)
During my first week at site, Ramadan had ended and everyone broke their fast with a celebration called Sambe Sambe. For three days, gaggles of women and children multiplied on the streets, swooshing as they walked around the village greeting each other in their newest shiny wax fabric dyed in a wide array of vibrant colors. The men in their elegant flowing boubous - the tuxedos of Mali - slaughtered many a livestock that everyone ate. And ate. And blessed. And ate. And blessed again. The children, like trick or treaters, ran around to houses singing benedictions and asking for money. My host mother had bought her grandbabies cheap plastic watches and sunglasses and they rocked them like they were the coolest kids in village, which of course they are. My host mother, Tanti, is the sweetest person in all of Mali, but you’d never know it by the tone of her voice, so it took some getting used to. The sheer volume of it sometimes makes me think she is yelling at someone she hates across town, but no, she’s just talking to her children across the concession. I now love her for it, but was a little scared of her at first. Plus she makes the best food in Mali (well actually her children do, she puts them all to work): rice with peanut sauce and lots of veggies, fish gumbo and rice porridge, flour tapioca porridge, she makes me crave Malian food now! Her t’oh is even gourmet! All her children are fat and happy, people in the village even refer to her one daughter as “Batoma Bilibiliba” (Batoma, the fat one). She has another daughter in America and feels like it’s her duty as a mother with a daughter overseas to take care of me.
My brain is totally overloaded with Bambara and I’m hoping it’ll work itself out soon and I’ll actually be able to form complete sentences. Right now I just spit out random vocabulary to get my point across, but don't make any real sense. I think Yoda is my inspiration… ("Sleepy I am", "hunger I have", "you are going where?") I meet with my language tutor four times a week for Bambara lessons in French. It’s a fun couple of hours where we play charades and sometimes I get it right. He’s a highly respected man in my village and as I mentioned before, he’s a rockstar. He and his cousins were the only educated kids in his village growing up where there was no school, so they started an organization that sold various things their community made and saved that money to build the first school in their village. He’s still active and extremely motivated at age 65, plus has three wives and 10 plus children!
Peace Corps sent my Language Coordination Facilitator (LCF) to come and stay with me for a week for more intensive language training. I think if there’s a way to “over” integrate, I’ve done it. Not only am I here in this little village in Africa, eating, working and conversing with Malians, but now I have a Malian living with me in my house, and am absolutely comfortable with it, actually I couldn’t be happier. Back at homestay I had joked with my LCF, Yagare, that I was going to take her with me to site, so when Peace Corps set up this extra language training and asked me who I wanted my LCF to be, it was a no-brainer. I keep trying to write about her in my journals or my blog, but I’m without words because Yagare is just… she’s just… amazing! She’s so sweet, funny and incredibly intelligent but is in her own little world sometimes and it brings me the most joy just watching her. She could stare at a flower for many minutes before noticing anything going on around her. Her English is nearly perfect and has little quirks in its syntax that I just cannot correct it because I think it is too adorable and I wish everyone spoke like her. One day, I came to her house after a group yoga session we had after class and she was laying out clothes she had just washed on the rocks around her courtyard. I asked her why she didn’t come do yoga with us and she replied, “Oh! I was laundering.” So many gems like this, it’s hard to pick just one to share with the world. Her voice, with its low dulcet tones is simultaneously light and lofty, like she’s singing to my heart when she speaks! Aside from my inappropriate love for her, I’ve really benefited from this week at my site with her. She has made me much more comfortable with my village and she has helped tweak the things I’ve learned in pre-service training so I can incorporate them into my daily routine: ie. greetings (slightly different dialect in my region from what I learned in training), bossing children around (I cant get them to do pretty much anything for me now) et c. It’s exhausting the lengths Malians go to bless things or greet people, and just when I thought I was doing it enough, I paid attention to Yagare and realized I had to up my game. I now fill about an hour more of my day just going through the same blessings.
There are times when I know that what is coming out of my mouth is pretty accurate Bambara and Malians react in the strangest way. It’s like when David Blaine does a magic trick that totally freaks people out and they kind of scream and run away, but then turn around and slink back to him saying, “how did you do that?” You get the picture. I’m a lot like David Blaine.
So, my mom keeps asking what I’m doing. I guess she means work. But everyone knows I’m no good at that. These first three months as a volunteer are supposed to be devoted purely to language and getting acclimated with my community. I have basic survival language skills now, but I have to improve my vocabulary to start working with Malians in a productive way. A little more than just, “Good afternoon! Are you well? And your family? Did you spend the night in peace? Where are you going? Is your female friend there? How is she? How is her family? (Meaningless word that is very important inserted here) Nse, (literal translation: it’s because I am a woman) May God increase the blessings of this (insert anything here ie: day, afternoon, donkey cart) Amiina, Amiina, Amiina, Amiina. Tomatoes here? Are they good? How much for a pile?” It may seem monotonous, but it’s all very important. As soon as you greet someone, they are instantly your best friend and ally. If I’m going to get anyone to trust me enough to work with me, or think I’m here to help them and not some spy from the US government, then I have to greet and just spend time with as many people as I can. I drink a lot of tea. And I yaala yaala (to walk around and greet) a lot. Yes, there’s a term for “to walk around and greet” and it’s a totally acceptable answer to “where are you going?”
Africa is definitely growing on me. I’m not just talking about the amoebas and jungle funk. The first time I felt that “connection” to Africa that I hear from people who have traveled here, or want to travel here, or love Africa (for whatever reason, I didn’t really get it), was when I noticed my extremely heightened sense of smell. I’m starting to notice things I would never have in the states. The way the breeze wafts over toward me sometimes I can tell exactly what’s going on with my neighbors: tea time, roasting corn over hot coals, making shea or peanut butter, washing clothes. Malians are 90% Muslims, but I know there are Christians in my village because I smelled pork cooking the other day. At first I thought my nostrils were playing a trick on me and I just missed Beach Haven that bad because I was reminded of those mornings I would wake up and know that Biggie was downstairs in the kitchen preparing one of her amazingly sinful breakfasts of fried tomatoes or blueberry pancakes and always bacon…lots of bacon, crispy and charred for everyone, but a special plate of limpy and undercooked pig for Grumpa and Uncle Al. They like their eggs runny too. I confirmed the Christian inhabitants in my village the following day when a light breeze sent the aroma of pork chops over to my concession and I knew it had to be pig. No cow could smell that good and make me wish I had a jar of applesauce at my disposal.
I did something today, Mom! (I know I already called you to tell you all about it, but I thought I’d share this one on the blog too) I set up a time to chat with the women in the Maternity CSCOM (health clinic) in my village and they said they would be more than happy for me to come in and observe/assist them on Sundays and Tuesdays when all the pregnant women come in for their open clinic checkups. I was lucky to have Yagare here with me for my first time going to the clinic so she could fill in the blanks in translation and let them know why I was there and how I could help/observe. I sat in the clinic room while women came in one by one to get their bellies measured, a basic obstetrics exam, and an HIV test. The first test I witnessed was another one of those profound “holy shit I’m in Africa and I’m watching a pregnant woman get an HIV test where she’ll find out in about four minutes whether or not she and possibly her baby have HIV” moments. I felt a little light headed. All the results were negative, I ni ce Allah, because I could not handle that on my first day. Twenty or so women came in, each one climbed up on the rusty metal table, lay their pagnes (cloth wrapped skirt) at their sides, while the Attending, donning a threadbare lab coat, long flowing colorful pagne and matching head wrap examined them. “Is there anything hurting you?” All of them replied with a simple “Nothing at all.” Then women in their last few months were encouraged to come back when they were in labor because it’s safer to give birth in the clinic than at home. They were directed to the male doctor in the adjoining building to get an anti-malarial shot and some prenatal vitamins.
During an examination, I almost missed a woman walk through the room into the back birthing room wearing all black, her face covered. I didn’t think much of it until the midwife turned to me and asked, “Do you want to help deliver her baby? She’s 5 cm dilated right now.” “Right now? She’s delivering right now?” I asked. “Not right now, but soon. Do you want to watch?” I felt so unqualified and nervous and anxious but knew that I desperately wanted to be a part of it, so of course I said “yes.” When the time came, I walked into the adjoining room and felt helpless as I stood behind the once head to toe covered woman splayed out completely naked on a metal table, obviously in pain, but not making a sound. I couldn’t believe how quiet she was, and so was the midwife who was assisting her. I helped swab her leg for an injection then got shuffled around to the receiving end and watched the “miracle of life.” The last thing I remember before passing out was when the midwife tossed the newborn into a dirty sink, then threw some water from a cup onto it and walked away into the next room, the mother still laying on the cold metal table with a bed pan under her, catching the leftovers.
I came to, sitting up in a chair with a cup of water in my hand, the women were chuckling to themselves and I felt like a complete idiot. I can’t wait to go back on Tuesday.
