Bambara Training

So there was a day earlier this week (like, Tuesday – it’s Thursday), where I was frustrated at not being able to talk to anyone and pissed off at Peace Corps for putting me into a village where a total of 2 people I have met speak French (no, wait, three, the lady principal of the school does, too) after only 5 days of Bambara lessons. I was like, I am never going to be able to communicate here in Bambara, my homologue is always going to have to translate for me, I will never be able to talk to people (or by the time I am able to it will be time to COS), and why did they do this to me?

So I texted my APCD Haoua and I was like, look, I need language help. My tutor does his best but he doesn’t know how to teach so it’s basically just me asking him what words in my Bambara manual mean. It’s really frustrating. She texted back that they would send a language trainer to my site for a week. You can’t say Peace Corps Mali doesn’t support their volunteers, that’s for sure.

The next day (yesterday), Bocar (the language supervisor) called me and said he had a trainer who was willing to come. She got here this afternoon. Talk about efficient. I get 30 hours of training over a 5 or 6-day period which works out to about 6 hours a day. We start at 8am tomorrow. So if you were keeping track, I asked for help on Tuesday and will start receiving it on Friday. PC Mali doesn’t mess around. In Guinea, it would have taken until Friday just for a formateur to GET to my site (2 days from Conakry woot woot!) and it probably would have taken them several days to lock down a trainer. Actually I don’t think PC Guinea even offered at-site training, though I have heard lots of other posts do. But in their defense, tons of people in my village spoke French there so it wasn’t absolutely necessary to speak the local language like it is here.

So hopefully at the end of a week I will feel more confident in Bambara, or at least able to say and understand more stuff. Then I think we might get some language training during IST in December, but if we don’t, since I’ll be in Bamako, I will just ask for tutoring while I am there (can have 30 hours a month) and get a formateur to come out to the training site for a few hours a week to help me.

Also, Drissa and I have only about 15 more families to interview (we have already done something like 45). So that’s exciting. It will be a load off once that is done, which should be Saturday night.

Oh, yesterday we interviewed the village chief. There are FIFTY ONE people living in his compound. Like 30 of them are kids under 16, but STILL. Insanity. Dri says there is another big family we are going to interview tomorrow. I wonder how it will compare.

Also, during our interviews the other day we came across a family with two kittens and after they and the dog chased them down, they gave me a long haired gray kitten who was very angry. I zipped him in my purse and he went to sleep, but BOY has he been a pain in the butt. He uses the litter box I made for him without a problem – this is great! But he does not eat the food I give him (which is the food the family gives me, plus milk). So I end up having to give him some egg or tuna (luckily it is tuna I can buy in Mali, but still, that stuff is expensive!) and put it on the millet and sauce so hopefully he will eat something. Cats are supposed to love milk, why doesn’t he drink it??? So whatever he doesn’t eat I give to the dog, who gratefully and quickly gulps it all up. Also, this cat screams all night long. I’m not sure why. If he’s scared, or calling for his mother, or just hates me. But he cries ALL NIGHT LONG. So I don’t get a very good sleep. I’ve been sleeping with earplugs in. I can still hear him, but it’s not as sharp and loud. I hope he gets over that soon. Also, he is always hiding. If you see him out in the open, it is a rare and freak occurrence. And he hates it when I try to touch or pick him up (so no, I have not bathed him). I mean, dude is practically feral.

But at least there are no more mice?